KaKoo

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: WePay

Quick Pitch: WePay makes it easy for groups to collect and manage money online.

Genius Idea: Simple tasks like paying the rent each month can turn into a massive headache when you’re dealing with various roommates’ schedules, pay days and issues like, “Who’s going to spring for the stamps this time?” That’s where WePay comes in. This payment product allows users to collect, manage and spend money — all in one, digital place.

WePay, which has been in private beta for the last six months, launches tomorrow, at which time you can create an FDIC-insured account that you can then share with people in your club, group, apartment, work place, etc. Once everyone has joined, you can send out electronic bills to the members of your group, which they cay pay either via credit card or their bank accounts.

After collecting the money, you can pay your landlord/novelty t-shirt supplier/pizza guy with a WePay VISA prepaid card, paper checks or electronic transfers. It’s free to sign up, but there is a small transaction fee included. Also, make sure you choose a responsible person to head up your group — the creator of the group is in charge of the money and is the sole cardholder on the WePay Visa card.

The service also keeps forgetful people on their toes by sending out reminders and alerting the group creator when members have ponied up. In addition, WePay allows you to create more than one group — so you can use the service to plan a much-needed group jaunt to somewhere sunny, as well as a work dinner.

We here at MashableMashable are into any services that make our hectic lives easier — especially with the first looming on the horizon. Rent day is no April Fool’s!

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHPPHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: WePay

Quick Pitch: WePay makes it easy for groups to collect and manage money online.

Genius Idea: Simple tasks like paying the rent each month can turn into a massive headache when you’re dealing with various roommates’ schedules, pay days and issues like, “Who’s going to spring for the stamps this time?” That’s where WePay comes in. This payment product allows users to collect, manage and spend money — all in one, digital place.

WePay, which has been in private beta for the last six months, launches tomorrow, at which time you can create an FDIC-insured account that you can then share with people in your club, group, apartment, work place, etc. Once everyone has joined, you can send out electronic bills to the members of your group, which they cay pay either via credit card or their bank accounts.

After collecting the money, you can pay your landlord/novelty t-shirt supplier/pizza guy with a WePay VISA prepaid card, paper checks or electronic transfers. It’s free to sign up, but there is a small transaction fee included. Also, make sure you choose a responsible person to head up your group — the creator of the group is in charge of the money and is the sole cardholder on the WePay Visa card.

The service also keeps forgetful people on their toes by sending out reminders and alerting the group creator when members have ponied up. In addition, WePay allows you to create more than one group — so you can use the service to plan a much-needed group jaunt to somewhere sunny, as well as a work dinner.

We here at MashableMashable are into any services that make our hectic lives easier — especially with the first looming on the horizon. Rent day is no April Fool’s!

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHPPHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Jim Tobin is president of Ignite Social Media, where he works work with clients including Microsoft, Intel, Nature Made, The Body Shop, Disney and more implementing social media marketing strategies. He is also author of the book “Social Media is a Cocktail Party: Why You Already Know the Rules of Social Media Marketing.”

“What’s next in social media?” It’s among the most popular questions out there. But while most folks currently answer with “location-based services” (i.e. FoursquareFoursquare, GowallaGowalla) or “group purchasing” (i.e. Groupon, Twongo, Living Social), the real battle may be between FacebookFacebook and GoogleGoogle.

The fight between these two Internet giants to become your default social profile has been brewing for a long time, and the prize is an enormous potential revenue stream. Let’s take a closer look.

Connect It. Buzz It.

---

Many sites allow you to become a member using Google Friend Connectgoogle friend connect. While the benefit of doing so wasn’t always clear, it was one of the first efforts to encourage the use of Google profiles across the web. Google BuzzGoogle Buzz and its thus-far poorly executed GmailGmail integration, is another. Google WaveGoogle Wave, if widely adopted and used at its full capability (which hasn’t happened yet), would be yet another a compelling reason to use your Google profile as a way to engage with most sites.

At the same time, on many sites, including MashableMashable, you can use Facebook Connect to leave a comment. If you do, it will grab your profile picture and leave a link to your Facebook profile.

