Twitter Periscope Live Broadcasting Now Available New App

Twitter has published a proprietary live-streaming video app for iOS .

This news comes in a context where a few weeks ago it was announced a similar service Meerkat at the SXSW .

The new app called Periscope works by allowing its users to live-stream from their smartphones to viewed publicly on-line.

This new app is not a new idea, as there are already similar apps available, however in this case it appears to be trending topic as technology such as 4G allows for better capabilities and signal improvement responsiveness. In practice the way it works is that much in the same way as other apps that can live stream,  As soon as an event starts by a user by starting a broadcast it is followed by an optional alert that is published live on their twitter stream. 

As expected, the live broadcast has the interactive capability for users to comment and send “hearts”. Another option available is the possibility to "lock" a broadcast so that it becomes private or accessible to only certain approved users.

Currently the new app is only available on the Apple store.  In comparison the new app Periscope with Meerkat does have some key differences in terms of media content offering features to users, 

With Periscope users can save the video streams after the broadcast has finished, for later viewing for a period of 24 hours, on the other hand Meerkat is ephemeral and live video disappears once you finish broadcasting.

Feel free to add your comments to this post, thank you.

Instagram New App - Layout, Display And Share Collage Photos

The announcement news from Instagram that it now has a new application called Layout, 

The new app Layout, offers new features for Instagram users as they use their photos to build photo group collages. And subsequently be able to share to Instagram, Facebook, or any where else.

These type of applications already exist and they are quite popular, however Instagram now offers with this new app, features that are an improvement where compared to other apps such as Pic Stitch, Pic Collage, InstaCollage, PhotoGrid, and these are just a few examples. 

The way these apps offer features are all based on similar varieties of blank photo grids where users can customize with their own photos, optional text, stickers, frames and backgrounds.

With the new app Layout, users can build collages by changing the order of the steps involved in the typical process of other apps.

As a user selects its photos, Layout then presents previews of custom layouts that a user can scroll down to see its photos. Then a selection of up to nine photos can be made, and each time to tap to add another, photo grid options update automatically to reflect the new photos selected additions. At the end when a user is ready they can simply flick through the presented options in order to choose their grid.

On Layout there is also an option to select Faces, where a user from its camera roll can select and filter just photos with pictures that feature people.

Another new option on Layout, is the Photo Booth that a user can use to capture spontaneous moments. The way it works is that when a user taps this button, the app starts a countdown timer and then captures a series of photos that will appear instantly in a layout.

Layout app from Instagram,

Feel free to add your comments to this post, thank you.

Ambient Proximity New Hype On Location Social Media Sharing Services

From a social media user experience it is not always about where your connections are at a location exactly, but in relative terms how close a user is to another, and that is the relevant factor. 

Following recent years on providing a solution to always provide users exact coordinate check-ins in both Foursquare and Facebook platforms, the user experience is now trending away from this feature capability and focusing more on ambient proximity, which works by constantly and automatically sharing your approximate distance from your nearest connections contained in distance labelled groups. 

The process of ambient proximity permits a user to learn if one their connections is near enough to meet up, without necessarily having the stalking capability of knowing exact locations historically on maps. This new approach could be much more appealing to the wider social media daily users.

In this context, Foursquare’s new ambient proximity app Swarm was announced today to be released very soon. It creates a feed of a user connections into groups based on their present distance. Also launched recently was the Facebook Nearby Friends .

Feel free to add your comments to this post, thank you.

Artificial Intelligence Now Tracking Conversations on Social Media

Salorix has a new analytics tool called Amplify, this new tool is built based on machine learning relating to artificial intelligence and it is designed to operate on learning data acquired via social networking. The way it works by searching social media data involving user conversations and interactions that contain keywords based on specific search terms that flagged by any monitoring business. Furthermore, this analysis tool also searches for conversations that may be related and of interest to products and services that a business may be currently providing.

Amplify works as a supervised machine learning where the criteria for searching relevant conversations is based by scores given on a large data set of tweets that were made available publicly as interactive data. In order to improve its accuracy it bases its scores on input by humans that have voted relevance results. Users of Amplify can also further fine tune scores so that the program is as best and efficient as possible. it as the program works for them.

A direct consequence of this new solution, is that for marketers they can utilize the information to direct their campaigns to a relevant audience that is engaging and influential on their business services or products.
Feel free to add your comments to this post, thank you.

Kred Story, A New Visual Stream of Your Social Media

It has just been launched a new visual display for social media content producers, it is called Kred Story and the it works by displaying a personal, visual stream.  On this new visual display, it can be seen social media posts, pictures, links and achievements that measured by Kred.

