Tag: Social Media

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News

Google Allows Sharing “+1” Links to Google+ Circles

Google introduced its +1 button long before Google+ was unleashed to the world. With Google+, the +1 button made sense. It was now more or less a counterpart of Facebook’s “Like” button.

Google has announced a new feature called +Snippets, with which Google+ users can share snippets of the link with their Google+ Circles.

As you can see in the image above, soon people will be able to start sharing on Google+, a link which they recommend using the +1 button. The big advantage over Facebook’s ‘Like’ feature is that the person sharing the link does not need to visit a pop-up page and all the sharing , adding comments, managing which circle can view the link is done without ever leaving the page. 🙂

This will in effect integrate +1 with Google+ completely, thus allowing the Google+ social network to make sharing links a lot more easier.

This feature is not available for everyone now, but you can start using it by registering here.

This is a new addition by Google on Google+ and follows the popular ‘Games’ feature on Google+. What are your views on sharing +1 Snippets on Google+ Circles? Do drop in your comments.

Link: Google+ Platform Preview

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News

Google Social Search now shows Google+ posts

Google search engine is dropping a new bomb over Bing’s social search project. Bing and Facebook came together almost a year ago to leverage social search. This is a way of showing links or updates made my your socially connected network on search engines.

This makes sense to an extent when you are searching for movie reviews or the news.

Google Plus lacked search, and it was conspicuous considering it was a Google product.

Google has now integrated Google Plus into social search. This makes sense, as I wrote in an earlier post about how Google uses Gmail contacts via Google Profiles to power social search results from various other social networks.

What does this signal?

It means there are two things about to happen. Firstly, we might see Bing and Facebook getting a little nervous. Considering both Bing and Facebook might have different agendas even as they co-operate. Google+ and Google Search could never have differing agendas.

Secondly we can soon expect that Google+ will see a search facility (probably Google real-time results) to give users a neat interface to actually look up trending search results.

What are you views? Will social search help Google+ or it will have no impact on Facebook? Do drop in your comments.

Related: Search for public posts and profiles on Google+, Buzz and Reader

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News

How Google uses YOUR Gmail for Social Search

Google’s social search allows you to look up which of your friends are sharing something online. Here if you search and look up social search on Google, it will show you the name of your friends who shared something.

Ever wondered how Google manages to know who your friends on other networks, even if they are not part of your Google contacts? The answer lies with Google profiles.

If you are signed into your Google account, look up this link and you will come across a complete list of your Gmail contacts and their social connections along with related shared content through these connections. Clicking on ‘Show paths’ allows you further information on social connections made through Google Profile.

Below is an screen-shot of my friend’s connections via Google Profile.

With Google+, more and more people will end up having Google profiles which are active. Most people end up sharing links to blogs, social networking accounts. As more people end up using Google+, our Gmail contact list will become a tremendous source of social information for Google.

Can we do anything about it? Not really, all this information is shared voluntarily and Google is only putting it together.

Do drop in your comments.

Link: Google Social Connections

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News

Angry Birds are Flying into Google Plus!

Google Plus has grown very fast over the past month and a half. It does not have a lot of features except sharing links, posts, images and nice Hangout feature. Last night, Google has started rolling out games on their new social network offering.

The new Games option will show up above the Streams. Click on it will take users to a different ‘Games’ page which will allow users to play online.

Google+ Games Features

The ‘Games’ feature will rest as a separate page and hence all the updates should be relegated to that page. I guess this is different from games on Facebook which end up updating achievements on the ‘wall’ and can upset a lot of friends who are not at all interested in playing these games.

The new games on offer will obviously impact Facebook or at least throws a direct challenge to them. One of the main reasons why people spend a lot of time on Facebook are games like Farmville and Mafia which had active followers in their millions.

Angry Birds already has a Chrome app and now seems to be closer to Google by making an appearance on Google+. It might also give some of these games the social element which was missing previously.

The feature on Google+ will be rolled out soon, if you have it available do drop in your views about Google+ Games.

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News

Twitter Adds Activity Feature to Become a Facebook Clone

If you enter your Facebook account, they first page you see the is the Home tab. It shows a lot of feeds from your friend’s activity on Facebook. What they have liked, comments, shared photos etc. This gives it great traction when it comes to social interaction.

Twitter is releasing a new feature called ‘Activity’. This new ‘Activity’ tab will show retweets, follows, and other things by people you follow. This will surely make it more social but might just make hurt its current open structure, in which tweets were being served up.

Will Twitter be a Facebook clone?

For most people using Twitter through their Phone apps, or other web app – this change will have no effect. But for people using Twitter on the web, the experience will become a lot more social and concentrated on what your network is doing. This will be a lot different from the current scenario where Twitter feed often behaves like an information fire-hose about the latest happenings.

Along with Twitter’s new image sharing feature, I wonder if ‘activity’ feature will impact Twitter’s uniqueness, or are they also feeling the heat from Google Plus?

Do drop in your comments.

Source: Twitter Blog

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News

Twitter Add Photo Sharing Service: Competition to TwitPic and yfrog

If you are on Twitter and ever shared an image on it, chances are you used TwitPic or yfrog. These are third-party apps which help Twitter users to share photos.

