Chances are, there's someone on the interweb watching the same video you're watching on MTV.com at the same time.   Maybe they have the same sense of humor as you.  Maybe they relate to the people or scenarios in the show  like you do.  Or maybe they're just procrastinating or need a little escapism like you.  Whomever they are, you guys are here for the same thing at the same time.   So now, we're giving you the opportunity to connect with these mysterious someones.  Welcome to MTV.com's latest online social viewing experience.  Below, you will find helpful FAQ's on how to make the most of your social viewing experience.

* Note: Social viewing features will only be available on the latest full episode of Jersey Shore season 2 at the moment *

Do I have to log in?

If you want to chat, find your friends, private chat with someone, or create your own viewing party, you must login. You can log in with yuor email address and birthdate, or use your Facebook or Twitter credentials.  However, you can still take polls, throw objects, and use the gestures without logging in.

What is "Update Networks"?

This lets your friends on Facebook or Twitter know what you're up to so that they can join you.

How many people can fit in a room?

Up to 35 persons in each chat room.

How do I invite friends to join?

Click "Find Friends" in the left rail.  You must be logged in so we can pull in your list of friends.  Click on "Invite to Room" and click "SEND INVITES".  They will received a direct message in their Facebook or Twitter.  If you room is full (35 people max), they will end up in another room that has open spots.  See below for how to create your own room.

What is a Viewing Party?

You can create your own room, public or private.  If your room is private, people can only come into your room if they are invited, by clicking on "Find Friends" in left rail.  Everyone who joins the room will be watching the same point in time in the video as you.  You have the remote control, so if you pause the video, everyone's video in the same room will pause as well.

What is "Add To MTV Buddy List"?

The MTV Buddy List allows you to keep a list of friends on MTV.com only.  It will not add them to your Facebook or Twitter friends.  Once you add someone to your MTV Buddy List, they will show up in "Find Friends".

What is "Watch Together In Sync"?

This jumps your video to the same spot the person is watching.

How do I block someone?

Rollover their picture and click "Block this user".  You will not see the user's comments pop up.

How do I turn comments off?

Click "Hide" in the lower right corner.

How do I turn cast and crew commentary tracks on?

If they are available, you will see a "Commentary Track" button in the right hand rail.  You can choose multiple commentary tracks if they are available.  You can turn them off by clicking on the "Commentary Track" button again and unchecking the track(s).

How do I turn all social viewing off?

Click on "TURN OFF EXTRA FEATURES" in the top left corner.

We're pleased to announce that on Wednesday of this week we enabled Facebook Connect on MTV.com. We know how much you use Facebook and we wanted to make it easier for you connect with each other and your friends.

Facebook Connect will allow you log in to MTV.com and participate in the community using your Facebook account. In addition to commenting on videos, photos and news, you'll now be able to share your MTV.com activity with your friends by publishing a story to your Facebook news feed.

If you already have an MTV.com account you can link it with your Facebook account by (1) clicking on the Facebook connect icon in the comment section on any piece of MTV.com content, (2) editing your profile and clicking on the "This Commuinty" tab, or (3) checking the box on the Log In page if you're logged out.

Tags community, facebook

This morning, we launched a new version of our Home Page.  Prior to arriving at this design, we tested a variety of layouts and concepts with audience members. The one you now see is a combination of the response from our research and our new editorial goals for the site.

Our first goal was to make the site easier for you to use and to find the content you're seeking with less effort.  We changed the sitewide navigation in the header to feature at-a-glance style pulldown menus.  No more annoying flyouts that are hard to get to!

We heard loud and clear that the rotating background art was visually pleasing, so we decided to keep that.  The existing large rotational promo unit, which we call the Marquee, was also favored over other layouts so that's staying as well.  These two elements should be familiar to you regular MTV.com users.

Secondly, we wanted room on the page to deliver you more timely, relevant content both from MTV as well as from others across the web.  That was the motivation behind The Daily Fresh module.  Multiple times a day, we'll be handpicking fun, cool things that we think you'll enjoy. (So keep checking back!)  Very soon, there will be a way for you to tell us about cool things you've found as well.  We know that you guys are in the know too.

The Daily Fresh will also be a way for us to spotlight and highlight our audience--that's you.  We might pull out a good comment from a music video, or find a cool photo or video uploaded by our community members to their profiles and put it on the home page.  We've got to call out talent when we see it.  You guys are a creative bunch and you deserve to be seen.

Just a few other things.  MTV.com is now the front door to all our our brands: MTV, MTV2, mtvU, MTV Tr3s and MTV Music.  We wanted to be sure that MTV.com's home page reflected what all the brands were up to because there's a lot going on.  We're continuing to work on ways to better connect with you and help you connect with your friends and other shows and music fans.  In fact, we're launching Facebook Connect on the site soon which will make it much easier for you to lend your voice and share content.  And because someone has to pay the bills, we'll be working with our advertising partners to innovate and experiment with new ad models.

Please let us know what you think.  Leave us comments below--we'll be checking!

Tags redesign

Yesterday, we discovered a poll containing content of a highly offensive nature within the section of MTV.com for the “Rob & Big” show that resulted from an apparent intrusion of the polling tool on our site.   MTV does not in any way condone the hateful remarks contained in this poll, and we offer our sincere apologies to those directly mentioned within it, the show’s fans, and visitors to MTV.com who were exposed to it.

The poll was immediately removed from MTV.com, and further investigation into additional potentially insensitive or inflammatory material has been conducted and concluded as of yesterday afternoon. Additionally, the MTV.com polling system is completely separate from our community platform, and there was no breach of MTV.com user profile data or our internal network security.

