We get it: You’ve been busy the
past month. With preseason football, picking your fantasy football team and
telling anyone who will listen about your East Coast earthquake experience,
there are likely a few things you missed during the month of August. So, here’s
a recap of things you may have missed in the world of social media.
Twitter
Old version of Twitter killed off; new version offers new features
via Mashable
In case you didn’t know, the
old version of Twitter was killed off early August. But the “new and
improved” Twitter has a few features that make this loss a little easier to
handle. One of the new
features makes it easier to directly tweet other users by creating a field
directly under a user’s profile that allows others to easily contact them.
Another upgrade Twitter has added is unveiling a
new photo sharing service for all users by allowing them to easily upload
photos using the camera icon located under the “What’s Happening?” box.
Twitter and The Weather Channel create The Weather Channel Social via
Mashable
The Weather Channel and Twitter
have merged to
create The Weather Channel Social, a new Web, on-air and mobile initiative
that combines city forecasts and weather-related tweets. There are 220 local
Twitter feeds for cities with populations of 100,000 or more.
Social media and natural disasters? Via Computerworld, Mashable
This month, Twitter users took to
their handles to tweet about or follow the two biggest natural disasters of the
month: Hurricane Irene and the 5.8 magnitude quake that shook the East Coast.
On the day of the quake, those in affected areas turned
to Twitter and Facebook to share news of the experience, some users even
tweeting and posting while they felt the trembling. As Hurricane Irene hit the
East coast the end of August, Twitter users
could follow the hurricane’s Twitter handle for updates about the storm, as
well as CNN and The Weather Channel, which merged social media and storm
tracking like never before.
New tool lets you see who you should follow
on Twitter via Twtrland
Twtrland, a new
Twitter analytics tool, helps you decide which
Twitter handles to follow by changing Twitter streams into detailed
profiles, displaying how often the user is retweeted, average number of tweets
per day, an analysis of tweet content and a sample of tweets.
Facebook
Facebook now offering updates using topic
groups via Mashable
Similar to how
Twitter lets users browse topics by the hashtag feature, Facebook now
groups status updates according to topic on users’ home page. For example,
if several of your friends have made comments on the topic of the Florida
Gators, Facebook groups the updates together in the hopes of making more sense
of your News Feed and helping to identify trends among your friends.
Germany vs. Facebook via Mashable, The New York Times
The German
state Schleswig-Holstein has ordered state
institutions to close their Facebook Pages and take the Like button off their
websites or face fines for failing to do so. The rationale behind the
decision is attributed to their belief that Facebook is building profiles of
both users and non-users using information collected from the Like button, violating
German and European data protection laws. A few weeks prior, a German regulator
claimed Facebook’s photo-tagging software violates
European privacy laws.
Facebook and Ticketmaster let you see your
friends’ seats at events via ReadWriteWeb
Ticketmaster
and Facebook have now integrated
to let users see where their friends are sitting at events. Ticketmaster
integrated with the social media platform in the hopes of making buying tickets
for an event “as social as attending them.”
Google+
Google+ bans simple names and pseudonyms — and receives backlash for doing so via
Mashable
Earlier last
month, Google
banned the use of pseudonym and common names, threatening to suspend users
who violated their Common Names Policy. The policy was implemented to fight
spam and the creation of fake profiles and ignited a firestorm of responses
from angry users.
Verified Google+ accounts now available via
Mashable
Google+ has now
made it so public figures, celebrities and those with large number of people in
their circles can have verified
Google+ accounts. Mark Zuckerberg,
Pete Cashmore and yes, even Britney Spears are among some of the verified
accounts Google+ users can add to their circles.
Google releases Chrome extension that
translates Google+ posts via Mashable
Google now
features a tool that allows you to easily
translate posts from Google+ users. The next extension allows users to
translate posts and comments from more than 50 languages.
Foursquare
Foursquare now offers tip lists with
locations via ReadWriteWeb
Foursquare
recently revealed its new feature, Tips Lists, which allows
Foursquare users to group tips about certain locations into thematic lists.
The provides List creators with a way to build online relationships with other
Foursquare users, allowing them to act as defacto “tour guides” for niche
interests.
Social media milestones:
Beyonce’s baby bump reveal at this year’s Video
Music Awards broke a new Twitter record with 8,868 tweets sent per second after
news of the baby bump broke.
Facebook received 1 trillion page views in June
2011
Tumblr receives 13.4 million unique visitors in
the US in July, up 218 percent from the same time period in 2010