AT&T Social Net users, get ready. You’re about to be hit while a serious dose of new features!

Starting this week, a brand new AT&T Social Net 1.5 is available in AT&T’s new App Center (formerly the AT&T MEdia Mall). You’ll find AT&T Social Net in the usual spot under Cool Tools > Social Networking (as well as the new “Student Life Essentials” category), but this isn’t your 2009 user’s Social Net. The new version 1.5 has photo upload, a newly formatted “My Stream” home screen, Twitter DMing, Facebook Friend search and much more. Plus, it’s just got better, faster, enhanced performance. We think our users will dig it.

Check out a walk though in our latest installment of iSkoot product demo videos:

To start, AT&T Social Net 1.5 is available on the Samsung Rugby II, Samsung Impression, the Pantech Impact and Pantech Pursuit.

We’ve got 1.5 support for a ton of new phones coming down the pipe, so be sure to check back on The iSkoot Blog and on the AT&T Social Net Facebook page to find out when the all-new AT&T Social Net is ready for action on your phone!

AT&T and Samsung announced today the upcoming release of the new Samsung Eternity II and the Samsung Flight II on AT&T this fall. Top on the list of new features highlighted in the announcement is “New Social Networking Features” — and by that the folks at AT&T and Samsung mean, of course, AT&T Social Net.

AT&T Social Net, which first launched as a download from AT&T last summer, now comes preloaded straight out of the box on these new high-profile handsets, giving users instant access to top social networking sites and up-to-the-minute news.

The snippet of choice from today’s announcement:

AT&T Social Net plus PicDial makes for a pretty powerful combination. Keep an eye out for the new Flight II, available in Radio Shack stores today, and the Eternity II, coming to AT&T retails stores on Aug 15!

The back to school blow out continues! Verizon’s just put out a catchy new TV spot, and Social Beat is featured front and center.

See for yourselves folks:

This fairly excellent Verizon back to school spot rounds out a hat trick of iSkoot’s social media solutions making their way to prime time TV, following AT&T’s heart-tugging Lost Dog spot last fall and O2′s bumpin’ summer festival spot in May. Can we say iSkoot for the holidays? We think it’s got potential.

Many thanks and humble appreciation goes to Verizon for giving Social Beat such fantastic stage time!

It’s August, folks, and that means Back To School activities are starting to hit full swing. Extra busy with Back to Schooling fun are our friends at Verizon Wireless, who put out an announcement yesterday touting some spiffy forthcoming devices, a few new service deals, and of course, the most essential social media app for supersocial students, iSkoot’s very own Social Beat.

A word from our sponsors:

If you haven’t already gotten on the Social Beat train, there’s no better time to connect with old friends and new ones than at the start of a new semester. So get on board already:

For LGs, Samsungs & more
For BlackBerry

As Verizon sees it, it’s not about heading “back” to school - it’s about looking forward to what’s next. Now that’s a philosophy we can get behind.

It’s been a busy summer, but the folks at iSkoot finally made it out of the office last night to enjoy some of the neighborhood’s finer offerings - namely, the incomparably swanky AT&T Park situated a mere 3 blocks away.

Of course, it’s obviously essential for the players to warm up and get loose before making for the field. That’s why we had a little pre-game social here at the iSkoot office. And at such events (particularly in this age of social media, which by the way, we fully endorse) photo snapping inevitably ensues. Just for fun, we thought we’d share the evidence.

That’s Mark, Vivek and John looking only mildly suspicious.

Yanting enjoying a splash of Sonoma Sauvignon blanc with Matt.

The very tall and very charming Eric Bohm, a recent iSkoot hire who keeps us all in check.

BD wiz Christina Cragholm with husband Andrew.

100% of the iSkoot Marketing Team, Jake & Jacqueline.

And Rusted Root impersonator Zac Oliff, sending us on our way to the Giants game.

So off we went. Admittedly a little chilly even for a standard July evening in SF, but with a few hot dogs, garlic fries, cheap beers and whipped cream-topped hot chocolates in hand, you could color the whole lot of us orange and black (in spirit, anyway).

Final score: Giants 6, Marlins 4, and a great night in South Beach for the iSkoot team.

