Viral Video: Foursquare's Dennis Crowley Is Character Approved

Recently, Foursquare was selected for an “award,” as part of an advertising campaign for USA Networks, whose motto is “Characters Welcome.” Now, a commercial featuring co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai is in heavy rotation on the cable television channel–what can BoomTown say, except, “NCIS” rocks, and thus, I have had to endure the ad 67 times so far!

Nike Digital Sport's Stefan Olander Talks About Its Digital Marathon

While BoomTown was running around the endless floors of the Consumer Electronics Show last week, I jogged right over to the folks at Nike, to see their new Nike+ SportWatch GPS. The device is yet another step in Nike’s long march to try to digitize the running experience.

Yahoo's M&A Head Andrew Siegel Is Departing the Company

Andrew Siegel–Yahoo’s head of corporate development, who is in charge of its mergers and acquisitions strategy–is leaving the company, according to sources. The move comes after Siegel–who has made some very prescient calls about game-changing acquisition targets for the company–has become increasingly frustrated in getting them completed. Siegel’s exit is part of a long line of departures of top talent under the leadership of CEO Carol Bartz. Yahoo has no replacement for him as yet.

Topguest Checks In With $2 Million Series A Round (And Peter Thiel as Adviser)

Topguest, a check-in loyalty service that was founded just five months ago, has gotten $2 million in Series A funding, as well as nabbing well-known Facebook investor Peter Thiel as an adviser. Other investors in the round include: Thiel’s Founders Fund, as well as angels such as Ron Conway, Keith Rabois, Jeff Clavier and Naval Ravikant.

Foursquare's Crowley Talks About a Real NY Marathon Badge (Coming Soon to a D: Dive Into Mobile Near You)

So what did Foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley do when he was running the New York Marathon last week? Three guesses and the first two don’t count: He checked in to the popular geolocation service from every mile marker on the 26-mile route. Of course he did.

Playboy Goes Geo-Local With Scout App, Even as Iconic Media Company Attempts Turnaround

How about some check-ins at the Playboy Mansion? That’s not exactly on the menu for a new mobile application being launched by the iconic adult-oriented media company today, called Scout (although BoomTown wishes it were). Powered by Xtify’s geolocation push notification technology, Scout will be available first in New York and Los Angeles, and initially only on smartphones using Google’s Android mobile operating system.

SCVNGR's Seth Priebatsch Talks About Geolocation Wars, Facebook Places and More!

Last week, SCVNGR integrated its third-party social geolocation game service into the Facebook Places mega-location offering. As it turned out, BoomTown was in Beantown–as in Boston–for a lovely wedding, so I took some prenuptial time to visit SCVNGR’s HQ in Cambridge, Mass., to talk to its founder, Seth Priebatsch.

Resistance Is Futile: SCVNGR Integrates With Facebook Places

SCVNGR, the mobile-social game, seems to be one of the first of many third-party social games to integrate with Facebook’s new Places location feature. In the launch last week, a series of start-ups in the geolocation arena announced their cooperation with the social networking site’s effort to include their services into the offering using its social graph APIs.

Say You, Say (Google) Me–When Will the Search Giant Get Social Graces?

We all want to be something else, don’t we? And so it is with Google, the robotic, algorithmic, black-box search behemoth girding the globe with datacenters stacked up to heaven. As it turns out, all it really wants is to be our friend. The big question is when it is going to do that, by introducing a social strategy that actually works, even as perceived rival Facebook barrels ahead.

Viral Graphic: What If Solar Power Grew as Fast as Facebook? (Also Its Places Video!)

In a slight switcheroo from viral video, here is a cool infographic from the One Block Off the Grid solar energy blog. As 1BOG notes: “Facebook recently passed 500 million users. If the growth rate of the world’s largest and fastest growing social network could be applied to solar, it would only take 4.7 years to power the entire world with solar energy.” Hot stuff.