If you watched the Super Bowl on Sunday you caught a pretty good show. From a football perspective, it was a pretty exciting game in the fourth quarter. The ads during the big game? Not so super if you ask me.

In one of the biggest yearly opportunities to catch a large audience staring at a screen for hours on end, big brands spent an estimated $3.5M each on Super Bowl ads. It’s the perfect time for innovation and interaction, especially using the Internet, Twitter, and Facebook, right? Wrong, big brands spending major money for ads aren’t so sold on using social media just yet.

According to analysis from Altimeter Group, 32% of the eighty seven ads displayed yesterday made no online reference whatsoever:

In what I’ll call “playing it safe”, it appears that most companies who did make reference to a presence on the Internet, chose to use their own URL rather than a hashtag or Facebook URL. Why is this? It has to do with controlling the message, obviously.

If I’m company and I’m spending a lot of money on the biggest television stage in the United States, there’s absolutely no way I’m going to ask millions of people to use a hashtag. There’s just no context to be had there and nothing to be gained. As we’ve seen with a recent McDonalds hashtag gaffe, it might actually cost you more money and brand integrity to defend something gone awry.

I’ve seen hashtags pop up on the screen a lot during television shows, and that’s the context that makes sense for me. If I’m watching a show that I’m really into, there’s a good chance that I’ll tweet something using its hashtag as a reference point and as a way to become a part of a larger conversation. For Super Bowl ads that cost so much money, there’s only one conversation to be had: did it suck or not? That’s not a question these brands want to ask, therefore they kept the social out of the ad.

In fact, the Altimeter Group points out that hashtags were only a part of 7% of the Super Bowl ads yesterday, and that doesn’t surprise me a bit. You can’t have a conversation without context, and I think that brands restraining themselves from using social media hooks and tricks as a way to seem cool is a good thing. These are “display” ads after all, and not interactive ones.

Apps aren’t just for startups these days, even NFL players are getting into the act. Newly minted Pro Bowl starter LeSean McCoy has launched his own app and took some time to talk to us about how social media has changed the way fans interact with their favorite stars.

McCoy’s app just hit the Android Market and lets fans read his tweets, Facebook updates, watch videos of his top plays, play puzzle games using his pictures, and more. The Philadelphia Eagles star has quite a following on Twitter, so a hundred thousand fans grabbing this app isn’t a crazy goal. The iOS version should also go live soon, we’re told.

We talked to McCoy about how social media has changed being a professional athlete:

TNW: How has social media changed being an NFL player?

LeSean McCoy: Social media has changed the landscape of marketing and engagement with fans for not only NFL players, but for anyone in the public eye. It gives us a chance to speak to our fans and supporters, on a level that wasn’t possible just a few years ago. With Twitter, Facebook, blogs and forums, NFL players have been given the opportunity to really interact with our fans, regardless of time, location, or any other barrier that existed previously.

Social media has also given us the opportunity to build our own brands outside of the game and extend our conversations to different outlets and mediums, engaging our fans even further.

TNW: Does it ever freak you out how much your fans want to know about you?

LeSean McCoy: Honestly, no. I had heroes and people who I looked up to as well that inspired me to become an NFL player and I completely understand and feel blessed that people want to know so much about me. It’s an amazing feeling and I try to give my fans the best that I can.

This was the reason why making a mobile app with Conduit made so much sense. In one app, my fans are able to access my Twitter feed, Facebook updates, photo albums and they can even add their own photos that they take live from any of my games. It’s great to be able to harness technology to open up a new channel for my fans to get to know the real me.

TNW: Do you have any stories about social media that made you want to do something like have an app?

LeSean McCoy: There have been significant changes in technology in the past few years that changed the way people interact. I mean, we still receive fan letters, but the conversations that are happening online in real-time is something that not only NFL players, but anyone in the public eye should be made aware. I want to have a say in what kind of image I’m putting out there for my fans and building an app lets me speak directly to that audience. It gives me the ability to have conversations with my fans individually and collectively.

That means a lot to me, so naturally, creating an app was going to happen sooner or later. I’d like to thank the guys at Conduit for giving me the ability to do this.

TNW: Have you played the games on your own app?

