Friday, December 21, 2012

Twitter Appoints New COO and CFO

Link to full story here



Twitter has shaken up its executive ranks, appointing a new chief operating officer and chief financial officer.

The microblogging site named Ali Rowghani its COO, a new role he quietly announced by changing his Twitter profile. Rowghani's LinkedIn profile, however, still lists him as the company's CFO. Before joining Twitter in 2010, he worked at Pixar (including a stint as CFO) for eight years.

Twitter also brought in Mike Gupta to fill Rowghani's former role as CFO. Previously the treasurer and senior vice-president of finance at Zynga, Gupta left after spending one-and-a-half years with the embattled game maker. He also spent eight years as chief treasury officer and senior vice-president of corporate development and finance at Yahoo, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Facebook Will Let People You Don't Know Message Your Inbox For $1

Link to full story here





If you start noticing a few more messages in your Facebook inbox in the coming weeks from people you don't know, here's why.

Facebook announced Thursday that it is testing a new option to charge users a one-time fee of $1 to send a message to another user's inbox on the network who they aren't friends with.

Currently, if you send a Facebook message to someone you're not connected to, it may end up in the Other tab, an oft-overlooked subsection of the inbox that basically serves as a spam folder, depending on whether you have mutual connections. With the new option, however, you would be able to pay a premium to ensure that the message ends up in the main inbox where it's likely to be seen by the recipient.

A Facebook rep told Mashable that users will have the option to mark the incoming message as spam and move it to the Other tab, which means the sender will be unable to reach their inbox afterwards. However, if the recipient doesn't take any action, the sender will be able to continue messaging that user's inbox an unlimited number of times after paying the one-time fee.

"Today we’re starting a small experiment to test the usefulness of economic signals to determine relevance," Facebook said in a blog post. "This test will give a small number of people the option to pay to have a message routed to the Inbox rather than the Other folder of a recipient that they are not connected with."

Facebook Set to Change Your Timeline Again

Link to full story here



Ready for some more design tweaks to your Timeline? If not, watch out. Facebook is experimenting with some significant changes that are already showing up for a small number of users -- and may roll out to the masses very soon. 

According to ABC News, where a producer's Timeline first revealed the changes Thursday, the new version is a return to tabs. Gone are the thumbnail pictures for "Friends," "Photos" and "Map" (where you see all the places you've checked in or geotagged yourself).

Indeed, the Map is gone altogether from your front page, banished under a tab that says "More"

There's a new "About" tab at the top of the page; click on that and you get all the information you've given the social network about yourself plus your full list of friends. Keep scrolling and you get to Photos, although the Photos tab will take you there faster.

And as Facebook previously announced, the word "subscribers" is being replaced with the Twitter-like term "followers." Your followers number will no longer be shortened once it gets into the tens of thousands.

Here's what a Facebook spokesperson had to say about the changes: "This is a new design Facebook is testing with a small percentage of people to make navigating Timeline even easier."

In November, Facebook began experimenting with another Timeline change: putting all your posts into a single column. That change still hasn't rolled out for the majority of users.

Instagram on iPhone Gets a Fresh Filter, Facebook Login, Apolog

Link to full story here



Kevin Systrom has had quite the busy week.

Fresh from nixing his revamped terms of service that caused such a stir on Tuesday -- and doing a 180-degree turn on those terms of service Thursday -- the Instagram co-founder has launched a significant update to his iPhone app.

The update adds a brand-new photo filter, "Mayfair", which brings the app's total number of filters up to 20. Its previous update, just 10 days ago, also added a new filter, "Willow". This is a veritable flurry of new filters by Instagram's standards; prior to Willow, the app hadn't added any new filters since September 2011.

Facebook Rolls Out Privacy Shortcuts in Plain English

Link to full story here



Remember those privacy controls Facebook announced last week, alongside the rather less friendly news that you would no longer have the option to hide when Facebook users are searching you?

Well, those changes are finally here. As of 10pm ET, you should start seeing a small symbol with a lock in the top right hand corner of your screen. Click on it, and you've got a list of "Privacy Shortcuts" in plain English -- namely, Who Can See My Stuff, Who Can Contact Me, and How Do I Stop Someone From Bothering Me.

