UK based Musicovery is a music discovery service not too different from Pandora. Instead of choosing specific bands, albums, or songs, you simply click on a variety of sliders and buttons, including the ability to hone in on specific genres.

Currently, you’re able to choose a genre, date, mood, or dance tempo for your stream. Musicovery then displays a colorful map of your personalized song playlist. You can skip around the playlist and choose a specific song to play. However, just like Pandora, there isn’t a way to play a specific song, nor is there a way to systematically go back to songs that were played.

Overall, I like how Musicovery lays out all the songs in a virtual playlist map. It allows you to easily see at a glance the energy level and genre of each song being played. However, I still prefer Pandora’s method of choosing genres based on specific artists and songs.

It’s been quite a year for social web technologies — blogs, social networks, and online video broke into the mainstream consciousness, even earning a tip from Time Magazine for person of the year. And, this has definitely been reflected in the 9 months that BuzzShout has been online.

Top categories

The top company categories for BuzzShout from this year are:

1. Social Networking (175)
2. Blogs (151)
3. Photos (110)
4. Listings (103)
5. Videos (102)
6. Bookmarking (94)
7. Reviews (93)

I really wasn’t kidding when I said that companies are springing up all over the place. For some the weeks, I was literally hearing about company launches on a daily basis. The Web 2.0 bubble is growing, and with it, we’re seeing a glut of companies that are all doing very similar things.

Go ahead, try browsing any one of the top categories for a glimpse of the ever crowding spaces.

Growing trends

Some trends have planted their seeds this year, and should begin to blossom in 2007. These include:

• Sharing what you wear — Companies like Shoutfit and StyleFeeder are leading the way for social fashion sharing and trendspotting.
• Getting paid for social media content — Digital Journal, Social Roots, and Yepic hope to actually pay the person of the year, You, for all that social media effort.
• Blog and news aggregating — TechMeme, Tailrank, and Megite have yet to garner mainstream attention. However, as blogs continue to grow in popularity, these aggregators will become increasingly important as a tool to filter out the wheat from the chaff.

Predictions

2006 really was a wild ride, full of mashups, agile development, and quick hacks. In contrast, 2007 should bring a more mature look at Web 2.0 (and, I daresay, Web 3.0). In particular, we’ll be seeing a lot more focus on creating fully functional web applications, and not just simple tools.

I expect 2007 to bring a healthy shake up of existing companies. There are just too many social networking and video sites to be sustainable. We’ll probably start seeing this happen in the latter part of next year, as major players get bought out or go big on their own.

Early in the morning today, Kevin Rose announced a major site redesign on digg. The changes include a fluid layout, a top 10 hottest stories list, a podcasting section, and most importantly, a concerted emphasis on video. I’m actually pretty happy about this, since I primarily go to digg for my intake of viral videos.

Nobody can deny the proliferation of online video within the past year. Time magazine has even named “You” as the person of the year, implying that YouTube has allowed everyone of us to easily broadcast ourselves. Watching these videos are millions of bored office workers needing a quick viral video fix during their five minute break. Online video has proven itself to be a huge industry, and, digg’s redesign addresses this.

Digg’s video section was originally located alongside the other categories. Now, it’s been prominently elevated to the top bar right next to News and Podcasts. I’m happy to see this division, because I don’t consider viral videos of your brother singing his rendition of the Backstreet Boys news.

For certain videos, you’re able to view the videos without leaving digg via a lightbox interface. Simply click the play button next to the video thumbnail and watch. The result? Users have easier access to the videos, and, will have a less likely chance of leaving digg.

Digg’s video section is definitely one of the fastest growing sections of the site, and, the redesign is a good response to the demand. I still find digg’s video portal into YouTube to be much more interesting and effective than YouTube’s own featured videos page. And, I’m one of the many people that are consuming YouTube via a third party site.

I never got sucked into the MySpace phenomenon, though my girlfriend uses it religiously. When we got our Maltese, Puff, a few weeks ago, I recommended she sign up for Dogster, which is a social networking site for dogs. She signed up for Dogster on Friday. The simple sign-up process involved a question/answer format and picture upload. She had finished creating our dog’s Dogster page in just a few minutes.  

We immediately wanted to show him to the Dogster community, so we clicked on the groups tab where she found the Maltese Mommies group. She joined and invited another Maltese to be friends with our dog. I checked the site later to find that Puff had his first friend, Charlie. That’s when my addiction began– I was overwhelmed with the unexpected obsession of making my dog the most popular pup on all of Dogster!

After we had one “pup pal”, I quickly jumped on the opportunity to garner many more. I received an invitation to join another group called OnLy PuPs, which I accepted without delay. It is my unfounded belief that the more groups I join, the more pup pals Puff can get. I started shooting off invites like a madman. To my chagrin, I’ve sent out fifteen invites, but Puff only has four friends.

