Google+ adds card UI and larger cover photos to mobile site

Google adds card UI and larger cover photos to mobile site

Google has been spending quite a lot of time tweaking, streamlining and generally beautifying the interface of its “social backbone.” But while the mobile apps and desktop site have seen near constant updates, the mobile Google+ site has languished slightly behind. Today Mountain view is delivering a little bit of parity for those on platforms that don’t have an official app, such as Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry 10. The update brings the new card UI to the phone-focused version, along with easier to see and tap +1 and re-share buttons. The updated profile experience is also going mobile, with large cover photos and more touch friendly icons coming to both personal profiles and pages. There’s no need to wait patiently while this rolls out either: the new mobile Google+ site is already live.

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Source: Google+

Twitter partners with NBA to highlight in-game replays, Blake Griffin posterizations

Twitter partners with NBA to highlight ingame replays, Blake Griffin posterizations

In all honesty, Blake Griffin himself could start a social network that served no purpose outside of featuring his dizzying (and disgusting, if you will) array of dunks, and it’d probably go over quite well. Instead, he — along with other superstars in the National Basketball Association — will soon see replays of in-game highlights making waves across Twitter in more official fashion. Hot on the heels of a deal between ESPN and Twitter comes this: a partnership between the NBA and the aforesaid social network that’ll get video highlights to the world while the game is still ongoing.

#NBARapidReplay will be the hashtag to watch for as the playoffs progress, and as you’d expect, short advertisements will appear alongside those clips. Twitter’s foray into the television universe is hardly a new one, but it’s becoming ever more obvious that the company is following the ad dollars into the homes of everyday viewers. Up next? A deal to tweet highlights from the 2014 Masters golf tournament… but only in extremely soft spoken, lowercase, predominantly pompous characters.

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Source: Bloomberg

Google Offers comes to Google+ with in-line save and share feature

Google Offers comes to Google+ with in-line save and share feature

The I/O keynote may be a fading memory, but Google’s work isn’t done just yet. Today its various services are getting a little more tightly knit as Offers comes to your Google+ stream. A select few brands (Zagat, Hello Kitty, Art.com, NOOK and Adafruit) will be part of the pilot program, which will allow businesses to post special updates that include discounts you can save directly to your Offers queue. Obviously, you can also share these offers with people in your circles who you think might be interested. It might seem like a small tweak, but it’s one companies are likely to embrace as a way to simplify their digital coupon offerings and increase engagement on Google+. You should start seeing in-line offers pop up today, so long as you follow one of the pilot brands.

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Via: The Next Web

Source: Google Offers (Google+)

Pinterest lets users send pins directly to friends, receive instant feedback

Pinterest lets users send pins directly to friends, receive instant feedback

Despite being one of the hotter social networks, Pinterest hasn’t been on the cutting edge of sharing: members wanting to send their pins through official channels have had to use old-fashioned email. The service is catching up to the modern era in style, however, with a new option to send pins directly to friends through Pinterest’s mobile and web apps. While email is still hanging around, both ends now just have to be mutual followers on Facebook or Pinterest for the magic to happen. Sharers will also receive any adulation (or criticism) right away — comments, likes and repins on those items will appear as notifications. It will take weeks to fully deploy the direct sending feature, but it shouldn’t be long before everyone is on the same page.

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Via: CNET

Source: Pinterest

Google+ gets a new multi-column card design and ability to automatically add hashtags (update: video)

Today at Google I/O 2013, Big G revealed a big redesign for Google+. Starting later today, users will see their content in a multi-column setup fit for any size screen. The home page for G+ now has up to three columns populated with individual cards for posts and pictures, and the social network can intelligently learn the content of those posts and automatically add related hashtags for you. Columns appear or disappear depending upon the size of your screen, and cards can be flipped to reveal editing options, or moved to suit users’ aesthetic tastes. Should you have the requisite screen real estate, pictures and videos expand to the width of multiple columns to further provide a more visually pleasing social experience. In order to eliminate clutter, Google + has adopted a familiar looking left-side menu layout that disappears until a hovering cursor (or presumably a swiping finger) reveals it.