That's a whole lot better than what used to be in that spot -- a dizzying array of privacy options in a control panel that was hard for the average user to decipher.

What The Twitter/Instagram Standoff Has Meant For Traffic To Instagram

Link to full story here



When Instagram began to pull its inline previews of photos out of Twitter almost two weeks ago, many did not take that turn of events too well. Consumers like things easy, and clicking out of one app or site to go elsewhere is not always the best experience.

Instagram, it appears, did this to drive more traffic directly to its own site — a move complemented by a couple of others, such as the newly expanded instagram.com with user profiles, and today’s changes to Instagram’s terms of service and privacy policies, which included new developments in advertising on the service (specifically: it is coming, you may not know very obviously when it is there, and you might just end up part of it).

Twitter Brought In $350M In 2012, So When Will It Hit $1B?

Link to full story here


We’ve been hearing from multiple sources that Twitter will bring in $1 billion in ad revenue in 2013. The company as of now, according to these sources, has a $1 billion revenue run rate, which means that if you take its current monthly revenue and 12x it will hit the big $1 billion mark by the end of next year.

In addition to us hearing this anecdotally, the New York Times’ Nick Bilton breezily tossed off the milestone in his Instagram article over the weekend, “Twitter is expected to make $1 billion in revenue next year.” Oh really?

The only issue we’re finding with this factoid is what exactly is meant by next year? While Bloomberg is reporting that the company will hit the milestone in 2014, we’ve heard from multiple sources that Twitter expects $1 billion in revenue by the end of 2013 specifically. So what gives? Maybe because it’s the end of 2012 people are getting sloppy with numbers and dates?

Key Twitter Execs Given New Roles As The Company Paves The Road To An IPO

Link to full story here.



Two key Twitter executives got new titles today as the company moves toward its highly anticipated IPO. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo confirmed that Mike Gupta has taken over as CFO from Ali Rowghani, who is leaving that position to assume his new role as Twitter’s chief operating officer.

Both Rowghani and Gupta have prior experience as key executives at publicly traded companies, which will be key to steering the course as Twitter works toward its first public offering. Rowghani was formerly the CFO and senior VP of strategic planning at Pixar Animation Studios. Since joining Twitter in 2010, he has been instrumental in monetization efforts such as the microblogging platform’s Promoted suite of ad products.

Instagram Co-founder Kevin Systrom Says It Is Committed To “Answering Questions And Fixing Mistakes”

Link to full story here.



In a very carefully worded blog post penned by Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, he laid out what Facebook and Instagram will do to answer any and all questions that users might have over the recent privacy and terms of service changes.

This was the “Beacon-Like” response we were anticipating:

I’m writing this today to let you know we’re listening and to commit to you that we will be doing more to answer your questions, fix any mistakes, and eliminate the confusion. As we review your feedback and stories in the press, we’re going to modify specific parts of the terms to make it more clear what will happen with your photos.

Along with the post, Systrom re-iterates that Facebook is not “selling” your photos to anyone, as in that’s not their intention. Not that it never will. He says that ownership rights stay with its users, and nothing has changed on the privacy front.

Facebook Brings Back Pinterest-Style “Collections” Feature In Test With 11 Retailers Like Fab And Etsy

Link to full story here.


Facebook’s Pinteresque Collections feature began its second phase of testing today after debuting in October and disappearing 17 days later to be redesigned. As part of the test, 11 retailers are sharing product photos that users can Want, Save, Add, Collect or Wishlist, depending on the version of the test they see. Facebook wants to collect data on which design people like best before fully launching Collections.

Now anyone can try Collections by checking out the news feed posts from the Pages of retailers Nordstrom, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, Pottery Barn Teens, West Elm, Michael Kors, Fab.com, Belk, Etsy, Macy’s, Old Navy, Mark & Graham, Wayfair.com. You can see a Collection in the wild here at Pottery Barn’s Page.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Google+ Testing Social Sharing Bar

Here is the link to the full story.



Google is testing a social side bar on certain websites, allowing users to chat directly on the page and opening up the stage for a bigger advertising stream.

