By Julie Blaustein

Bibbil is officially launching its social video platform today to help people easily connect around the world through a magical video experience that you can learn more about here.

“People need an enjoyable and beautiful way to connect with the ones they care about,” said David J. Phillips, CEO and Co-Founder of Bibbil. “With Bibbil, you can now get what you want from video chat – simple, fast, and fun connections to all of your friends and family around the world. There is no downloading, installing, or running of a separate desktop application required. Once inside Facebook, the user is merely two clicks away from video enchantment – and it’s free.”

Bibbil uses game dynamics to reward users and give them access to new features. Starting out on the service a Bibbilittle, a user earns bibbills (virtual points) to unlock new features on their way to the top status of Bibbillionaire. Features include group video chat, party video chat, live broadcasting, and more. The team is also preparing to release its new platform solution that integrates across many mobile devices. To learn how to Bibil visit Bibbil or to learn the 5 easy ways to earn at Bibbills.

The founding team of David J. Phillips, Robbie Trencheny and Jesse Sung have known each other for over 14 years. As serial entrepreneurs, they hold more than a dozen startups under their belts, including a venture backed social discovery service.  To date, the Bibbil team has built its initial version of the application, secured partnerships with leading Web video communications provider TokBox, and ran a successful private alpha launch which spread to over 20 countries in less than 24 hours.

Recruiting Disrupted: What’s Your Online Score?

Finding the needle in a haystack in search for the right talent is getting harder as the traditional recruitment models are being disrupted by social networks and increasing number of online services for professional resumes. True story: While professional social network LinkedIn just passed 100M members, growing at a rate of 1M new members per week, an executive recruiting agency just had a seminar on topics ”What is LinkedIn?” and “The difference between Twitter and a chat?”. They better hurry. The landscape is rapidly moving towards social recruiting services in verticals, good example being the newly launched Careers 2.0 by Stack Overflow, offering programmers create free online resume that weighs in their forum activity.

“No longer will your resume be your own version of your work history; it will also include a data-driven third party’s assessment. You will also be judged by your network, online activity, level of contribution, all adding up to your online score. The next time you look for a job, don’t be surprised if someone asks you for your score.”

“How much are you worth and would you opt-out from social scoring systems?”

Student Competitions Harnessing World’s Top Students

First off, thank you to Brian for allowing me to do a guest post on Bub.  Last week I contacted Brian to solicit some advice on how I could get the word out about a little video I recently released on YouTube.

A contest video.

First, let me preface by saying that I’ve never entered a video contest before. The opportunity cost just didn’t make sense – taking time out from other work to essentially create a free commercial for someone and then shamelessly self-promote it in hopes of winning a gift certificate (?) Didn’t seem worth it.

Then I came across this contest sponsored by Lash Allure MD. There’s a $100,000 pot at stake – which, needless to say, is much larger than most other online video contest winnings. Immediately, my mind was racing about the web content I could fund with 100k. No more brand or studio pitches in 2010? I’d be in heaven.

The best part (or, in some cases, the worst)? The winner is NOT chosen based on a subjective judging process. The system is clear: the person with the most “votes” wins. Each YouTube star rating counts as one vote, and one comment, per user, per day, counts as a vote. Simple, quantifiable. And yet, a little unfair for those who don’t have massive YouTube followings.

So I decided to enter. First with my own video, and then after realizing that I would never win on my own regards, I teamed up Olga Kay, a YouTuber with about 70,000 subscribers. To incentivise people to help, we decided to offer up $10,000 of the prize money to dedicated commenters. Every day for 20 days, we pose a new question in the annotation on the video. Answer the question, and you could win $500. $500 to twenty people = $10,000 total giveaway.

Shameless.

It’s now Dec. 12th – only 8 days before the contest ends. We are currently in 2nd place, behind a witty YouTube blogger with a big following, but with the a little nudge here and there from the right people, we could definitely win the grand prize.

We’ve received several little endorsements from friends – including tweets from Ryan Higa and Dave Days – and brought on a new, third partner – Phil DeFranco.

We are asking for your help because this isn’t about making money to put in a savings account. It’s a viral contest, and as such, Olga, Phil and I want to put that money toward advancing our own web content initiatives.  Not to mention that we would still give away $10k (and a few other little surprises) to our commenters.

It’s hard for me to ask any favors of anyone, but in this case, I’m swallowing my pride.

So, please, if you have a chance today (and for the next 8 days) – rate and comment this video here —> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df2_CZCfAaE – and RT if you can

Oh, and for all of you business owners out there looking to hold promotional video contests – take a cue from Lash Allure MD. By judging a video contest on ratings and comments, rather than on the video content itself, the company is benefiting from the self-promotional efforts of people like me as well as the engagement and interaction of potential customers who are rating/commenting on the videos. Smart.

A book may not be the first thing that comes to mind when discussing innovation but as technology has progressed, the way we consume the information presented in books has made a steady evolution. From the audio book to the Kindle, technology has jumped in to make books easier to consume in a variety of formats creating a debatably richer experience.

