This week’s Social Mashup features Under Armour’s live NFL Draft Facebook chat with superstar 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.
Under Armour an ever innovative brand, used the Draft Chat to promote their new fast-drying performance cotton collection, Charged Cotton. Under Armour has been promoting the line heavily on Facebook with the Charged Cotton application that allows users to upload photos of themselves and “get charged.”
The chat was broadcasted live on Under Armour’s Facebook page and Ustream.tv with NFL analyst Boomer Esiason moderating. Senior VP of Sports Marketing for Under Armour, Matt Mirchin, said,
This event offers fans the special opportunity to learn first-hand how Tom Brady transformed himself from the 199th player picked in the 2000 NFL Draft to one of the most prolific quarterbacks of all time.
UFL Coaches to Announce Draft Picks on Twitter 
In a social media first, the head coaches and commissioner of the United Football League (UFL) will announce their 2011 draft selections on Twitter tonight at 8pm ET. The league, which started in 2009, now has five franchises going into this season.
UFL commissioner, Michael Huyghue (@UFLCommissioner), will announce the First Round from his Twitter account then the head coaches will take over with the announcements in the following rounds. Huyghue had this to say about the announcements via Twitter,
The UFL Draft plays an important role in stocking our teams’ rosters and we hope fans enjoy this innovative means of communicating each pick.
Round by round selections will be posted on the UFL’s homepage and each of the teams’ Facebook groups. The Hartford Colonials lead off the draft with the first pick after finished 2010 with a 3-5 record. The Omaha Nighthawks get the second pick, followed by the Sacramento Mountain Lions, Virginia Destroyers and finally the 2010 champions, the Las Vegas Locos.
The Draft will run through 10 rounds, of which each team only has one pick per round. During the first three rounds, each team will have five minutes to make their selection. In the final seven rounds, teams will be given just three minutes make their pick.
Want to follow the UFL Draft live? Here are the Twitter handles to follow:
UFL Commissioner: Michael Huyghue @UFLCommissioner
Hartford Colonials: Jerry Glanville @JerryGlanville
Omaha Nighthawks: Joe Moglia @UFLJoeMoglia
Sacramento Mountain Lions: Dennis Green @UFLDennisGreen
Virginia Destroyers: Marty Schottenheimer @DestroyersMarty
Las Vegas Locos: Jim Fassel @LocosJimFassel
YouTube has been making major strides to legitimize its content from allowing people to rent Sundance movies, to live stream sporting events and organizing its content into groups which are filled with professionally produced videos. In addition, Life in a Day, the documentary created by YouTube users and produced by Ridley Scott, will have its day in theaters nationally.
However, the newest initiative may be the biggest of all as it has been reported that the Google-owned video-sharing site plans to launch an on-demand movie channel, which will charge people to stream major Hollywood movies. And we may not have to wait very long. Pictures from studious like Warner Brothers, Universal and Sony are apparently already in the works to be on the site, and Fox could be next. YouTube has had no comment on the subject thus far but it definitely seems as though it is moving forward based on the strong rumors. As mentioned before, YouTube is not new to movie rentals as they have had a rental channel with Sundance movies previously.
If this deal is real it could certainly give Netflix a run for its money. The question would basically be if YouTube could get enough content to challenge Netflix and if they could, if people would be willing to switch. At this point Netflix Watch Instantly is pretty ingrained as the movie streaming service of choice and it will be interesting to see if YouTube could take the majority of the market. Our gut instinct is that if Google went at this 100% they would have no problem crushing Netflix given the Google and YouTube names and the quality of the products that Google releases.
After a long wait and much anticipation, Facebook is finally launching their Local Deals. The pilot program will start in only five cities (San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, Atlanta and San Diego) but assuming it sees success, it will spread across the country. It is essentially a Groupon type product and is expected to directly compete with the aforementioned social buying juggernaut. The initial mobile Deals product that Facebook launched competed more so with Foursquare since it was a piggyback to Facebook Places while the new product competes with Groupon and LivingSocial.
Users who opt into Deals will get to see opportunities specific to their locations. Those offers will arrive via email or, in some cases, will appear in the user’s news feed on Facebook. Each deal gets its own Facebook page and users can “Like” a deal, share it, or opt to buy it immediately. Users can pay via credit card or with Facebook credits. This will bring Facebook Credits into the real world for the first time which was probably Facebook’s plan for them all along. Facebook’s initial model has steep discounts of 50% or more but it will be interesting to see if they can keep up that discount level.