TVGuide.com is among the first websites to tout the new social bar, according to TheNextWeb. Notifications and sharing options -- such as posting to Google+ -- are positioned to the right, while the left is dedicated to page content.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Hands On With Facebook Nearby, A New Local Biz Discovery Feature That Challenges Yelp And Foursquare

Here is the link to the full story.



Each month 250 million Facebook users tag posts with location. Today that data goes to work for you in a major revamp of Facebook’s Nearby feature for its iOS and Android apps. Built by Josh Williams and the Gowalla team that Facebook acquired last year, Nearby helps you discover nightlife, shopping, restaurants and more based on the Likes, check-ins, and recommendations of your friends and other users.

I got to spend the weekend trying out the feature that will rollout first to 1 percent of users later today and all users soon. Here I’ll review Facebook’s impressive first attempt at local business discovery, discuss its potential to earn money while delighting users, and explain why it spells trouble for apps like Yelp and Foursquare.

Facebook Users Must Be Allowed To Use Pseudonyms, Says German Privacy Regulator; Real-Name Policy ‘Erodes Online Freedoms’

Here is the link to the full story.


Facebook’s thorny relationship with Europe and European lawmakers took another barb in the side yesterday as German’s Data Protection Commissioner issued a ruling that Facebook’s real-name policy violates a German Law.

The data protection body, called Unabhaengiges Landeszentrum fuer Datenschutz (ULD, which translates as the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner), said Facebook’s policy of mandating users of its social network use their real names, with no provision permitting “pseudonymous accounts”, violates the German Telemedia Act (TMG) — section 13, part 6 of which states

The service provider must enable the use of telemedia and payment for them to occur anonymously or via a pseudonym where this is technically possible and reasonable. The recipient of the service is to be informed about this possibility

The clause exists to protect Europeans’ “fundamental rights and in particular the fundamental right to freedom of expression on the Internet”, says the ULD, which also notes that the TMG is in line with wider European law. (Something Facebook has fallen afoul of before — or at least had to take steps to adjust its modus operandi, by turning off facial recognition in the EU this fall to help it through a privacy review conducted by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner.)

Twitter And Nielsen Announce Partnership To Create New Twitter-Based TV Rating

Here is the link to the full story.



Nielsen and Twitter just announced a deal for something called the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating, which they’re hoping to turn into the standard metric for measuring the conversation that a TV show spurs on Twitter.

The companies say they’re planning to make the rating available commercially in the fall of 2013. The new Twitter ratings are supposed to complement Nielsen’s existing TV ratings, and will be built on top of the SocialGuide platform offered by NM Incite. (NM Incite is a joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey, and it announced the acquisition of SocialGuide last month.)

In a post on the Twitter blog, the company’s head of media Chloe Sladden said Twitter’s TV partners have been asking for “one common benchmark from which to measure the engagement of their programming.” And according to the press release, the new rating will measure “the total audience for social TV activity – both those participating in the conversation and those who were exposed to the activity – providing the precise size of the audience and effect of social TV to TV programming.”

What The Twitter/Instagram Standoff Has Meant For Traffic To Instagram

Here is the link to the full story.



When Instagram began to pull its inline previews of photos out of Twitter almost two weeks ago, many did not take that turn of events too well. Consumers like things easy, and clicking out of one app or site to go elsewhere is not always the best experience.

Instagram, it appears, did this to drive more traffic directly to its own site — a move complemented by a couple of others, such as the newly expanded instagram.com with user profiles, and today’s changes to Instagram’s terms of service and privacy policies, which included new developments in advertising on the service (specifically: it is coming, you may not know very obviously when it is there, and you might just end up part of it).


Twitter Passes 200M Monthly Active Users, A 42% Increase Over 9 Months

Here is the link to the full story.


Twitter has announced via its own official Twitter account that the service now has more than 200 million monthly active users, an increase of 60 million from the 140 million milestone it shared back in March. That represents a 42 percent increase in the size of its active user base in under a year, pretty impressive growth for an already popular service.

When the service turned six years old in March, the company announced that it had passed 140 million active users, with 340 million tweets per day. Now, the company reports 200 million active users, as per its tweet, and 400 million tweets per day according to the most recent information shared by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.


