LIVESTREAMED VARIETY SHOW WILL STAR SNOOP LION AND YOUTUBE TALENT

The Tube-a-Tweet-a-Thon Holiday Spectacular, a new variety show that will be livestreamed Dec. 13 and benefit homeless youth, has roped in rapper Snoop Lion, celebrities and YouTube stars to fill the benefit with musical and comedic entertainment.

The event, from YouTube talk show What's Trending, will leverage Twitter to accumulate donations. Each tweet viewers send (up to 50,000) with the hashtag #Tubeathon will automatically donate $1 to the Covenant House, courtesy of Virgin Mobile. People can also donate via Text2Donate or at VirginMobileLive.com on the day of show, which starts at 9 p.m. EST on What's Trending's YouTube channel.

In addition to Snoop Lion (formerly Snoop Dogg), comedians Kevin Pollak, Heather McDonald and Doug Benson, actor Josh Malina, The Gregory Brothers, web personalities iJustine and Daily Grace, the cast of Annoying Orange, musical group Pentatonix and My Drunk Kitchen's Hannah Hart are also scheduled to appear.

"This event combines those classic, 1960s old-school variety shows with the digital smartphone culture of today to host something special for people in need, including those crippled by Hurricane Sandy," Virgin Mobile USA's Ron Faris said in a statement.

Listen a track here from snoop dog:-

Why Facebook Just Turned Your Subscribers Into 'Followers'

It's been more than a year since Facebook introduced the Twitter-like "subscribers" feature, letting you follow public updates from people you aren't friends with. Well, a year is a long time to go without changing any feature at the rapidly iterating social network -- which announced Wednesday that it would be changing the name of your subscribers.

At some point in the next few days, and henceforth, they will be known as followers.

Astute readers will notice that's exactly the word Twitter uses to describe folks who, er, follow you on that service. Conspiracy-minded readers might surmise that Facebook always intended to take the Twitter nomenclature outright, and simply waited a year to get everyone used to the feature before changing the name.

Indeed, it's hard not to read something into the fact that this is rolling out on the same day that Instagram removed its support for pictures within tweets.

On the other hand, "followers" just makes a lot more sense. Subscriptions are something we tend to associate with payment, after all. And if there's one message Facebook is trying to get across amidst the whole controversy over promoted posts, it's that the service is free and always will be (as it likes to remind you when you sign up.)

Having subscribers placed so prominently on every profile page might dilute that message. Then there's the fact that "followers" just tested better with Facebook users, apparently. "We found it is a term that resonates better with people using the service," a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable.

Have your subscribers become followers yet? Do you prefer the new word? Is there a subtle competitive anti-Twitter strategy at work here? Let us know in the comments.