Activ8Social

10 million? 10,000,000? 7 zeroes? We’re impressed. Social media has always had strength in numbers, and 10 million users or consumers of any product or service is a big deal as far as we’re concerned. Foursquare recently announced they have officially reached 10 million users, and when you step back to think about this feat, it becomes even more impressive when you consider the obstacles the NY start-up has faced to date.

Today’s Mashup reviews three top stories from the past week in the world of sports, entertainment, and social media marketing. Headlines include Monster.com’s new Facebook job network application, the IOC’s decision to allow 2012 Olympic athletes to post social media content during the games, and the brand new partnership between American Express and Foursquare. The Activ8Social team would also like you to check out the world’s newest viral videographer, this seagull.

For the past 4 days and ending Sunday (June 22-26), the AT&T National is giving away an amazing package of prizes to golf fans in the streets of Philadelphia. In fact, we’re positive you are going to get super excited when you hear what fans are receiving.

Each day an AT&T National pinflag pops up at different locations within the city of Philadelphia. The tournament’s official Prize Team posts clues about their locations on Twitter from @TWFoundation and Facebook.
According to the tournament website (and our insider information), those who really want to be in the know should also keep an eye on tweets from the AT&T National Tournament Director Greg McLaughlin. His Twitter handle is @TWFGMAC.

“I never thought about breaking a record, but since there is one, they’re meant to be broken!” – Jimmy Rollins

This Monday, June 27^th, from 11:45 AM -1:00 PM, Red Bull athlete Jimmy “J-Roll” Rollins will attempt to break the world record for “Longest Batted Ball” at a remarkable event called Red Bull Ball Park Cranks in Philadelphia.  Benjamin Franklin Parkway will be closed down in Philadelphia for the record-breaking event and Jimmy is going to hit baseballs as far as he can down it.  As you may already know, Red Bull and Jimmy tried to do this last year but were thwarted by injury.  Rollins certainly looks to be good to go this year as he and the Phillies have been red hot over the last month with the Phils owning the best record in Major League Baseball.

Welcome back everybody and Happy Father’s day to all of our American readers as well as many others around the world. This week’s Social Mashup reviews music and entertainment application Shazam, Samsung’s social media initiatives for the 2012 London Olympics, Pandora’s upcoming IPO, and social web browser Rock Melt.

For nearly two years, Shazam was known as the innovative app used to identify the artist of songs heard on the radio, but moving forward it’s about to be known for so much more.

Earlier this week, the London company added a real-time lyrics feature into Encore, its premium paid application, by acquiring their first company—Tunezee. The synchronized lyric technology, powered by Tunezee’s LyricPlay, shows scrolling lyrics as a tune is playing on the radio.

Earlier this week, I received a tweet from @KloutPerks alerting me to the fact that I was eligible for a free $10 gift card to Subway restaurants because of my Klout. After clicking through the link, I became aware that the world’s largest fast food chain wanted me to try it’s new fresh avocado option on its subs and sandwiches.

To be honest, as much as I read the likes of the Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, and Fast Company, I somehow missed the industry news that Subway was rolling out an avocado spread (not to be confused with guacamole which has other ingredients beside the fruit) and fresh avocado slices nationwide. My guess is that this simple fact met one objective of the company leveraging Klout—raised awareness.

Congratulations to the 2011 NBA champion Dallas Mavericks … they definitely took their talents to South Beach! This week’s Social Mashup as always features four excellent stories including an MLS innovation to All-Star voting, a possible chink in Facebook’s mighty armor, Apple’s introduction of the iCloud, and a Nascar Facebook game.  And we would like to remind you, no matter how much you love Facebook and your Facebook friends, a sleeve tattoo featuring them is completely unnecessary (that includes you T-Pain).

Steve Jobs announced Apple’s iCloud, a cloud storage service for music and information that integrates with various devices, at the WWDC conference last week.  iCloud may change the way we use computers.  Mr. Jobs himself even stated,”We’re going to demote the PC and the Mac to just be a device.”

Red Bull consistently pushes the envelope in the sports marketing arena, and their promotion of 2010 PGA Rookie of the Year, Rickie Fowler, leading up to the 2011 US Open at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland is no different.

On Saturday June 11th, in an event called Red Bull Capital Drive, Fowler will head down to the Georgetown waterfront at 5pm EST and blindly hit chip shots  from a platform onto a custom built green floating in Georgetown’s famous fountain.

What an exciting weekend for sports! First Rafael Nadal defeated his arch rival Roger Federer to join the elite company of Bjorn Bjorg as only the second person in the history of professional tennis to win the French Open at Roland Garos six times. Then, in a series that keeps everybody guessing, the Miami Heat notched another victory for the road team by edging Dallas in the final seconds of Game 3. Completely changing pace and looking at the week ahead, country music fans have the glamorous 2011 CMT Music Awards to get excited about.

In this week’s mashup we review Sony Ericsson’s “hide and tweet” scavenger hunt for the UEFA Champions League final, the new LinkedIn job application button, Twitter’s new photo sharing service and search, and Twitter’s sleek new follow button.

If you advertise on Facebook, then more than likely you have noticed some pretty significant changes to the analytics.  The enhancements to the advertising system were incrementally rolled out to business accounts over the last few months, but as of May 25th,  the new metrics are in effect for all accounts.

Through these significant additions to the analytics format, advertisers can now determine if their Facebook ads or sponsored stories have exhausted the intended target reach and therefore requires the advertiser to switch target demographics in order to prevent the same ad from being shown too many times to the same user.