Activ8Social

The Washington Redskins wanted a creative way to show their fans appreciation for sticking with them and showing support through the NFL lockout. With the help of Activ8Social, they elected to invent a unique Twitter hashtag and concept called #FollowFanDay, which is a take on the popular #FollowFriday (or #FF) where people recommend new Twitter accounts to follow on Fridays.

When Google+ debuted a few weeks ago, the first question naturally was could it compete with the almighty titan Facebook?  While there are obviously many differences between the two social networking platforms, the primary functionality of both products puts them squarely in direct competition with each other.

Today, we came across Kwarter, a new iPhone and iPad app, that’s soon to launch to the publics, and we are pretty stoked about it. The app sets to reinvent the live television sports experience by giving fans a platform to engage with friends, family and other like minded fans during their favorite team’s game.

The Activ8Social team nearly didn’t survive Washington DC’s 101 ºF (38 ºC) weekend but luckily we caught some cool waves at the National Harbour waterfront. We hope you fared better than us. This week’s Social Mashup is sure to help you ring in the new week with stories on mobile app Hitpost, ESPN’s new Twitter reporting philosophy, Airbnb’s $1 billion valuation, and Apple’s potential acquisition of Hulu. Oh and apparently we get to watch Super Bowl XLVI next year according to @AdamSchefter!

Our hearts go out to the US Women’s National Team who fought so valiantly in the World Cup only to come up a little short. Soccer is a funny game and sometimes the team that controls the play and has the most chances doesn’t come out on top. Congrats to the Japanese, they played a wonderful tournament and truly play a gorgeous brand of soccer. This week’s Social Mashup brings you the new Pandora, the MLB’s usage of Twitter during the Home Run Derby, Golden Tate versus NASCAR, and Facebook’s successful sponsored stories advertising units.

Happy social Monday everybody!  The Activ8Social team is still coming down from the incredible drama of the US Women’s National Team’s victory over Brazil in the World Cup yesterday. We truly hope that you did not miss the amazing action!  This week’s top stories include the launch of Crowd Seats, the NBA’s lockout tweeting rules, eBay’s purchase of Zong, and Facebook implementing video chat.

There’s no arguing that group buying sites aren’t popular and successful.  Now Crowd Seats, which launched last week, is trying to jump on board and introduce sports ticketing to the daily deals masses.  The new deals site is offering “tickets to your favorite sporting events at 50-90% off face value” through an email subscription based service.

Happy Fourth of July to all of our US readers! Kick back in your office chair, read our stories, and let us catch you up on the latest after a long weekend of BBQs and Independence Day fireworks. Top stories include the long over due sale of MySpace, NASCAR’s 15 year marketing growth plan, and an introduction to Google’s much anticipated social networking product Google+.

After hanging a for sale sign on the front steps of MySpace nearly 6 months ago, News Corp. has finally placed the rubber stamp on a deal for the bargain price of $35 million. The buyer is an advertising network called Specific Media which was founded in 1999 by three brothers – Tim, Chris and Russell Vanderhook – and is based in Irvine, California. The new owners plan on focusing future iterations of the site solely on music.

A few week’s ago in our Monday Social Mashup, we told you how new user adoption of Facebook is slowing down in the United States and other mature markets. Well, in case you were wondering about the overall global growth of Facebook, it is reportedly showing no signs of slowing. According to a source close to the company, Facebook has now reached more than 750 million active users per month.

For the last two years, Vincenzo Cosenza at the VincosBlog has maintained a world map of social networks which tracks the most popular social networks by country, according to Alexa and Google Trends for Websites traffic data.

Another day, another Twitter milestone. So what else is new in the social media world? The micro-blogging service, founded back in 2006, now supports over 200 million daily tweets from all corners of the planet. This is only up 65 million tweets from the same time last year, or a measly (sarcasm) roughly 200% growth! In January of 2009, only 2 million tweets were transmitted daily. Not too shabby, huh?