It is also possible to explore social streams from anyone, favourite brands and popular publications. As an example by typing @name like @CNN, @Wired or @BoingBoing produces a scannable overview of their most influential content.

Furthermore, a hashtag can be entered to display users that are trending and engaging on an event, etc .  It seems that kred is following on the rebelmouse visual displays innovation.

New Routes for Facebook as it Enters World of On-line Gambling

Facebook is innovating once again, following the disappointing stock share current value descent pattern, it seems that Facebook is now fighting back by trying to show shareholders that its value can only go up as new income possibilities are always emerging.  Facebook has launched its first very own  application for users to be able to gamble using real money.
Facebook users residents in the UK aged 18 and over, will be able to play online bingo and slots with cash prizes. Nonetheless, when it comes to world markets, it may not look so easy to offer this service to its users, as many Countries to have legal restrictions and regulations linked to on-line gambling activities for its citizens.

In this context, particularly in the US, the market for real-money social gaming is in effect closed. It has only been recently possible to play on-line however the restrictions are so tight that it becomes so difficult to implement a successful business plan including its required monitoring technology.

Facebook on-line gambling will start with the Bingo and Slots Friendzy app in partnership with Gamesys, which is a top player in the UK gambling operators. Furthermore, facebook seems to in talks with gambling companies to diversity the games to perhaps include casino games such as blackjack and roulette.

Facebook Stories, A New Social Site in Extraordinary Ways

Facebook has today launched an interesting original site where its content is run and maintained by Facebook itself, named Facebook Stories. The way the site operates is collecting and selecting  interesting stories depending on the chosen theme during on a monthly basis. The inaugural Facebook Story for this month, is based on the  theme of "remembering".  Anyone can view an infographic that details and presents a process on how Facebook users typically share and post important memories or events such as travel and marriages, it is also possible for users to submit stories, however Facebook will decide what story or who to feature.

The site will be showing and featuring videos and articles that will tell stories in a creative way, based on the activity of Facebook users and its community, nevertheless this new site does not resemble to Tumblr's Storyboard or Twitter Stories. In comparison this new site of Facebook Stories is quite different as it will enhance community stories based on a monthly trend or theme.

Facebook's Tucker Bounds commented on ABCNews "We wanted to create a place where we could celebrate great stories" . On this new site, will be displayed not just stories but also features such as Goodreads and Playlists to feature new music by "inspiring artists", furthermore there will be a monthly podcast.

Twitter Planning Platform Structural Improvements

Following a recent article, it is apparent that twitter is planning many changes at its core platform. As a result this means, that the web technology is always evolving and competing for better ease of display for its users and more notably to advertisers and marketing companies. Twitter has already implemented media rich tweets, however not to the extend it is now planning.

The aim seems to be to please advertisers and thus increase profitability, the main development is being directed to producing rich media kind of expandable widgets that are called cards, an example can be seen here.  Twitter is now preparing and engaging with developers so that apps can be built using this new functionality and as a result embed cards to be displayed.

There are existing twitter applications where these "cards" may never be displayed, examples are Tweetbot and Flipboard. It can then be concluded that these apps may have to stop operating. It then follows that for this apparent reason, the Flipboard CEO Mike McCue has recently resigned from the Twitter board.  There are many interesting developments currently happening at twitter so we do recommend to read the full story here.

Google Acquires Wildfire Social Marketing Platform

It has been announced that Google is to acquire Wildfire Interactive, a startup company that specializes in promotional marketing on social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter,  Google+, among others.

Following this addition to Google's portfolio can be easily deduced that Google is preparing and embracing social media marketing as a highly rewarding offering to its users and advertisers. The niche offering from Wildfire is that it offers users the ability to promote content across a wide variety of social networking sites from a single central platform. It can be envisaged that from the current offering of Google analytics and DoubleClick, it may not be the complete full circle in terms of metrics and advertising to users, with this new acquisition it will allow Google to speed up new capabilities with far reaching solutions where marketing advertisers and viral strategists can better plan, deploy and measure campaigns across a wider dynamic spectrum of web activity. Currently Wildfire users are able to publish content simultaneously in many places which can include content as status messages, also administer owner pages, run advertising custom campaigns with performance metrics on a multitude of social sites from a single central dashboard.

Wildfire customers include Virgin, Cirque du Soleil, Gilt Group and Spotify, and this shows how attractive the platform is which in turn Google wishes to benefit by also incorporating these highly profitable customers.

