It’s Thanksgiving weekend, and what better time to have a write-up about a ridiculous website that has only one offering. When I first heard this on the radio, I couldn’t stop laughing. When James Yu first visited the site, he couldn’t start laughing. I guess it will only be funny to some.

Write someone’s name into “Da breakup song”, and give them a couple reasons why you’re breaking up with them. Maybe they’re cheap, fat, have bad breath, talk too much, have no car, forgot your birthday, blogged mean things about you? All are included in the customizable breakup song. The song is sung, or rapped, by Lady Raptastic, who I think is really a white guy trying to sound like an uneducated African American woman.

While waiting for the song to load there are some funny one-liners such as: “Hold on, I be doin’ my nails”, “OK, I be getting up”, and “Hold on fo’ one sec”. Warning: the beginning of the song, whether you like it or not, will be stuck in your head if you hear it more than twice. I have 3/4 of my family, not including myself, singing the beginning. “Dees song is especially fer you…Jo-el, Jo-el you about to be broke up, Jo-el, Jo-el you about to be broke up.” Catchy, ain’t it?

My interest was sparked when I saw a solitary ad from PayPerPost, the service that pays bloggers to write nice things about companies or products. Upon further research, I found the group behind Da Breakup song, MindComet, is also tightly connected with, if not the parent company of, PayPerPost. Ted Murphy, the Founder and CEO of PayPerPost, is also the Chariman of the Board at MindComet.

Interestingly, the people behind PayPerPost also created Disclosurepolicy.org, a disclosure service that helps bloggers generate a statement that will disclose any conflicts of interest they may have. Ironic. It reminds me of the tobacco companies who pay millions in advertising to tell kids that smoking is bad. I don’t believe the tobacco conglomerates are really opposed to kids trying cigarettes and subsequently becoming addicted to smoking; nor do I believe that PayPerPost wants bloggers disclosing that they are paid to write a favorable post about a certain company. Consumers are more likely to try a product a blogger recommends if they don’t think the blogger was paid to write about it– PayPerPost knows that.

MindComet is an interactive marketing company, and while they have some diverse offerings, I find a lot of what they have to be quite strange. For instance, they have a lot of blogs about different forms of online marketing such as emailmarketingvoodoo.com, cgmvoodoo.com (cgm is consumer generated marketing), and behavioralmarketingvoodoo.com. I’ve studied a lot about marketing, and I think associating voodoo with marketing lessons doesn’t leave a good taste in my mouth. In my mind, Voodoo provokes images of one devious person trying to manipulate or control another.

One good thing that can be said about MindComet is that they are highly productive.

I’m wondering if MindComet were the ones who sent the site to the radio station. And if so, was the station paid to do so or did the DJ just genuinely like the site and song?

Here’s a couple of my favorite lines from Da breakup song:

“I am suspect, when you give a gift to me, because everything you buy is buy one get one free
You so cheap the only time you use Grey Poupon, is when you have a free Grey Pou-pon cou-pon”

Also check out Monkey Mail which is on the Career Builder website. I enjoy the text to speech feature where I type in my Mom’s dog’s name several times and watch the dog look around very bewildered.

Yes, I’m referring to the long awaited results to the BuzzShout blogger contest that ended at the end of October. And while I’m glad my catchy title has caught your attention, I’m sorry to report that we don’t yet have a winner. All submissions are in, and James and I are working together to agree on which one should get the grand prize.

Allow me to explain what has taken us so long. We’ve spent lots of time attending events and interviewing “Web 2.0″ visionaries. The videos that we’ve been posting take a surprisingly long time to edit, though I think we’ve finally gotten through the learning curve and the editing time seems to be going down. By the way, did I mention that the two of us behind BuzzShout also hold down day jobs?

Anyway, we will have a winner picked soon. Thank all of you for your submissions, and keep your eyes on your inbox as we will be emailing the winner before the big announcement. I badly wanted to submit my own entry to win the part of the cash prize that I wasn’t throwing in, but hence I couldn’t. So, if you know of other blogging contests on another site, and if they have a prize as cool as ours, please let me know so I can send them my entry.

Cheers!

We usually aim to get a post up on the Shoutblog once a day. Lately, however, we just haven’t had the time to do so. James is working on tightening up the backend of the site, and we’ve both been working on getting some new features released. The one that we’re most excited about is the video blog, or vlog, that we’ll be debuting on the Shoutblog tomorrow. The initial short video interview was our first attempt at the new medium, and while it needs some improvement, I think it’s a great job for our first one. They will continue to get better over time.

