Blackberry has built up a reputation as being the business phone. When we think of corporate America, there is seldom humor involved. That's why this cross-promotion from Blackberry and CollegeHumor caught me off guard and caused a bit of a chuckle.

Two CollegeHumor reps took to the streets to play a game of BBM/Text roulette. After finding a random person with a Blackberry, the correspondents would flip a coin labeled "BBM" and "Text". The game contestant would then spin a giant wheel consisting of various phrases and sentences. Whatever phrase was landed on, the innocent victim would have to BBM or text a randomly selected person from their phone book.  If after texting, they were able to wait five minutes without following up to let the recipient know it was a joke, they received a $100 bill.

As you could imagine, things get a bit awkward, especially when a friendly young lady texts her boyfriend's best friend that she is madly in love with him. Though only a minor campaign, the BBM/Text roulette game works well in capturing the attention of a market segment that is quickly becoming loyal to the iPhone and Android devices. It made me laugh with the brand, and not at the brand, which seems to be the trend these days.

(Before I get into the new version of Stickybits I need to include a small rant. While I think that their new blue critter is cute he's not nearly as cute as the old monkey dude. I'm a sucker for a cute critter and I don't like when they are changed. (e.g. The Geekend robots, Trump from Monster.com, the SCVNGRbot, Twitter's fail whale, etc.) Ok, enough of that.)

It has been many months in the making, and the new version of Stickybits was finally released this week. They have made it a lot easier for brands to attach rewards to an item using the Stickybits platform. This takes the app from a simple scan and add content, to a rewards system for consumers. I believe that this is a move that Stickybits had to make in order to survive in the already saturated location based check-in market. I understood the appeal of the original version but I found that when I'd explain it to others I just sounded silly for being so excited.

Version 2.0 can be broken down into changes for two categories: consumers and companies.

Consumers

You'll see changes to the interface that should make it easier to use. Now, when you scan an object, it'll take you to a social wall, of sorts, comparable to a Facebook wall, for the product. Here you can post 'bits' just like before and you'll be able to easily read what others have been saying....

Yesterday, Facebook announced the launch of their redesigned Messages product. Much has been written in the last 24 hours regarding how the product works, potential privacy implications, and concerns over having yet another email address to check. Essentially, the goal is to provide a seamless conversational experience across email, IM, text messaging, Facebook messages and Facebook chat.

My initial reaction is that I like the idea of email/messages from people I know being separated by default from companies and people I don't know. Beyond that, I fall into the camp of people irked be the idea of yet another inbox/email service to check.

If you're not yet familiar with the broad strokes of the new Facebook Messages, I've compiled a round up of some of the better posts that have been written on the subject. In the meantime, watch the following video that explains how the new Messages product and the @facebook.com email will work.

Facebook Messages stories:

• Facebook Announces New Messaging System: "It's Not Email"
• The New Faceook Messages: A Walkthrough [SCREENSHOTS]
• Facebook's New Messaging System Explained [VIDEO]
• Facebook Announces Seamless Messaging Across Communication Mediums
• Facebook’s New Inbox May Siphon Social, Informal Messages From Email

Disclaimer: "Viral" may be the single most overused term in all of social media, yet I am continuing to write a blog post about it. Shame on me. If you find me smitten by the social media gods, you will know why. I will from here on out surround "viral" in quotations so it is understood that it is the bane of social media terminology.It seems that almost everyday a new "viral" video surfaces causing a stir from the social media community and drawing lots of eyes on YouTube or Vimeo. A new site, Videolla, aims to monetize these videos for creators.

After setting up a Videolla profile, users can upload their videos and customize a variety of settings. From the back end, the user can set the price they wish to sell their video for along with whether it will be available for streaming or download. There is also a cool slider bar which allows you to specify how much (if any) of your profits you would like to share with those who help distribute your video. Once your new hit video is uploaded, you can place the embedded code wherever you so desire.

On the front end, fans wishing to view your video can pay online via credit card or PayPal. The site also offers tracking capabilities making it easy to monitor your sales and purchases.

From the user's standpoint, I don't think Videolla would be very effective in attempting to monetize your future "viral" videos. The only reason a video becomes "viral" in the first place...

I have a confession to make. I've told foursquare,"I'm just not that into you", and it is because I'm having a love affair with SCVNGR (shh...don't tell my husband). I'm so in love with the location based app that I've moved it to the home screen on my iPhone, the screen reserved for my most heavily used apps. This is pretty big since most of the things on this screen are Apple standard apps (the other 3rd party ones are Twittelator, Facebook, Boxcar, The Weather Channel, & Google). I demoted foursquare to the second screen after the most recent SCVNGR update.

This doesn't mean that I'm not using foursquare anymore, it just means that there is a new number one in my life. There is value in using both, especially from the perspective of getting free stuff, but SCVNGR is just more fun!

SCVNGR has made a bunch of updates recently and I want to make sure everyone knows about them. (Admittedly, this blog posts is probably 5-6 days too late, but let's just blame that on all the fun we were having last week at Geekend<...