I really like the fact that I can tell how many people have viewed Puff’s page. I dislike that I can’t tell who has given him a bone. In fact, Puff has eight bones, but I’ve given him six of them.

Users are given ten Zealies, the Dogster currency, after joining. Users can buy more of them, or will be given twenty-five a month by signing up for Dogster Plus ($19.95/year). You can use zealies to buy stars or rosettes to give to other dogs…or your own. A rosette is basically a ribbon you would get in a first grade spelling bee. I can see how some people enjoy these, but to be frank, I could care less about them. That is, unless you all want to login to Dogster and give Puff a lot of them!

I’ve given Puff a good start, but he and I have talked, and he will take over further responsibilities for finding new friends on Dogster. Though, it’s such a great site, I will probably still help him.

There’s been a lot of controversy about Digg over the past few months, ranging from cries of secret moderation to condemnations about its worthlessness as a news site. Recently, Jason Clarke of DownloadSquad wrote a scathing article about why Digg is doomed.

For the most part, I tend to agree with Jason about how Digg is more an entertainment site rather than a news site:

Although digg claims to be a news aggregation service, in the scheme of things digg articles skew much further towards the Entertainment side of the online content spectrum than they do to the News side. Therefore, a better analogy to illustrate the problem with the digg community would be to liken it to a rock concert that gets out of control where a riot breaks out. The people in the crowd at the concert weren’t looking for a riot when they showed up at the concert, they were there looking to be entertained. The problem is that when a few idiots in the crowd begin taking part in antisocial behavior, the “wisdom of crowds” tells the people in the crowd (particularly those who feel anonymous) that it’s okay to take part in the nonsense.

A few of my friends and I were at a coffee shop discussing the state of online social media. One of us asked the fabled question, “How do you consume Digg?” All of us agreed that it’s basically the technogeek’s equivalent of reading trashy tabloids on the checkout aisle of the supermarket. I don’t go to Digg for serious news, but rather, for a quick peek at some viral videos and articles.

And, I always have a feeling of guilty pleasure.

However, I think it’s sensationalistic to say that Digg is doomed. There’s a place in the online social ecosystem for entertaining quickie types of links. I’m not sure if this is the vision that Kevin Rose had two years ago when he started Digg, but, it’s the reality at the moment.

So, how do you consume the content on Digg?

This is the year of online videos. With the success of YouTube and their contemporaries, many companies are looking for ways to enhance traditional services with moving images. The recently launched Gigged Up is a job site that is betting on the video phenomenon to change how employers and candidates interact.

Gigged Up allows employers to upload a video along with their job posting. Candidates will be able to get a more personal feel for the company that cannot be conveyed using text. They may also be more apt to view a video, especially if they are on the fence about whether they like a particular job posting.

On the flip side, candidates can also upload their own video for employers to watch. Gigged Up suggests that the video be treated like a first interview, and that the candidate should delineate their background information and goals.

Overall, Gigged Up is an interesting twist to the traditional job site, allowing candidates and employers to interact via online video. However, I am a bit skeptical that many candidates would trust themselves to put up a video interview.

Currently, I don’t see any real videos on the site. The only video is an example clip made by the people of Gigged Up, and the video itself is pretty bad quality. Even more foreboding is the clunky nature of their flash player. They should really consider using the same player as blip, which is simple and fast.

We should all check back when employers start uploading videos. It will be interesting to see if they make fresh and creative videos that draw candidates in more successfully than a plaintext job posting.

How does the face of journalism change when cell phone cameras and small video camera devices become ubiquitous? Instead of the appointed few recording breaking news, we have the eyes of the masses, each equipped with the necessary gear for grassroots journalism. Following in the footsteps of CNN’s I-Report, which allows users to upload video, audio, or photos, comes the more sophisticated You Witness News from Yahoo.

YouTube has already proven the ability for average people to present compelling news stories. Both the UCLA tazing incident and Michael Richard’s racial outbreak were documented by bystanders and first broadcast via YouTube.

You First News allows users to upload photos and videos and have them considered for use in articles on Yahoo News. The primary content on the site right now are a few videos and articles providing tips for citizen journalism. You First News’ stance is that you don’t need fancy equipment or knowledge to capture news–simply being at the right place at the right time, and having an inquisitive mind will suffice.

It’s great to see Yahoo forging ahead in grassroots journalism. You First News may become the outlet for citizen news breaking videos, rather than YouTube, which is a more general video site. Right now, users won’t be paid for content that is shown on Yahoo News. However, if their content gets distributed to Reuters, they will be compensated.

Like many of you, we have been following the tragic Thanksgiving trip made by the Kim family. The wife and children have been found and are safe, but today, we learned that James Kim has passed away while bravely searching for help for his family. We would like to express our deepest condolences to the Kim family.

James Kim was a senior editor at CNET and had a part in running Crave, a consumer gadget blog.

Tonight’s planned San Francisco New Tech Meetup at CNET headquarters will not convene due to the tragic circumstances.