All these features are pretty basic so far, but these are just the recon teams prepping for the coming war. Right now, each company is trying various tactics to condition you to use their service as your default social profile.

Social Commerce is Coming

---

In April 2009, Forrester released its “Future of the Social Web,” a report that outlines five major eras of social media. The final one, set to begin in 2011, is “social commerce,” in which social networks start to become intermediaries in the buying process.

With programs like Alvenda, where you can buy flowers from within the Facebook Fan Page of 1-800-Flowers, and Payvment, where you can buy from multiple businesses on Facebook using one shopping cart, we’re seeing the early efforts of outsiders to make buying within social networks easy and natural. I believe this will continue. If the process is easy and secure, why wouldn’t users feel comfortable making purchases directly through their social interactions with companies and friends? Because of this trend, I expect Facebook and Google to start generating their own revenue streams from these transactions.

Virtual Goods Worth Billions

---

Add to this a genuine interest in the purchase of virtual goods (from little Facebook gifts at birthdays to just about everything in the online game Second Life), and you’ve suddenly got a $1 billion market in the U.S. alone.

In China, the market for virtual goods last year was $5 billion, and the larger social networks in China are profitable — something Facebook is reportedly still reaching toward.

Facebook, therefore, now has a genuine interest in having a very secure, very simple e-commerce platform, where you can buy whatever you want with one-click, similar to Amazon’s Kindle Store, and Apple’s App Store.

Make Checkout Portable

---

So Facebook has Facebook Credits. Google has Google Checkout.

While Google Checkout has always been designed to be used on other sites, in Q2 this year Facebook will roll out its Open Graph API, which will “allow any page on the web to have all the features of a Facebook Page.” If “all the features” includes the ability to make purchases (large or tiny) using Facebook credits, we’ve got something there. Plus, Facebook just announced that they might automatically connect you with certain pre-approved sites without you even clicking a button — a strong move if their goal is to become that default social profile.

Google can counter this by integrating Checkout data (your credit card, basically) with your Google Profile, allowing sites that choose Google to also have the potential for one-click buying. And both Google and Facebook are good at making these programs easy to implement, so the friction for site owners to add that functionality is very low.

Certainly AmazonAmazon.com has also had a long interest in people using its cart functionality on sites, but I’m not considering it here because it doesn’t aim to use your social profile as the hook for connecting – it is a more traditional e-commerce play.

Team Facebook? Team Google?

---

Suddenly, whether Facebook or Google becomes the default social profile around the web has billion-dollar ramifications. Just ask credit card companies how much can be made by taking just a small percentage of all of those transactions. And with billions at stake, it’s likely to be a real battle ahead.

The winners may be all of us, because to compel us to connect using their services, both companies will have to think about providing a lot of genuine utility. When they get creative, we get better web experiences.

Get it right, make it secure, and I’m there.

Which social network do you think will ultimately triumph and why? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

More social media resources from Mashable:

---

- How Facebook Can Become a Money Making Machine
- 6 Easy Ways to Score the Best Deals with Social Media
- 5 Big Twitter Trends to Follow Right Now
- 5 Ways Non-Profits Can Increase Engagement With YouTube
- 4 Tips for Reducing Social Media Stress

Jim Tobin is president of Ignite Social Media, where he works work with clients including Microsoft, Intel, Nature Made, The Body Shop, Disney and more implementing social media marketing strategies. He is also author of the book “Social Media is a Cocktail Party: Why You Already Know the Rules of Social Media Marketing.”

“What’s next in social media?” It’s among the most popular questions out there. But while most folks currently answer with “location-based services” (i.e. FoursquareFoursquare, GowallaGowalla) or “group purchasing” (i.e. Groupon, Twongo, Living Social), the real battle may be between FacebookFacebook and GoogleGoogle.

The fight between these two Internet giants to become your default social profile has been brewing for a long time, and the prize is an enormous potential revenue stream. Let’s take a closer look.

Connect It. Buzz It.

---

Many sites allow you to become a member using Google Friend Connectgoogle friend connect. While the benefit of doing so wasn’t always clear, it was one of the first efforts to encourage the use of Google profiles across the web. Google BuzzGoogle Buzz and its thus-far poorly executed GmailGmail integration, is another. Google WaveGoogle Wave, if widely adopted and used at its full capability (which hasn’t happened yet), would be yet another a compelling reason to use your Google profile as a way to engage with most sites.