LeSean McCoy: Yes, I’ve played the game on my own app and i think the fans will enjoy the overall challenge of the puzzle.

TNW: Are you an Android or iPhone guy?

LeSean McCoy: I’m a big iPhone guy since it keeps me connected to everything that’s going on. For that reason, I’m super excited for my iOS app to go live.

TNW: Mac or PC?

LeSean McCoy: I enjoy all Apple products so definitely a Mac, but because of my lifestyle, I think I’m going to have to go with an iPad due to its portability.

While we’ve heard a lot about businesses building their brands on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, pro athletes like LeSean McCoy are doing the same. It used to be that the only interaction fans could have with a player were chance encounters at training facilities or games, or purchasing their jersey. Now fans can have a dialogue with their heroes, and it seems to be a win-win for everyone so far, including LeSean McCoy.

➤ LeSean McCoy Official Android App

Customer support platform Zendesk has released some interesting details in a 2011 study and infographic. The study shows that businesses and consumers are both going to platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and blogs to interact. It’s something that seems obvious, but has taken the better part of two years to come to fruition.

With brands getting a head start on accepting social media platforms as a useful means for customer support, the consumers themselves are finally getting into the act. However, the study shows that consumers would use these platforms to interact with businesses more often if they had a better grasp on how to use the tools. In fact, 76% of those polled said that they’d take to social media first if they had a better understanding of how it all works.

This means that in 2012, brands can’t simply flash a “Follow us on Twitter” or “Like us on Facebook” image on commercials or websites, they’re going to have to do a little bit of handholding if they want social media to make a big dent in how they handle customer support.

Here’s the full study from Zendesk, which shows that retail businesses are the most social media savvy (you can click here for the full-sized graphic):

It would be easy to argue that 2011 was the year of mobile photography. At the top of the app list facilitating this trend is Instagram, sporting over 15 million users. With the simple premise of taking a photo of something around you, throwing an artistic filter on it, dropping it into a stream, and beaming it to Twitter and Facebook, the app has built a gigantic community around itself.

Today, Instagram posted its first in a series of 2011 review posts, listing the top locations that people shared with their photos.

The top 15 locations showed heavy usage on the West coast, California specifically, with top spots being Disneyland, AT&T Park, and airports in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Here is the complete list of the top 15 locations people Instagram’d in 2011:

1. Disneyland
2. Suvarnabhumi International Airport (BKK)
3. AT&T Park
4. San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
5. Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
6. Hong Kong International Airport (HKG)
7. MoMA – Museum of Modern Art
8. Golden Gate Bridge
9. Metropolitan Museum of Art
10. Parque do Ibirapuera
11. Siam Paragon
12. Mission Dolores Park
13. Terminal 21
14. LACMA – Los Angeles County Museum of Art
15. Times Square

While it’s not mandatory to post your location with an Instagram photo, I think it’s safe to say that major metropolitan areas and landmarks are the most photographed on the platform. It’ll be interesting to see where Instagram goes in 2012, will filters be enough for its hungry user base? So far, so good.

The holidays can be a difficult time for military families. With so many fathers, mothers, husbands, and wives stationed outside of the U.S., putting their lives on the line to protect their country, social networks like Facebook can be a priceless communication tool.

The organization Blue Star Families, which was created by military families to support other military families, guides people through difficulties that come from having their loved ones be in a sometimes dangerous situation so far away.

Facebook has teamed up with Blue Star Families to publish a social media guide, to help men and women overseas navigate social networking to keep in touch with their loved ones. This is a followup to Facebook’s “A Nation Thanks You” campaign that launched on Veterans Day this year. Nearly 60,000 people have used to app the give thanks.

This is a guide that is very close to Facebook’s heart. Don Faul, Facebook’s VP of Online Operations, is a former U.S. Marine and veteran, having served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and had this to say about the partnership:

As a former active duty Marine, I understand how hard it can be to be separated from family and friends, especially during the holidays. Social media services like Facebook play an important role in the lives of service members and military families and are a particularly beneficial link between those stationed around the world and their families at home. Blue Star Families’ “Social Media Guide for Military Families” gives best practices and tips to help military families stay in touch every day and celebrate the holidays together, no matter where they are located.

