Apparently, neither has Jon Stewart.

LinkedIn, of course, is the social network for professionals. According to the company, they connect over 120 million professionals who “exchange information, ideas and opportunities.”

Jon Stewart thinks that it is a company whose sole purpose is spamming his inbox. On his nightly show “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” he discussed the merits of LinkedIn while covering the recent Obama / LinkedIn Town Hall.

Check out the clip below –

Although it’s totally unfair to point to four unemployed LinkedIn members and make an assumption about the usefulness of the social network itself, it’s still pretty funny. Plus, nobody said that comedy has to be fair to anyone.

Of course, everyone isn’t simply on LinkedIn to find a job. LinkedIn helps people re-connect with former co-workers and classmates and lets you make new business connections to help your professional career. Plus, its use as a social network allows users to get information and feedback from millions of industry professionals.

Like I said before, I’m not really a LinkedIn’er. What about you guys? Do any of Jon Stewart’s rips about the service have merit? How do you use LinkedIn? Let us know in the comments.

Shows like Tosh.0, The Voice and just recently Breaking Bad have begun to display specific hashtags on-screen during their broadcasts in the hope that they will spur conversation across the social network. For the most part, this Twitter focus has been successful.

On last night’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart, cable news’ use of Twitter was the topic of discussion.

Right off the bat, Jon Stewart hits the nail on the head when it comes to describing the complexity that is Twitter: Platform for serious journalism and irreplaceable tool for social change, or a mecca for screaming teenage girls?

He says that Twitter is the social networking site that has “become an increasingly popular outlet for new about Justin Bieber and popular revolutions.”

But what fascinates him the most is the fact that so many news outlets are relying on Twitter responses about current news topics. News outlets like CNN and MSNBC often ask questions to the Twitterverse and then read the replies on air.

Sure, feedback from everyday folk has its advantages – but people’s names on Twitter…oh the humanity. Check out the clip below –

The account he mentions that is quoted so often by the cable news outlets, @ladybigmac, turns out to be a woman named Ruth McInerney from Alabama. She is a retired bookkeeper, political junkie and NASCAR enthusiast. As of today, she has amassed over 1,500 followers for her contributions on CNN.

The debate about journalism and social media is a complex one. I guess a basic question is this: How seriously can we take someone with the handle @krispibacon? In my opinion, Twitter is a great source of quick information. The problem is that it is so large and unfiltered that it is oftentimes a source of wrong information.

Want proof? Just ask @NFLDraftInsider. His Twitter fail is discussed thoroughly here.

Let’s start with a quick rundown of the content deal.  Episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report will once again become available on Hulu the day after they air.  Meanwhile, Hulu Plus users will get access to episodes of Hot in Cleveland, Jersey Shore, and Tosh.0 21 days after they air, along with 2,000 episodes of older shows like Chappelle’s Show, The Hills, and Reno 911.

Rumors indicate Hulu will pay Viacom at least $40 million for all this, although no financial details were disclosed.

As for what Kilar had to say, he indicated that Hulu Plus has been successful, writing in an official blog post, "Our subscriber count will pass 1 million this year, to our knowledge the fastest start of any online video subscription service.  In the fall, we expect Hulu Plus as a business will have a revenue run rate north of $200 million."

Then Kilar addressed the subject of Hulu versus traditional TV.  He wrote, "Based on metrics from Nielsen/IAG, Hulu’s video advertising service is roughly 2x as effective as traditional TV video advertising services."

So, tackling the idea of having to pay for content (and perhaps angering network execs), Kilar concluded, "Our conviction remains that if we respect the customer and innovate effectively, we can pay content owners more from the ad side of the business than anyone else’s ad service can do (be that live/linear consumption or DVR viewing)."

The shows were pulled in March of this year after Hulu was unable to secure the rights to keep presenting them.  Reports indicated that Comedy Central wanted monetary payments in advance of whatever ad revenue episodes generated.

Hulu handled the loss well, though, saying "a fond farewell" with an official blog post, and now it looks like remaining friendly could pay off.

Brian Stelter wrote this week, "[E]xecutives at Hulu and Comedy Central negotiated about restoring the shows as recently as last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks. . . .  Both sides were eager to make peace, the people said."

Let’s hope an agreement is reached.  "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" are still available through Comedy Central sites, but Hulu’s user interface is widely considered to be better-designed.

The only catch may be in whether the shows are made available to everyone or tied to Hulu Plus in some way.

This doesn’t seem to signal a complete estrangement between the two companies; in fact, Hulu’s Andy Forssell wrote on the corporate blog, "[W]e are continuing to talk to the Comedy Central folks about a number of opportunities.  They’re a great team and I’m confident that we’ll be working with them in multiple ways in the future."

Also, Hulu will direct users who search for the affected programs to TheDailyShow.com and TheColbertReport.com, two Comedy Central properties that will continue to make clips available for free.

Still, it’s hard to imagine that this would have occurred if both parties were completely satisfied.  Perhaps Comedy Central wasn’t impressed by the size of Hulu’s audience.  Or maybe they couldn’t agree over a revenue split.  Either way, it’s a fact that Hulu’s trying to obtain more content, not shrink its existing library.

Hulu execs must be hoping that the site doesn’t lose too many viewers due to this loss, and praying that the development doesn’t represent the start of a trend.

Huffington notes that 50,000 blogs are started every day at which point Stewart notes that the statistic sounds like that of a sexually transmitted disease. But she says blogging is a lot more fun.

"Write about yourpassion. Love your passion," says Huffington, when asked about what the "trick" is to blogging. She says to write about your obvious passion and your secret passion. "My obvious passion is poliitcs," she says before Stewart makes a joke about secret eggplant passions at which point Huffington reveals that she has a passion for cheese. She then provides an example of when she really did write about cheese.

The conversation that Huffington has with Stewart kind of backs up my point about how you have to care about what you’re doing when you’re blogging and using social media. You can’t just talk about your product and advertise. You have to get involved and get personal.  In other words, you have to be a human, not an ad. Huffington understands this and that is one reason why the Huffington Post is as successful as it is, and she is on national television talking about blogging.

She can freely talk about things like cheese on her blog, and it makes the readers feel like they are reading something written by their friend, and that is something that people can connect to. She’s letting her personality through. It can also elevate the entertainment value of a publication. She likens blogging to emailing a friend in terms of tone as Stewart tries to grasp what blogging is really about. Huffington also refers to blogging as a "rough draft of history," presumably in the context of news-related topics.

She talks about the spectrum of blogging from the type of blogging from the Huffington Post does about news to people just blogging about more trivial things. She also talks about a series the Huffington Post launched calling on readers to blog the economic crisis, called "Blog the Meltdown."

"You lost a job? You have time to blog," exclaims Huffington.

Huffington then continues to try to explain to Stewart what blogging is really about and tells him that he doesn’t understand it, which is funny in itself, most likely true for a lot of other people as well.  "Blogging is not about perfectionism. Blogging is about intamacy, immediacy, transparency, and sharing your thoughts the way you share them with a friend," she tells him.

I think that sums it up pretty nicely, and is a statement that businesses should consider when they set out to do their own blogging. If you keep this frame of mind in your writing, and in your social media efforts altogether, you have a better shot at really getting through to the audience that you are after.