Activ8Social

We’re one more sultry summer weekend closer to the revitalized NFL season, college football, and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows! On that note, today’s #SoMash includes MasterCard’s promo of the Yankees, live streaming of U2′s 360 Tour, Nielsen’s new Facebook ratings, and the PGA Championship’s social media push.

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.

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.

This year Chris DiMarco is not competing at the 75th Masters but that does not mean his presence will go unfelt in Augusta.  DiMarco’s radio show, oPINionated w/ Chris DiMarco, has been transformed into a YouTube show from April 6 through April 10th (Masters Week) on his brand new ChrisDiMarcoTV YouTube Channel which Activ8Social designed and helped launch in addition to the Augusta Challenge on Facebook.

It’s an all sports week here on the Social Mashup! We cover some innovative uses of social media in the sports world from the NBA’s new social media game, the Devils digital command center, the Warriors case study use of Facebook Deals, and the PGA Tour’s embracing of cell phones.

People have found managing virtual farms and virtual cities to be absolutely fascinating.  So why not apply the same gaming logic to virtual basketball players?  The NBA has created a Facebook game called NBA Legend that will allow people to do just that.  Facebook users can create an avatar, join an NBA basketball team, and follow a simulated career.  You start off as a rookie trying to get your foot in the door with an NBA team and the goal is to develop into an NBA Legend.

Welcome back folks! This week we get back to our regularly scheduled programming as we present to you many of the top stories from this past week in social media and sports. We have everything a reader could ask for … one of the world’s most innovative brands and its newest gem, a battle for social media supremacy among NFL football teams off the gridiron, a web discovery and referral tool that claims to dominate Facebook, huge announcements from the world’s largest technology companies at the world’s largest tech trade show, and a unique rules violation involving social media, golf, and the PGA.

Over the last two weeks, Tiger Woods has started tweeting from the @TigerWoods handle and it has gone under the radar.  The question everybody has been asking is whether or not it will really be Tiger or a hired gun.  Tiger’s agent Mark Steinberg has tried to assuage those fears by telling the world that is in fact Tiger but experts are still skeptical.  Woods though is gonna have to prove to his fans that he has a fun side instead of being the quite conservative guy that we have not gotten to know over the years.  The athletes who have traditionally done best on Twitter are those that have found a way to get closer to their fans by being consistent, being candid and showing a personal side.