Activ8Social

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.

We hope that you had an excellent weekend and managed to get off your couch for at least a little while in light of the excellent NBA and NHL playoff games taking place.  This week’s edition of the Social Mashup features two intriguing Twitter stories, a new advertising plan from Pepsi and MLB, and finally Google Offers going into Beta testing.  Hopefully if you were fortunate enough to win any trophies this weekend, you didn’t run them over in your celebration.

Twitter has been recently encouraging developers to move away from creating third party clients so that Twitter can have more traffic on their actual site which would lead to more monetizing options.  But that may backfire on Twitter.  Some of those developers may be looking to build their own competitor to Twitter.

This week’s Social Mashup features Major League Baseball’s digital campaign for the legendary Jackie Robinson, Living Social’s $1 deals, Reebok’s cool new mobile application, and Virgin America awesome new Foursquare marketing campaign. And no, we can’t believe Rebecca Black’s Friday has just topped the 100 million views on YouTube either. Watch out Biebs!

In 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the MLB’s color barrier becoming the first African American to play in the Major League. Every year on the anniversary of his first big league game, April 15th, each MLB team celebrates Jackie Robinson Day by wearing 42—which is the only number in history retired by all 30 MLB teams. This year, to honor Jackie, MLB has released a new digital campaign called IAM42 which is aimed at creating a personal connection between fans and the legend through personal videos and social media.

Can you believe that the Activ8Social company bracket predicted VCU, Butler, UConn, and Kentucky… to all have lost by the end of the second round!  Apparently, we don’t have the skills of Joe Pearlman who correctly picked all four teams. This week we bring you Google’s online magazine, a new mobile photo sharing application, AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile, and LivingSocial’s aggressive battle to overtake Groupon.  And in case you are flying this week, we’ve provided you a little reminder on the FAA’s safety guidelines from the always entertaining Richard Simmons.

What a game last night! Wow! Our sincere condolences go out to all you Steeltown fans but then again six Lombardi trophies isn’t so bad either. As we do every week here at Activ8Social, we cover the top social media stories in sports and entertainment including the controversial Groupon vs. LivingSocial Super Bowl ad wars, Foursquare’s Super Bowl check-in, free Facebook on Gogo flights in February, Kia’s Australian Open campaign, and MySpace’s not-so-surprising for sale sign. And of course, don’t forget to vote on whether Barbie should take Ken back!

In our fourth installment of Monday’s Social Mashup in 2011, we review how the NFL’s players are turning to social media to oppose the impending lockout, what a new crowd sourcing website from France promises do for brands, what Google’s answer to Groupon offers, and how the University of Texas athletics department has become the real “ESPN The Ocho”. As much as we wanted to unlock the Golden Egg for you, we promise not to talk about the impending Angry Birds television show.

In honor of the new year, our final Social Mashup of 2010 takes a brief look back at five of the most important social media trends of the last 12 months. Here at Activ8Social, we believe that you should pay special attention to hyper-localization, social retail, deals, check-ins, and mobile … you are going to be hearing a lot more about innovation in these spaces from both fresh startups to establish players like Facebook and Google. Happy New Year everybody!