Mobage will serve as a “hub” for AT&T Android users to discover and play games, as well as connect and communicate with other players around the world.

The move is another clear indication of AT&T’s desire to embrace the social mobile gaming realm, as the potential rewards are far too lucrative to ignore.

“Games are consistently among the most popular entertainment apps for smartphones,” said Ted Woodbery, vice president, Wireless Data, Voice and Ancillary Services, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. “We are pleased to be the first U.S. wireless carrier to work with ngmoco and look forward to giving our Android customers access to the rich Mobage gaming catalog later this year.”

“AT&T has been a leader in the smartphone revolution in many ways,” adds Neil Young, CEO, ngmoco. “We are delighted to bring Mobage to the massive group of Android users on the network.”

Naturally, AT&T customers will be able to find the Mobage app on Android Market.

With over 1 billion page views on mobile platforms and 1.2 billion page views on the web each month, myYearbook is one of the largest media properties in the US.

“It is also the #1 web site in the comScore Teens category with more visits, minutes, and pageviews than any other site in the category,” Quepasa Corporation says.

The deal is worth $100 million – approximately $82 million in Quepasa common stock and approximately $18 million in cash.

“With this merger, we intend to create nothing less than the public market leader in social discovery,” says Quepasa CEO, John Abbott.

“Combination with myYearbook nearly doubles the size of Quepasa’s existing user base while positioning the new company for significantly higher growth in mobile and social games, advertising, and virtual currency,” he added. “”The myYearbook team is product-oriented and hungry to continue building innovative products at the convergence of social and mobile. We expect the scale of this combination to enable a new class of investor in Quepasa. We believe myYearbook’s proven track record in monetization and engagement will fuel significant future growth.”

According to the official word of the merger, myYearbook has experienced rapid growth during the last year both in terms of users and mobile traffic.

“We are thrilled to bring our vision of social discovery to a global audience through combination with Quepasa,” said Geoff Cook, CEO of myYearbook.

According to an eye-opening (and head-scratching) new study commissioned by Neil Brettell, director of animal insurer PetPlan, “animals are more popular than celebrities on Facebook and other social networking sites.”

And the data proves it.

Would you believe that one in ten British pets – mostly dogs and cats – now have their own social media profile on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube? What’s more, well over half of all UK pet owners use social media to share their animal pictures and stories with the rest of us.

The explosion of “connected pets” has resulted in a number of owners joining dedicated sites, reports the UK Telegraph, with names such as Critter, Catster and Doggie Dating.

Others have also set up entire websites devoted specifically to their pets, many of which have raised money for rescue centers or animal welfare charities.

Without question, social networking junkies have taken notice of this new pet-friendly social web phenomenon.

“This new social petworking trend is further proof of the UK’s love of their pets,” says Brettell. “With our mutts and moggies becoming more popular than celebrities on Facebook and other social networking sites, we predict this trend is only going to get bigger.”

According to the latest projections by eMarketer, the emergent popularity of social networking sites (and their associated mobile and web-based games) is finally beginning to translate into substantial revenue.

eMarketer says that ever since Zynga released FarmVille in June 2009, it’s been “game on” for the lucrative market that social games has given rise to.

If the latest forecast is accurate, overall US social gaming revenues will surpass $1 billion this year, an increase over $856 billion in 2010.

Nearly 62 million US internet users, or 27% of the online audience, will play at least one game on a social network monthly this year, up from 53 million in 2010.

Revenues from virtual goods are booming and there’s no indication they will slow any time soon. In fact, eMarketer revealed Friday that virtual goods “make up the majority of overall social gaming revenues, accounting for $510 million in revenues in 2010.”

Additionally, social gaming sites are expected to earn $653 million in virtual goods revenues this year, “compared to just $192 million in ad revenues and $248 million in lead-generation offers,” the eMarketer Quick Stat reveals.

On Monday, fans were given the opportunity to serve as the WWE Raw General Manager. By texting their match preferences for the evening, WWE was hoping to give fans a democratic majority-rule opportunity to determine which superstars would wrestle one another. Fans were also provided the opportunity to determine match stipulations and rules.

As it turned out, however, technical glitches caused the voting results to be every bit as genuine as the sport of professional wrestling itself.

The WWE now admits that three match choices were affected by “faulty text voting tabulation.”

Per the established rules on Monday, WWE fans could select match stipulations and opponents by texting A, B or C to 46993 (GOWWE). But when the system overloaded (that can happen when you’re fielding 600,000 texts), all hopes for making the live three-hour program “interactive,” were dashed via incorrect voting results – results that actually made viewers and fans alike scratch their heads during the program before anyone knew of the errors.

Simply put, something seemed a bit off when matches were being made that very few fans seemed to have any interest in watching. And the ratings from Raw this past week reflect that reality.

Still, WWE is being lauded for acknowledging the error and promising to give WWE fans the matches they really wanted to see (as determined by a subsequent correct tabulation of votes) next week on WWE Monday Night Raw.

The movie takes place in the summer of 1979, where a group of friends in a small Ohio town witness a catastrophic train crash while making a Super 8 mm film and soon suspect that it was not an accident.

The paranormal frenzy then begins.

Shortly after, unusual disappearances and inexplicable events begin to take place in town, and the local deputy tries to uncover the truth – something more terrifying than any of them could have imagined.

Helping movie-goers navigate the supernatural hysteria are the good people at 7-Eleven. The largest chain in the convenience retailing industry is capitalizing on the hype surrounding the new film by giving one lucky fan the chance to find out for themselves “if we’re really alone in the universe” with the “Super 8 Check in to Space” promotion just by checking in at a 7-Eleven through Foursquare.