The only thing we love more than feeding our not-so-inner geeks with MobileCrunch is getting an iSkoot shoutout ON MobileCrunch. Recently we’ve been working with T-Mobile semi-under the radar to preload T-Mobile Social Buzz on their newest batch of feature phones (you’ve probably heard us spill the beans about that here on the blog). This latest launch rounds out a solid year and a half of carrier partnerships to get social media on mass-market feature phones, and this afternoon MobileCrunch decided to crunch the numbers (smirk!) and send us the blog equivalent of a high five.

Here’s a tasty morsel for your Tuesday afternoon:

That’s the kind of write-up you email to Mom back home. Thank you kindly, MobileCrunch!

Mark Jacobstein heads to Qualcomm’s Uplinq conference in San Diego this week to share his thoughts on monetization in the mobile apps game. He’ll be joined by a Qualcomm EVP, the CEO of AdMarvel, a VP from Paramount Digital Entertainment’s mobile division, an editor from RCR Wireless News and a GM from Associated Press to answer the question “Is Anyone In this for the Money?” Should make for a pretty interesting conversation.

The Wheres & Whens:
Tomorrow, Jun 30, 1:00 pm - 2:15 pm
Room: Manchester A/B

What Uplinq has to say about the panel:

How do you make money from apps in today’s fragmented landscape? Is free the new fee? Why bother with native apps if it’s all going to the web? Who’ll be the winner in the war of the application stores? Feature phones vs. smartphones, does it matter? There’s Google and Apple and why bother with anything else? Where is the industry going; what are the technologies, commercial channels and business models that will re-shape it? Challenge your views and join us for a frank, open discussion with opinion makers from across the value chain. This isn’t your standard panel - come and join the conversation.

Don’t miss it!

This week T-Mobile added three new phones to their summer roster, and iSkoot’s social networking stuff is featured, nay, preloaded on the whole lot of them. But don’t just take our word for it. T-Mobile has a thing or two to say about it too.

You may recall that iSkoot launched the stealthily-named “Social Networks” app with T-Mobile this past spring. “Social Networks” came preloaded on a number of T-Mobile Tap devices. Word got around about this mysterious (and free) social networking feature available to some - but not all - T-Mobile Tap users, and the lucky users who got the freebie definitely liked what they saw.

Fast forward to summer 2010, and T-Mobile’s offering iSkoot’s solution, now officially named “T-Mobile Social Buzz,” right out of the box for free on three brand new handsets: the Samsung Gravity 3®, Samsung Gravity® T and Samsung : )™ (Smiley). T-Mobile Social Buzz connects users to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter in a single application, so now T-Mobile subscribers can easily stay in touch on the networks that matter most.

If you’re a T-Mobile user looking for a streamlined solution for your social networking needs, get yourself to a T-Mobile store and pick yourself up one of these cool new devices stat!

Social Beat for BlackBerry.

It’d been something of a elusive phenomenon. Like Christmas in July (or in Social Beat’s case, November and March) some Verizon users woke to find a shiny new Social Beat application in their BlackBerry’s Apps folder. Yet other customers, with the same handsets (and more importantly, without the requisite “Prosumer” Blackberry plan) woke to find…well, nothing resembling a complementary social media + IM + RSS solution in their Apps folder.

This week, however, iSkoot has leveled the playing field.

Social Beat is now live and available for ALL Verizon BlackBerry users (with supported handsets, of course) in BlackBerry App World. Plus, we’ve added support for a few new BlackBerry handsets!

You can check out the Social Beat listing in BlackBerry App World here.

And you can download it, regardless of your BlackBerry service plan, if you’ve got one of the following handsets:

The Tour
The Storm 1
The Storm 2
The Curve 1 (new!)
The Curve 2
The Pearl Flip (new!)

Enterprise BlackBerry users, the wait is over. Download Social Beat today, and be sure to post your review of the app on App World to let us know what you think!

First bus advertisements, now TV spots? Now this is what we call a launch week!

O2 Ireland just launched a summer TV advertisement that puts their brand new O2 Social Link front and center. And not like we’re biased or anything, but this is one seriously cool commercial. Check it out:

Oh, by the way. That’s Gabriel Byrne talking to you.

Does it get any more awesome? We’re thinking no. Big thank you to O2 Ireland for such an exciting first week!