Monday, December 17, 2012

The Weekly Good: Twitter Gives Back With #Tweet4Good, Here’s The Behind The Scenes Look

Here is the link to the full story.


Before we start with this week’s edition of “The Weekly Good”, I want to let everyone know that our thoughts are with those who are affected by the horrific events in Connecticut today. We are all human, and doing damage like this to one another must stop.

There are good things going on in the world, and it’s important to highlight those things. When tech companies deploy their efforts and resources for good, it hits me, for reasons. Twitter is doing something really awesome, called #Tweet4Good. For every tweet using the #Tweet4Good hashtag, Twitter will give $1 to in ads on the platform to the Red Cross. Up to $20,000. You have until 12/31 to get your tweets in.

Twitter Starts Rolling Out Option To Download Your Twitter Archive: Request Every Tweet You’ve Ever Made In One File (Updated)

Here is the link to the full story.


It looks like Twitter has started rolling out the option to let users download all their tweets — with some Twitter users reporting they are seeing an option to ‘request your archive’ appearing in their settings 

Twitter user Navjot Singh tweeted the following screengrab of the option as it appears on the Settings page of the Twitter web client — which states that users can request a file containing every tweet they’ve ever made, starting with the first one, and will be emailed a link to the file once it is ready for download

A Few Reasons Why You’d Want To Download All Of Your Tweets

Here is the link to the full story.



Today, we learned that Twitter made good on its promise to start letting its users download all of their tweets from the beginning of their history with the service. For many geeks, there is excitement about this. It means that Twitter is showing how truly “open” they can be when it comes to your data and information, finally catching up with companies like Facebook and Google, which both allow you to grab all of your information at any time.

But some are confused about what they might do with the data once they have it. As with any data, the why’s and what’s are without boundaries. It’s pretty much infinite what you can do with a bazillion tweets that you own — well some have fewer than others.

The first thing you should do once you get the ability to download your archived tweets is to do so immediately. It won’t take up too much space on your hard drive. If you really care about the time you’ve spent on Twitter, why not back the massive file up on a service like Google Drive, Dropbox or Box? It certainly can’t hurt.

Now that you have the data, what can you do with it? Well, the tools to do cool things with massive amounts of data aren’t readily available to consumers like you, but that’s changing quickly. Services like Gnip, which has firehose access to re-sell to marketers, should absolutely take this opportunity to create consumer-facing services.


National Rifle Association Hides Facebook Page To Avoid Hosting Flame Wars

Here is the link to the full story.


To prevent uncivil debates from breaking out on its Facebook Page wall in the wake of the tragic shooting in Newtown, the National Rifle Association has unpublished its Facebook Page, presumably temporarily. The NRA hasn’t confirmed that it voluntarily hid the Page from the public, but Facebook is refusing to comment rather than saying it’s responsible as it typically does when it takes down Pages.

The non-profit group that advocates to protect the right to bear arms in the United States has encountered intense backlash on social media since the mass shooting in Connecticut on Friday morning. Following the shooting in Aurora, Colo., in July the NRA got into trouble for an insensitive tweet. It’s taking a more aggressive approach to handling its social accounts now.

The NRA’s Facebook Page became unavailable to the public and began redirecting to the Facebook home page on Friday evening, roughly 10 hours after the shootings. The NRA’s Twitter account has not tweeted since the tragedy, but it remains visible.

Twitter only provides account holders with a more drastic “deactivation” option that deletes the Page entirely 30 days later. Since the NRA couldn’t prevent people from searching for tweets about it, and Twitter profiles aren’t set up as forums between other users, it’s understandable that the rifle association would leave the account merely silent.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Google+ Gets End Of Year Update: Low-Bandwidth Hangouts, Full-Size Mobile Photo Backups, Better Event Planning & More

Link to full story here.


Google is giving its social network a “big” end-of-year update, with 18 new features parcelled up and doled out — many of them coming in a new version (v3.3) of the Google+ app, which Google says will land on the Play Store today. The rest of the updates will apparently hit Google+ “in the next day or so.”

Google announced the update on its Google+ blog, with Mountain View saying it’s aiming to make sharing and communicating via Google+ easier and more fun. The updates cover several areas, including photos, mobile, Hangouts and Events.

