Blabberize Is One Of The Funniest Services I’ve Seen In A Long Time
Duncan Riley
41 comments »
Blabberize is a new service that allows you to create your own talking picture, basically a moving mouth on a still image.
Using Blabberize is simple. Users upload a photo of someone to Blabberize, select a mouth and then record a message. Once done, users can email a link to the Blabberize hosted page or embed the result.
Blabberize was developed based on a demonstration at Yahoo’s Open Hack Day event in September.
With sincerest apologies to Nick Douglas, the following Blabberize was put together by Chris Pirillo, who I have to thank for the tip (please note: there is language that some readers may not like in the clip). There are a wealth of other examples as well on their website, which for me at least had me in stiches. I’m not sure what the business model looks like, but it sure is a lot of fun.
Update: it looks like we might have taken Blabberize offline (it’s up at times, but slow) with this post. Below is another Chris Pirillo clip but served (hopefully more reliably) by YouTube.
The darn thing won’t load.
This becomes very frustrating when anticipating having some promised ‘Fun’
Ive tested it on Safari and FF on a Mac, both seem to work, but there is a slight delay in it coming up. If anyone else cant get it to work, let me know.
To be fair: http://www.blabberize.com/crea.....abber/2678
Seems the site is running extremely slow… Looks like too many people are trying to have the promised “fun”
Dan
looks like we might be taking it down with traffic already, it was quicker earlier on.
These are brill….
Love the intro blabber! These guys are funny
Here’s another sample blabber:
http://pulse2.com/2007/09/18/6.....l-of-lies/
Mike was there when the idea came together at yahoo hack day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=416jMJIcJn4
I’m scrambling to get the site back online. It’s 5am and I just got a phone call from a buddy telling me I got tech crunched. Yikes.
This reminds me of the “Elf Yourself” campaign that OfficeMax ran last fall:
http://www.youtube.com/results.....rch=Search
Sorry Mo
combination of me being in Australia and Chris Pirillo being a night owl on the West Coast in terms of posting
Kept trying to “sign up” but won’t allow. Also tried using “guest” sign in. Site won’t recognize login. I NEED some of the “FUN”. HELP!!!
The site was working great as our little secret *laugh*. It’s getting slammed right now, and because of it our poor little database server can’t keep up.
Duncan,
Blabberize was our first step out to really see how web users would respond to the idea (I felt it had proven itself in concept form in front of an audience at Yahoo hackday). We also wanted to see what advertisers thought of Blabberize as a customizable platform for pitching their products. From the information we’ve gathered so far, we’re moving forward with building blabberize out into a more robust tool and adding a lot of features to facilitate fun ways to connect and share. Our montization model will be clear with the next iteration of the site. I’ll be sure to send you a note to let you know about it :).
@11- Sorry Mark, soon as traffic calms down hopefully it’ll let you sign in. Currently our server resources are going through the roof.
Thanks for the exciting morning!
This is a little childish… but was funny!! Nice service to create cartoon like funny moments…
This is a cool idea! Anybody want to do a blabberize featuring the president?
And there is a typo in the word “stitches” in the blog post.
Man, it took the site like ages to load. Saptarshi, it’s not childish at all. I myself find it really entertaining. Way to go Blabberizers!
what a stupid ass idea.
Heh, some friends of mine and I did this for a presentation video way back in highschool. Granted, that was a manual process with magazine cutouts, but the fact that we got our history teacher (an LDS bishop) in tears laughing at what were effectively poop jokes were a testament to the format.
Oh god… just don’t let myspace users get near it. For the love of humanity!
I love it! Great work Mo!
This is hilarious!
lol….cool idea
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
@17,
Hey Josh, you’re a stupid ass idea!!
Excellent post, Duncan.
Hi,
The funniest thing? Thats because you don’t have friends honey!
That looks like a Bubblified.com service on steroids
Only, that in Bubblified it seems to be more stable
I cant load it :-((((((
It sounds like fun…
I know I’ll get blasted… and I may sound like I take myself too seriously (I don’t)… but I don’t really find anything funny about a voice-over on Jack Ruby being killed after he shot JFK. Just not funny. Sorry.
>>I don’t really find anything funny about a voice-over on Jack Ruby being killed after he shot JFK. Just not funny. Sorry.
Of course that’s not funny, since Jack Ruby is killing Lee Harvey Oswald in that picture. Since, of course, it was Lee Harvey Oswald who killed JFK, not Jack Ruby.
Jack Ruby died in prison. And there’s nothing funny about a talking prison.
Wow. Let me guess, they will get $50mm in funding from some VC for this.
WOW!
This is wonderful!
However is is a FEATURE already contained in Vista!
Some people are entertained by the simplest things. I am sure that Justin TV’s audience would love it.
I honestly think that Blabberize is what doctor ordered in terms of Internet humor. Imagine the other kinds of crap that is getting the attention of Internet users today–such as some numb nuts guy that looks kind of like a girl (but you don’t want to ask what their gender is) crying about Britney Spears. The content generated on Blabberize is made by actual normal people looking to express their own humor types.
Matt Scoble
perhaps the Jack Ruby voice over wasn’t in good taste, but there’s a lot more on the site. It’s a clever little idea that is just pure fun.
@28 - Unfortunately Ian, we only got $45mm in funding. We’re disappointed too and hoped for more… But that’s what 2nd round is for, right? *sarcasm*
But seriously, we will be looking for funding as soon as we can prove our monetization plan and show a solid revenue. Blabberize is a precursor experiment to what we will be launching. Folks that sign up now will get instant access to the next iteration when we launch, which will probably be invite only for a period so that we can scale.
That being said, we are looking for an Angel/Mentor/Advisor. We’re young, inexperienced yet intelligent, and fiercely passionate about making something cool, viral, and profitable. We’re looking for someone that can give us guidance.
And Duncan, god bless you and Chris Pirillo for having the same goofy humor as me. *laugh*
Perfect for dumb and dumber, but if you have a brain the novelty will wear off as fast it does for an animated gif. Anybody that thinks this crap has legs deserves to lose their money and time.
@sam - Have you made one? *smiles* I’ll freely admit it’s a goofy idea, but you have to make one to really understand what fun it is. The moment you see the mouth drop to your voice it makes sense. When I present blabberize at tech meetups the audience doesn’t light up until they see one being made.
I presented at SF New Tech and was lucky enough to present after Guy Kawasaki. I used his picture as my example and the folks there seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. Make one for a friend, your significant other, heck your mom! Just try it before you write it off because you might be missing out on something you’d enjoy.
Ok…. i mad, e a blabber, the photo was mine the content was not safe for work and it got deleted….. It’s no youtube. No I have to recreate it download the flash then re-upload to .
Hey Mo, this stuff is funny as hell. I hope you guys get the help you are looking for. It’s about time we get some new and fresh ideas that are strictly designed for fun. I like the fact that you guys are following through on your instincts. With some much stuff on the net that looks like everybody is trying to emulate something else, its good to see people trying to do something against the grain. Laugh at your haters all the way to the bank!
Don’t quit your day job Mo!
Blabberize is fab…