• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, February 22, 2007

Me-Media takes another dubious step forward with video avatar ringtones from online phone retailer Wirefly. "This is an initiative to get the brand in front of people," says Sean Mallon, VP and GM of parent company InPhonic. He is leveraging the viral power of e-mail and social networking to "seed awareness."

At Wirefly's U-doo.com, you can "do UR own tone": create an avatar, then turn a message into a perfectly lip-synched cartoon announcing a call. Push the tone to your phone, e-mail it to others, or use it on MySpace. After a trial period, a subscription is $4.99 per month.

For this project, InPhonic partnered with Oddcast, the technology that powers similar campaigns for the likes of Starbucks and Careerbuilder. Oddcast now serves over 150 million avatars a month, says CEO Adi Sideman. He sees this as just the first stage in proliferating avatars. Can celebrity avatar-tones be too far off? Maybe a cartoon Jack Nicholson barking, "Answer the damn phone already, will ya?