These news follows on that other multinational companies have also recently been acquiring social media marketing startups.  The examples are Salesforce where it recently acquired Buddy Media. Furthermore,  Oracle has also been active by entering to social business game.

A New Social Secure Network, Welcome Tuenti to the World

A new global launch is happening today for an existing service called Tuenti, which is a  Spanish social network with a current 13 million users mostly based in Spain. This social network is owned by Telefonica with a majority stake. Today's launch is about making the current available service open to a worldwide user audience and participation.  Furthermore, there are extra new features added which can be seen as a sign that it aims to compete with the giants of Facebook and twitter.

Following today's launch, Tuenti is now available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Slovak, and Czech.  The service design appears to be developed as a mash-up of a simplified framework when compared to Facebook and Twitter.  It operates similar to twitter in the way that is are limited to 140 characters.  In comparison to Facebook, Tuenti relates as adding status updates and photos  “moments” in Tuenti terminology.

The concept that having a large book of contacts, however with a smaller number of close friends is what differentiates Tuenti, which can be a  more private social network.  The process to sign-up for Tuenti is done by using people’s real names and by entering a mobile number in order to verify their accounts with a confirmation code to be received.  Another interesting feature is the security concern on this network, as a result all is sent data via SSL, furthermore users activity on Tuenti is not indexed by Google. Users are also able to chat in real-time from today.

Today's statement by a Telefonica representative: “We’ve integrated a globally competitive messaging service with our core social network, while incorporating a uniquely simple privacy model that makes it easy for users to control what they share”, in a statement.

Facebook Calls To Compete with Airtime and Google+ Hangouts

Following recent news, it appears that Facebook is now testing a new feature “Call” button  to be positioned at the top users profiles pages.  This is a recent new development following the video chat feature which was launched when Facebook partnered with Skype over a year ago.

This may interpreted as a strategy and a display of the competitive spirit of Mark Zuckerberg's following his own amazed photo posted on-line while testing Airtime's solution.  This new development does fall quite nicely in a competitive strategy in an attempt to outsmart Airtime, as well as a start to direct and address the growing popularity of Google+ hangouts.

Foursquare New Design Available Next Week

According to Foursquare twitter account stream, it now includes a hashtag #allnew4sq where it is being announced a new design for foursquare users.  It appears that with the new design, foursquare users will have an better experience in terms of recommendations for locations and more interactivity between users of which it can be argued a wider social experience with extra features which go beyond the mere check-ins.

Foursquare has a considerable large data set and growing daily, the data includes not just locations and user statistics but also has the capability to learn user patterns of their activities. With this growing own data source it can be assumed that foursquare can now add extra functionality to enrich its users experience based on geographical activities. As a result, it seems to be quite natural that foursquare is now evolving its offering which will include recommendations, customised to a user historical pattern as well as proposing locations based on ratings, quality and popularity. The new design should include a better explore functionality based on this improvement, possibly including  trending locations and destinations maps of friends locations. You can follow us on YODspica.

Social Media in China With Code User Restrictions

Social media in China is a growing concern from the authorities, its biggest microblogging service called Weibo (similar to twitter) will now incorporate behind the scenes code of which it executes functions to restrict the type of messages that are allowed be posted publicly. Furthermore, it is also expected that a credit scoring algorithm will also be embedded and results displayed, so that anyone with a low score face the possibility of their accounts being suspended or deleted. It is understood that users will start with a set number points as their initial metric which will then go up or down depending on their activities based on the rules.

This insight was first reported here The Next Web quoting  the rules from an anonymous group.

The restrictive rules appear to be these:

• Spread rumours


• Publish untrue information


• Attack others with personal insults or libellous comments


• Oppose the basic principles of China's constitution


• Reveal national secrets


• Threaten China's honour


• Promote cults or superstitions


• Call for illegal protests or mass gatherings

Is Global Facebook Helping the World or Itself?

At present the financial model of Facebook relies on advertising revenue, as a result it can be argued that Facebook is better than other technology based companies, however other people also argue that in terms technological development the platform does not contribute to original scientific knowledge or discoveries, furthermore nor does it challenge sufficiently current technologists with new thinking and implementations.

Facebook as a business which has revenue solely based on advertising is highly dependent on external economic factors. In terms of global benefit it also does not contribute with any benefit to people in terms of their economic development, as most global companies tend to do.

