MAKE IT STOP! 'Facebook - The Musical' and more

A cheery new YouTube video called "Facebook - The Musical" is on its way to going viral at more than 500,000 views during its first few days on the Web, thanks to a campy crew of crooners singing the praises of the social network.

While I'd love to see "Annie," "Bye Bye Birdie" and the rest of those overplayed musicals go the way of MySpace (oh, it's still around?), it looks like tech-themed musicals might be here to stay. At least on YouTube.

AVbyte, the outfit that produced "Facebook - The Musical" (what it calls a Youtubesical), has also created musicals honoring Instagram, and in conjunction with the Vlogbrothers, Tumblr (in which a Disney-ish Ariel and geeky friends sing about the joys of viewing Tumblrs instead of actually reading).

AVbyte on Friday even uploaded a follow-on to its "Facebook - The Musical" that highlights comments from viewers of the original video, including a request to come up with a Twitter musical (the AVbyte guys just laugh at the notion of putting Google+ to music, dismissing it as something they tried for a day).

But on the Twitter front, have no fear: A musical featuring a lot of tweets and paper clips popped up on YouTube a few years back (and mercifully, has been viewed by fewer than 3,000).

And as for the giant search engine that does no evil, well, a live action version of "Google: The Musical" had a run at the University of Minnesota back in 2006. ("Google is taking over the world - one thought at a time. An entirely original darkly-comedic electronic musical. Librarians, DJs and zombies - it's a brave new world.") If it went on to Broadway, we missed it.

Naturally, the other prime subject for a musical -- Apple -- has also been addressed. A crowdsourced Indiegogo project to convert the play "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" into a musical has raised the $3,100 needed by Fractured Atlas to put the show on this summer at the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, D.C.

And don't confuse that production with "Nerds," a musical comedy from North Carolina Theatre featuring performers portraying both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

There might not be a Tony Award coming for any of the above, but perhaps they are a step forward from even older attempts at converting tech subjects into musicals. We leave you with: "IBM 1401: A User's Manual," from Iceland:

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