While the guide is part how-to on using Facebook, it also helps service men and women with what they can and can’t post on social networks. Since their jobs are to protect the country, sharing their location, pictures, and stories publicly can damage national security.

You can read the blog post announcing the partnerships, co-authored by Blue Star Families, or read the guide below for yourself:

Social Media Guide for Military Families

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Hanna Phan wanted to work for online presentation service SlideRocket really bad. What she did to land the job seems obvious, but common sense isn’t so common as we know.

Phan actually used SlideRocket to get their attention.

SlideRocket lets you build presentations online, so Phan used the service for a little attention grabbing and message sending. The message was received loud and clear, apparently.

She tweeted the company’s CEO with her presentation which explained why she wanted to work for the company, and got a reply back almost immediately.

@chuckdietrich @sliderocket I want to work with you! Find my application here: http://portal.sliderocket.com/AIWCI/Iwanttoworkatsliderocket

An hour later, after Chuck literally walked off a plane, he replied:

@hannaphan @sliderocket AMAZING Preso! Let’s talk.

Here’s her presentation:

Needless to say, she got the job.

Job hunting can be a tedious job in and of itself, but if you know where you’d like to work, take some tips from Hanna Phan and eat your own dog food before you’re hired to do so officially.

Finding jobs at startups relies on your past experience, relationships with those at the company, and how passionate you are about what they’re doing. These things weren’t the case ten and twenty years ago. Finding a job relied on your past work history and your collegiate accolades.

So remember, the next time you want to work for that hot startup, simply use their service and figure out a way to get their attention. A tweet is worth a thousand words, and in this case, thousands of dollars worth of work.

When you’re visiting a city for the first time, you have a lot of options to help you find cool places to go. You can ask your friends and locals, or just surf around on the net looking for attractions.

One city Mayor has decided to utilize foursquare in hopes of becoming your Tampa tour guide.

Relying on the lists feature that foursquare provides, Mayor Bob Buckhorn and his office have generated expansive lists of things to do, see, and follow in Tampa, including city parks, attractions, dining and shopping, government buildings and public safety.

I’m in Tampa, now what

Politicians are using social media more and more these days, from President of the United States, Barack Obama, to Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Cory Booker.

Tampa Mayor Buckhorn has taken social sharing to a new level though, becoming our virtual tour guide for the city of Tampa.

On top of hand-picking places to go while you visit his fair city in the state of Florida, the Mayor has left tips at specific venues, suggesting you try different things at restaurants for example. This turns touring around Tampa into a bit of a scavenger hunt. Nobody knows a city better than its Mayor, right?

Do you think more Mayors will get involved with social media, and specifically using foursquare in this way? I found it to be a perfect introduction to a city that I’ve never been too.

➤ Mayor Bob Buckhorn on foursquare

That is a forgivable offense, we all make mistakes and say things that we wish we could take back after having all of the facts. However, when you have over 8 million followers like Kutcher does, it’s hard to do that. Kutcher decided to delete his original tweet, and that was his second mistake. He apologized profusely and honestly, but received responses calling him things like an “Idiot”, and other words that I’d rather not publish here.

Regardless of what I feel personally about what he said, deleting a tweet only makes things worse. The internet never really forgets, and people took screenshots and shared the tweet on every publishing platform known to man.

Today, he made his third, and perhaps final, Twitter mistake.

In a tweet to a post on Posterous, Kutcher again apologized for his words, but reacted with a solution that actually shocked me, and some of my colleagues.

Here are some of Kutcher’s words from the post, which you can read in its entirety here.

Up until today I have posted virtually everyone of [sic] my tweets on my own, but clearly the platform has become to big to be managed by a single individual. When I started using twitter it was a communication platform that people could say what they are thinking in real time and and [sic] if their facts where wrong the community would quickly and helpfully reframe an opinion. It was a conversation, a community driven education tool, and opionion [sic] center that encouraged healthy debate. It seems that today that twitter has grown into a mass publishing platform, where ones tweets quickly become news that is broadcated [sic] around the world and misinformation becomes volitile [sic] fotter [sic] for critics.

Twitter is still a place to share your thoughts, opinions, and ideas in real-time. We all make mistakes, but in what seems like damning words for the future of Twitter, Kutcher has seemed to have changed his mind about the platform that he has invested in.

