Gowalla 3.Whoa!

Check-in at one of the biggest location based services, check-in at them all? The newest version of Gowalla’s iPhone app was released on Thursday, and had some pretty big updates. Gowalla has unified check-ins, allowing users to check-in to Facebook Places, Tumblr, Twitter, and competitor Foursquare when they check-in to Gowalla. Download Gowalla 3.0 here.

Rumor Alert: Google to Buy Groupon?

Rumor has it that Google may buy Groupon for a whopping $6 billion dollars. Groupon is rapidly growing in popularity, and is set to exceed $500 million dollars in revenue this year. Sources say that Google wants to make this purchase to extend their online dominance through local advertising dollars, and to fend off competition like Facebook, who recently announced their own deal service.

One Hangover (Badge), Coming Right Up:

Badges! Foursquare announced new badges this week, including Dog’s Best Friend (“for frequenting dog parks”), Great Outdoors (“for getting out to parks to breathe in some fresh air”), Swimmies (“for the aquatic minded”), 9 to 5 (“for those of us in the weekly grind”), Hangover (“we’re not encouraging hangovers, but are happy to salute people who keep on trucking!”), and Ski Bum (“to commemorate your trips up the mountain”).

Social Networking for Social Good:

This week, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes officially launched Jumo, a social activism social network. You can connect with Jumo via Facebook connect, and then select to follow any of the 3,500 charity organizations (in 200 issue areas) you support.

Netflix To Offer More Streaming Options:

Recently, Netflix began offering a streaming-only subscription, and beginning in 2011, we may have more instant options. This week, Netflix announced a deal with FilmDistrict that will allow first run movies to be streamed. The New York Post also reported that Netflix is in talks with production studios, possibly paying upwards of $100,000 per episode for first-run TV content.

Super Bowl & Social Media:
This Sunday is marks the 44^th Super Bowl. & from a social media perspective, this Super Bowl is unlike any other. Pepsi decided to create a large social media campaign in place of a super bowl spot, companies, such as Coca Cola, are using social media to generate buzz around their Super Bowl spots and the NFL is even getting fans involved socially. The NFL created hashtag #SB44, and if you tag your Tweets and Flickr photos with this, it will show up on the official NFL site’s SB44 Page.

Facebook Redesign:

This week, Facebook began rolling out a major homepage redesign. Changes include:

• The notifications bar has moved to the top menu
• The left menu is now used to display friends content
• Search is being emphasized more
• Easier to view photos, send/receive messages, chat, and interact with gamesRea

Read more from the Official Facebook Blog.

Hovercards:

On Wednesday, Twitter began rolling out a new feature to help improve user experience. Named Hovercards, this feature allows you to see additional information about a user just by mousing..ehem..hovering over the username. You will be able to see the users bio, whether you follow them or not, and easily interact with them all without leaving the page you’re on.

Happy Birthday to Facebook:

On Thursday, Facebook celebrated their 6^th birthday. In Zuckerberg’s blog, he wrote: “Facebook began six years ago today as a product that my roommates and I built to help people around us connect easily, share information and understand one another better.” It has grown from that to a global, massively popular networking site. Today, over 400 million people use Facebook.

Bravo & Foursquare

Foursquare is teaming up with traditional media. This week Foursquare and Bravo TV announced a partnership. On Monday, Bravo began offering specialized Foursquare player badges for players who visit any of the 500+ Bravo locations (the locations are based on select Bravo shows.) Bravo also plans to offer incentives and prizes for viewers who participate. It will be interesting to see if other advertisers follow suit and how such badges will change the make-up of Foursquare.

-Anna (@alucas9)