Social Media Digest: Apr. 3 through Apr. 9
This week we look at location based rewards for skiing the North Pole, a site that lets you buy your way to Mayor, a mysterious hashtag based puzzle, and augmented reality game that uses Layar, and a deodorizing adventure.
The Last Degree – 15 year old Parker Liautaud hopes to become the youngest person to ever ski the last degree of the North Pole, and along the way, he’ll be using a combination of Facebook, YouTube, Google Earth and DailyMile to document his journey. Plus, when he gets to the North Pole, he’ll be able to check-in on Foursquare and become the first person to earn a special North Pole badge that Foursquare has created specifically for his trip.
Get Mayor – Want all the benefits of being a Foursquare mayor but don’t want to actually check-in to a location over and over? A new service called Get Mayor promises to make you Mayor of a location for a day for a one-time fee, or to make you a permanent mayor for a slightly larger fee if you don’t want to give up the title. Foursquare recently announced new measures designed to prevent check-in fraud, so time will tell if this service manages to work around those restrictions, but for now at least, the title of Foursquare Mayor is only a small payment away.
Underground Puzzle – Mysterious black posters have popped up in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn subway stations, showing just a piece of an image and a Twitter hashtag. Users are encouraged to share a picture of the poster they find with others by tagging it with the hashtag, and then following the @UGPuzzle Twitter account for more details on what it all means.
Splinter Cell Layar Game – To promote the release of Splinter Cell: Conviction, Ubisoft has partnered with Layar to create an augmented reality game that has players exploring Amsterdam to unlock missions and solve puzzles scattered throughout the city.
Old Spice Adventure – Old Spice is going to send two adventure seeking guys on the ultimate internship experience to explore where freshness comes from. Whether it’s snowboarding in Switzerland or surfing in Fiji, both candidates will compete against one another in various challenges, and then document their journey in daily blog entries and other social media updates so that they can share their adventures with the world.