Today, Twitter has introduced a new feature which allows users to upload photos.

This would probably worry TwitPic and yfrog. It also is another case of Twitter replicating what 3rd party developers created.

Twitter’s history of borrowing ideas

  1. Retweet Option: The Retweet feature was not exactly a 3rd party developer’s idea but this idea came from the Twitter users themselves. Just adding an ‘RT’ in front of the tweet allowed people to give credit to the original tweet. Twitter then included this as a new feature in their interface itself.
  2. Tweet Counter: Webmaster usually used retweet buttons on their website with Tweetmeme. Twitter then also did the same thing, possibly making people forget all about Tweet Meme service.
  3. Tweet Deck: This was the most expensive deal for Twitter. It did not have a great platform like TweetDeck and before UberMedia could buy it, it bought TweetDeck. Chances are TweetDeck will rust away over the new few years.
Do try out Twitter new add photo option on their website. Do let me know if you would use that or stick with a 3rd party service.
Categories
Tips

[Tip] Find Your Twitter Followers on Google+

Finding people on Google+ is quite easy. With the recent mass invite URL feature, getting even strangers in your network has become easy. 🙂

If we want to get all the people we follow on Twitter and Google+ to be common, a great way to do that is use Twitter2Plus.

Just type in the twitter handle in the search bar, and get all your Twitter contacts who also have a profile on Google+. Now simply start adding them to a Google+ Circle.

What the website does, is match one twitter account to another with the corresponding Google+ profile in which the twitter URL might be included.

Considering Twitter and Google+ have the same structure of not needing to mutually follow each other, this tool could be very useful to follow your Twitter friends on Google+.

Try out Twitter2Plus and drop in your comments.

Link: Twitter2Plus

Related: Find people on Google+ Directory

Categories
Reviews

Flip Through Your Twitter and Facebook Updates Like a Magazine

I am always on the lookout for new online tools to manage my social media profiles. The real pay-out is when some service approach social media management in a new way. For example Twimbow, which uses a colour coded strategy to manage your Twitter account.

With Layers – which is a Chrome App, we  can look up your social media accounts or even RSS feeds in a magazine-like flip layout.

Layers App Features

  • Install the Layers App on your Chrome browser and sign-in to your Twitter and Facebook accounts.
  • I could add RSS feeds also into the web app, which can also be flipped through.
  • If you are looking at Facebook or Twitter posts with a link, the page actually loads up on top of the slide, while you can still continue looking at other posts.

Layers, is not going to replace other social clients like TweetDeck or Hoot Suite. It cannot be considered to be an alternative to Google Reader either. But for some people who only follow a couple of blogs or casually glance at their twitter timeline, Layers will be very interesting.

Do give it a try and drop in your comments and views.

Link: Layers

Categories
Tips

Enable Automatic Sharing of Google+ Posts on Twitter

Sometimes when I post something on Google, I wish there was an automatic way to share it on Twitter. Manage Flitter has a nice tool which allows sharing of Google+ posts on Twitter.

Manage Flitter you might remember from an older post, is a great online tool to clean up your Twitter account. Clean up means, it shows you accounts which do not follow you back, accounts which tweet too much or too little for you to choose and unfollow.

Now with new Manage Flitter’s Plus tool, it allows automatic posting of your Google Plus updates on your Twitter account.

Just link up your Google+ profile ID, sign in with your Twitter credentials and we are all set.

If you want your Twitter followers to check out your Google+ profile with the update, we can even include a link to the original Google+ post.

If you are looking to share your Google+ updates on Twitter automatically, use Manage Flitter Plus. Do drop in your comments.

Link: Manage Flitter Plus

Categories
Reviews

Manage your Twitter Account With a Colour Coded Strategy – Twimbow

Colours can mean a lot of things. Red usually means danger, green means go and so on. Color coded charts are often used as a great way to focus on important information, especially if there is an overload of information which needs to be digested.

Twimbow is a nice online tool to manage your Twitter account using a color coding strategy.

Twimbow Features

  • If you are using TweetDeck or HootSuite, you might be really interested in Twimbow. It has a neatly arranged look about it and a nice search feature.
  • It allows tagging certain accounts with a particular colour. For example I decided to mark @Devils_workshop as must read and hence assign it the color ‘Red’.

  • Now while looking up the feed, just clicking on the red colored icon, all the tweets from the categorised account get highlighted as seen in the image below.

  • I could also drag and drop accounts into different lists within seconds. Mentions, retweets and replies are also highlighted with different colors.
  • Users can add multiple twitter accounts. I found it faster than TweetDeck but then I have not tested it for more than a couple of hours.

Honestly, I found it better than TweetDeck and HootSuite for it’s new approach but it does lack the feature of scheduling tweets. If you want a new approach to managing your Twitter accounts from the browser, try out Twimbow. Do drop in your comments.

UPDATE: The team behind Twimbow, citing new API guidelines by Twitter have decided to discontinue supporting the app.

Link: Twimbow

Related: 5 Recommended Twitter Apps