According to 7-Eleven, prizes will be unlocked in increments of 8. For example, every 88th person wins a free movie ticket.

But wait… there’s more.

The 88,888th person will win a ticket on the Zero G Experience, a zero-gravity flight which simulates the experience of being in space. The grand prize unlocks with the 888,888th check-in, and “one brave fan will have the chance to travel to suborbital space 62 miles above the Earth.”

“As part of our exciting 2011 summer season, 7-Eleven is providing value to consumers with a fun promotion tied to the Super 8 movie,” said 7-Eleven Chief Marketing Officer Rita Bargerhuff. “Not only will there be special prizes and a retro look from the 1970s at the stores in honor of the movie, this promotion will rank as the largest ever for 7-Eleven with an expected 21,000 prizes distributed. Topping it off will be a suborbital space flight, our grandest prize ever.”

Customers can check in via Foursquare as often as once every three hours at any single 7-Eleven store and can check in at as many different stores as they like each day.

For more information about this innovative promotion that is garnering no shortage of attention, click here.

On Friday, Photobucket announced that it will power Twitter’s native photo sharing capabilities. And when it comes to pictures, Photobucket is the sage atop social media’s hill. With 100 million users and more than eight billion uploads, Photobucket has become the world’s leading dedicated photo and video sharing service.

As a result, Twitter users can now easily upload and share photos directly in Tweets. According to Photobucket, “This partnership reflects the synergy between the companies’ growth strategies and audience needs, delivering a simple, intuitive user experience for photo sharing.”

Often times, a picture can convey a depth of meaning more significant than just words alone, and the most iconic stories and lasting memories of our lifetime have been conveyed visually. Millions of people have used Twitter to share, discover, and communicate around meaningful experiences through 140 character Tweets. Now incorporating images helps users tell a richer and more complete narrative. Photos on Twitter, tagged “powered by Photobucket,” will now link to a page that allows users to sign up for or sign in to their Photobucket accounts via Twitter to further edit, share or save their photos.

“Photobucket is the category leader with regard to reliability, size, offerings and scalability, and we are ready and able to best serve the growing number of Twitter users. Photobucket extends and enriches the Twitter experience, and we look forward to building on this collaboration with Twitter to better serve the needs of our joint audiences,” said Tom Munro, CEO of Photobucket. “This partnership is just one example of how companies can easily build upon the Photobucket platform to extend their brand vision and product offerings.”

But for the sake of potentially winning an expensive swag bag filled with ridiculously overpriced Hollywood fluff stuff, we can bend our imaginations to include Ms. Hilton in a serious conversation about mobile for just a moment.

Here’s the scoop. Paris Hilton is running a new mobile contest using her official iPhone app – the latest effort by a mainstream celebrity to use the mobile channel for highly effectual marketing purposes.

Both the Paris Hilton app and contest were developed by Velti, the world’s largest mobile marketing platform.

To enter, fans can download the app from the iTunes App Store, use the “BFF” feature to have Paris inserted into their photo and submit it to contest@parishilton.com. Alternatively, anyone can create a photo using the official templates and email it in.

So why would anyone actually do this? For the “hot” prizes, of course.

The grand prize includes a Paris Hilton Swag Gift Basket valued at over $500, with smaller prizes to the first and second runner-up.

The contest ends on Friday, June 3rd and the winner will be announced on ParisHilton.com on June 7th.

If you’re wondering if Paris Hilton is also simultaneously promoting something, you’re correct. The contest coincides with Paris’ upcoming new TV show, “The World According to Paris.”

On Monday, the company rolled out its newest product, Mundu TV.

The service allows users to access live and archived television content, video programming, movies and more from top content providers around the world on a range of mobile phones, netbooks, laptops and other Internet devices.

“Mundu TV is the only mobile TV service built from scratch as a truly global offering,” the company says. “The app is optimized to run on 2G, 2.5G, 3G and WiFi networks, ensuring superior audio and video quality over a wide range of network connections and devices. The app also offers region-specific content, ensuring viewers from across the globe can easily access their preferred news and entertainment channels.”

“Mundu TV looks and acts like regular television – only on-the-go,” Geodesic boasts. “It offers a mix of prime-time television and movie content from top channels across various genres, such as business, news, sports and entertainment, as well as live coverage of events.”

According to the official announcement of the service, the app serves up all your commonplace TV features, including the ability to switch channels and pause live TV. It also streams to both mobile and desktop devices for one subscription price – $6 per month or $15 per quarter

Mundu TV is available as a downloadable app, or as a white-labeled solution for broadcast network operators and mobile carriers.

On the heels of launching its Opera Mobile Store app marketplace, Opera is making overtures toward mobile app developers with what the burgeoning browser giant calls “a fantastic offer.”

Meet “Opera Appcelerate,” a program to help promote developer apps in a big way.

Opera says Appcelerate delivers pay-per-download pricing options that allow app developers to push their apps within the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers, concentrating exclusively on the operating systems and geographic locations they want to target.

The Opera Mobile Store only bills the developers when their creations are downloaded by a user.

The Opera Appcelerate program is designed to help developers gain traction on the platform they want, within regions they’re targeting by offering unique ways to specify your audience, define a campaign, and even boost your promotion effectiveness with dollar for dollar co-marketing, the company says.

The attractive allure of matching co-marketing funds, however, will be available for only “a limited period of time.”

“We are very excited about the Appcelerate, program, the first of it’s kind to help promote content and applications to a global audience” said Mahi de Silva, EVP, Consumer Mobile, Opera Software.

“Just one month after the launch of the Opera Mobile Store, we are giving developers unique capabilities to promote their content in channels focused on devices, platforms and geographies”.

To learn more about the new opportunities from Opera, check out the company’s official splash page on the freshly-introduced service.