At the same time, on many sites, including MashableMashable, you can use Facebook Connect to leave a comment. If you do, it will grab your profile picture and leave a link to your Facebook profile.

All these features are pretty basic so far, but these are just the recon teams prepping for the coming war. Right now, each company is trying various tactics to condition you to use their service as your default social profile.

Social Commerce is Coming

---

In April 2009, Forrester released its “Future of the Social Web,” a report that outlines five major eras of social media. The final one, set to begin in 2011, is “social commerce,” in which social networks start to become intermediaries in the buying process.

With programs like Alvenda, where you can buy flowers from within the Facebook Fan Page of 1-800-Flowers, and Payvment, where you can buy from multiple businesses on Facebook using one shopping cart, we’re seeing the early efforts of outsiders to make buying within social networks easy and natural. I believe this will continue. If the process is easy and secure, why wouldn’t users feel comfortable making purchases directly through their social interactions with companies and friends? Because of this trend, I expect Facebook and Google to start generating their own revenue streams from these transactions.

Virtual Goods Worth Billions

---

Add to this a genuine interest in the purchase of virtual goods (from little Facebook gifts at birthdays to just about everything in the online game Second Life), and you’ve suddenly got a $1 billion market in the U.S. alone.

In China, the market for virtual goods last year was $5 billion, and the larger social networks in China are profitable — something Facebook is reportedly still reaching toward.

Facebook, therefore, now has a genuine interest in having a very secure, very simple e-commerce platform, where you can buy whatever you want with one-click, similar to Amazon’s Kindle Store, and Apple’s App Store.

Make Checkout Portable

---

So Facebook has Facebook Credits. Google has Google Checkout.

While Google Checkout has always been designed to be used on other sites, in Q2 this year Facebook will roll out its Open Graph API, which will “allow any page on the web to have all the features of a Facebook Page.” If “all the features” includes the ability to make purchases (large or tiny) using Facebook credits, we’ve got something there. Plus, Facebook just announced that they might automatically connect you with certain pre-approved sites without you even clicking a button — a strong move if their goal is to become that default social profile.

Google can counter this by integrating Checkout data (your credit card, basically) with your Google Profile, allowing sites that choose Google to also have the potential for one-click buying. And both Google and Facebook are good at making these programs easy to implement, so the friction for site owners to add that functionality is very low.

Certainly AmazonAmazon.com has also had a long interest in people using its cart functionality on sites, but I’m not considering it here because it doesn’t aim to use your social profile as the hook for connecting – it is a more traditional e-commerce play.

Team Facebook? Team Google?

---

Suddenly, whether Facebook or Google becomes the default social profile around the web has billion-dollar ramifications. Just ask credit card companies how much can be made by taking just a small percentage of all of those transactions. And with billions at stake, it’s likely to be a real battle ahead.

The winners may be all of us, because to compel us to connect using their services, both companies will have to think about providing a lot of genuine utility. When they get creative, we get better web experiences.

Get it right, make it secure, and I’m there.

Which social network do you think will ultimately triumph and why? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

More social media resources from Mashable:

---

- How Facebook Can Become a Money Making Machine
- 6 Easy Ways to Score the Best Deals with Social Media
- 5 Big Twitter Trends to Follow Right Now
- 5 Ways Non-Profits Can Increase Engagement With YouTube
- 4 Tips for Reducing Social Media Stress

Jacob Gube is the Founder/Chief Editor of Six Revisions, a popular web development and design site and the Deputy Editor of Design Instruct, a web magazine for designers. He has over seven years of experience as professional web developer and has written a book on JavaScript. Connect with him via Twitter.

Buzz — Google’sGoogle entry into the real-time social web — is becoming increasingly more popular. Because it was launched by an Internet giant and initially incorporated directly into GmailGmail by default (whether a good idea or not), the service was able to instantly compete with other, more well-established competitors like TwitterTwitter, FacebookFacebook, and MySpaceMySpace in the crowded social networking arena.