Facebook Realisations

Facebook is highly reliable on selling people's content, networks and all associated glorifications of which businesses are happy to be part of in order to further their own interests of reaching many people globally.  As a result it can be argued that the present value of Facebook on the stock market is a mere reflection of how people see it in terms of their own contributions and efforts on their facebook activities.

The main value generated from facebook may be the time spent by its users and their activities, which in terms of data it is highly valuable but not necessarily worthy of technology innovation, rather popular activities on a mass scale.

Facebook’s populism is amazing for a few selected people which run and own facebook, however for the vast majority of people around the world including economic development does very little apart from very cheap entertainment and time consumption.

Future Prospects 

To be fair, Facebook does allow people to network online by helping connections across the globe, subsquently a few years ago most facebook users would find it difficult to communicate in a social manner with distant people or even with people near you at convenient times suited to everyone's time schedules. Furthermore, users can meet new connections and broaden their knowledge about world society as well as learning and understanding cultural differences.

As Facebook is now listed publicly, a new wave may happen in terms financial returns for its owners, however its traditional market is based on users which prefer not to pay for things, rather be entertained and challenged on pretty things online which make them look engaging, sharing, popular and  little celebrities. This could quite the sort of users that do not like or understand too much of the financial market and are dubious particularly on the current world concerns for financial stability.

The Ultimate Twitter Tools List

Twitter is very popular, and many people use it in different ways as well as using different tools. Even for the advanced twitter user, it can be difficult to keep up with new tools and their success or disappearance. In many cases, when people are comfortable with one tool they will remain to loyal to. As a result, users may use tools which are convenient which they are used to but not necessarily the best tools. In this post we present a list of the many available to get the best of twitter usage.

Clients

• TweetDeck


• Seesmic


• HootSuite


• Destroy Twitter


• Hibari


• Twitbin


• Echofon


• ManageFlitter


• Twidget


• TwitterForBusyPeople


• Refollow


• All My Tweets

Interesting Tools

• twitcam


• Buffer


• TweetMeme


• Twitter Status


• Twileshare


• Twitvid


• Twups


• Tweetwally


• TweetMyJobs

Group Tools

• Splitweet


• BirdHerd


• Nurph


• Chitty Chat


• GroupTweet


• TweetChat


• Twibes

Management

• Proxlet


• Slipstream


• Shuush


• Mute.ly


• TwitBlock


• Tweetizen


• Followize

Marketing

• Twylah


• DataSift


• CoTweet


• Twittad


• SocialBro


• BrandChirp


• TweetReach


• adCause


• Twitalyzer


• Featured Users


• Twitdemic


• TwtQpon


• Twtpoll


• Twilert


• The Archivist


• Twitter Counter


• Tweriod


• Commun.it


• Hashtracking


• Who Tweeted Me

Twitter Search

• Twitter / Search


• PostPost


• Snap Bird


• Cloud.li


• BackTweets


• Tweet Scan

Visualizations

• A World of Tweets


• Tori’s Eye


• Social Collider 


• Visible Tweets


• TweepsKey


• Revisit


• Mentionmapp


• The View from Above


• Vizify TweetSheet

Recommendations who to follow

• WeFollow


• Qwitter


• Friend or Follow


• Twibs


• Listorious


• Follow Cost


• Fllwrs

Influence Reports and Statistics

• Klout


• PeerIndex


• TweetLevel

Other Useful Tools

• Portwiture


• #earthtweet


• Food Feed


• Trick.ly


• TweetBackup


• Twilk


• FileSocial


• Nearby Tweets


• dlvr.it


• Tweepi


• Tweetboard


• TrueTwit


• Twitterfeed


• TwitLOL


• Twittereye


• Loudtwitter


• RetweetFollow


• TweepsMap


• DoesFollow


• Tweetburner


• QuoteURL


• Flickr my Background


• Twinslator


• Twepe


• useqtwitter


• Contaxio

Google Improves Google+

There is now a new design/interface version of Google+, featuring revamped navigation including drag-and-drop elements as well as actions that appear when hovering on items. Furthermore, there are new features to ease finding conversations and joining them. Also there are new profile pages, with a specific page just for Google+ Hangouts, among other tweaks and improvements. The new interface has the navigation to the side, where users are allowed to reorder features.

When hovering over each icon feature on the side bar, users are able to note related actions. There is now a new feature which designed as an icon called "Explore", which allows users to go to a page where it is shown trending and popular content.

The Google+ News Feed now features full photos and “conversation cards,” for which there is a better visual borderline between each post. Furthermore,  all activity from content is available below the shared items in a drop-down box.

