Matthews has teamed up with Suave for Men hair care products for the promotion, which leverages Twitter to give one lucky fan the chance to hang out with last year’s Super Bowl champ, sometime during the offseason.

The contest began on February 1st and will run through February 15th. All fans have to do is snap a photo of their best Clay Matthews hair style. It can be their real hair, or a Clay Matthews-esque wig for those who might be follically challenged. Once they have the perfect photo, fans must tweet it to the @SuaveMen Twitter account using the hashtag # HairLikeClay. One lucky fan will be chosen to win a trip to hang out with Matthews.

“All men can’t have football greatness like Clay, but they can have hair greatness with Suave for Men,” said David Rubin, Unilever Marketing Director, Hair, U.S. “Clay is a great fit for our Suave Men’s line and with #hairlikeclay we’re giving fans the opportunity to show off their hair greatness for the exciting opportunity to meet Clay in person.”

Suave has also tapped Clay’s brother Casey for a Matthews vs. Matthews video campaign showcasing…you guessed it, hair.

I wonder when Head & Shoulders’ “Hair Like Troy” campaign will kick off?

Best Buy will be giving away an HTC smartphone to anyone who purchases the game, given that you do the whole contract thing. So if contracts aren’t your thing, this isn’t the deal for you. But if you were planning on signing up for a 2-year plan anyways, and love shooting people in the face with sniper rifles – this is your lucky day.

Participants will have three smartphone options: The EVO 4G for Sprint, the Incredible 2 for Verizon or the Inspire 4G for AT&T. The deal also includes a free case as well as a bonus MW3 package that lets players tack on more experience points at the outset for stuff like weapons upgrades.

In recent years, you probably noticed all the mobile sections popping up inside your local Best Buys. That’s because the company has been trying for years to set itself up as the go-to place for mobile. This holiday season, they are planning a huge campaign through TV, social media, and print ads to hammer home Best Buy Mobile.

A $25 million ad campaign, according to CNET.

“We want to get customers to realize there is a better way, and that better way is Best Buy,” said Allister Jones, head of marketing for Best Buy Mobile.

You can expect more promotions like this MW3/HTC one in the upcoming weeks.

Modern Warfare 3 hits the shelves on November 8th.

That’s because Google and Best Buy have announced a special promotion for the Nexus S smartphone. Today, at any Best Buy store, you can get the phone for free with a 2 year contract.

Best Buy Mobile today revealed an exclusive one-day sale on Nexus S from Google phones valid on all carriers who support the device – AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. Customers can receive a free Nexus S phone, either as a new phone or an upgrade purchase, with two-year activation at all Best Buy, Best Buy Mobile specialty stores, and online at BestBuy.com/Mobile.

Nexus S is a pure Google experience phone and runs Android 2.3, Gingerbread, the fastest version of Android available, and will be offered free starting tonight at 11:00 p.m. CST, through Aug. 3, at 11:59 p.m. CT.

The Nexus S, which was launched first for T-Mobile and Sprint, debuted on the AT&T network a little over a week ago.

The Nexus S has a 4 inch AMOLED screen and a 1GHz processor that can support 3D. It is also NFC capable and includes both front and rear cameras. It is a definitely a Google phone all the way, with complete Google mobile app integration.

When Google debut the Nexus S, they also unveiled a game to advertise the device. Nexus Contraptions is a fun little Rube Goldberg-based game that will seriously ruin your productivity. Trust me, you’ve been warned.

Rapper Soulja Boy surprised the interwebs today when the news broke that he had purchased a brand new G5 private jet. The price tag on that baby? $35 million for the plane plus and additional $20 million on extras. According to TMZ, those extras include multiple flat screens, custom Italian leather seats, Brazilian hardwood cabinets and a brand new deluxe bathroom.

Oh yeah, and the paint job to include his logo on the outside.

Yesterday was the rapper’s 21st birthday, and apparently this was a present to himself. I remember being really excited about the $15 bottle of bourbon I bought for myself when I turned 21, so I can only imagine how exciting this is for Soulja Boy.

The Twitterverse seems to be shocked that Soulja Boy has $55M to drop on a plane, and that fact isn’t lost on Soulja Boy himself. Along with retweeting articles about his purchase, he retweeted this derisive tweet a couple hours ago –

Here are some more Twitter responses –

He is also using Twitter to promote his online pay-per-view stream of his birthday party –

That link takes you to www.souljaboybirthdaybash.com where you can watch his party on a live stream. That party will begin tonight at 11 pm EST. The site also displays a video where Soulja boy informs us about the benefits of watching his bash – red carpet, musical performances and celebrity surprises.

But it will cost you $2.99 to watch it, payable via PayPal.

