Activ8Social

What a year for entertainment “check-in” service GetGlue! Not only did the company surpass the 2 million user mark before the new year, but AdaptiveBlue, Inc. (parent company of GetGlue) has its eye on evolving the platform beyond simply rewarding users for checking-in to movies, music, and television shows.

Welcome back to this week’s Social Mashup! We’ve got a heavy dose of sports and social media news for you this week. Leading off is Facebook and USA Today’s announcement of an app allowing fans to rate Super Bowl commercials, the Phoenix Suns looking to hire a social media sideline reporter, reports of a Twitter integration into Apple’s iOS5 and Sports Illustrated’s ‘Football Rivals’ app.

Unfortunately beach season is quickly coming to a close but that means American football season is fast approaching! BTW, did anybody catch The Band Perry’s stellar performance at last night’s CMA Musical Festival? This week’s edition of the Social Mashup features a flurry of major college sports programs banning Twitter usage among its student athletes, superstar musicians supporting Save the Children via Facebook and Twitter, Haven’s unique integration of Twitter into its on-air plot, and Rovio’s amazing billion dollar company valuation.

We hope you had a great weekend and are ready for last week’s top news in sports, entertainment, and social media. Today’s edition includes a major social media marketing push behind box office number one movie Cowboys & Aliens, the 2012 Olympics Twitter contest, Twitter’s new delivery of promoted Tweets, and finally Foursquare and Groupon’s official partnership announcement.

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!

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.

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.

Who had Charl Schwartzel in their Masters pool?  We wish we could claim it’s true for us, but sincere congratulations to young South African golfer on winning the illustrious Green Jacket.  In this week’s edition of our Social Mashup, we recap Facebook’s potential push into the China market, a new digital case for the iPad 2, ESPN’s live streaming, and the MTV O Music Awards.  And in case you weren’t one of the 25 million people (yes, you read that number right) to view the live Ustream feed of the bald eagle family in Iowa, here it is for your viewing pleasure.

MTV announced a new online awards show that will take place on April 28 and be shown on MTV.com, VH1.com and LogoTV.com. Voting opened up to the public this week on the O Music Awards website. The first ever awards show will find the artist to follow on Twitter, coolest Tumblr, best music hashtag meme, best independent music blog, most viral dance and more according to fans. The Super Fan will also be crowned during the O Music Award show. Points are awarded to voters, and the fan with the most points is titled “Super Fan”.

Say what you might about the television quality of Gossip Girl produced by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage (creators of “The O.C.”), but it’s a weekly winner for the CW Network drawing nearly 4 million viewers on average. Equally interesting to us at Activ8Social is the CW’s winning social media strategy especially on Facebook.

Gossip Girl’s official Facebook Page clocks in at an impressive 8.5 million fans ranking #16 among all TV shows past and present—ahead of such household names like The Office and right on the heels of Jersey Shore. Considering the relative unknown stature of the show’s cast prior to creation, the CW has a real gem across multiple screens. To the CW’s credit, the GG Facebook Page is given prime real estate on the network website as seen above.

This week’s Social Mashup may be secondary to filling out your NCAA March Madness bracket (drop us a line if you want to know who we’re picking) but don’t let that stop you from brushing up on sports and entertainment social marketing this week.  We present to you Memolane,  a new social media visualization service, movie rentals on Facebook, and a social media game from Hollywood. Just to make sure everybody is totally clear, Charlie Sheen is in fact not dead.

A new social media service has entered the market that has the potential to replace grandma’s old photo albums.  What memolane is at its core is an aggregator of your social media history from all the major social media sites you often upload media to including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, YouTube, Picasa, Flickr, Instagram, Tripit, Vimeo, Spotify and Last.FM.