Quora Updates Tablet App

Question and Answer site Quora has improved its app for tablet devices, with a new interface, “seamless navigation” and faster performance.

In the announcement post on Quora’s blog, Brien Colwell reveals the thinking behind the company’s recent focus on mobile devices:

“More and more, people read and write on Quora while on-the-go. Many people also love using tablets, making a unique Quora experience for tablets one of our most popular requests.”

Twitter Updates Pictures And Individual Tweets

Twitter has made changes to users’ profile pages and individual tweets. Pictures viewed on a profile page will appear in a light-box on the same page and replies to tweets will all be viewed on one page.

Firstly, when clicking on a photo on a profile page, the photo will now appear on the same page in a pop-out box rather than taking the user to a different page altogether. These images will also appear larger than they were when shown on a different page.

Foursquare Launches “The Best Of Foursquare”

Foursquare has created “The Best of…” lists for 30 major American cities, compiling data that includes almost 30 billion check-ins from over 30 million users worldwide.

Foursquare has taken into account comments, likes, dislikes, local expertise, popularity and many other factors to produce lists of the top ten places for food, nightlife and things to do, as well as another category specific to each city.

The cities chosen are as follows, with their special category beside them:

Facebook Asks Users To Invite Guests To Events

Facebook is now suggesting that guests ask others to join once they click that they are attending a Facebook event.

Early on in 2012, the social network added ‘suggested guests’ for events in a sidebar unit. But this move seems to have taking a further step by automatically asking users to invite others (suggested by Facebook) once they RSVP.

Also, a navigation bar has been added to the top of a page administrator’s main screen. When using the desktop version of Facebook, a navigation bar will appear when they scroll down beyond the cover photo of the page.

YouTube Soon To Introduce Paid Subscriptions

In an effort to attract more advertisers and content creators to the site, YouTube will begin asking viewers to pay for certain channels.

American magazine AdAge has published an article revealing that YouTube has begun inviting developers to submit ideas for monthly subscription channels.

The first paid-for channels will cost between $1 and $5 per month for subscribers, with the added possibility of pay-per-view services if they want to watch archived videos.

Foursquare Releases Business Based Standalone App

Location based social platform Foursquare has launched a new standalone app called ‘Foursquare for Business’ which solely focuses on utilising the social media format in order to benefit small companies.

Launched on Tuesday morning, this is the second standalone application that Foursquare has released. This further extends the social site’s additions to their merchant tools last year. This update helped business owners to control special offers to customers with a more helpful dashboard on the desktop version.

Pinterest Is Testing A New look

Having taken user feedback into consideration, social Pinboard Pinterest is testing a site redesign.

The navigation of the new design will be “more intuitive”, says Pinterest Software Engineer Vy Phan on the announcement post, with an improved categories list that drops down from a tab in the top right-hand corner.

There will be more information on pins, with “pins from the same board, other boards this pin was pinned to, and a whole slew of related pins” beside each pin clicked on.

Facebook Ads Grouped 3-In-1

Facebook is going to start grouping advertisements in threes rather than just one at a time. These will come in a horizontal unit known as ‘Pages You Might Like’.

The change was implemented in the News Feed of the desktop version over the weekend. The change helps Facebook to fit more ads into the feed without having to take up too much space.

The idea to fit multiple advertisements into a space that would normally fit one could have come due to the fact that the mobile version of the social platform has been implementing it since August last year.

TweetPing Pinpoints Tweets In Real-Time

Website TweetPing, the brainchild of front end developer Franck Ernewein, tracks the World’s tweets in real-time, displaying each one as a pinprick of blue light on a map of the Earth.

The site starts tracking tweets every time it is loaded, registering each tweet posted on Twitter in a counter, as well as tallying each of the five most populated continents’ tweets separately.

North America, South America, Europa, Africa and Asia compete for the highest tweet count, with Asia having the added allegiance of Australasia.

Facebook iOS Update Includes Voice Messaging

An update to the iOS Facebook app allows users to have the same features that have previously been launched on the Facebook Messenger app on both iOS and Android devices.

The updated app for iOS means that users are now able to send voice messages when using the Facebook app.

The ability to send a voice message via the Facebook Messenger app was unveiled earlier this month which was later enhanced with VoIP calling free of charge in the United States and Canada.