Update: You can see the new layout and auto hashtagging in action in the video after the break.

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Source: Google+

Facebook finishes rolling out ‘Sections’ to people’s profiles, brings ratings, activities and apps to your timeline

Facebook finishes rolling out 'Sections' to people's profiles, brings ratings activities and apps to your timeline

In mid-March Facebook announced that it would be updating its Timeline design with a focus on users’ interests and app activities. Now the the new “Sections” are finished rolling out and you should be able to find them in the left-side of your profile. Now users can rate books, shows and movies in addition to curate personal content from other apps. As a bonus to developers that are integrating their services (such as Goodreads, Spotify and Endomodo), Facebook is offering a new App Insights tool to track user engagement through the Sections section of people’s profiles. So head on over to your profile right now to get a tweaking — you probably don’t want people to see how much you love that Bruno Mars album.

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Source: Facebook

ESPN and Twitter widen their deal for in-tweet video highlights

ESPN and Twitter widen their deal for inline video highlights

Twitter would really, really like to make ad-driven TV experiences central parts of its service, and it just confirmed that laser-like focus through an expanded deal with ESPN. The sports broadcaster will soon show in-tweet video highlights of football, soccer and the X Games; Twitter, in turn, gets a guaranteed volume of promoted tweets to parallel ads inside the videos themselves. While we’re not looking forward to the new marketing pitches when they surface in the year ahead, we’ll be happy if we can catch more replays without losing our place in the social stream.

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Source: Wall Street Journal

Foursquare’s website now lets you sort businesses by price, hours and check-ins

Foursquare's website now lets you sort businesses by price, hours and checkins

Yelp users have enjoyed advanced sorting for years, but as Foursquare grows beyond basic tips and incentivized check-ins, such search filters are making their way to that site, too. Today’s announcement details a few handy additions, enabling you to locate businesses by price range, available specials and hours of operation. If you’re willing to sign into the service, you’ll see a few more options pop up, letting you find both new haunts and places you’ve saved, along with your friends’ favorite locales. The Foursquare team promises to release more options in the future, and while these latest tools are only available on the company’s website today, they should be hitting your smartphone soon.

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Via: The Next Web

Source: Foursquare

Bing now loads related Facebook posts, lets you share search results from the social sidebar

Bing now loads related Facebook posts, lets you share search results from the social sidebar

Competing with Google for search traffic is no easy task, even for a software giant like Microsoft. Unique features and customization have helped keep Bing afloat, though — and now, MS is counting on some more comprehensive Facebook integration to boost appeal. Beginning today, the site’s “Social Results” sidebar will be pulling in a bit more Facebook content, including posts from your friends that the tool deems relevant to the search at hand. You can also pub directly to your timeline from within the tool, sharing search results with your online buds. It’s hardly a revolutionary refresh, but if you haven’t yet managed to annoy your friends with posts about your favorite Spotify tracks or those shoes you just purchased online, Bing’s now ready to step in by making your search habits public, too.

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Source: Bing

LinkedIn and Twitter updates for BlackBerry 10 focus on search

Twitter and LinkedIn updates for BlackBerry 10 deliver big leaps in search

BlackBerry isn’t done with improving the BlackBerry 10 editions of LinkedIn and Twitter — not by a long shot. The company has once more upgraded the two social apps, this time with an emphasis on search. LinkedIn now lets users import contacts to find people they already know; in Twitter, meanwhile, universal search now shows photos, profiles and tweets on a single page. There’s more than just these two upgrades, of course. LinkedIn reveals more about companies and carries a slew of minor UI tweaks, while Twitter keeps content fresher with automatic caching. If the new versions are tempting, they’re waiting at the source links for Q10 and Z10 owners alike.

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Via: Inside BlackBerry, Phone Scoop

Source: BlackBerry World (1), (2)