Hangouts, have also been improved, which includes a specific page where it includes lists of Hangouts invitations from added contacts. It is now  easier to access to live and public Hangouts which a rotating billboard showing popular Hangouts.

The new profile pages have now bigger photos, with a new chat list in the sidebar.

Pinterest Upgrades Site Design

The social image sharing site Pinterest has upgraded its design.

The profile tab that used to be on the left-hand side is now visible on the center of the profile page. Subsequently, allows for  content and repins, like and activity to be the center of attention. Furthermore, it also includes a description and contact info, alongside the profile picture and 3 of the latest people that have been repinned by the user. It is now easy to visitors and other users to note the number of boards a user has including the pin count, likes and activity.

The boards have also been upgraded so that it now includes a larger image of one of your pins, with thumbnails down below for the rest. As a result, it all looks pleasant and the user experience of the site greatly improved.

News Feed Optimization on Facebook

The news feed on Facebook is quite important to gain good ratings by facebook .  Furthermore, the feed can be customized following  its network and its patterns of activity, including how your friends they interact statistically with your news feed.  The news feed on facebook presents users with the top posts from a particular user’s network, it is processed by filtering around 99% of content published by a user.  Below are a few techniques to better optimize your news feed posts on facebook:

Post a variety of content to attract interactions from a higher percentage of your users, raising your affinity (facebook’s algorithm, please note post below) score.

Presenting positive, interesting and fun content on Facebook.

Talk about Facebook.

Respond to comments that your fans post on your contentto increase the number of interactions per post.

Respond to comments that your fans post on your wall to increase your affinity score.

Experiment with targeting posts to get a higher feedback score.

Post regularly, but not too intensively so that your posts can be measured in due time.

Post content outside of main work hours – Facebook users interact more enthusiastically during out of office hours.

Include eye catching images on blog posts.

Appealing meta description for any links you post, it helps the algorithm and seo.

Use share links on your blog articles and landing pages to encourage users to post your content directly.

Integrate landing pages within Facebook, most users like to stay within Facebook.

Post videos directly instead of links to articles with videos, so users can watch the video within Facebook.

Include links in video descriptions to increase traffic to your website.

Share photos, use Flickr integrated with your Facebook account.

Post photos directly to Facebook.

Use simple language.

Ask questions and specifically ask for feedback from your fans.

Use Facebook Insights to measure which content performs the best on your specific page.

Promote user-generated content, including user-created photos, comments, or links.

EdgeRank Facebook’s Algorithm Explained
Facebook has shared their algorithm for ranking content on Facebook and filtering what appears in the news feed. The algorithm consists of three components:

1. Affinity – the number of times 2 people (or a person and a page) have interacted

2. Weight – the number of times users have interacted on your page.

3. Recency – the time since the content was posted

Why RSS Auto Posts on Social Media is Wrong

Businesses are now noticing and starting to invest more on social media marketing in 2011, however not all are embracing the new media seriously or following the correct procedures in order to gain the most from this growing people phenomenon.

Many are still cautious and require much beginner's experimentation before accepting and understanding its full potential.  The good news is that now social media is winning over skeptical marketing executives and traditional methods for promoting, engaging and developing enterprises. Currently many businesses are expanding budgets for social media not because they understand the ROI, but because they appear to be trendy on their eyes.

Many so called wrong reasons and preconceptions still exist, particularly when it comes to increase investment on social media.  A few years ago, YODspica was one of the first companies in Wales to fully embrace social media.  As a result, it has become a Leader as well as a content provider and inspiration for many businesses and individuals.  If follows that the many wrong reasons businesses use social media typically include: running a few trials occasionally,  auto posts on twitter and facebook using RSS feeds from non related news corporations (just tricking readers and increasing their posts count without actually producing any valuable own content or effort). Furthermore,  by allowing inexperienced and temporary staff become the face of the business,  hope for the best with no idea of what the best content may be to produce.  Subsquently, a reliance on so called "experts" which in turn talks and training events  are produced as way to educate users, however as result most speakers tend give an image that social media is something which needs to addressed scientifically with no scope for error for most businesses and individuals.

One of the few right reasons that many social media long term users say, is that mistakes which appear to be "silly" is something perfectly acceptable and that perfection posts are something contrary to the whole social media concept.

Finally, other wrong things tend to be the case where many social media business websites charge users,  in order to allow users to leave their comments on published posts, create blogs or even participate at forums, in this case these businesses are not being "social" rather taking financial advantage by denying users to participate as opposed to the well know freely available to the masses i.e. Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.