Soulja Boy buys a $55 million jet and on the same day asks fans to shell out cash to watch a stream of his birthday party? I guess he has to find some way to pay for the four minibars.

As a promotional campaign for a new opera debuting this month comes a nice little video entitled “Can I Be Your Friend.” One man walks around and interacts with real people in the same manner we react with people on Facebook and Twitter. The results are entertaining.

The opera in question is called “Two Boys” and it is based around the topic of “internet crimes.” In fact its inspiration comes from a 2004 story about an internet-based crime. A 14-year-old boy apparently posed at a female spy online and convinced an older boy to kill someone for him. The person he was trying to get killed was actually himself, and he was attacked, suffering multiple stab wounds. The older boy feel in love with the younger boy, and more confusion ensued. See how murky the internet can get sometimes?

The Opera is from the mind of 28-year-old composer Nico Muhly and will premiere at London’s English National Opera on June 24th.

The promotional video available on YouTube asks if you’ve “ever thought what could go wrong” in your online life? A man walks around asking strangers to be his friend, if he can poke them, and sticking “like” post-its on everything he sees. In the end there is even a gag involving a pretty creepy interpretation of a common Twitter term.

Check it out:

That’s right, the international chain of convenience stores has just announced a partnership with Space Adventures and the upcoming film Super 8 for their “Super 8 Check In To Space” contest.

The contest rules are pretty simple. Once players check-in to a 7-Eleven location on Foursquare, they will be directed via special offer to the promotional website where they will register for the instant win contest and the grand prize sweepstakes. You can play once per location every 3 hours, maximizing your chances to win. The contest runs from now until June 30th at midnight.

The way you win the instant win prizes is based on the specific check-in number. Over the course of the promotion, 21,464 people will receive the second prize of movie tickets to the upcoming J.J. Abrams directed, Spielberg produced sci-fi film Super 8. Every 88th check-in will get one of these.

Ten first prizes will be awarded. These are zero gravity flights provided by private space travel company Space Adventures. Basically you’ll go up in a Boeing 727 with “parabolic arcs” designed to create a weightless environment, and you’ll float around in zero-g. Sounds pretty fun. This is a nearly $5,000 package if you paid for it yourself. Every 88,888th check-in will win one of these flights.

The big daddy grand prize will be unlocked by the 888,888th check-in. On July 5th, a winner will be selected from all eligible entrants for a suborbital space flight, once again provided by Space Adventures. According to their website,

Ten times higher than the altitude reached by a commercial aircraft, and a third of the way to man’s only orbital outpost – the International Space Station. You are in space. No life can be sustained outside the cocooned environment of your spacecraft. The view is spectacular – you can see the curvature of the earth and see for hundreds of miles in any direction. Above you, the sky is no longer sky; it is space, and it is black. And getting there will be a thrill in itself.

Well that sure would be fun. That space trip would run you at least $102,000 if you decided to do it on your own.

As of right now, there have only been about 4400 check-ins logged, so there are still plenty of prizes to be handed out.

And just for fun, what do you guys think about the upcoming Super 8 movie? Looks like a little Cloverfield meets E.T. and Close Encounters if you ask me. Plus it has Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights in it, and he’s pretty awesome.

In order to celebrate this great day for our union, breakfast superstars Dunkin Donuts is running a contest on Twitter to give away $50 gift cards to its followers. Using the hashtag #ApplePieDDay, tweet your guess for the types of apples Dunkin uses in its apple pie, and you could win.

Make sure to get your guesses in by 1 pm. Of all the correct applicants, the winner will be selected at random at 1:30 pm today.

Dunkin Donuts is on the leading edge of social media-connected food chains. The company’s Twitter account has around 80,000 followers and is very well connected with them. Just in the last day, the account has publicly replied to around 20 different followers. The company frequently holds contests and promotions via Twitter, so many that is has an entire page on its site devoted to “rules for contest on social networks.”

In April, Dunkin Donuts retooled its website to be more focused on social media, integrating live Twitter feed as well as Facebook and YouTube directly into the home page. The new site also features a mobile friendly layout for use on the go.

I’ve yet to try their apple pie offering, as I usually just stick to coffee – and damn fine coffee it is.
So to those of you that have tried it, what do you think? Do they use macintosh apples? Granny Smith? Gala? Red Delicious? If you think you know, tweet at them, because you may just win something for free.

From the Twitter blog:

When you’re hanging with your mom this Mother’s Day, try teaching her a thing or two about Twitter…moms on Twitter are like moms in real life: fun, funny, caring, adorable and engaging. It’ll bring you closer and provide some laughs as well.

