Brightkite has teamed with McDonalds and Visa to power a unique rewards program centered around checking-in to McDonalds locations to earn a $5 Visa gift card.

Following similar programs with brands like Starbucks, The CW, Sharpie and Dentyne, this rewards campaign marks the largest brand play to date for Brightkite.  McDonald’s and Visa got together to launch the ‘Easy’ badge for Brightkite users to earn by checking in to their nearest McDonalds.  The first 500 people to earn the badge  receive a $5 Visa gift card, courtesy of Visa and Brightkite.

To highlight the campaign, Brightkite is also running a location and activity targeted ad campaign that launches an on-screen spinner that highlights the McDonald’s dollar menu.  The Brightkite campaign is integrated with other media including online and out-of-home.

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A new survey out by Pew Research suggests American adults are just as addicted to text messaging as the younger generation, with the amount rising substantially over the past year.

The survey found that roughly 72% of adult cell phone users send and receive text messages these days, up from 65% in September 2009.  This still falls short of the 87% of teen cell users who text.  The research shows teens text 50 messages a day on average, which is five times more than the typical 10 text messages sent and received by adults per day.

“Texting among adults has reached the mainstream and the charge is being lead by African-Americans, Hispanics and young adults,” said Amanda Lenhart, Senior Research Specialist and author the report. “Of course, none of these adult groups hold a candle to teens when it comes to texting, who swamp adults in messages sent per day by a factor of 5.”

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Mobile is immensely popular in India, as evident in new figures out by SMS GupShup that indicate the text-based social network has reached 35 million total users while adding over 1 million each and every month.

These figures show SMS GupShup surpassed July traffic on Facebook (with 21 million unique visitors) and Orkut (with 20 million unique visitors) — two social networks who have long fought for social dominance in the region.  Granted, SMS GupShup differs, but it shows mobile’s dominance in India.

There are roughly 550 million mobile phone users in the country and only 50 million web users, according to the company.  With a 10 to 1 mobile-to-PC ratio and SMS serving as the most popular communications platform, the market is ripe for SMS GupShup to take off, which it obviously already has.  The startup currently processes more than 500 million messages a month and accounts for over 5 percent of all texts sent within India.

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Gowalla has long had an interest in stepping beyond the confines of the ubiquitous “checkin” to leverage location in other useful and unique ways.  The company today announced a new addition to its service that does just that.

Called “Highlights,” the new addition aims to define places using user experiences rather than checkins.  Here’s how it works: a user is asked to tag real world places based on a set of criteria, so for example, you’re asked to name your favorite “Date Night” spot, the place you think has the “Best Tacos,” your “Alma Mater,” and your favorite “Watering Hole,” among other things.  Each of these answers reveals a bit about who you actually are, and where you spend your time.

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NBC Universal Digital Studio has teamed with human-powered answering service ChaCha for a unique mobile engagement initiative for NBC’s new “FCU: Fact Checker’s Unit” series.

The series, based on a short film of the same name, follows two overzealous fact checkers employed to confirm or disprove various statements made in articles scheduled to be published by a magazine.  Viewers and fans can participate by joining the show’s mobile alerts and “Check Your Own Facts” by texting ChaCha on the show’s site and engage more deeply with the content by experiencing a live feed of fact checking questions.

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There’s big news for SMS marketing in Latin American countries today, as the “Latin America Common Short Code” initiative announced in March by the CTIA has gone live.  The initiative provides a much-needed centralized CSC registry process for all of Latin America — a high-growth region in terms of mobile technology.

The initiative is supported by all major operators in the region and uses technology provided by Syniverse Technologies, a company that provides a wealth of telecommunication services to over 800 mobile operators, ISPs and other enterprises around the world.  Syniverse has built a short code system that every single operator in Latin America can tap into that provides 6-digit short codes that work the same in any country, as long as your operator is part of the CSC initiative.  With the new system in place, marketers will be able to reach an additional 500 million people within Latin American countries.

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AOL has purchased Rally Up, a team of mobile developers behind the popular “Rally Up” and “FacePlant” mobile apps, to begin its new “mobile first” initiative led by David Temkin, AOL’s new Vice President of Mobile.

“Rally Up” is an LBS app that enables users to combine private microblogging with location to allow users to share text, photos and direct messages with each other, while “FacePlant” is an app that would allow users to see which of their friends are available to chat on the FaceTime application available on the iPhone 4 — though it’s currently pending approval from Apple for inclusion in the App store.

AOL’s highly-touted “Mobile-first” push marks a new approach to the mobile market for the company.  For the first time, AOL mobile applications will consist not only of mobile versions of its popular desktop and web offerings, but also will include all-new products that launch first on mobile devices.

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