Everything that you can post on is technically a “publishing platform”. Facebook is a publishing platform, as is YouTube. But what Mr. Kutcher needs to realize is the internet has trolls and angry people on it, because the internet is made up of people from all over the world. When you have 8 million followers, you’re bound to irritate someone with almost every click of a post.

With his new-found feelings about Twitter after last night’s incident, Ashton Kutcher has found a solution, let a management team handle his account.

A collection of over 8 million followers is not to be taken for granted. I feel responsible for delivering an informed opinion and not spreading gossip or rumors through my twitter feed. While I feel that running this feed myself gives me a closer relationship to my friends and fans I’ve come to realize that it has grown into more that a fun tool to communicate with people. While I will continue to express myself through @Aplusk I’m going to turn the management of the feed over to my team at Katalyst Media to ensure the quality of it’s content [sic]. My sincere apologies to anyone who I offended. It was a mistake that I don’t think will not happen again.

While the actor is indeed a brand in and of himself, this decision is one that could turn the use of and opinions about Twitter on its ear. It sounds like using Twitter has become simply “too much” for Kutcher to manage. This decision seems strange to me, because it’s primarily an outbound publication system, with you controlling what and if you communicate reciprocally on. It’s not as if strangers can publish to his account, or change his words around. It’s almost as if saying that using words to speak out loud is too much to manage, so someone else will speak for you instead.

Ashton Kutcher has done amazing things for social media and social good, backing such movements as #EndMalaria and his own organization against the illegal trafficking of children for sexual purposes. After reading many of the angry responses last night, most people were just venting about this one event, and not his entire usage of Twitter as a service or platform.

Perhaps saying “Hey, I messed up let’s move on” would have been a better “strategy”. What do I know, I don’t have the responsibility of having over 8 million Twitter followers. Twitter is still a place for communication for a lot of people, and not seen as simply a publishing platform.

What are your thoughts on Kutcher’s decision? Share them in the comments.

In a tweet from comedian and actor Denis Leary today, we’ve learned that “Back to the Future” star and Parkinson’s fighter Michael J. Fox has joined Twitter.

This is pretty exciting, because Fox’s career spans the interest for many generations. Most of us remember Fox from “Back to the Future”, but a lot of us watched “Family Ties”, the show that made him famous. Now that Michael J. Fox battles Parkinson’s very publicly, Twitter will be the perfect platform to speak openly to his many followers and fans.

Michael J. Fox’s organization “Team Fox” (@TEAMFOX) has been on Twitter for some time now, but having the man himself on the platform will help its cause. His Twitter name is nothing flashy, it’s simply @RealMikeFox

Fox has become a leader in seeking out Parkinson’s funding and research since being diagnosed with the disease in 1991.

As we know, social good gets major traction for organizations, and we suspect that Michael J. Fox will be no exception. It will be exciting to see what he can do with the powerful Twitter platform in his arsenal against Parkinson’s.

Showing that no disease will rob Fox of his sense of humor, he tweeted this yesterday:

The internet is becoming more and more of a place to mobilize charitable efforts. In the recent years, I’ve seen many campaigns raise quite a bit of awareness and money for causes.

One organization who has been at the forefront of the Social Good movement is charity:water. With events all over the world, and campaigns on Twitter, the foundation has raised awareness and money for the over one billion people in the world who don’t have access to clean drinking water.

Its latest movement “WaterForward“, takes the awareness and fundraising to the next level.

Today, I saw a post on my Facebook wall from a friend who donated $10 in my name to charity:water. This donation added me to an online “book” that WaterForward is compiling.

It is really quite genius. Organizations have let you donate money in the names of others for years, but to be able to pull it all together with your social graph on Facebook and Twitter is quite powerful.

Here is a video explaining the WaterForward efforts:

Donating to a charitable cause like charity:water is a good thing to do, but involving your friends in a positive and inspiring way makes the campaign even better. The WaterForward movement wants to leverage the almost one billion people on Facebook who may have access to drinking water into giving money to the billion who don’t.

As of the time of publishing, WaterForward has 12,808 people in its book, and has raised $128,080 for clean water. Get involved today!