New to the market is Vook. It is the latest innovation in reading that brings together books, video and the Internet. Vooks are available on the web and to download on a mobile phone. It’s an interesting idea with the goal of supplementing books with video and social content that aren’t available in the static format.

The web-based version allow for the reader to view the text of the book in a similar format to an e-Reader. Video is incorporated on the side of the screen so you can easily view complementary material without flipping between screens or from book to computer. It also includes social media capabilities by integrating with Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. The mobile format has similar features but due to the size of the screen, readers are directed to video rather than it being incorporated in the screen. Although I have yet to try it, I imagine this is incredibly useful for cookbooks and fitness materials more so than novels.

The book selection is on the smaller side and focused on fitness and cooking texts but the site is new and I expect their library to grow. I do wonder if they will attempt to turn some of the classics into Vooks, which could be very interesting to see.

Video-creation service Animoto has teamed up with SmugMug, the destination for storing and sharing photos and videos. With this teaming up of Animoto and SmugMug, users are able to access their stored SmugMug content in order to create videos on Animoto. As videos on Animoto are created with photos put creatively to music, such a partnership is dually beneficial for both parties.

Animoto emerged a couple years back as a strong candidate for becoming a leader in its space. The technology behind Animoto works well for its purpose as a consumer-sided product. With this, Animoto’s finished products are clean and polished.

From a business standpoint, Animoto has begun to encourage an integrated medium for multiple media types, including music. Providing an accompanying market for musicians to promote their work as the “sountrack” for people’s video creations puts Animoto in an interesting position, one it can take advantage of moving forward.

What’s been particularly useful for Animoto since its launch is the integration of third party content sites with its own service. This makes video-creation easier for users, as they can pull from content they’ve already uploaded on another site. Removing such obstacles within a given service increases its chances of seeing a high rate of adoption.

To this end, Animoto has forged a few other partnerships with companies including iStockPhoto. Animoto has also created applications to run on social networks such as Facebook for additional interaction with its existing and potential user base. With multiple points of access and the support of multiple media-sharing sites, Animoto has placed itself in a strong position for the future.

For participating partners, Animoto provides another tool to be extended to consumers. This provides an additional perk to existing users member to partner services, continuously freshening their ability to re-xeperience their uploaded content.

What I’m particularly keen on watching is how Animoto continues to move with trends, including mobile trends. Especially as Animoto seeks out partnerships for the growth and distribution of its own product, there are a great number of opportunities for such in the mobile realm.

Over a year ago, Tivo and RIM announced an app for Blackberry and it’s finally here. I wish I still had the Blackberry Tour to play with this app a little. I’m a devout Tivo user.

The app allows BlackBerry users with a TiVo box to access their program guide and remotely schedule recording. Yep, it’s a scheduling app. If you expected to be able to watch videos, that isn’t coming any time soon. I’ve learned when trying to export my own Tivo’d shows that most of the shows are copyprotected and not exportable, even if I’m just trying to watch them on my mobile phone.

Screenshots from Boy Genius.

__

Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

I think it’s pretty clear that we here at bub.blicio.us like online video, but TurnHere is proving that video can do more for you (and your business) than you may know. Although, it is useful for covering topics like office style.

In just a year and a half, TurnHere has produced a whopping 20,000 videos for businesses in a range of industries including travel, publishing, local, and real estate. The company leverages its growing network of more than 8,000 professional filmmakers across more than 70 countries to create affordable Internet videos.

Many small businesses are turning to online video to stand out with customers. With its measurable ability to build trust and create consumer action, video is one of the best (and most affordable) ways to meaningfully engage with potential and current customers.

In fact, Kelsey Group research shows of people who viewed a video online:
•55% visited the company’s web site
•30% visited the physical store
•24% made a purchase

So, to celebrate their milestone, TurnHere has launched the “Fall in Love With Video” sweepstakes. If you have a small business – pay attention!

Here’s how it works:

• The campaign started August 31 and runs until September 25. Each week, TurnHere randomly selects 100 winners to receive a free custom video profile of their business shot onsite and produced by one of TurnHere’s professional filmmakers.

• Additionally, one winner each week will receive a $1,000 “Stimulus Package” giftcard to a leading retailer such as Costco, Best Buy, Staples, and Walmart.

Check out the video below for details and go here to enter: www.FallinLoveWithVideo.com

Good luck!

Disclosure: In addition to being a contributor to bub.blicio.us, I also work at FutureWorks where one of my clients is TurnHere, but that doesn’t make this contest any less cool.

Plenty of people still view social media as a fad, yet this informative video by Socialnomics yields plenty of surprising stats that will make the naysayers stand up and take notice. Social media has shifted the way we communicate and the numbers behind Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others tell the honest truth.

Socialnomics, a blog covering the latest trends in social media, is the brainchild of founder and author Erik Qualman who has penned a book by the same name. Take a look at the video and there are some figures that might surprise you — I know they surprised me.