My previous must-read post was about Shmuly Tennenhaus - an industry friend who has become a YouTube reality star. Not to be outdone by Shmuly (Shmuly’s recent YouTube video about his “Bubby” aka, grandmother has gotten over 250K visitors within the last 4-days and has been getting international press), Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney) blogged today further adding fire to the speculation that Matt Cutts is leaving Google. Not sure if this story will gain the same traction that “Bubby” has for Shmuly, but I have a funny feeling that Shoemoney’s post has some serious buzz potential even if it’s unlikely that Matt will accept Pepperjam’s generous offer.

Here’s what Shoemoney did - on Monday he sent an e-mail to a small list of his friends, including myself. He posed the following question: Would you hire Matt Cutts? If you had to come up with a dollar figure to offer him what would it be? What would his job title and job description be? The other folks that responded to Shoemoney’s “top secret” e-mail included Danny Sullivan, Patrick Gavin (CEO, Text-Link-Ads.com), Aaron Wall (Author, SEOBOOK), Rand Fishkin (President, SEOMOZ), Jason Calacanis (Former CEO Weblogs INC & AOL Exec - apparently loves English Bulldogs) and others.

Anyway - there were some really interesting responses. Here was my response to Shoemoney’s question:

Kris Jones - CEO, Pepperjam

Pepperjam would hire Matt Cutts in a fraction of a second.

TITLE: President of Software Development - Search Division
JOB DESCRIPTION: Matt would manage the day-to-day operations and direction of Pepperjam’s internet software development - search division. As President, Matt would direct the overall strategy of the division and would be provided with the flexibility and resources to build a team around his vision for the future of search.
SALARY: $250K Base + Profit Sharing + Stock

As one of the fastest growing privately-held companies in the United States (Inc. Magazine, 2006), why wouldn’t Matt want to work for Pepperjam? He’d be crazy not too. Matt clearly wouldn’t go where the money is - he’s got more than he will ever need. Matt wants the flexibility and upside that a company like Pepperjam will give him. At Pepperjam he would be given free reign to build projects around his vision for the future of search. Aside from that, I just know Matt would fall in love with Roxy, Pepperjam’s English Bulldog mascot.

CLICK HERE to read all the responses (and comments) from Shoemoney’s blog. Click below to digg Shoe’s story.

Many of you know Shmuly Tennenhaus as the former energetic and always eccentric affiliate director of ICE.com. In that capacity Shmuly was one of the best in the business - in fact, in those days we used to educate our affiliate management team by using examples of Shmuly’s out-of-the-ordinary effectiveness - we used to say things to our managers like if you ever have a question first ask yourself….What would Shmuly do?

Seriously, at Pepperjam we have always seen Shmuly as a star…maybe not of the broadway or Hollywood type, but a star nonetheless. But wait…..Shmuly is no longer an affiliate manager - what are we to do? Honor Shmuly’s legacy…..Build a statue…Change my dog’s name to Shmuly?…Maybe we should attempt to hire Shmuly to be part of the Pepperjam Team?

Shmuly Tennenhaus left ICE.com several months ago. Since then he has been getting in touch with his soul, while at the same time using his honest eccentricity to build stardom through YouTube. Has it been working? Well, let me put in this way: Shmuly Tennenhaus is the next lonelygirl15….before you think I’m crazy…hear me out. While Shmuly is not the young attractive girl-next-store type like lonelygirl was portrayed to be, or what I see as reality TV - lite…Shmuly is the next generation of reality - TV, ShmulTube style. Shmuly offers viewers a racey, not always mainstream, but always-entertaining view of reality…or of what Shmuly’s reality is anyway, and from my vantage point - it’s worth watching.

I’m not entirely certain when Shmuly’s YouTube channel took off - whether it was the time when Shmuly decided to video tape himself working out at Wal-Mart, his BellSouth & AT&T merger rap song, or most recently when he got his grandmother (Bubby) to video tape a New Year’s message to the Tennenhaus family - the Bubby video is approaching 200K viewers in less than 1 week. Either way, Shmuly is a brilliant young entreprenuer with a career that seems to be taking off.

Here are some of my favorites with links to Shmuly’s work.

Shmuly’s Grandmother offers New Year’s Message
Shmuly Suggests Talks Middle Eastern Peace and Kevin Federline (This one made it to ABC News)
Boycott The Apprentice
BellSouth, AT&T Merger
Superman Cheating on YouTube!
The Walmart Fitness Center

By my calculations, ShmulTube should bust through 1 million visitors within the next few months. I’m not sure about you but that is uber impressive.

Shmuly’s YouTube Channel
Shmuly’s Blog
Shmuly’s Revenews Posts