GetHundos is a startup that has recently gone into beta. GetHundos is a social networking site for college students. Right now it is open exclusively to University of Washington students and their friends. Today, I signed up for this fun service and tested it out. So far it has been pretty humorous and very engaging.

To sign up for the service, you must have a valid University of Washington email address. Registration was quick and painless. No unnecessary data is required, just basic registration information. The interface is easy, intuitive, and looks great.

The main idea of the site is to pit users against each other and see who can come up with the wittiest answer to a question posed by GetHundos in 160 characters or less. An example of a contest is: “How do you know when you are obsessed with Husky football?” Users come up with responses and other users vote up the ones they like and vote down the responses they think are lame. A picture can be uploaded with the response to enhance the message and make it funnier. Whichever entry garners the most votes at the end of the time period nets $100 dollars (hence the name GetHundos). Users also have the options of SuperVoting and Bombing entries, which count as +10 and -10 votes, respectively.

Users can earn “hundos” for entering and winning contests as well. Hundos are like currency and are used to buy more SuperVotes and Bombs at the GetHundos store. They also determine your rank in the GetHundos community. Like any other social network, users can befriend others and grow their network. In addition, users can become Fans or Haters of other people and establish alliances.

GetHundos is a simple but extremely entertaining site for college students. Once it gets bigger and looks beyond the UW campus, GetHundos should be very popular. If you are a UW student you should sign up right now. If you already have, what do you think of the site? What contests have you entered so far? What contests should be posted there?

Find me on GetHundos using the name cyruskazemi

Howcast is a startup company founded by ex-Googlers Jason Liebman, Daniel Blackman and Sanjay Raman. All three worked on Google Video and YouTube before creating Howcast. The site launched on February 6th, 2008 along with an announcement of an $8 million series A funding led by Tudor Investment Group. Howcast provides instructional how-to videos on everything from How To Paint A Wall to How To Pretend You’re A Real New Yorker.

One might wonder why someone would try to create a site based solely on how-to guides when thousands of such videos can be found on YouTube. What sets apart Howcast from the competition (which includes Instructables, Expert Village and 5min in addition to other people YouTube) is the quality of the videos. The majority of the videos on the site so far are actually produced by Howcast’s own studio. Once users register they can suggest new topics and even write up and edit instructions for those topics.

The site also includes a wiki section. I find this especially helpful for instructions that are easier to visualize in my head than to watch in a video (such as How To Do A Kickflip). The wiki section is where users can submit their write ups. If Howcast chooses to make a video out of a certain wiki, they either shoot it in their own studio in New York or pay film students to shoot the footage then Howcast voices it over and makes it pretty.

Revenue is driven by embedded ads in the instructional videos. These ads are much more effective in my opinion. When I watch a video online, I don’t want to wait 15, 30 or 60 seconds to start the video. Placing a small ad at the bottom of the video grabs the user’s attention without being too annoying. It’s similar to driving a car: for some reason it feels more efficient to be moving slowly than to be stuck at a red light before driving off quickly.

Howcast looks promising. It offers a broad range of topics with the potential user involvement of a wiki with the entertainment of online video.

What are some your favorite Howcast how-tos? Do you think Howcast seems like a service you would want to use?