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Carmen Electra Will Wish You Happy Birthday on Facebook... For $3

by Matthew Zuras on August 2, 2010 at 11:09 AM

cameo stars facebook page screenshot of carmen electra
A new Facebook-based start-up called Cameo Stars is hoping to turn itself into the next viral craze by having celebrities wish you a happy birthday. Cameo Stars features A-list football players Reggie Bush, Tony Romo and Drew Brees -- along with the perpetually irrelevant Carmen Electra -- shot on green screen and expressing generic platitudes for you to post on your friends' Facebook pages.

Some of the videos are free -- like the one featuring Tony Romo psyching you out with a feigned pass -- while the birthday greetings will run you 30 Facebook credits, or $3. It's unclear whether or not the videos can be made truly personal -- the paid videos we previewed were not much more than Carmen Electra in full sexpot mode popping through the top of a CGI cake, squealing, "Happy birthday, baby!" According to the New York Times, the company "promises that more movie and television personalities are on the way."

So far, the Facebook page, which was launched just today and seems to be plagued with major UI glitches, has received one five-star review -- from Daren Hornig, the company's founder. But Hornig may want to work on his sales pitch a bit more; the Info page explains that Cameo Stars can "deliver a variety of personal messages directly on the consumer's, or their friend's, social network page." How thoughtful! Happy birthday, Consumer!

We put on our conspiracy-sensing helmets and took a guess as to where this idea might've originated. Could it be that, since everyone went gaga for Isaiah Mustafa's personalized YouTube videos for Old Spice Twitter fans, Cameo Stars saw a market ripe for exploitation? We'll stick with the free variety. As Videogum helpfully pointed out, you can simply enter "[name] happy birthday" as a search string in YouTube, and find endless random greetings made by strangers for your friends and loved ones. Sometimes your dutiful writer just watches this video when he's got a case of the gloomies. [From: New York Times]

Tags: birthday, CameoStars, CarmenElectra, DarenHornig, DrewBrees, facebook, ReggieBush, SocialNetworking, startup, TonyRomo, top, web, weird

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