Changes for Google+ Android app users include: on-the-go profile editing and an “easier way” to author content; plus a “subtle notice” when there’s something new to read. Android G+ users will also be able to subscribe to mobile notifications from Circles, and interact with Google+ Communities on their phone/tablet.

Google+ Didn’t Stop With 18 New Features, Updates iOS App With Photo Album Swipes And Conversation Cards

Link to full story here.


Well, Google+ is playing coy at the end of the year, aren’t they? Today, Google launched a year-end “blow-out” of features for users of its social layer. Eighteen new features.

The features were nice enhancements to all of its core functionality, making Google+ a cooler place to say, rather than dip your toes in once in a while, which is how I happen to use it, and why I like it a great deal. But at the end of the day, engagement is the name of the game.

My favorite feature in this version has to be the new way to share links with the “Link” button, because sharing a link to say, a blog post, was a major hassle before. Also, the Photo button. You might have noticed that big and featured “Check-In” button, if not, I’m sure that Foursquare did. Google clearly wants you to share your location more, and has surfaced it more prominently. That’s a smart move, as a big part of social behavior, along with the “Circles” approach to privacy, lends itself to letting people know exactly where you are.

Twitter Introduces 'Negative Keyword Targeting' to Make Ads More Relevant

Link to full story here.




Twitter's ad offerings continue to mature. The latest example is Thursday's introduction of "negative keyword targeting" for Promoted Tweets, which will let advertisers buy a term but avoid having the ad shown in contextually irrelevant situations.

In Twitter's example, an advertiser that buys the term "bacon," as in the edible product, could make sure it doesn't show up near conversations about actor Kevin Bacon. In that case, "Kevin" would be a negative keyword. The company also introduced a "bulk importing tool" that will let you highlight which terms you want to match and which you don't.

Facebook For iOS Now Supports Uploading Photos to Albums

Link to full story here.


In addition to updating its Android app, Facebook pushed an update to Facebook for iOS on Thursday.
Version 5.3 of the app includes a faster –- now native -- timeline, as well as a faster loading news feed.
The most important feature in the update, however, has to do with photos rather than speed. Now when you upload photos to Facebook through your iOS device you can select an album for those photos to go into. A feature already available in Android, album functionality is something iOS users have been without since the app’s launch.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Twitter Releases Its 2012 Year In Review, And It’s An Immersive And Personal Experience

Here is the link to the story.


This is the time of year when most consumer-facing companies put out their “Year In Review”, which reflect upon what happened on its service during that particular year. It’s pretty straight-forward stuff usually, but Twitter is a different type of company. By different, I mean that very rarely do you find a company that can follow its user’s pulse and passion as closely as only they can.

Today, Twitter released its 2012 Year In Review, and while there might not be any surprises for those of you who remember all of this year’s big events, for others, it’s a walk down memory lane on a year that seems like a blur at this point.

Twitter Mobile Now Available In Arabic And Farsi

Here is the link to the full story.


Twitter just announced that its mobile Web site is now available in Arabic and Farsi.

A Twitter spokesperson credited a team of volunteers:

Several weeks ago, we added translation support for right-to-left languages in the Twitter Translation Center, specifically for mobile.twitter.com. Since then, our awesome community of translators has been working hard to translate the mobile website. They completed the work for Arabic and Farsi quickly, and today we made them available to mobile.twitter.com users. We will continue to ship additional languages as they are ready.

Moxie Software Taps The Facebook Social Graph To Connect Brands With Customers When The Time Is Right

Here is the link to the full story.


Moxie Software has announced the ability for customers to tap into the Facebook social graph to determine the best time to engage with people on a brand’s Facebook page.

Moxie is a customer facing and internal collaboration service that provides a knowledge engine that defines profiles and business rules. It is a crowdsourcing platform that the company refers to as “social knowledge” that it markets to customers for better engagement on brand web sites and now Facebook.


Here’s how it works: Moxie uses the social chat Facebook API. Its Engage+ App gives companies the ability to access a consumer’s Facebook profile to deliver personalized offers. The customer, usually a mass consumer brand, provides its social data to Moxie, which it then adds to the customer’s knowledge base. The brand gets notified when a Facebook visitor comes to the page who may be interested in the company’s products.

