By Miiko Mentz and Alison McNeill

Most people are familiar with Lolcats and ICanHasCheezBurger, but what some may not know is that Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger Network, has grown a successful business and in just two years he and his team have gone from one site — icanhascheezburger.com — to an entire network of more than 25 fun and entertaining sites. In addition, they have published three more books since their first one I Can Has Cheezburger?: A LOLcat Colleckshun, and one of them, How To Take Over Teh Wurld, debuted on the New York Times Bestsellers list.

We love the icanhasacheezburger site and the FAIL Blog, which is another popular site in the Cheezburger Network. It’s quite entertaining. And on Wednesday night, they announced the FAIL Blog’s Top Ten FAIL Lists for 2009 with Kanye West taking the grand prize of “King of Fail” for 2009. Check out the entire FAIL list here.

Ben was a busy man at BlogWorld Expo 2009, speaking and signing books, but after his book signing he took a second to chat with us and share what’s next for the self-proclaimed “internet content connoisseur.” He shared with us a little bit about the latest books that they’ve published, which are Graph Out Loud, Fail Nation and the New York Times Bestseller How to Take Over Teh Wurld (yes, you read that correctly…those are not typos). He also talked about two new sites within the Cheezburger Network that have been well received by the community.

The first one is Daily Squee, which is a site with all things cute, tiny and squee. And the other newly launched site is It Made My Day (IMMD), which is a site that’s similar to the popular FMyLife (FML) site but in reverse. The tagline is “Little Moments of WIN.” However, that doesn’t mean it’s all things good and positive. Let’s just say some IMMDs are a little twisted, yet entertaining. In our interview, Ben shares one example that gives you a flavor for the site. The site also has an IMMD Facebook fan page with more than 10,000 fans.

And if that wasn’t enough, he concludes with a brief comment about an online t-shirt store that they’re launching. Ben and his team are truly unstoppable, and we love it. Keep up the great work guys!

#bwe09

Follow us on Twitter: @miikomentz @alisonmcneill

RELATED POST: BlogWorld Expo: Social Media for Social Good

Post and video by Miiko Mentz

Bubblicious Reporter Alison McNeill recently presented Bubby awards to five winners at Twiistup 5, which was held at Hangar:8 at the Santa Monica airport. Last Friday, we posted our highlight reel that included an interview with Twiistup Producer Mike Macadaan and highlights of all five Bubby Award winners, and all this week we featured each of the five winners.

Today concludes our Twiistup coverage with our final interview with Christine Elia, founder and CEO of Closet Couture, who was awarded the Bubby award for “Favorite Fashionista Startup.”

Closet Couture is a social fashion site that “connects people of stylish minds with those who live or work around them,” according the Closet Couture site. In addition to being a community of fashionistas, it also serves as a utility site where people can get help with their personal wardrobes, or even help with just one outfit for a special occasion, from other users or professional stylists. We first discovered Closet Couture at TechCrunch50 and have closely followed them since. We love them and hope you do, too.

If you missed our other interviews earlier this week check them out:

• Favorite Do-Gooder: Causecast
• Favorite Showoff: Viewdle
• Kick Ass Female & Best Laugh: Patricia Handschiegel
• Most Bubbly: Karen Hartline

I hope y’all enjoyed the Bubby train ride this week. We’re off to SXSW and we just might give out one more Bubby award while kickin’ it Texas-style. Ya never know when or where we might turn up to award you with a Bubby. As Alison McNeill stated in last Friday’s post, “we were questioned about our criteria in choosing the winners and the truth is that there are none. So be prepared, at any time or any event, because you, too, may be presented with a Bubby!”

Post by Alison McNeill and video by Miiko Mentz

Is there another word to describe Karen Hartline besides bubbly? Well, perhaps “Twitter Addict” would have also been appropriate, but we chose to award her with the “Most Bubbly” Bubby award at Twiistup 5.

Many of you probably know Karen as the events coordinator for Mashable, but she has branched out and is also doing her thing for Blurb. But whether she’s hosting or attending the party, she’s always the life of the party, which is why we presented her with the ‘Most Bubbly” award.

For those of you hitting SXSWi, swing by and say hi to Karen and the Blurb team at the Mashable Blurb SX Bash on Monday night, March 16. Blurb is also on the show floor at booth #408, so swing by and check out Blurb books. Maybe you have a book inside you waiting to be published Blurb style.

If you missed our highlight reel or the first three Bubby awards, check out our posts from earlier this week: Causecast, Viewdle and Patricia Handschiegel.

And stop by tomorrow as we present our final Twiistup 5 interview with Christine Elia, founder and CEO of Closet Couture, and winner of the “Favorite Fashionista Startup” Bubby award.