What’s more, with Google’s history of supporting web developers through free and public application programming interfaces (APIs), the opportunity to create web-based tools is abundant.

In fact, many of them are already beginning to crop up, even though the social network is still in its infancy (being less than two months old). Check out this list of web-based tools to help you get the most out of Google BuzzGoogle Buzz.

Connect with Other Social Networks

1. Buzz Can Tweet

Anything that averts us from doing repetitive work is always a good thing. With Buzz Can Tweet, you have the capability to synchronize Buzz with your Twitter feed, automatically updating Twitter with the same message whenever you post a buzz.

In case you only want to send a Buzz-specific update, it offers an option for selective tweeting only buzzes with certain hashtags (like #twitter).

What’s great about Buzz Can Tweet is that it makes messages longer than Twitter’s 140-character limit easier to deal with, generating a short URL to your buzz update so that your Tweeps can read the message in its entirety.

Since Google Buzz allows the posting and attaching of multimedia items such as images and videos, another bonus to using Buzz Can Tweet is bypassing the need to use a Twitter image or video sharing service to post richer content.

2. HomePuzz

HomePuzz is a web app that integrates Twitter, Buzz, and Facebook into one interface, giving you the opportunity to update all three services at the same time. It’s a singular location for monitoring your social networks and seeing what your friends are saying, whether they use all or only one of the three services currently supported by this web tool.

For site owners and web developers, don’t forget to check out the HomePuzz tools that give you options for incorporating HomePuzz into your website or web app.

Search

3. Buzzzy

If you’re familiar with Gmail’s search syntax, you will no doubt appreciate the built-in search capabilities of Google Buzz (see a list of search methods on Google Help). Native search in Google Buzz blows Twitter’s “advanced” search out of the water, giving you better and more accurate search results.

With that said, mucking around with search syntax can be cumbersome for some people. Enter Buzzzy, a web tool for searching items on Google Buzz profiles. Buzzzy has a near-replicate of Twitter’s advanced search interface, undoubtedly designed for people accustomed to using Twitter’s version.

In case you’re into mashing up web services, Buzzzy offers a REST API to help you leverage its services in your own custom apps.

4. Mini Buzz Search Engine

If you want to read a Google Buzz user’s feed between a certain date range, Mini Buzz is a simple, no-frills search tool that will help you get the job done quickly.

Mini Buzz is bare bones — it only takes three inputs: Username, start date, and end date.

Statistics

5. buzzstats

The site buzzstats highlights how popular a Buzz user is by displaying statistics about their number of followers and the number of people they follow, as well as a chart of their follower growth history. It makes a bookmarkable URL for you to link to for times when you want people to know about your Buzz prowess.

In addition, the web tool automatically generates a small snippet of JavaScript that you can simply copy and paste into a website or blog for presenting a Buzz badge with your stats.

Bonus facts: buzzstats uses Google’s Charting API to display statistics, and their website has a top 20 list of Buzz users, with MashableMashable claiming the highest spot.

6. Buzz-Charts

Buzz-Charts is an online web tool for uncovering a plethora of stats about a Buzz profile, including the number of posts, where they send out their buzzes, their total number of replies, the total words they’ve used in the past 100 buzzes, and a bunch of other questionably useful statistics. See this live example for a working demonstration of how Buzz-Charts works.

7. BuzzCounter

Integrating Google Buzz as a widget on your website or weblog is made nearly effortless with BuzzCounter.

Using it is simple — enter your Buzz username and it will generate a code snippet that you can copy and paste into your web pages’ source code.

The widget displays your recent Buzz updates and some useful associated links, including one that allows a user to directly comment on updates.

Social Bookmarking

8. Buzrr

With TweetMeme’s popularity skyrocketing to over 3.5 million visits per month, it’s no surprise that enterprising web developers are seeking a chance to parallel the Twitter link aggregator’s success over in the Google Buzz arena.

Buzrr is one such web tool — a social bookmarking site similar to TweetMemeTweetmeme created by Dennis Hettema. Hettema describes Buzrr as “a website that allows you to add a re-buzz button to your blog so your visitors can share your stories on their Google Buzz. Buzrr.com counts the re-buzz action and provides a ranking of the buzziest stories on Buzz.” He adds that Buzrr is “just like TweetMeme and DiggDigg but just with a different source.”"

