Category Archives: Social Media

Global Twitter Restrictions

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Twitter changed the restrictions on some tweets in some countries yesterday. Before, the general policy was that a tweet would be removed on a global level by Twitter if a government requested that. Yesterday, however, the policy was adjusted.

Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

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While this is – of course – running into criticism as it relates to free speech, many do think that Twitter chose the best option available to them.

Twitter would be banned outright in many countries if it did not agree to restrict Tweets, said Cynthia Wong of the Center for Technology & Democracy.

“The question is: What’s best for freedom of speech?” Wong said. “If Twitter was completely blocked from certain countries, is that really better? It looks like Twitter has done a good job in thinking through how to mitigate the human rights harm in complying with local law.”

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Considering how big of a role Twitter has played in past civic uprisings globally, it seems obvious they’re still try to be a tool for the people and a voice to those silenced when they can. We’ll see how well it plays out when it’s first put to use.

Timeline Rolls Out To All Facebook Accounts

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Facebook has announced that they will be rolling out the Timeline profile format to all users in the next few weeks. Facebook is offering the same 7-day “trial” period to the users that get the Timeline rollout so that they can go back and edit their Facebook histories before the Timeline profile is revealed on their public account. That “trial” period has been given to all users that have opted in early to the new profile display in the last few months. This gives a user 7 days to hide old statuses and links and pictures they don’t necessarily want easily found in your past Facebook use.

Of course, if Facebook has not rolled this out automatically to a user’s account, they can still get it by going here and clicking “Get Timeline.” They’ll get the same 7-day grace period to edit the Facebook past before that format is used permanently. Either way, every user will be using the Timeline format eventually, adding a bit more consistency to the social platform that has been pretty divided in the recent months.

Best Time Of Day For Sharing Content

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We’ve all seen our twitter stream fill up with links to the same article and we all wish it was an article we had written. While content should be king in terms of quality getting shared, the article may have better luck passing through the statuses and tweets if it’s introduced during the right time of day. Or on the right day of the week.

This article at Social Fresh highlights just those ideas. If you want an article to have a great chance of being based down the digital line of social media, when should you publish it? When should you share it? And it doesn’t look like the data matches up for all times of content goals. If you want the best days for sharing, you need Thursdays and Wednesdays. However, if you’re looking for the best days for pageviews? Mondays and Tuesdays. But if you decide what day is best for you, what about time of day?

27% of all content shares occur between 8am and 12pm EST.

There is a spike at 9am and 10am and then a decline the rest of the day. There are also smaller but significant spikes in sharing at 2pm and 9pm EST. We like to share content in the morning as we catch up with news. We circle back and do the same after lunch as well as after dinner in the late evening.

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Of course, this information is useless if you don’t generate content worth sharing. But if you think you have the content that you need, this article proves there’s plenty of information out that suggests to you the best time to share that content to maximize publicity.

Social Growth Trends Towards Interests Instead Of People

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While all reports indicate that social networking is the main pull of all internet traffic lately, comScore seems to indicate even more specific trends.

It seems that the social networking sites that encourage growth around interests instead of personal relationships are the fastest growing in the industry. The two seeing these shocking levels of growth are Tumblr and Pinterest. While social sites like Twitter and Facebook tend to build relationships around people, Tumblr and Pinterest build relationships around interests. You follow Tumblr blogs about the shows you watch, or the movies you love. You follow Pinterest boards about food or crafts or fashion. On Twitter and Facebook you follow people. And it looks like popularity trends recognize the difference.

The blogging platform gained nearly three million new unique visitors, growing 18% from 15.9 million to 18.8 million uniques. Meanwhile, the online pin-it site boomed by nearly 55%, from 4.85 million to 7.51 million uniques.