Users of the Facebook app are also able to record a video and share it with friends from within the app.

Will you be sending voice messages and video recordings?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or via Twitter.
 

Daniel Barr

Follow us @SocialMediaF & @DanielAtSMF

www.socialmediafrontiers.com

Facebook Recommends Similar Pages When You Like A Timeline

When liking a new page on Facebook, the social platform will now suggest other pages you may find interesting and wish to like. These will appear underneath the cover image on a page’s Timeline.

Facebook is testing this new module so that when a user clicks Like on some pages, a box will appear under the cover photo showing ‘More Pages You May Like’. Pages of a similar category will be displayed that when hovered over will show the option to Like the page.

Facebook Introduces “Ask Our CPO” Feature

Facebook users can now send queries to Erin Egan, the company’s Chief Privacy Officer, just under two months after the “Ask Our CPO” feature was announced.

In the first half of December last year, Facebook held the Site Governance vote to decide on the future of Facebook’s privacy and voting policies, primarily the Statement of Right and Responsibilities and the Data Use policy.

For the proposal to be vetoed 30% of users, over 300 million people, would have had to vote against change. Only 700 thousand people took part in the vote, not enough to stop Facebook taking the right to vote on future privacy policy changes away from its users.

Soundrop App To Be Incorporated Onto Facebook

Soundrop, the service that offers the chance to access different listening ‘rooms’ where users can suggest and recommend songs of a particular genre, will now be available on Facebook pages.

Having proven to be popular on music site Spotify, Soundrop rooms can now be embedded onto an artists’ Facebook page. The service will be identical to the one used on the Spotify app and web version.

Users of the experience can listen to the song that they are currently playing and also vote on multiple suggested songs and talk amongst other listeners in real-time. The option to do so can be found underneath an artist’s cover photo amongst other apps.

Vine Already Climbing Despite Setbacks

Twitter’s new affiliate, video sharing service Vine, has already been adopted by a number of brands despite some early setbacks.

A few businesses have posted videos on Vine: clothes retailer Gap has taken a “trip down #Gap advertising memory lane for [their] #firstpost on Vine. http://vine.co/v/b5PeYQOLuLj”, while broadcaster PBS has given followers a look into the lobby of their offices in Arlington, Virginia.

PBS also invited its Twitter followers to post videos on Vine during the new series of Downton Abbey with the hastag #DowntonPBS, promising that the best would be featured.

Here is the tweet on PBS's Twitter account:

Facebook Blocks Its Rivals’ Access To Social Graph

Social media giant Facebook has changed its Platform Policies, denying Twitter’s Vine application and Yandex’s new Wonder service access to it’s social graph.

In an explanatory post on the Facebook Developer Blog, Platform Partnerships and Operations Director Justin Osofsky, explains that the changes will only affect “apps that are using Facebook to either replicate [its] functionality or bootstrap their growth in a way that creates little value for people on Facebook, such as not providing users an easy way to share back to Facebook”.

Wonder, a voice controlled iOS app launched in the US by Russia’s equivalent to Google, Yandex, is a combination of Apple’s Siri and Facebook’s Graph Search, available on a mobile platform.

Pinterest Creates News Feature For Advanced Content Discovery

Pinterest has installed a ‘News’ tool to replace the activity feed. The ‘News’ feed shows boards that reveal where recent images have been repinned.

This feed will create content that could be relevant as users search for images via their own profiles or whilst on other user’s profiles.

Social Media Promotions of the Week – 25/01/2013

This weeks edition of Social Media Promotions of the Week (SMPW) features three different and creative campaigns that utilise social media. Created by a range of companies with different ‘products’ to offer, we felt that these three stood out from the rest.

1. Yamaha – Silent Sessions



Yamaha released the promotional video above in order to gain publicity for their range of silent pianos. The video which has almost 10,000 views already on YouTube features jazz musician Jamie Cullum.

A New Study Shows How Twitter Can Monitor Disease Outbreaks

A recent study by a computer science class from Brigham Young University has found that Twitter could be used to track the outbreak of diseases.

The researchers sampled 24 million tweets from 10 million unique users, discovering that 15% of the tweets could be located using GPS or information from the users profile.