9. RebuzzThis

RebuzzThis is another social bookmark aggregator that uses Google Buzz as its source. Like Buzrr and TweetMeme, content shared through their RebuzzThis button is presented and indexed on their website.

The service is new, just like Google Buzz, but the site is taking shape nicely, and the creators have plans for improving their public API to give other website developers better opportunities to interface with their service.

10. Njuice Google Buzz Button

Njuice, a web service that monitors the real-time web by scanning social sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz, has an online tool for creating a Google Buzz button.

The button currently has six different styles to choose from, and two options for implementation — using JavaScript or a dynamically-generated image served from their servers.

Directories

11. Gone Buzz

If you’re in search of interesting Buzzers to follow, check out Gone Buzz, an online directory of popular users.

A short bio, the user’s location, the number of buzzes, and a rating is presented for each Buzz profile listed on the site. Additionally, if you log in — they use Google’s authentication system so that you don’t have to create an account on their website — you can rate each user profile on a scale of one to five stars.

12. BuzzAware

BuzzAware is an unofficial web-based directory that catalogs Google Buzz apps. They have categories for browser, desktop, web, and mobile to help you quickly discover applications that fit your needs.

Be sure to check out Mashable’s full coverage of BuzzAware.

What other Google Buzz apps have you discovered? Be sure to share your picks in the comments below.

More Google Buzz resources from Mashable:

---

- HOW TO: Integrate Google Buzz Into Your WordPress Blog
- Google Buzz: 5 Opportunities for Small Businesses
- 4 Ways Non-Profits Can Use Google Buzz
- HOW TO: Integrate Facebook, Twitter and Buzz into Your Gmail

Jacob Gube is the Founder/Chief Editor of Six Revisions, a popular web development and design site and the Deputy Editor of Design Instruct, a web magazine for designers. He has over seven years of experience as professional web developer and has written a book on JavaScript. Connect with him via Twitter.

Buzz — Google’sGoogle entry into the real-time social web — is becoming increasingly more popular. Because it was launched by an Internet giant and initially incorporated directly into GmailGmail by default (whether a good idea or not), the service was able to instantly compete with other, more well-established competitors like TwitterTwitter, FacebookFacebook, and MySpaceMySpace in the crowded social networking arena.

What’s more, with Google’s history of supporting web developers through free and public application programming interfaces (APIs), the opportunity to create web-based tools is abundant.

In fact, many of them are already beginning to crop up, even though the social network is still in its infancy (being less than two months old). Check out this list of web-based tools to help you get the most out of Google BuzzGoogle Buzz.

Connect with Other Social Networks

1. Buzz Can Tweet

Anything that averts us from doing repetitive work is always a good thing. With Buzz Can Tweet, you have the capability to synchronize Buzz with your Twitter feed, automatically updating Twitter with the same message whenever you post a buzz.

In case you only want to send a Buzz-specific update, it offers an option for selective tweeting only buzzes with certain hashtags (like #twitter).

What’s great about Buzz Can Tweet is that it makes messages longer than Twitter’s 140-character limit easier to deal with, generating a short URL to your buzz update so that your Tweeps can read the message in its entirety.

Since Google Buzz allows the posting and attaching of multimedia items such as images and videos, another bonus to using Buzz Can Tweet is bypassing the need to use a Twitter image or video sharing service to post richer content.

2. HomePuzz

HomePuzz is a web app that integrates Twitter, Buzz, and Facebook into one interface, giving you the opportunity to update all three services at the same time. It’s a singular location for monitoring your social networks and seeing what your friends are saying, whether they use all or only one of the three services currently supported by this web tool.

For site owners and web developers, don’t forget to check out the HomePuzz tools that give you options for incorporating HomePuzz into your website or web app.

Search

3. Buzzzy

If you’re familiar with Gmail’s search syntax, you will no doubt appreciate the built-in search capabilities of Google Buzz (see a list of search methods on Google Help). Native search in Google Buzz blows Twitter’s “advanced” search out of the water, giving you better and more accurate search results.