Post by Alison McNeill and video by Miiko Mentz

The Bubby award train makes its next stop at Patricia Handschiegel. We presented Patricia with the award for “Kick-Ass Female and Best Laugh” at the recent Twiistup 5 event in Santa Monica. If you missed our highlight reel or the first two stops on the Bubby award train, check out our posts from earlier this week: Causecast and Viewdle.

In addition to keeping up with her personal blog, Daily Patricia, Handschiegel also writes the Digital Dish blog for TV Week, The New Power Girls series for the Huffington Post, and runs her latest venture, the hybrid consulting and production company 9.  9 works with brands, entertainment, media and internet companies to create TV, internet and media projects over traditional networks and on the Web. So yeah, we’re pretty sure that make her a kick-ass female.

As for the “best laugh” portion of the award, we just couldn’t resist. Her laugh is fun and infectious as we learned in our previous interview with Patricia here. Check it out for yourself below!

Post and video by Miiko Mentz

Bubblicious Reporter Alison McNeill recently presented Bubby awards to five winners at Twiistup 5, which was held at Hangar:8 at the Santa Monica airport. On Friday, we posted our highlight reel of the Bubby Award winners and this week we’re posting one interview a day from each of the five winners.

Yesterday’s  interview was with Causecast, our “Favorite Do-Gooder” Bubby award winner. Today’s post features Viewdle, our ‘Favorite Showoff’ Bubby award winner.

Viewdle is a video platform that provides powerful facial recognition and audio content identification in Web videos for indexing, searching and monetizing video assets.

In our interview with Laurent Gill, president and COO of Viewdle, he shares how Viewdle’s video search technology works and how its able to recognize who is in a video and identify what’s being said within the video. To date, they have indexed more than 44,000 people in online videos with a high degree of accuracy. Viewdle can even find your mother, provided she’s in a Web video.

Watch our interview of Gill to learn more about Viewdle’s innovative digital media platform and how it all started with three guys in a room with a whiteboard in the Ukraine. The company is now based in Los Angeles with R&D in the Ukraine.

And come back tomorrow and watch our interview with Patricia Handschiegel, winner of “Kick Ass Female & Best Laugh” Bubby award.

Post and video by Miiko Mentz

On Friday, we posted our highlight reel of the Bubby Award winners and every day this week we’ll be posting one interview from each of the five winners. Bubblicious Reporter Alison McNeill recently presented the Bubby awards to each winner at Twiistup 5, which was held at Hangar:8 at the Santa Monica airport. First up is Causecast, winner of the “Favorite Do-Gooder” Bubby award.

In our interview with Mateo Gutierrez and Kate Stahnke, director of product development at Causecast, Stahnke explains how Causecast is a platform where non-profit organizations and individuals join together to further their philanthropic goals. In addition to connecting non-profits with people who want to make a difference, it also provides them with the tools and information needed to support and further the cause they care about.

Causecast also has leaders that are dedicated and passionate about facilitating and finding ways “to help, donate, organize, promote and inspire others to make a powerful and positive impact on this world – together,” according to the Causecast site.

For example, Aaron Cohen is a human rights activist and Causecast leader who has dedicated himself to stopping human trafficking. At Causecast, people can learn more about human trafficking on Cohen’s Causecast profile page where he has a blog, videos, photos, and a place for supporters to leave comments and support the fight to end human trafficking.

Causecast also has many celebrities participating such as Matthew Modine and Jenny McCarthy, but it’s not about being a celebrity. It’s about coming together as a community to make the world better. As Stahnke says, “celebrity or non-celebrity, if you’re doing amazing things in the world, you’re a leader in our eyes and we want to give you a platform.”

If you care about a particular cause and want to lend your support by giving a donation, volunteering, attending an event or becoming a Causecast leader, join Causecast and do your part to make a difference in the lives of others.

Come back tomorrow and watch our interview with Laurent Gill, president and COO of Viewdle, winner of “Favorite Showoff” Bubby award.

Post by Alison McNeill and video by Miiko Mentz

The inaugural Bubby Award was presented to celebrity blogger Perez Hilton at Twiistup 3, so it seemed fitting that we give away more awards during our recent trip down to LA for Twiistup 5. Here are the winners this time around:

• Favorite Do-Gooder: Causecast

• Favorite Showoff: Viewdle

• Kick Ass Female & Best Laugh: Patricia Handschiegel

• Most Bubbly: Karen Hartline

• Favorite Fashionista Startup: Closet Couture

Twiistup went all out this time and was held at Hangar:8 at the Santa Monica airport, had Cuban Rollers at the entrance and our very own Brian Solis as a Showoff judge.

When handing out these Bubby Awards we were questioned about our criteria in choosing the winners and the truth is that there are none. So be prepared, at any time or any event, because you too may be presented with a Bubby!

For our pics of the event go here. Check out our interview with Mike Macadaan, Twiistup producer and VP of product and design at Tsavo Media, along with quick snapshots of each Bubby award winner. Every day next week we will be posting interviews of each Bubby award winner, so be sure to check back then to watch.