Pat in Forbes →

Pat:

Whenever I've seen people do something just for the money, they've failed because their intentions aren't driving them in the right direction. It should always be about helping people and about the passion of making others feel better. The byproduct of doing that is generating money.

Proud to say that I've known Pat since before he turned his life around. I've worked with shady marketing/sales people in the past, but Pat is a genuine guy that makes an honest living by helping others.

Carissa & Michael Sign with Major Label →

Their unique technique also helped boost re-Vines: filming only half their faces to focus on harmonies over looks (nevermind that they're an impossibly adorable couple.) Though it's become their trade mark, Carissa insists it was born out of necessity. "I wasn't wearing makeup one night, and Michael wanted to film a video and I was like, 'No I'm tired and I'm in my pajamas,'" she recalls. "We'd had a Vine account, but we never really too active on it. We tried to post funny Vines, but we're not comedians, so it didn't go over too well. But the six-second cover thing seemed to really take off and people seemed to like it." x

By mid-December, a take on The Neighbourhood's "Sweater Weather"

Carissa & Michael on Business Insider →

Business Insider:

YouTube has always been filled with covers of songs. In fact, there are a few household celebrity names we know today who got their start on YouTube (like Justin Bieber).

Then there's Vine, which only allows you to cap a measly 7 seconds of footage before it goes into a looping stream. It may not seem like the most obvious platform for budding musicians to showcase their work.

But it worked for the Alvarados, who go by UsTheDuo on Vine.

Michael and Carrisa Alvarado have amassed over 1.5 million followers on Vine, where they post 7-second clips of a cappella versions of songs we all know.

I'm already predicting that these boys will win Season 4. They have an American-dream backstory (they're first-generation Filipino-Americans, whose parents have sacrificed for them); they traffic in '90s nostalgia (they were raised on boy bands like *NSYNC, Kris Kross, and, yes, Boyz II Men); and they're cute as heck, with charisma for days. Their performance of Bruno Mars's "Treasure" was a hoot. "You have so much personality, and it's really coming through," said Jewel. Ben described them as "absolutely fun and entertaining and grabbing from the first note," though he did say they sometimes got ahead of the beat. Shawn compared their "smooth, not too loud" style to Boyz II Men's. These boyz are going to go far, mark my words.

Lyndsey Parker, Yahoo TV