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Tips For Using Pinterest

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Now that Pinterest has the attention of people other than fashionistas, foodies, and crafters, there are tips and tricks rolling around the web for new users of the site. Mashable has the best round-up teaching some of the ins and outs of the platform. However, I’m not sure how “cutting edge” the tips are. They basically make up a “How To Use Pinterest” assortment of tips, nothing too new to anyone using Pinterest for longer than a few weeks. I would append one of their tips, however. They recommend looking at a users assortment of boards and just following the ones that appeal to you. I would suggest, if the majority of them interest you, following the user as a whole. That way if they set up new boards you will see those pins as well. If pins pop up on your feed you aren’t into, then just go unfollow that board itself.

Now, if the user only has a handful of boards that appeal to you? Then do it how Mashable suggests. Save you time in the long run.

Is Instagram Ruler Of The Mobile Social Network?

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This article analyzes Instagram as a strictly mobile social network and compares it to the other similar network: Foursquare. “Instagram and Foursquare both fit this bill well and they were both created as mobile apps first, not websites with a mobile app added later.” While people on the go may interact on Facebook more using their mobile devices, Instagram was created ONLY as a mobile network, without a real web-based counterpart. Facebook, on the other hand, was established as a web-based network first, with the mobile app becoming the main tool.

But the comparison is still important. Instagram announced at Le Web that they have passed 14 million users and well on their way to 15 million users. Foursquare announced previously that they currently have 15 million users.

Instagram is growing at 2 million new users a month, Foursquare at .866 million a month. Instagram will likely surpass Foursquare’s user numbers in January, if they have not already.

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Facebook Timeline Open To All

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It seems that after a long trail period with limited users, Facebook is finally offering the new “Timeline” profile to everyone. Once you choose to use the Timeline, Facebook will give you SEVEN DAYS to tweak it before publishing it live to your contacts. This is a good opportunity for the users to go through and clean up their timeline since this new profile will allow contacts to see everything the user has done since the first signed up with Facebook.

As a user cleans up their timeline profile, Facebook basically just gives the user the option to “hide” things from their timeline. But nothing gets deleted from the history itself. This new timeline profile will also allow a user to “feature” items on their wall by giving that item more room on the profile page.

How useful this new profile will be depends entirely on the individual Facebook users. If you are the type of Facebook user who simply looks at things posted in your feeds, you’ll never really see how anyone edits their profile page. However, if you pop by a friend’s wall periodically then you’ll notice a huge difference.

It will be interesting to get reports back from average users now implementing the Timeline profile option.

YouTube Changes (For The Better?)

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In a world of social networking where I’m probably the worst culprit to whine about changes to my platforms, I am proud to say I am thrilled with the updates that made. Aesthetically? It’s so much better. I like the look of the pages and the display of the videos much better than before. But functionally? I really do love it. YouTube has always seemed a bit counter-intuitive with the way they offer their options and information to users. I have gotten used to it, of course, but I do know it’s a struggle for newbies to navigate. I really think some of the design changes and menu adjustments will work for the better for new users and I thin it will clean up management for veterans. Especially the analytics which were always available, but I felt like they were never easy to find.

I also like some of the new features, like “Pinning” which allows you to pick some of your subscriptions to keep on your dashboard home at all times. I did quickly adjust my display to show “uploads only” from my subscriptions because I have no desire to see updates from every comment or “Like” they’ve done across YouTube. I also like that the “rating” is gone and there is merely the option to Like/Don’t Like. It does seem simpler and I really think more people will click one or the other instead of rating a video. I’m more likely to click “Like” below a video I like than I ever was to actually rate it.

What do you think of the changes?

Twitter Adds Photo Galleries

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If you upload photos while using Twitter (using Twitter itself or some services like Instagram and TwitPic) the photos now show up in a gallery on your profile. At least they do for your followers by default. If someone who does not follow you clicks over to your profile, they’ll see the option to “Display Media” on your profile page that will show your gallery. You’ll also have the option to “Always Display Media” from there on out so that you’ll always see a user’s gallery on their profile page.

These galleries will show recent images while also giving the viewer the option to “View All” photos in the gallery. I think this is quite a nice feature as it adds a little more dimension to a Twitter profile which sometimes feels bland in 140 character increments. Especially with the rise in popularity of Facebook which displays photos at the top of a users page as well.