More Than Privacy Controls, Facebook Needs Our Trust To Keep Growing

Here is the link to the full story.


If you don’t trust Facebook, you might keep an account, but you won’t share as much. So Facebook is aiming to educate users about privacy in the hopes that they’ll keep doubling the amount they share each year and uphold Zuckerberg’s Law. Facebook privacy can’t just be “good enough.” It needs us confident in our control, because as it runs low on people to sign up, attracting more data is the main way it will grow.
At this point, having a Facebook account is basically a requirement for staying in touch with friends and being on the Internet. Sure you could delete your account, but people who would have messaged, wall posted, or invited you to events won’t always go the extra mile to contact you some other way. You’d also be unable to sign up for many services, or otherwise have to endure manual sign-up flows and unpersonalized, unsocial experiences.

Is Twitter Working on Its Own Version of Facebook's Open Graph?

Here is the link to the full story.


Twitter will ratchet up its competition with Facebook in the coming weeks by unveiling its own version of Facebook's Open Graph for mobile app developers, according to a source.
The company is in the process of getting feedback about the initiative, which will roll out "in the next couple of weeks," according to the source, who was briefed by Twitter. The context of the discussion was "evangelizing best practices to leverage twitter for discovery and distribution." Twitter reps could not be reached for comment.

Facebook Shows You Your Year in Review

Here is the link to the full story.



Facebook has cooked up a 2012 Year in Review tool to show you the 20 most important moments of your year, including life events, highlighted posts and your most popular stories.
In addition to your most popular photos and status updates, you'll see how many new Facebook friends you made, how many people wrote on your wall for your birthday and how many new pages you liked.
You can try the tool for yourself by going to Facebook Stories. The tool isn't available for brands, but you can try out any of your friends by entering their Facebook user name in the URL field.






Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Twitter: Everyone Will Have Enhanced Profiles On December 12th, For Beautification Reasons

Link to full story here



In case you haven’t seen the updated Twitter profiles, they allow you to add a “cover photo”, ala Facebook and other services. The idea there is that they’d like you to expand your identification on the service, to feel like it’s a place you want to show off to friends, family and colleagues.
These profiles are available on the desktop, as well as official Twitter apps.

Facebook Rolls Out Gifts (And Wine) From Beta To All US Users. Here’s How Much Money It Could Make

Here is the full story



Now it’s time to see if Facebook Gifts will be a nice supplement to the company’s revenue, or a core chunk of it. Today after two months of testing with tens of millions of people, Facebook is rolling out Gifts to all US users. It’s also launching a wine category, plus adding a Hurricane Sandy benefit and the Robin Hood foundation to the charities you can gift to. Let’s look at Gift’s earning potential.
Facebook has roughly 170 million users in the US, based on SocialBakers data and the company’s latest earnings call. It doesn’t reveal the revenue share between Facebook and its Gifts manufacturers, which is different depending on the Gift. But let’s say Facebook earns either 10%, 15%, or 20% per purchase. Some users will likely buy many Gifts, while many will likely buy none, so we’ll calculate assuming the average user buys one half, one, or two gifts per year. Gifts range in cost from $5 to over  

Twitter Brings Aviary-Powered Photo Filters To Its Android And iPhone Apps

Here is the full story

Twitter just announced that its Android and iPhone apps now feature Instagram-like photo filters. Given the heated back-and-forth between Twitter and Instagram in recent days, this wasn’t exactly unexpected, but it happened a bit faster than most of us anticipated. This new feature is, interestingly, powered by Aviary, the company behind the popular online and mobile photo editing SDK.

Twitter Releases Its 2012 Year In Review, And It’s An Immersive And Personal Experience

Here is the full story

Today, Twitter released its 2012 Year In Review, and while there might not be any surprises for those of you who remember all of this year’s big events, for others, it’s a walk down memory lane on a year that seems like a blur at this point.

Hands On With Instagram's New Features

Here is the full story


Instagram updated its iOS and Android apps Monday with a new filter, new crop and scale features and a more refined user interface.

