Here is a quick roundup of some of the latest happenings in the social media world.
Contents
- WordPress
- Social media stats
- More social media news
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Ready for another News Feed algorithm tweak? This week, Facebook announced that Pages publishing text updates could expect another decrease in reach. Brands are instead urged to “use a link-share [Facebook’s built-in link sharing option]. We’ve found that, as compared to sharing links by embedding in status updates, these posts get more engagement (more likes, comments, shares and clicks) and they provide a more visual and compelling experience for people seeing them in their feeds.” (Source: Facebook Newsroom)
Facebook also released a major update to its App Insights product and started testing ads in third-party mobile apps. However, the company is working directly with its partners to act like a mobile ad network.
Administrators and owners of Pages for places will soon have the ability to respond to public reviews.
Some Princeton researchers were in trouble after releasing a epidemiological-based study showing that Facebook was at risk of losing 80% of its user base within the next three years. The latter responded with a humorous but scathing article that used the same methodology to prove the upcoming demise of the university:
We don’t really think Princeton […] is going anywhere soon. We love Princeton. As data scientists, we wanted to give a fun reminder that not all research is created equal – and some methods of analysis lead to pretty crazy conclusions.
It was another busy week for Google. The company made several announcements:
– New design and simpler navigation for AdWords
- Official launch of the new sign-in page for Google Apps customers
- Introduction of surveys for users who have muted Google network ads.
- Implementation of Knowledge Graph into Search to surface more information on websites appearing in result pages. The option is located next to the URL, as shown below:
Photo credit: Google Inside Search Blog
Is this the end of guest posting as a link-building tactic? Yes, according to Matt Cutts. The head of Google’s webspam team posted an article on his blog that states that the practice has made guest blogging too spammy:
I just want to highlight that a bunch of low-quality or spam sites have latched on to “guest blogging” as their link-building strategy, and we see a lot more spammy attempts to do guest blogging. Because of that, I’d recommend skepticism (or at least caution) when someone reaches out and offers you a guest blog article.
Cutts mentions that quality guest blogging will never be penalized by Google. Just make sure you only accept posts from people you trust.
Pinterest added support for GIFs and new search filters for recipes to its web platform. Users can now find items based on dietary restrictions (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, paleo…) and specific ingredients.
Marketing Land also reports that the team is testing a new category called “Interests” with selected users.
Finally, the site is now available in Korean.
Twitter Cards users finally have an analytics dashboard to play with.
The dashboard also gives you access to more information about your account, including:
– Engagement for all Tweets: mentions, follows, unfollows, retweets, favorites and replies
– Followers data: gender, location, interests…
Vine is one year old. The platform, which launched on January 24, 2013, created a page that highlights the most memorable Vine videos created in 2013.
WordPress
WordPress 3.8.1 is available for download:
Version 3.8.1 is a maintenance releases that addresses 31 bugs in 3.8, including various fixes and improvements for the new dashboard design and new themes admin screen. An issue with taxonomy queries in WP_Query was resolved. And if you’ve been frustrated by submit buttons that won’t do anything when you click on them (or thought you were going crazy, like some of us), we’ve found and fixed this “dead zone” on submit buttons.
It also contains a fix for embedding tweets (by placing the URL to the tweet on its own line), which was broken due to a recent Twitter API change. (For more on Embeds, see the Codex.)
(Source: WordPress.org Blog)
There are new themes in the directory: Opus, Bushwick, Syntax, McKinley, Moka, Gallery.
Social media stats
In its latest Social Media Traffic Report, Shareaholic reveals that three social platforms drove the most traffic to websites during Q3 2013. Facebook is the clear winner with an increase of almost 49 percent compared to Q3: “Last month, this behemoth of a social network drove more than twice the referrals all 7 of the other social media platforms sent to sites, combined,” says Danny Wong on the Shareaholic Blog.
Pinterest and StumbleUpon also played a major role (30.06 and 54.36 percent respectively). Google+ continued its ascent, while Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, and LinkedIn experienced dips in referral traffic.
The study was based on data collected from 200,000 websites with an average of 250 million monthly unique visitors.
According to a report by GlobalWebIndex, social media users rely more and more on networking and messaging apps. For example, WeChat and Vine user bases increased by 379 and 105 percent between Q2 and Q4 2013.
Facebook still is the king of social networks. However, the age profile of its active users has changed. The top demographic can be found in the 25-34 range, which is also the case for Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, MySpace, and Orkut. Younger active users (16-24) are now more likely to hang out on Instagram (39 percent), Tumblr (45 percent), and YouTube (32%).
Instagram is the fastest-growing site globally. Its user base increased by 23 percent.
http://www.slideshare.net/globalwebindex/gwi-social-summary-2014
GWI Social Summary – January 2014 from GlobalWebIndex
More social media news
If you love GIFs, time to vote for your favorites at The .GIFYS:
The .GIFYS are the first ever awards honoring the animated GIF as a medium, social commentary and art form. GIFs in categories ranging from celebrity cats to news and politics were selected by our expert nominating panelists, and then we invited the internet to vote on the most GIFtastic in each category. Winners are immortalized on our website, finally giving GIFs their rightful glory.
(Source: .GIFYS About page)
The winners will be announced on January 31.
Flipboard introduced magazine widgets and profile badges.
Getty Publications launched its Virtual Library. The library allows people to download digital copies of 250 art books released by the Getty Museum, including many out-of-print titles.
HootSuite acquired social analytics platform uberVU.
Last.fm rolled out a YouTube-based beta version of its music player.
Have you checked Swayy‘s new Chrome extension? With it, you can share and schedule posts on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin, and add recommended hashtags and mentions. You will also get article recommendations based on your activity or audience engagement.
Triberr has a notification center.
Tumblr updated its terms and policies. Users are invited to review the changes and submit questions or concerns at [email protected].
