Activ8Social

Happy Memorial Day weekend! We are excited there is no Lightning or Thunder in the extended forecast … just kidding. Sorry Tampa Bay and Oklahoma City fans, we can’t resist bad jokes. This week’s Social Mashup features new Twitter features, Amazon’s competing Apple app store, Google Wallet, and a potential major partnership.

Just this past Thursday, Twitter unveiled a new feature that allows you to view a profile as the user would see it.  To see this feature in action, click on the “Following” link on anyone’s profile to see the tweet timeline that the user sees on their main feed.  This feature is beneficial for someone looking to find good Twitter users to follow.

Are you curious as to who’s on certain social media sites and how often they use these platforms?  Well, we’ve got the perfect infographic for you.

Ad Age recently released a wealth of information about four of the most popular social media sites in the world (surprisingly YouTube was not included).  With the growth of social networks in the past few years the demographics of these sites has seen several shifts.

We hope this weekend you didn’t come up just short like Animal Kingdom did in his quest for the Triple Crown but congrats to Shackleford for holding winning an instant classic at The Preakness. This week’s Social Mashup reviews LinkedIn’s astonishing IPO, the Starbucks and Lady Gaga partnership, the first social media hedge fund, and Square’s amazing mobile merchant payment system … and for all you Angry Birds fans out there, this real life enactment is for you.

Some people in the valley just have the magic touch and that appears to be the case for Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square, and co-founder of Twitter in 2006. It looks like he’s behind another homerun with this latest venture (let’s not even mention the fact he’s an Angel investor in Foursquare and Art.sy in addition to participating in the Series A round of Flipboard and Kickstarter).

Despite the fact 2010 was arguably the year of the location-based check-in (although others like The Next Web contend 2011 is really the year), there are certain pundits who proclaim that the phenomenon was nothing more than a short lived fad yet many others envision the check-in will evolve beyond simply telecasting one’s whereabouts.

One thing is for sure … Foursquare definitely begs to differ with the doomsday prognosticators and if the newest version of the geo-location platform is any indication of future usage trends, the check-in will eventually grow more sophisticated. In late March 2011, Foursquare launched version 3.0 and with it came a litany of new features most notably more specials for merchants.  The 2 year old startup now boasts more than 250k small and large businesses alike that have taken advantage of specials.

Has the novelty of the location based check-in worn off?  The buzz right now is checking in remotely, but that doesn’t mean the location-based check-in is dead—it does indicate, however, that the “check-in” is evolving and users are beginning to ask the question, “What now?”.

Of course, Foursquare would probably beg to differ that the physical check-in train is losing steam given the service’s 3 million check-ins during this year’s Foursquare Day (4/16) but traffic through April 2011 has basically trended downward or remained static since topping out at 1.8 million unique visitors in July 2010.

Hey everybody!  We hope you enjoyed the weekend. This week’s Monday Social Mashup reviews Dana White’s announcement he will pay UFC fighters to tweet, Google’s new music service, Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype, and Groupon’s launch of their new product ‘Groupon Now.’

The NFL would probably prefer it if Chad Ochocinco never tweeted again.  The controversy surrounding his usual tweets is assuredly not the type of publicity the NFL is going for.  In fact, most major leagues have had at least some problems with their athletes using Twitter.  The same cannot be said for the UFC.

Will there be pro football in 2011 under the banner of the National Football League? That’s a question that many hope will have a positive outcome in the coming months pending the resolution of issues that separate the owners and players from agreeing to a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).

Considering Activ8Social is a social media marketing agency, we wondered what the Facebook and Twitter universe had to say about the lockout so we decided to ask our online peeps how they thought the ordeal would end. However, before we made it a few steps out the door, the good folks over at Lab42 released a sexy infographic (shown below) which answers a couple of our burning questions.

Happy Monday everyone!  Hope you had a great weekend sipping on your mint julep as Animal Kingdom crossed the finish line at the 137th renewal of The Greatest Two Minutes in Sports (aka the Kentucky Derby).  Without further ado, we bring you this week’s Monday Social Mashup lineup which includes top stories about Facebook, Google, and Warner Brothers.

Facebook rolled out a new program this week which will pay you (albeit not very much) to watch certain advertisements that have been uploaded.  The average ad will yield the user with 10 cents worth of Facebook credits, not the greatest incentive in the world but more than nothing.  The people that are willing to watch these ads are probably those that utilize Facebook credits already for things like Facebook Deals or Facebook Games.

Ever wonder what it would be like if Facebook didn’t exist? Blasphemy! How dare you think that! Well, if you did there’s an infographic for that.

Facebook has skyrocketed in growth since its initial launch solely to Harvard students in early 2004. There’s no doubt that the social networking site has changed our lives. So what would we do without out it? The infographic presented in this post demonstrates Facebook’s massive reach, and how ingrained it is within our daily lives. Read more to find out what we think is particularly interesting.

This week’s Social Mashup features Under Armour’s new NFL Draft live Facebook chat with super star Tom Brady, the UFL’s announcement of all 2011 draft picks via Twitter, YouTube’s move toward distribution of major Hollywood films, and Facebook’s roll out of Local Deals. It’s a good one so fasten your seatbelt and hang on for the ride.

Last Friday on Facebook, Under Armour teamed up with the New England Patriots’ three time Super Bowl champion quarterback for the first-ever Tom Brady Draft Chat. The chat featured a Q&A session with a group of lucky fans who were hand picked by Under Armour Founder and CEO himself, Kevin Plank. The twelve winners were chosen from the lot of folks who submitted photos of themselves “Getting Charged Up” on UA’s Facebook Page.