July 7, 2007

Gizmoz To Get Mainstream Attention At MTV Music Awards

Michael Arrington

11 comments »

Gizmoz, an Israeli startup that allows people to create realistic 3D cartoon avatars of themselves and embed them on other websites, will be getting a little mainstream attention at the upcoming MTV Music Awards in September.

On Monday, MTV, Taco Bell and Gizmoz will jointly announce a new website and promotion: users will go to tacobell.gizmoz.com and create a fifteen second audition of themselves doing anything they like. Taco Bell will select three winners and create a new thirty second spot with Gizmoz technology that will be played at the MTV music awards in September. The site is live now, but all content will be cleared or the Monday announcement (so wait until then to create an audition).

All auditions will be publicly available and viewers can rate them. The three winners will be paid and given a years worth of Taco Bell food (hopefully not all at once).

Gizmoz is an impressive and fun widget platform - and it’s something MySpacers in particular are likely to crowd to over time. This kind of exposure is great for the company…and we hear that Taco Bell is actually paying them for this, not the other way around.

Sphere It

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 7th, 2007 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Jon Phillips - July 7th, 2007 at 2:13 pm PDT

Outstanding! Looking forward to seeing Gizmoz on TV.

David Mackey - July 7th, 2007 at 2:41 pm PDT

If it was Chick-fil-a or McDonalds, I’d go for it - but I’m not a fan of Taco Bell.

Eric Marcoullier - July 7th, 2007 at 3:03 pm PDT

Gizmos, meet Uncanny Valley. Voki was smart to go with a cartoonish avatar.

Mark Williamson - July 7th, 2007 at 3:24 pm PDT

Nothing beats two tacos, a bean burito, and a drink for $3 and change at Taco Bell. I’ll be watching to see how the Gizmoz Taco Bell partnership comes off on MTV.

bob cobb - July 7th, 2007 at 6:10 pm PDT

I just tried the gizmos. It was ok for a few minutes, but I lost interest quite fast

Michael Hoffman - July 7th, 2007 at 8:51 pm PDT

Gizmos isn’t for me, and probably not for you Bob, but I think the teens and tweens and 20-somethings on their Razrs and Sidekicks and with their MySpace pages will love it. Having this level of deal so fast after their public launch is, I am sure, the work of their smart and connected backers at Benchmark.

terry ayaki - July 7th, 2007 at 9:37 pm PDT

gizmos isnt new. there is software that does this already

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlRn-OFG8VY

Y A - July 8th, 2007 at 12:50 am PDT

The graphics technology here is really light years ahead of
anything else in web2.0

This stuff really belongs in proffesional graphic studios. It is fairly amazing to see it available as such a user-friendly level.

Anon - July 9th, 2007 at 4:05 pm PDT

Call me paranoid but was this created by MOSSAD to get captures of peoples faces for face recognition software? it’s possible?

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