Twitter also prepares you for the resistance that may arise from your mother when you suggest she creates a Twitter account – statements like “But I don’t have anything to say” and “I don’t care about [following] celebrities.” They say to tell her that Twitter is an easy way for her to check up on you and that of course she wants to follow celebs, Martha Stewart is on Twitter!

I love my mother, but I doubt those would be the roadblocks we would run into. Ours would be more like “People are going to steal my identity,” or “I’d love to, but my son didn’t get the hint and buy me a new computer last Christmas.” Perhaps “What’s the internet?”

Twitter is promoting the hashtag #MyMomTweets to promote mothers on Twitter, but it is a morphed version of that hashtag that is trending currently. #mamasays is the hot hashtag right now, and besides the obligatory #mamasays knock u out, here is my favorite that I’ve seen. Good one, Mitch.

I can only imagine the Twitterverse using this and #MyMomTweets for nefarious purposes, however. Just imagine, combine an @ mention with #mamasays and the perfect mom jokes are born on Twitter.

But I am a pessimist. Mom awareness on Twitter could be a good thing. Seriously, with all the incessant crap that people tweet about, tweets with sound motherly advice or tributes to wonderful moms are quite welcome. Plus, at least in my family, teaching the parents about anything tech related is a win for all.

Just don’t think that explaining Twitter to her counts as her present. You still have to get her flowers, guys.

Dog users in countries where GranataPet is available (Germany, Switzerland, Austria) that check-in to certain dog food billboards will have a free sample dispensed to a small bowl attached to the sign.  The way this works is servers continuously poll for check-ins and trigger the food dispenser when it notices someone new.  Dogs can then get a taste of GranataPet’s product and owners can then spend the rest of their lives trying to pull their dogs away from the streets where the billboards are located.

This has been tried before in the States, when last year nonprofit environmental firm EarthJustice placed ads in San Francisco transit stations.  The ads said that with every check-in on Foursquare, the firm would make a $10 donation to help an endangered species.  Cute.  But it’s not food.

Sure, something like this is a novelty.  People will go out of their way to try it once, but what are the chances it could actually promote brand loyalty?  The possibilities are far greater if a company were to apply this model to food for humans.  Free Snickers bar with your first check-in to a certain movie theater?  Flav-o-rich offering free Popsicles for check-ins on a hot New York street?  Sure, Foursquare already allows businesses to offer deals for 1st time check-ins and for mayorships,  but a deal is not the same at something free popping out of a billboard.  And that, my friends, is pretty cool.

Check out this video about the GranataPet dog food billboards:

Then there are the human-edited ones that tend to be more useful, but are aimed more at the submitter promoting their business than they really are towards the user who is there to find information. Often times these directories offer paid links, further proving that they are really there for promotional purposes.

Why can’t a directory be there to be simply that – a directory? A directory of useful information to the common person who wants to find helpful resources.

"Who needs one of those when we have Google, Yahoo, and so many other search engines," you might ask. Quite frankly, no matter how much emphasis search engines put on relevancy, let’s face it. If you want to find a collection of useful resources on a particular topic, you will be left wading through pages and pages to come up with them.

Since you are obviously a WebProNews reader, there’s no question that you’re interested in eBusiness, and that is why we are introducing the eBusiness Directory, a directory that is dedicated to indexing only useful links to sites within the niche of eBusiness. This directory is a single place to find all of the resources you need to successfully run any aspect of an online business, from marketing to programming.

Like all directories, it is a work in progress. We are open to submissions, but only sites that we feel will be truly beneficial to you – the user, will make the cut. We aren’t selling any links. The eBusiness Directory will not sell out. We are dedicated to keeping this thing as useful as possible, and not cluttered with a bunch of junk.

It will be very strictly human-edited. Do not expect your link to appear in the directory unless it is truly top-notch. There are boxes throughout the directory containing hand-picked links to sites we feel will be valuable to the user, but even these are not paid. Submission is 100% free.

Due to the fact that the directory indexes only sites under the eBusiness niche, and because we are focusing on quality, the amount of listings will be limited. We see that as a good thing.  Some directories, like the old Yahoo! Directory for example, are often useful at first, but become less useful as they are bombarded with submissions, but that is the beauty of keeping this one related to a niche.

Don’t think it will be too limited, though. There are many sub-categories within the niche of eBusiness, and we intend for this directory to cater to all of them, and like all directories it is a work in progress and will continue to expand.

To aid the expansion of the directory, please feel free to leave us feedback. I will personally read it, and suggestions will be considered by myself and the WebProNews team of designers and developers.

If you feel that your site is truly of use and a cut above the rest, please submit it.  If you want to find good information on eBusiness, go to the eBusiness Directory at directory.webpronews.com, bookmark it, check back often for updates, and most of all, USE IT!