Also of note, we are quickly approaching the final October 30th submission date to get your entries in to the Shoutblog blogger contest. The $50 prize, which comes in the form of a prepaid credit card, is still up for grabs. We are also interested in bringing the winner on as a regular contributor. So, if you’re passionate about new web sites, apps, mashups, etc., be sure to email us your submission. Not to shabby to earn $50 for about an hour of your time writing about something you’re enthusiastic about.

Stay tuned for the first of our new releases starting tomorrow!

About a month ago, Cisco updated to the new logo shown to the left. Recently, they’ve added some new user-centric Web 2.0 features to the Cisco.com website. Some of the new additions include consumer forums to review Cisco products, a landing page for users to download podcasts focused on sharing ways to use different internet technologies, RSS feeds for new product announcements, and even a mobile friendly version of the site. A live video chat on October 26th will allow Cisco’s consumers to talk about the sites changes and get their input. 

These site changes coincide with last weeks introduction of the Cisco Digital Media System which helps business customers connect with their customers, partners, or employees through rich digital media. One of the most recent case studies to implement Cisco’s Digital Media System technology is Brunel University in the UK. According to Cisco’s press release, “professors and university staff will be able to capture, store, record, and deliver digital media content, which will extend the resources of the university…Brunel will introduce video conferencing into the lecture halls as well as enhance further collaboration with other institutions, developing more e-learning and interactive projects along the way.”

For a company that started out solely manufacturing enterprise routing equipment, this is a huge step to connect more with the end user instead of their customer’s purchasers. Sun Microsystems has taken a similar step with the introduction of their Sun employee blog network, including one belonging to CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

While Web 2.0 is based on more interactivity and user involvement, it seems to have also caused a shift in the way corporations are thinking about how they are perceived within the community. This might not be that big of a deal for Cisco and Sun, both in the high-tech industry, but it will be great if we see the trend transcend to drug manufacturers, tobacco companies, oil conglomerates, and other old-school, tight-collared corporate entities. Let’s hope that Web 2.0 leads to a corporation 2.0, where end-users opinions really do matter, and the bottom line is connected to how well the company is perceived within the community.  

Read/Write Web writes about a new service called User/Submitter, which pays people to vote for articles on digg. People who want their article or site dugg can pay $20 plus $1 for each desired digg.

At the heart of this is the big gaming elephant in the social news room. Anyone who uses del.icio.us, digg, Wikipedia or any other site that relies on voting has seen the gamers and trolls that lurk behind the curtains. Indeed, we have even seen it here at BuzzShout. In order for such sites to be successful, the barrier to entry for voting should be low enough so that anyone can easily participate. However, this is at odds with the ideal of removing the junk, since it means people and sites like User/Submitter can disrupt the quality chain.

Currently, they are paying $0.50 for every five stories dugg, which is quite low. However, my fear isn’t that people would do this manually. The User/Submitter revenue model may encourage someone to automate the digging process in order to earn the cash. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has already done this.

Is this a dark portent of the future? Will sites like del.icio.us and digg be controlled by the highest bidder? Even though I still hold to the philosophy that people are generally good, I hope User/Submitter isn’t the start of a new trend.

I’ve just read an interesting post on the CNET News.com Gaming blog. With the help of Millions of Us, CNET Networks now has a recreation of their corporate HQ in Second Life! The office looks nearly identical to the real one, but in Second Life they are on the water. Lucky bastards! 

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According to Daniel Terdiman’s blog post this SL CNET Networks office “will be used for a series of interviews with virtual-world luminaries, and as a forum for CNET News.com reporters to come and talk about stories they’ve written. Over time, however, CNET hopes the space can be used for CNET.com reviewers to talk about products they’ve tested, as well as for any number of multimedia projects, including the posting of CNET videos, meet-ups and other events.”

Steve Rubel thinks that other media companies will start doing the same. I think as the popularity of Second Life and other online worlds continue to increase, we’ll start to see all companies, not just media, wanting to build their presence there. I just hope the Starbucks and McDonalds don’t dominate the virtual world like they do ours!