In fact, only 2% of the tweets in the survey contained GPS data, far less than suggested by survey data, a figure that surprised BYU professor Christophe Giraud-Carrier:

“There is this disconnect that’s well known between what you think you are doing and what you are actually doing,” Giraud-Carrier said.

Facebook Writes New Language To Fight Spam

On Thursday, Software Engineer Louis Brandy revealed that the engineering staff at Facebook have created a new programming language to combat spam.

The programming language, called Feature eXtraction Language, or FXL for short, is “a domain-specific language forged in the fires of spam fighting at Facebook”.

Brandy admits that writing a language from scratch is not always the most effective approach to fighting spam. FXL, however, “is not a novel language”.

More Personal Facebook Data Shown By Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha, the computational knowledge engine that previously launched a Facebook tool for Personal Analytics has expanded what it can do and how much it can analyse. This is quite the achievement considering how much it could previously do.

John Burnham of Wolfram Alpha wrote in a blog post that: “One of the most shared pods from our first release was our colorful social network visualization.”

New Years Resolution: Learn How Social Media Works For Business

Are you a Business Owner who hands over your social media management to someone internally or externally because they “know how it all works?”   Big deal they know how Facebook or Twitter works, they’re just tools.  How are they with online marketing or at producing content that is aligned with the strategy and goals you have for your business. In my experience working with SMEs I find many Business Owners take a hands-off approach when it comes to social media and the most common reasons quoted is a  lack of time to learn how it all works and/or holding a belief that social media is the domain of the young.

I’m going to dismiss the latter reason quickly for the simple fact that social media is now a part of life and one way or the other it is a part of yours.   On the other hand, lack of time is a real problem for SMEs, with many doing whatever it takes, regardless of hours, to stay on top of all that is going on relating to their business.  When it comes to introducing new systems or tools like CRM or accounting packages it is standard practice to invest in training.  It’s also acknowledged it will take training, time and practice before everyone is using the new tool to its full effectiveness. And yet this practical ‘real-world’ thinking is often forgotten when a business enters the online world.

Facebook Testing More Timeline Options

Facebook Timelines are once again likely to undergo a redesign. Although it is unknown when this new look will be launched, the preview (shown above) shows a single column on the right hand side of the Timeline with other features on the left.

The social platform began testing a single-column view for user’s Timelines last October. It now seems that an update will show a similar design that uses the same header and swaps the two columns of posts and activity around on the site.

Vine, A Twitter Affiliate That Allows Users To Embed Short Videos Into Tweets, Is Coming Soon

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has shown off his company’s recent acquisition, Vine, in a Tweet today by embedding a short episodic instructional video on how to make steak tartare.

Vine, which Twitter bought last fall, is an app which allows users to record and share short video clips. What differentiates Vine from it’s competitors is the ability to pause the recording and restart it by just depressing and pressing the record button.

Quora Launches Blog And Rich Text Editor

Question and Answer website, Quora, announced a new mission last month to grow and share knowledge around the world. This mission has been revealed to include the launching of new blogs, and use of a rich text editor.

CEO of Quora, Adam D’Angelo revealed that the site would be growing beyond the Q&A format that it is known for and that this extension has already begun to take place.

Similar to the question and answer part of the website, the blog posts will be categorised into over 300,000 relevant topics. These different topics are/will be followed by users of the site who will, as a result, be able to then read the blog posts.

Facebook Surpasses Google Maps As The Most Popular Mobile App in the US

Internet analytics company ComScore has released estimated figures revealing that Facebook overtook Google Maps as the most popular US mobile app late last year.

As the graph shows, up until September both apps were showing a steady increase in Monthly Unique Visitors, then Google Maps saw a drop between September and August from roughly 81,000 to 71,000 MUVs, while Facebook only saw a slight dip.

Microsoft Updates Bing Tags

Microsoft has updated Bing Tags so that they can now be seen by anyone.

Bing Tags, which were introduced to Microsoft’s search engine last summer, allow Facebook users to tag themselves and their friends on blogs, other social media platforms, or any other website.

Microsoft created Bing Tags so that users could show off their creations to their friends, draw attention to certain search results and credit friends who had created interesting blog posts, images or articles.

Twitter Updates Embedded Tweets

Twitter have improved Embedded Tweets so that they look more like the original tweet on-site.

