• by Jonathan Blum , January 26, 2007

Call it the, how you say, “Borat Effect.” Humor is the new mover and shaker online, particularly for mobile devices.

Aggressive content player HandHeld Entertainment recently signed several comedy deals to gain traction in the portable device wars, buying Funmansion.com and Dorks.com. It also struck a deal with Comedy Time Networks to get into new venues.

Online movie retailer CinemaNow also inked an exclusive deal to grab new yucks, signing comedian Josh Blue, winner of the “Last Comic Standing” contest in 2006, late last year.

Established comedians are also feeling new love from the mobile Web. Ellen DeGeneres signed with Sprint Nextel to produce a mobile version of her show. “Ellen-On-the-Go” will be the latest channel on the Sprint Power Vision Network.

Solid research backs the move to comedy.

Nielsen//NetRatings recently found that comedy is the third most popular downloaded category among English-speaking young people, ranking just behind music and movies.

“Comedy by its very nature lends itself to the online form — it is short in length but hugely popular in the viral stakes,” Nielsen//NetRatings’ European Internet analyst Alex Burmaster points out.