To target the market of young people in Stockholm, McDonald’s created an interactive outdoor game with mobile phones called Pick N’ Play. If you were passing by with a mobile phone, you could use it a controller for a paddle game on their billboard. Players who lasted 30 seconds won a coupon for a free snack at the nearest golden arches.

In Turkey, a mobile company called Turkcell recently held a competition on Twitter. They had a giftbox with a free mobile phone. The box was covered with post-its. Players had to post the text on the post-it in order to remove it. The player to remove the last post-it won the phone. This simple idea generated 56.000 tweets with the #turkcelltweet hashtag in 7 days, and reached about 2 million people.

Looks like Microsoft just bought Skype from it’s previous owner for €6 billion ($8 billion). I guess they are following the age-old mantra of: “If you can’t build it, buy it.” I wonder wonder what will come next. And also: if and how it will generate money. Skype may be one of the most widely used online services, there’s a huge operational cost attached to all those VOIP and video calls. Will Microsoft be able to keep the magic goose alive without breaking it’s golden eggs?

This has been announced loads of times before, but perhaps tomorrow is the day we will finally get to see Google Music. Personally, I have some doubts on putting everything in the cloud, mainly about ending up being locked-in chez Google. How about you?

(19:30h) Looks like the rumors were on the mark. The official Google Blog introduces Music Beta by Google while finer details are provided on this about page of music.google.com. Rightaway I tried to obtain an invite, but right now it’s US only, as was to be expected.

To celebrate the International Day of Friendship, Coca-Cola planted special vending machines that sold 2 Coke bottles for the price of one. Only one catch: standing at over 3 meters tall, you’d need help from a buddy to reach the slot; afterwards you could share the drinks. And isn’t that what friendship is all about? :)

Meanwhile, arch enemy PepsiCo responded with a similar idea, but their PepsiCo Social Vending was a bit more complicated.

Who still needs a web-shop? Stipple recognizes your product in a picture and attaches the price-tag and product information. Shopping for that one celeb outfit has never been easier!

The 2010 version was such a great success that Mashable is organising a 2nd Social Media Day in Antwerp. Who’s interested in joining me? FYI: the official hashtag for the day will be #smdaybe.

I must says Mark Suster makes some valid points here. Advertising is moving towards an integrated approach on multiple platforms and levels, some of which might not even exist yet.

Talking Heads proposes an alternative to ROI for measuring the efficacy of social media. It’s an interesting point of view in an ongoing search.

Google Analytics 5 arrives! Since this morning everyone has access to the new Google Analytics v5. It’s been a while in the making and there were some screenshots and webcasts around, but finally we can all get our hands on it ourselves. Personally, I’m still having a hard timing finding my way around.