Embedded Tweets, which were introduced in late 2011, allow users to post interactive tweets on third party sites.

The updated service improves the performance of the tweet and displays all the information present on Twitter cards.

“Embedded Tweets display photos, videos, article summaries and other content shared in a Tweet, just like you see on twitter.com”, said Twitter on the Twitter blog.

HiveMindMap Helps You Track Top Tweets

The Twitter statisticians at HiveMindMap display the most popular hashtags from the last seven days in a kaleidoscopic spider diagram, with affiliated links connected by multicoloured tendrils.

The site, which is updated and filtered for spam nightly, also displays hashtags which are strongly connected to the most popular links.

You can navigate around the diagram easily, scrolling, zooming in and selecting preferred hashtags with the mouse or keyboard.

Google+ iOS App Now Available In Many More Countries

Google+ has revealed that the social media platform is now available to iOS users in 48 new countries and territories around the world.

The news that will undoubtedly help support the notable growth of the social network was announced in a post by Google employee, Frank Petterson.

100% Of U.S. Senators On Twitter

Barack Obama is sworn in as the President of a truly social media-minded United States, with 100% of Senate members active on Twitter.

Instagram Announces 90 Million Monthly Users

Photo sharing platform, Instagram, has announced that it has 90 million monthly users from around the world.

The release of this statement came in response to figures that showed a large number of those users had left the social service due to changes to its terms and conditions.
 

Tumblr Introduces Panoramic Photos

Tumblr has got a nose ahead of its photo-sharing rivals Twitter and Instagram by introducing the option to upload panoramic photos onto the site.

The update “works automatically for super-wide (3:1) high-res (1000px wide) photo uploads”, according to the announcement post on the Tumblr staff blog.

The panoramic photos, which cover the entire width of a blog post as opposed to just the side, can be displayed with a specialized extra-wide lightbox.

Facebook For Android App Updated With Improved Photos, Sharing, And Voice Messaging

The Facebook Android app has been updated with new features concerning photo viewing, sharing abilities and voice messaging.

Faster photos are now available on the app. Simply when opening the app on an Android device, the photos will appear more quickly.

The sharing functionality of the app has been improved. Users of the app have the ability to share their friends’ stories to different Timelines, groups, and pages. Android users were previously only able to share friends’ stories on to their own Timeline.

Microsoft Bing’s Improved Social Updates Sidebar Now Shows More Social Media Search Results

On Thursday, Microsoft announced that the social sidebar on Bing’s search results page would now display relevant status updates, shared links and comments from the user’s Facebook friends.

In the social sidebar, which was released last year, Bing already found photos, Likes and Facebook profile information that was relevant to the search. Now they have introduced a three column design, separating relevant web results, photos and information from the most relevant result and results from social media sites.

In the announcement on the Bing blog, the Bing Team say that they have introduced the social sidebar in the acknowledgement that, “more often than not, we look to the people we trust to help us make decisions and get stuff done. At Bing, we believe that for anything you want to get done on Bing, there is at least one person out there who can help.”

Make Your Facebook Profile Business Friendly With Web App

Facewash is a new web app that gives users of Facebook the ability to clear out profanities and cursing from their profile in order to look more professional and business friendly.

A negative and sometimes embarrassing profile on social media can often be the difference between being accepted into the business world, or continuing to be overlooked for a professional role.

Party photos from nights out, bad language, and confusing privacy settings will often cause a bad impression to a potential employer when they begin researching job applicants. This sort of content will now become even more evident due to Facebook’s Graph Search feature.

NHS Employers Unlease New Social Media Guidance

A published guidance called ‘HR and social media in the NHS’ has been published by the NHS Employers organisation as they hope to promote social media in order to make the health service more effective.

The report discusses what elements of social media can support high quality care for patients. With social media’s help, patients can be better equipped to find good information online.

Social media would allow the NHS to understand developments in staff and/or patient situations sooner and with more ease. Also, the use of it would lead to a stronger relationship between staff and the public.

Foursquare Creates Map Celebrating 500 Million Check-ins In 3 Months

Foursquare has created an infographic displaying all the 500 Million Check-ins over the last month as white dots on a black map of the World. Foursquare says that what the map displays is “at the heart of three important things” that the company has been doing.

