Next Great Thing

Piczo to Launch Mobile Service [Guardian]
Piczo, a teen social networking service popular in Europe, announces plans to launch a mobile application that will enable users to post pictures, videos, and messages directly from their handsets to their profiles.

Nielsen Releases 10 Most Popular Lists for 2007: From Web Sites to Ringtones [Editor&Publisher]
So what was hot in 2007? Reality TV show contests like “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars”, the “High School Musical 2″ album, and songs “Crank That” by Soulja Boy and Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry”. T-Pain’s “Buy U A Drink” was the top downloaded ringtone. What cities topped in the latest trends? Austin was #1 in blogging, Houston led in text-messaging, and Salt Lake City sold out the most movie theaters. And which company won out in product placement? Coca-Cola—with 3,123 occurrences on TV alone.
Related: Virtual Worlds, Real Kids:Webkinz and Club Penguin both make the cut in this year’s Google’s top-10 search list, illustrating how popular virtual worlds are becoming with youth. [eMarketer]

Top 5 Viral Video Advertisements of 2007 [FT]
Cadbury’s “Gorilla Drummer” topped the list of top viral video ads in 2007, with over 5 million hits on YouTube and dozens of related user-generated versions. Other contenders included Smirnoff’s “Green Tea Party” (3.4 million hits), Ray-Ban’s “Catch Sunglasses (3.2 million + UG versions), Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?” (2.7 million), and Lynx/Axe’s “Bom Chica Wah Wah (2.6 million).
Related: Aping of ad helps to drum up chocolate brand interest [FT]

WeeWorld’s Avatars Now Available as Vringo Ringtones [Press Release]
WeeWorld, the social network where users can create avatars for use online, is teaming up with Vringo, the video ringtone sharing site, to make those creations available on mobile phones. Now Vringo users can turn their WeeWorld-made avatars into video ringtones that will appear on friends’ phones when they call, as well as personalize their phones by making avatars their handset wallpaper.

Hispanic Media Vets Launch Mio.TV [MediaWeek]
Hispanic media vets get together to launch Mio.TV, a Hispanic-focused multimedia application that blends e-mail, instant-messaging, social networking, online video and gaming into a single web interface. The site is hiring TV talent to help produce a variety of professional content, including everything from three-minute comedy sketches to full-length movies.

Penthouse Buys Group of Social-Networking Sites [NYT]
The brand well-known for its porn mags and videos acquires Various, a company with more than 25 online networking sites—i.e. adultfriendfinder—with over 260 million members. Penthouse hopes the move will help it to better target 18-34-year-old men who get their lovin’ online.

LimeJuice’s Mobile Social Network: It’s Easy, And So People May Use It [TechCrunch]
LimeJuice, now in beta-testing, is a mobile social network that let’s users join on the fly (at bars, clubs, etc.) and flirt with one another via SMS. Users give themselves nicknames–i.e. “stud with the sunglasses”–so that others can quickly identify and message them. The service reminds us of MeetMoi, an LBS-based mobile social network that lets users search for dates in their vicinity—but MeetMoi requires prior online registration (so much for last-minute desperation!).

Universal’s Imeem Deal May Unlock More Free Music [NYT]
With Universal Music now on-board, Imeem, the growing social networking site that streams music, has secured rights to all the major labels’ music catalogs—another sign that ad-support streaming music may be the way of the future.

Intel, Kingston Make Music Together [BrandWeek]
Intel debuts a new Sean Kingston song, “Gotta Move Faster,” along with a 3-minute video and free ringtone for the first 1,000 downloads, to help promote its Centrino computer chip. The video, launched late last week on MySpace and gottamovefaster.com, has been viewed over 300,000 times so far.

Old Spice Seeks Gaming ‘Experience’ [AdWeek]
P&G’s Old Spice brand partners with Xbox community site 360Voice.com to launch OldSpiceExperienceChallenge.com, a portal where users can create their own challenges for friends and win prizes.