February is a rough month for everyone: Football is over, there are fewer days in the month, the groundhog saw his shadow, and there’s also the stress and desperation that tends to surround Valentine’s Day. You’ve likely spent the last month brushing up on the lyrics to, “I Will Always Love You” and figuring out which teams will dominate March madness. If you were too busy inhaling chocolates and watching red carpet coverage to see what was going on in social media, don’t worry: We’ve got you covered.

Facebook

Facebook Timeline available to brand pages (via AdWeek) Similar to the changes that were made to personal profiles, businesses can now change their pages to the Timeline layout that features a large cover photo and a history of the company year by year. Businesses will have until March 30 to make changes to their pages and then will be automatically updated. You can see examples of the Timeline for brands on our Facebook page.

Facebook introduces ads that appear when users log out (via Mashable) Facebook reps have confirmed that log-out ads will appear live in April. These ads, which can reach about 37 million users who log out of Facebook every day, are part of the premium products available to advertisers.

Twitter

Twitter breaks news of Whitney Houston’s death before news outlets do (via Mashable) The social media network broke news of the pop singer’s death 27 minutes prior to mainstream media releasing the info. The first tweet of the news broke about 35 minutes after Houston was pronounced dead by Beverly Hills Police.

Twitter hits its 500 millionth user (via MediaBistro) Twitter hit 500 million users last month, which isn’t bad for a social network that has been around only six years.

Twitter testing translation feature (via Mashable) As Twitter’s reach continues to spread throughout the globe, the social networking site is experimenting with a feature that will automatically translate tweets in other languages using Bing’s translation services. This service is only available for some users at this point and it’s unknown when it will be available for everyone.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn lets users follow businesses (via Mashable) LinkedIn announced a program that lets brands feature a follow button on the company’s home page, similar to Liking a brand on Facebook or following them on Twitter. Users who follow these brands on LinkedIn will see the brand’s updates in their newsfeed when they log in.

Google+

Google now features a share box on its home page (via Marketing Land) Google has released a  new share button that allows users to easily post information to their Google+ profiles directly from the Google home page. This is the first time in Google’s history that users are able to do something other than just search on the company’s home page.

Google+ users spend less than 4 minutes each month on the site (via Bloomberg) According to research from ComScore Inc., Google+ users spent less than 4 minutes on the site in January. By comparison, Facebook users spent 7.5 hours on Facebook during the same time period.