With that said, mucking around with search syntax can be cumbersome for some people. Enter Buzzzy, a web tool for searching items on Google Buzz profiles. Buzzzy has a near-replicate of Twitter’s advanced search interface, undoubtedly designed for people accustomed to using Twitter’s version.

In case you’re into mashing up web services, Buzzzy offers a REST API to help you leverage its services in your own custom apps.

4. Mini Buzz Search Engine

If you want to read a Google Buzz user’s feed between a certain date range, Mini Buzz is a simple, no-frills search tool that will help you get the job done quickly.

Mini Buzz is bare bones — it only takes three inputs: Username, start date, and end date.

Statistics

5. buzzstats

The site buzzstats highlights how popular a Buzz user is by displaying statistics about their number of followers and the number of people they follow, as well as a chart of their follower growth history. It makes a bookmarkable URL for you to link to for times when you want people to know about your Buzz prowess.

In addition, the web tool automatically generates a small snippet of JavaScript that you can simply copy and paste into a website or blog for presenting a Buzz badge with your stats.

Bonus facts: buzzstats uses Google’s Charting API to display statistics, and their website has a top 20 list of Buzz users, with MashableMashable claiming the highest spot.

6. Buzz-Charts

Buzz-Charts is an online web tool for uncovering a plethora of stats about a Buzz profile, including the number of posts, where they send out their buzzes, their total number of replies, the total words they’ve used in the past 100 buzzes, and a bunch of other questionably useful statistics. See this live example for a working demonstration of how Buzz-Charts works.

7. BuzzCounter

Integrating Google Buzz as a widget on your website or weblog is made nearly effortless with BuzzCounter.

Using it is simple — enter your Buzz username and it will generate a code snippet that you can copy and paste into your web pages’ source code.

The widget displays your recent Buzz updates and some useful associated links, including one that allows a user to directly comment on updates.

Social Bookmarking

8. Buzrr

With TweetMeme’s popularity skyrocketing to over 3.5 million visits per month, it’s no surprise that enterprising web developers are seeking a chance to parallel the Twitter link aggregator’s success over in the Google Buzz arena.

Buzrr is one such web tool — a social bookmarking site similar to TweetMemeTweetmeme created by Dennis Hettema. Hettema describes Buzrr as “a website that allows you to add a re-buzz button to your blog so your visitors can share your stories on their Google Buzz. Buzrr.com counts the re-buzz action and provides a ranking of the buzziest stories on Buzz.” He adds that Buzrr is “just like TweetMeme and DiggDigg but just with a different source.”"

9. RebuzzThis

RebuzzThis is another social bookmark aggregator that uses Google Buzz as its source. Like Buzrr and TweetMeme, content shared through their RebuzzThis button is presented and indexed on their website.

The service is new, just like Google Buzz, but the site is taking shape nicely, and the creators have plans for improving their public API to give other website developers better opportunities to interface with their service.

10. Njuice Google Buzz Button

Njuice, a web service that monitors the real-time web by scanning social sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz, has an online tool for creating a Google Buzz button.

The button currently has six different styles to choose from, and two options for implementation — using JavaScript or a dynamically-generated image served from their servers.

Directories

11. Gone Buzz

If you’re in search of interesting Buzzers to follow, check out Gone Buzz, an online directory of popular users.

A short bio, the user’s location, the number of buzzes, and a rating is presented for each Buzz profile listed on the site. Additionally, if you log in — they use Google’s authentication system so that you don’t have to create an account on their website — you can rate each user profile on a scale of one to five stars.

12. BuzzAware

BuzzAware is an unofficial web-based directory that catalogs Google Buzz apps. They have categories for browser, desktop, web, and mobile to help you quickly discover applications that fit your needs.

Be sure to check out Mashable’s full coverage of BuzzAware.

What other Google Buzz apps have you discovered? Be sure to share your picks in the comments below.