There is a lot of drama right now in the photo sharing space -- especially now that Twitter is offering its own photo filters -- so we wanted to spend a few minutes with the new Instagram features and see how the changes stack up.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Google+ Introduces “Communities” To Replace Old School Groups, Forums And Message Boards

Link to full story here

Now that we have that out of the way, we can move on to the actual innovation that’s happening with Google+, which is quite impressive. Today, the company announced a whole new set of features called “Communities”, which allow you, or anyone, to set up a place that’s not your own profile and not a business “Page” to have discussions on any number of topics.

The Account Filings Must Flow: Twitter, TweetDeck Fined For Overdue U.K. Accounts

Link to full story is here

Maybe Twitter has just had too many other things on its mind lately — like building its own Instagram-busting photo filters perhaps? Whatever the reason, it’s got into a spot of hot water in the U.K. after failing to file its business accounts on time with local Registrar of Companies, Companies House. Sky News picked up the discrepancy earlier today, reporting that Twitter has been fined for late filing. Twitter’s U.K.-based subsidiary, TweetDeck, has also failed to file its accounts on time.

Half A Million People Voted Against Facebook’s Governance Changes, But Not Enough

Link to full story is here

619,000 people have cast their ballot in Facebook’s vote on site governance and policy, and 87% want to block the changes. But unless 299.4 million more people vote by tomorrow morning, Facebook users will lose the ability to vote on future changes, and their data will be intermingled with Instagram. Enough votes won’t be cast, so Facebook’s experiment with “democracy” will be coming to a close.

Updated: Instagram Disables Support for Twitter Cards

A link to the full story is here



nstagram images are not displaying on Twitter cards as of Sunday afternoon. Instead, users are being shown an empty white space where a photo should live. A link to the Instagram photo is still included.

Update: A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to AllThingsD that Instagram has disabled all support for Twitter cards. Instead, Instagram shots shared via Twitter will only include a link to the photo's Instagram URL.

Twitter Reducing Some Tweets to Just 117 Characters


Link to full story is here

Think 140 characters isn’t enough to say what you want in a tweet? Get ready for 117.

Starting in February, tweets that contain URLs will be reduced to 118 characters, 117 for https links. While that may seem like a huge drop, the change represents a two-character drop per tweet from what you are currently able to send when a hyperlink is involved.

Announced Thursday on Twitter's developer blog, the adjustment is due to some upcoming changes in Twitter’s t.co link wrapper. The revision extends the maximum length of t.co wrapped links from 20 to 22 characters for non-https URLs and from 21 to 23 characters for https URLs.

Friday, December 7, 2012

Setting up your Social Media Page: CheatSheet

Are you tasked with setting up your companies social media page?  Are you lost for ideas?  What tab should I put where again?  ummmm......

Never fear!  Here is a fun cheatsheet to provide some assistance.

Thanks Reddit!

SEC probes Netflix CEO following Facebook Post

This interesting turn of events could lead a new charge social media interaction from stakeholders.  Social Media posts may soon become another regulated method for informing shareholders alongside preexisting methods such as SEC Filings, press releases, and investor letters.  For more information on this story, follow the jump!

Developers Will Love This: Facebook Now Auto-Generates Documentation From Source Code

Taken from:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/07/facebook-developer-documentation/


Reference docs for Facebook’s FQL, Android SDK and iOS SDK are all now being generated automatically from their source code. Facebook’s Graph API will be converted to this system soon, along with other parts of the platform including the PHP and Java SDKs plus the money-printing Ads API. Facebook also redesigned the structure of its docs to make them easier to navigate.


Google Kills Free Google Apps For Business, Now Only Offering Premium Paid Version To Companies Of All Sizes


Taken from
http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/07/google-kills-free-google-apps-for-business-now-only-offering-premium-paid-version-to-companies-of-all-sizes/

Google has announced a change to Google Apps for Business — ending the free version of the product, offering only its Premium version which costs $50 per user, per year, regardless of the size of the company. The change was announced on Google’s Official Enterprise blog. Existing Google Apps for business users who have free accounts get to carry on without paying the subscription fee but businesses wanting to sign up from now with have to pay.