So you think you know your MTV shows? Prove it!

Add this Facebook application to test your knowledge of the shows you love on MTV!

• Prove the depth of your devotion by taking MTV quizzes
• Challenge your friends to beat your scores
• Climb the leaderboard to become the recognized most knowledgeable fan of a show (or shows) among your friends or across all of Facebook
• Show off your achievements by adding MTV Show Quizzes to your profile
• Keep watching for new quizzes, because we'll be looking for new ways to measure your MTV intelligence and we'll add more shows all the time

It's time to put what you know about MTV series like The Hills, The Real World, MADE and more to the test with MTV Show Quizzes. We're looking to sort out the people who watch the shows from the truest, bluest, hardcore fans. How can you show that you've got the goods? Put your wisdom on the line and take a quiz!

Want more MTV?

Check out the MTV Music Videos app to watch more than 16,000 videos on Facebook!

More?

Check out the Facebook MTV page and become a fan!

Looking for the hottest young thing? Searching for an old school jam?

Add this application to get the MTV Music Videos experience!

• Find and watch MTV’s library of 16,000+ music videos
• Create a list of your favorite videos and see your friends’ favorites
• Create music video playlists and watch videos
• Share music videos with your friends
• Watch music videos in full screen

Thanks to all of the fans who’ve sent us their feedback – and please keep it coming! We’ve been listening and we’ve upgraded this application to add playlisting, favoriting and more ways for you and your friends to stay in touch and share what you're watching.
We’re continuing to make improvements…stay tuned and check back for updates. We’re working on additional playlisting features, video suggestions, and much more.

Watch videos, invite your friends and let us know what you think.

Want more?
Check out the first video that aired on MTV: “Video Killed The Radio Star” by The Buggles

More?
Check out the second video that aired on MTV: "You Better Run" by Pat Benatar

Still more??
Check out the MTV fan page on Facebook, and become a fan!

We’re happy to announce the public availability of the MTV Networks Content API. For the past few months a select group of developers have been helping us through our “private beta” period and now we’re ready to go public... But still beta. Our API will allow web programmers access to our content - like music videos - in an easy way.

Initially we’re making every music video in our archive (plus all the related metadata) available through our API.

Not sure where to start? Check out the documentation, read the latest blog entries or drop us a line on the message boards. We're building, tweaking and adding new features all the time, so be sure to visit this site frequently for the latest updates.

Today we’re excited to release the first of what will hopefully become many, many new widgets. Check out the shiny new MTV Summer Blockbuster Widget!

4/14 Update: Thank you for the feedback on our new video player.  For those who have had trouble watching our video, we appreciate your tremendous patience.  We've been working hard to tackle all the problems that have been coming up.  It can take time to figure out and reproduce an issue sometimes when we don't get many specifics, and we want to make sure we've tested our fixes thoroughly.  For many of you who have been able to enjoy the new full episode video player, we have improvements on the way.   Your feedback is invaluable, so please continue to let us know what you think.

3/18 Original Post: We're truly excited to launch our new full episode video player in time for the new episodes of The Hills premiering on March 24. We've been working hard to pack this new player with lots of improvements over our old video player. There's also many more features we have in store for you, and once it's more proven, we'll start rolling this player out to other shows.

We're still working out some kinks and tweaks but check out what’s new below. In the meantime, definitely let us know what you think… what you like, what's not working, what can be better, and anything else you’d like to see in our new video player. We may not have time to reply as much as we'd like, but rest assured we're reading and listening to your comments.

Before

After

• Watch larger video with up to 3x improved video quality, color fidelity and resolution than previous video players on mtv.com without downloading additional software.
• The video player will automatic detect and dynamically optimize the streaming content to the highest level bit rate your internet connection can support for optimal viewing experience. Our Flash videos stream from 1.7 Mbps for higher connection speeds to 350 Kbps for modest connection speeds. Also, the player automatically displays 4:3 (full-screen) or 16:9 (widescreen) video in their native aspect ratio. We still give you the ability to change display sizes and optimize the bandwidth settings, but designed the video player to give you the best viewing experience without you having to do much but sit back and enjoy.
• We've redesigned the webpage to give the video center stage with minimal clutter, and not in a pop-up. The layout is optimized for 1024 x 768 monitor resolution in mind, so even the large view fits perfectly on your screen. Relevant content like songs from the episode and After Shows, along with access to other episodes of the series, are now one click away.
• Watching our shows online doesn’t just have to be passive. Our audience is part of everything we do and we want to hear what you think about the show via comments and ratings, share your favorite episodes with the community by adding to your profile, and share with your friends by posting or sending them the URL.

WOW. We've been tracking your support for the adorable Jonas Brothers and their latest video--and we're totally bowled over. And I'm sure that the Jonas Brothers would be too. While you got your fan mojos on, you actually helped us uncover a bug in our comment counter on the video page! There is a fix currently in the works now so that we can allow an unlimited number of comments. The good news is that all the comments were actually recorded, it was just the count that was off.

We decided to do a little housekeeping while the fix is taking place, so we eliminated all duplicate comments just to make it easier for you to get through them. Half the fun of watching the video is seeing what people have to say about it, right? We wanted to make it easier for you to see more comments at once. It's not our general policy to delete duplicates, but given the circumstances we figure you'd understand.

We alerted our Music & Talent department to all of your efforts and they're letting the Jonas Brothers' label know how active and motivated you guys have been around the band. We were definitely impressed by your organization and mobilization so we passed the word on.

Thanks for visiting MTV.com!