Dude, screenshots are so Bubble 1.0; check out the screencasts instead. Molly, a loyal BuzzShout user and our new friend, has created a wonderful screencast of BuzzShout. Not only has she done a great job with the screencast, but on it she’s even helping us promote our Shoutblog contest. What a great gal!

According to her Screeniac blog, she is the newest addition to VPOP Technologies, which does custom programming and web hosting out of Southern California. She has already done 50 screencasts, so be sure to check out some of her past work. If you also like her screencasts, and have a good idea for a site she should feature, drop her a suggestion here.

A song: Molly McDonald had a screencast, ee-eye, ee-eye-oh. And on that screencast she had Buzz-Shout (hyphenated to keep rhythm), ee-eye, ee-eye-oh. With a new site here and a new service there, here an app, there a mashup, everywhere a social networking site, ee-eye, ee-eye-oh…or something.

Note: About that contest, the prize has been decided and we think everyone will love it. Drumroll please…it’s…CASH! Fifty dollars of cold hard cash in the form of a pre-paid credit card. So get those blog entries submitted to us at the BuzzShout feedback email before the end of October. Don’t procrastinate or you’ll forget. Also, thanks to Computer Joe for the mention on the 9Rules site.

Congratulations to Ryan and Gillian Carson, and Lisa Price for putting on a wonderful conference. I especially enjoyed Yahoo’s Tom Coates and Dogster’s Ted Rheingold, who both talked about social communities on the web and how strong ones are built. In fact, a lot of the knowledge they had can be used to help grow the BuzzShout community. I realized there was a lot we should be doing, but aren’t yet. BuzzShout was created to help people cut through the hype of Web 2.0. As individuals, we don’t want to check out every single new website, web app, service, or mashup. If we collectively share our opinions on the few we do visit, then we’ll help each other figure out what is the best, and not have to visit the ones that suck. An interactive BuzzShout community will make a very useful and informative site where participation will help shape the future of the web. The larger we are, the more our opinions are heard.

I also enjoyed seeing some of the aesthetically-pleasing applications from digg labs that gives a larger, visual perspective on stories and how they’re doing on digg. These have been around for a while now, but I have never checked them out until yesterday. I find them useful as one thing I don’t like about digg is having to mull through multiple pages. Kevin also mentioned that there will be some new digg labs inventions launched within the next couple of months, so keep your eyes peeled on the Shoutblog for coverage. A commenter mentioned that users should be able to “digg” which digg labs ideas are implemented on the site. I thought that was a great idea, but Kevin said something about not being able to do that because of Calacanis being a competitor. Also see Rafe Needleman’s blog entry on some new digg features.

Although they weren’t presenting, I had the opportunity to speak at length with Thomas Hawk and Kristopher Tate. For those of you who don’t know, Thomas is a wonderful photographer (the photos in this post are his) as well as an investor in Kristopher’s Zooomr. They gave me some info about their newest additions which include a tagmap, comments on specific photos, and quicker upload speeds. Flickr has also came out with geo-tagging, but I look forward to even more innovative features that Kristopher confirmed will be coming out soon for Zooomr. Small companies like Zooomr have great opportunities to take on market leaders because they don’t have to deal with bureaucracy when taking on new projects.

Other blog posts about the conference can be found at Jeremiah Owyang’s blog, and Dan Farber’s write-up on Arrington, and Liz Gannes on GigaOm. Also check out Scott “Laughing Squid” Beale’s photos on his site.

Have you signed up for the two-day Future of Web Apps Summit yet? If not, go to their website to check it out. Speakers include Evan Williams formerly of Blogger and now of Odeo, Ted Rheingold of Dogster, Tantek Celik of Technorati, and Steve Olechowski of Feedburner. The conference is put on by UK based Carson Systems, a company focused on enterprise web applications that is led by Ryan and Gillian Carson.

It’s only $295 for two days, which is a great price to be able to hang with so many visionaries. If you desperately want to go but don’t have the funds, then contact us and we might be able to give you the 25% BuzzShout discount!

2nd Update: Only one more to go! Who will be the one to add it? Grab your piece of BuzzShout history now! Update: We are now up to 998– Keep them coming!!! BuzzShout is quickly approaching the addition of company number 1,000 in our directory! We’d be thrilled if you helped us soar over this benchmark; please submit plenty of cool web companies with Web 2.0 offerings. Who knows, maybe you’ll be the one to add company number 1,000! If you are, we’ll give you a mention in this blog.