The first thing that Foursquare is focused on is “creating amazing personalized recommendations”:

Social Media Promotions Of The Week: 18/01/13

This week I have had to bend the rules slightly for the Social Media Frontiers SMPW post. The first two listed are promotions that we thought were innovative and original. We felt that the final three, though not strictly Promotions, still deserved a mention for their clever use of social media.

1. Samsung – The Ecobubble Bear



This hilarious advert was created by The Viral Factory to promote Samsung’s new Ecobubble washing machines.

Companies Awarded Twitter’s Certified Product Approval

Twitter has announced that more companies will be added to the 12 existing partners who have previously been given its Certified Products Program stamp of approval.

Companies from two of the program’s most important verticals, engagement and analytics have been approved.

Spredfast, Adobe Social and Percolate are just some of the companies that have been named as new partners in the announcement.

Twitter Opening Office In Sao Paulo, Brazil

Twitter has announced that the company is building an office in Sao Paulo, the Brazilian city in which Facebook has based its South American branch.

Sao Paulo, which is the eighth most populous city in the world, is enjoying a internet boom along with the rest of Brazil, the country where Twitter has its second largest membership base after the US, counting 40 million users.

VoIP Calling On Facebook Messenger Distributed To U.S. Users

Facebook Messenger users in the United States have begun receiving VoIP calling for their Messenger app which is a new way to make free calls.

The feature has been tested in Canada and has now begun to be distributed to U.S. users. The calling service in Canada was accompanied with an app update which saw users given help and support for voice messaging.

The calls are only free if you are using Wi-Fi. However, the Facebook Messenger voice calling will also use regular cellular data if there is no Wi-Fi present.

How Can Facebook Graph Search Help Your Business?

Facebook unveiled its new search engine, Graph Search, earlier this week, explaining how the new feature’s focus would be on connection and discovery rather than the acquirement of knowledge. There are, however, a number of ways that companies could use Graph Search to improve their business.

Facebook Graph Search opens up a number of possibilities for companies on Facebook. During Facebook's announcement of Graph Search Tom Stocky, one of the men behind the idea, talked about how the engine could be used for recruitment, potentially rivalling LinkedIn:

Twitter Links Highlighted While Composing Tweets

Twitter users will now be able to see what elements of their tweets will become clickable before the tweet has even been sent.

With a small change to the desktop version of the site, users of the social media site will be able to better understand which parts of their tweets will be interactive to followers as they type.

Anything that is clickable in a tweet, i.e. hashtags, @mentions and links to other sites will become blue before you click send/tweet.

Facebook Graph Search, The New Way To Connect And Build Relationships

Facebook has announced the creation of a Graph Search, a brand new search engine that helps users navigate their way through the staggering amount of data in the Facebook database.

“Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected”, say Tom Stocky and Lars Rasmussen on the Facebook Newsroom page. “The main way we do this is by giving people the tools to map out their relationships with the people and things they care about. We call this map the graph. It's big and constantly expanding with new people, content and connections. There are already more than a billion people, more than 240 billion photos and more than a trillion connections.”

New Myspace Released To All Users

After a successful beta testing stage, the all-new rebranded Myspace has been released to the World Wide Web. The Justin Timberlake-backed redesign focuses on music sharing and discovery, with features similar to Pandora and Spotify, but also has a strong social media element.



When the re-re-re-release of Myspace was announced last year, there was a mixed response. Some welcomed the announcement,  fond memories of the original social media giant fresh in their minds. Others groaned in despair, having seen the social media site die, get resurrected and die again, only to see the site get resurrected once more.

As Facebook Hits 27 Million UK Users, Its Affiliate Instagram Drops By Half Worldwide To 7.6 Million

Despite reports that Facebook lost 600,000 users in the UK last month, Nielsen has released figures confirming that the social media giant hit 27 million monthly active users in the past week. Meanwhile, their new affiliate Instagram has lost almost half its daily active users worldwide in the wake of changes to its terms and conditions.

According to Nielsen, a global market research company, two thirds of the UK population use Facebook – that’s 27 million – 19 million of whom access the site on mobile devices. 26% of Facebook users access the site via a tablet device and are most active in the evening, while smartphone users are active at midday.

