• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, April 24, 2013

Mel Brooks on Twitter? The fabled 2000-year-old man will in fact get his own handle and be the kickoff act for a new partnership between Comedy Central and Twitter. The 5-day festival of standup and comedians will run from April 29 to May 3. It will begin with a tweet from Brooks that will link to a live stream from the Los Angeles Paley Center. Brooks’ first tweet will be recorded, as he is accompanied by longtime partner in comedy Carl Reiner and moderator Judd Apitow.

Using the #ComedyFest tag, the program will tweet out 16 programmed events with more than 50 comedians over the following week. The linked content will be viewed via Twitter as well as Cc.com. The diverse programming will include moderated panels as well as connections to Comedy Central shows where tweeting will be integrated into the content. Comedian Jeffrey Ross, for instance, will be hurling his insult comedy at Twitter users who submit their profiles. Al Madrigal will be live tweeting commentary on his own show that will broadcast on May 3. And on May 1, 17 comedians will be performing a live drinking game over Twitter as they are episodes of “The Half-Hour” comedy shows air on the network.

This partnership with Comedy Central comes during the week of both ups and downs for Twitter. The company announced deals with BBC America late last week to tweet content synchronized with the airing of some of its TV programming. Earlier this week, the company announced an upfront-style deal with Starcom. And the company’s new music app launched last week. And all of these developments suggest the many ways in which Twitter is hoping to further insinuate itself into various media consumption habits and the marketing that accompanies them. But in the midst of this, yesterday the AP’s Twitter account was hacked and a prank news item was enough to send the US stock market plummeting -- if only very briefly.