More Google Buzz resources from Mashable:

---

- HOW TO: Integrate Google Buzz Into Your WordPress Blog
- Google Buzz: 5 Opportunities for Small Businesses
- 4 Ways Non-Profits Can Use Google Buzz
- HOW TO: Integrate Facebook, Twitter and Buzz into Your Gmail

Come on, you know that’s one of the first questions that crosses your mind when you get a Facebook invite — whether you’re male or female. Well, wonder no more — there’s a new app on the block that will determine this burning question for you: Sausage Party.

Sausage Party is a nifty FacebookFacebook app/website that sifts through the invite list of your events to tell you what percentage of the attendees are male, using the meat product in question as an indicator:

Mashable’s Editor-in-Chief Adam Ostrow and I both tried out the app to gauge the manliness of our current events. Looks like Ostrow is in for a major boy’s weekend:

Meanwhile, there’s nary a sausage party among my various and sundry art shows and musical events.

[via Buzzfeed]

Come on, you know that’s one of the first questions that crosses your mind when you get a Facebook invite — whether you’re male or female. Well, wonder no more — there’s a new app on the block that will determine this burning question for you: Sausage Party.

Sausage Party is a nifty FacebookFacebook app/website that sifts through the invite list of your events to tell you what percentage of the attendees are male, using the meat product in question as an indicator:

Mashable’s Editor-in-Chief Adam Ostrow and I both tried out the app to gauge the manliness of our current events. Looks like Ostrow is in for a major boy’s weekend:

Meanwhile, there’s nary a sausage party among my various and sundry art shows and musical events.

[via Buzzfeed]

European budget airline easyJet is poised to become the first airline company to enable users to plan and book flights entirely on Facebook.

easyJet currently offers a “Holiday Planner” Facebook app that helps fans plan trips with their friends through Facebook and email. Users can coordinate destinations and dates, propose a range of budget options and then invite friends along for the trip.

However, users must go to a destination website to complete the transaction — a step easyJet wants to remove altogether by adding booking functionality to their Facebook app.

Facebook has become a popular platform for hosting marketing campaigns and driving traffic to various destination sites, as Toys”R”Us famously did with their Black Friday preview on Facebook. We’re now seeing a shift toward conducting the entire experience within Facebook – a trend that may render destination sites all but irrelevant. It’s certainly a more convenient option for users who will not have to create a login and store credit card information on separate sites.

It’s a shift that could also generate an unprecedented amount of revenue for Facebook. According to the Department of Commerce, online purchases totaled $134.9 billion in 2009. If companies set up e-commerce functionality on their Facebook Pages, the social network could realistically charge companies for a percentage of those sales in addition to attracting more advertising opportunities. Facebook currently charges developers a whopping 30% of their Facebook Credits revenue.

Would you book a flight through Facebook? What other brands would you like to see open storefronts on Facebook?

[via thenextweb]

Twitter lists are a great way to find new groups of people to follow on Twitter, and share your favorite follows with friends. To help you find and follow interesting lists, we’ve created the Mashable Twitter List Directory.

The idea is pretty simple: With help from our partners TLISTS, we’ve organized TwitterTwitter lists into 10 categories (plus hundreds of subcategories!), creating a comprehensive directory of people to follow on any topic.

The Mashable Twitter List Directory is a place to find collections of tweeters on any topic sorted by relevance, not by follower count. For instance, you’ll find a list of Mashable Channels to follow on Twitter, or you can follow a list that provides updates from the whole Mashable team.

From Tech and Science to Politics and Causes, plus country-specific lists, we hope the Mashable Twitter List Directory will be a useful resource for those creating and following lists on Twitter. Be sure sign in with your Twitter account to add your lists to the Directory!

PS. Don’t forget to check out Mashable’sMashable Twitter Guidebook and our Twitter channel for Twitter tips and updates.

About TLISTS

Mashable’s Twitter List Directory is powered by TLISTS, a real-time media startup with a directory and search engine that crawls and indexes Twitter lists and users. TLISTS has already crawled more than a half a million lists, and is adding 150,000 lists a month. TLISTS is presently working with mobile apps to integrate its directory onto phones, and has a public API for developers.

TLISTS is funded by tech media luminaries including Chris Dixon, Roger Ehrenberg, Mark Gerson, Strauss Zelnick, and Ron Conway, and based in New York City.