No.1 Hunting App Pealk Secured By LinkedIn Rival, Viadeo

Professional networking site Viadeo has announced that it has attained the “#1 Hunting App”, Pealk.

Viadeo is a site which is similar to LinkedIn and has around 50 million worldwide users. Professionals use the social network to enhance career prospects and discover business opportunities.

Pealk was designed so that HR and managers of businesses could extract desirable profiles from LinkedIn accounts. The app gives users the ability to thoroughly search through results in order to find the right candidate for a particular role.

Social Voice App Bubbly Launched In The UK.

A new social media app called Bubbly allows users to share short voice messages with friends and followers.

The voice blogging service has been launched in the UK and users can share ‘Bubbles’ with those they are connected to as well as adding filters and other edits to their voice recordings.

The app has been described as the ‘Instagram of voice’ and already contains celebrity content with Manchester United footballer Rio Ferdinand being a regular user.

Facebook Admins Can Now Promote Their Pages

Since May last year, Page administrators have been able to promote their posts. Now, Facebook has begun giving administrators based in the USA the option to promote their Pages.

Jon Loomer was the first to post about what he has called a “Promoted Page” after he noticed that the new feature had appeared on his Admin Panel.
There are three payment options given to admins who are promoting their pages: $5 per day, $10 per day or $20 per day. The $5 per day option will get your page an estimated 3 - 28 likes per day, the $10 option between 6 and 56 and the $20 option from 13 to 113 likes per day.

Facebook Users Can Send Messages To High-Profile People For $100

Facebook has begun to test charging users should they want to send a message to a high-profile person via the site.

For $100 (£61) you will be able to send a direct message to CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg as well as other users with a high-profile. The cost of a message will depend on the profile and popularity of the recipient.

The social platform has said that ‘extreme price points’ are being tested as it attempts to increase revenue from its 1 billion users.

Social Media Promotions of the Week–11/01/2013

The staff here at Social Media Frontiers have chosen our favourite social media promotional campaigns of the week. Based on their creativity, originality and innovation, these five campaigns stood out from the rest.
 

1. Lenovo – Year of Do



Lenovo, a PC manufacturer, has released an app which gives users the chance to share their New Year’s resolutions with a campaign created by Saatchi and Saatchi Singapore, enabled by We Are Social.

The Facebook app called ‘Year of Do’ hopes people will publicly commit to their resolutions as it was found that 78% of people never fulfil their own. The resolutions will be shown on a global wall with the app tracking which country makes the most.

Director of the digital and social centre of excellence at Lenovo, Rod Strother, said that: “this app is part of Lenovo’s commitment to enabling people to achieve their goals. We’re confident that by aggregating a tapestry of global resolutions, our communities around the world will be spurred on to do more and make 2013 the year of achieving great things."

Google+ Begins Pushing Communities, But How Can They Help Your Business?

Google+ have begun prompting users to create their own Communities.

The Google+ Communities feature provides people with a place to share, enjoy and talk about their common interests with other Google+ users.

Members of a Community can share photos, videos and experiences, start competitions or discussions, or even create events using the selection of tabs on the Community page.

Businesses can also benefit from joining Communities: they can learn more about their target audience, connect with others in their industry and, in certain instances, market their products and services.

Here are the five steps to take when using Google+ Communities to the benefit of your business.

Facebook Asks For Participants For Poke Survey

Facebook are placing ads on user’s homepage of the social media site to find participants who are willing to take part in a survey concerning their new Poke app.

The giants of social media want to know how you feel about ‘poking’, and whether you use it at all. The Poke app was launched a few weeks ago and by using Ethn.io, an internet recruiting tool, subjects are being found.

Clicking on the ad that says, “Facebook is seeking paid participants for phone research” leads participants to a questionnaire that first and foremost asks whether they are using the application or not.

“We’re conducting phone interviews about the poke app and would like to talk with you if you use the app. This is not spam . . .”

LinkedIn Reaches 200 Million Member Mark

On Wednesday, LinkedIn announced that it now has over 200 Million Registered Users.

In the blog post reporting the milestone, Senior VP of Products and User Experience Deep Nishar says that the business networking site has “representation in more than 200 countries and territories” and that they are serving their “members in 19 languages around the world”.

LinkedIn has also created an infographic breaking down their 200 million members into interesting and easily-digested statistics.