The Dallas Mavericks won the most important prize in the basketball, winning the NBA Finals four games to two over the loathsome Miami Heat. From a social media perspective, however, the Heat swept every game, earning more mentions and comments and winning the so-called social score of the series. Read more
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. 
When National Basketball Association superstar and sure-fire Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal announced the end of his 19-year career, he didn’t hold a traditional press conference at TD Garden, the home arena of his last club, the Boston Celtics. He didn’t commandeer ESPN for a one-hour special, as LeBron James did last offseason when announcing that he would join the Miami Heat as a free agent. In fact, most people initially learned the news through his Twitter feed, which boasted more than 3.8 million followers at the time of this post, but O’Neal actually broke the news of his retirement via a post on Tout.
The National Basketball Association’s regular season may be winding down to an end, but Miami Heat superstar LeBron James’ new animated series on YouTube is just getting started.
First, photo-sharing service TweetPhoto got a new name, becoming Plixi in August. Now, it has a new owner — members-only social-commerce site Lockerz — and it will soon have another new name, as Lockerz said Plixi will become Lockerz Photos and the combined traffic of the two sites will total more than 31 million unique monthly users.
Plixi serves more than 1 billion photos per month, and more than 300 developers have integrated its technology, with the service receiving more than 67 million requests daily via application program interfaces.
The two companies will team up to develop new media-sharing features, including the ability for Lockerz members to share activities, photos, and videos on other social networks. They will also focus on celebrity content, as Plixi celebrity users currently include Justin Bieber, LeBron James, Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, Seth MacFarlane, and Chelsea Handler.
Terms of the transaction were not revealed.
LeBron James, one of the most loved and most despised players in the NBA, is web-ward bound. This week the news is out that LeBron is getting his own animated web series – The LeBrons. The series is coming soon to a computer near you, though the official launch date has yet to be announced, and will star LeBron and several of his alter egos – Kid LeBron, Athlete LeBron, Business LeBron, and Wise LeBron.
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Fortune released its 2010 40 Under 40 rankings Thursday, and technology and media are well-represented, with Andreessen Horowitz co-founder and Netscape Communications founder Marc Andreessen occupying the top spot, followed by Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and a third-place tie between Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone.
Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page tied for fifth; News Corp. chairman and CEO, Europe and Asia James Murdoch was No. 8; Univision Networks president César Conde No. 12; Aol chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong No. 18; there was a three-way tie at No. 27 between Facebook vice president of product Chris Cox, VP of engineering Mike Schroepfer, and chief technology officer Bret Taylor; foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley was at No. 29; Slide founder Max Levchin and Vevo president and CEO Rio Caraeff tied at No. 31; Google head of location and mobile services Marissa Mayer at No. 34; Hulu CEO Jason Kilar at No. 37; and Microsoft global head of advertising Carolyn Everson at No. 39.
The 2010 40 Under 40 rankings will appear in the Nov. 1 issue of Fortune, which will be on newsstands Monday. The full list appears after the jump:
The Access Point just released a pretty cool infographic that compares Twitter and Blog traffic between LeBron James – who decided yesterday on ESPN that he would move to the Miami Heat last night – and the FIFA World Cup, which is about to enter into its final game this weekend. The international coverage of the World Cup is staggering, and trumps LeBron’s decision by an order of 10 to 1 when it comes to blog posts. There are some interesting statistics on the image, so take a look after the jump.
New York City is starting an official online campaign to recruit NBA superstar LeBron James to the Big Apple. NYC & Company, New York’s official marketing and tourism organization, has quietly launched the “C’mon LeBron!” campaign at www.cmonlebron.com.
The site features Facebook and Twitter connectivity, encouraging users to use the #cmonlebron hashtag and letting them customize C’mon LeBron avatars for use on the social networking sites.
there is also a video, led by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, outlining all the reasons James should play for in NYC, including this doozy:
As the good book says, lead us to the promised land. And that is from the King James version.
More proof that people that own media companies should probably not be the ones appearing in front of the camera.
