Founder Michael Levy said that ShoutOmatic helps make social networking more personable.

“It adds emotion to your actual tweeting instead of just texting where you’re going, (or) what’s happening in your life,” he said. “People can hear you and have a full understanding of the emotion and the tone.”

To help spread the word about ShoutOmatic, Levy enlisted the help of a few MSU students.

“We hired those students because we wanted to get them to play with (ShoutOmatic) — we wanted to get a real sense of the college student’s perspective,” Levy said. “We basically said the only thing you have to do is use it, tell your friends about it and let us know what you think.”

Communication senior Weslie Iza was one of the students who was hired to help promote ShoutOmatic. After seeing a classified newspaper, she contacted Levy by e-mail and began using the site at the beginning of February.

“What I do specifically is act as a liaison for MSU and ShoutOmatic, doing marketing and promotion,” Iza said.

In her brief time using the website, Iza already liked it and could see how useful ShoutOmatic could be.

“I think if people start learning more about it than it could be used in better ways than Twitter is,” she said. “It adds more authenticity, emotion and sincerity that text alone can’t offer.”

Levy had experience in numerous other business ventures in photography and music before starting the website. He got the idea for ShoutOmatic after working on a different music website that allowed artists to sell their own music directly. ShoutOmatic would give the artists an opportunity to make a quick shout-out and tell people about their songs, Levy said.

“You can obviously say more in 30 seconds than you can in 140 characters,” he said.

Students also can link his or her phone number with their account on ShoutOmatic and call in shouts. In the future, Levy plans to incorporate celebrities into the website, allowing people to buy personalized shouts from their favorite celebrities.

English senior Rachel Berzack never had heard of ShoutOmatic before but was interested in the concept.

“I think it’s a cool idea — it’s an innovative idea,” she said. “I don’t know if I personally would use it, but I definitely think it’s a cool idea. I think that it should be made available to people.”

Journalism senior Ashleigh Rogers was another MSU students hired by Levy. She has high hopes for the website and has continued using it even after her promotional period was over.

“As far as the MSU community getting involved, I haven’t seen very many people get involved (with ShoutOmatic), but I think over time as the word gets out about it, more and more that (students) will find out about it,” Rogers said.