Twitter Thinks It May Know Your Friends

Love the “People You May Know” feature on LinkedIn? Then you may be happy to learn that Twitter is essentially copying the feature. Instead of a widget, though, Twitter will suggest potential contacts via a weekly email.
Twitter already offers suggestions for who to follow, of course, and those have gotten more prominent (and relevant) on the site as the company has refined the widget. It’s based on an algorithm that has gotten better and more personalized, and now even takes into account your location.
“People You May Know,” however, gets populated differently. Twitter said in a blog post that the people suggested are based on “signals” such as who your friends follow and the contact information imported by the people you connect with on Twitter.
As an example, Twitter says if several people you follow also follow someone, that person could come up as a person you may know. Twitter told Mashable “People You May Know” uses contact information this way: If your friend uploads his address book and it includes your email address, and then you sign up for Twitter with that email address, Twitter may suggest your friend to you as an account to follow.


In any case, Twitter users should begin to get suggestions via email in their next weekly update from the service. Don’t want them? It’s easy enough to turn off in your settings for email notifications. The new feature strikes us as a little redundant considering the existence of to “Who to follow,” but we’ll reserve final judgment until we see the updates for ourselves.
What say you? Do you think “People You May Know” is extraneous, helpful or whatevs? Sound off in the comments.

Facebook Stock Closes at 7-Week High

Facebook shares ended the day up 6.5% at $23.30, the first time the company’s stock has closed above $23 since the end of July.
The company’s stock rallied following the news that Facebook is working with a small number of ad exchanges to test out advertisements on third-party mobile apps. Investors appeared to see this as a positive sign that Facebook is moving towards finding a way to monetize on mobile.
Facebook’s stock plummeted to an all-time low of $17.55 in the beginning of this month on investor concerns about the company’s ability to boost its revenue in the long-term. The stock began to climb back from the bottom after CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged not sell off any shares for at least a year and later pledged to double down on mobile in his first post IPO interview with TechCrunch.
Facebook is still trading well below it’s IPO price of $38 a share

Twitter Announces New Look for Profile Pages, Updated Mobile Apps

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo went on NBC’s Today Tuesday morning to announce a new look for profile pages on the social network and a new iPad app plus updated iPhone and Android apps.

“We rebuilt Twitter for iPad from the ground up to make it fast, beautiful and easy to use,” Costolo said.

Today‘s website explains:

What’s the biggest change? There’s now a huge header image that runs across the top, sort of like the banner image that Facebook users have on their timelines. The page itself has been reoriented to play up other visuals as well: Your avatar is no longer tucked in the corner, but will display front and center. The photo stream, too, has been moved up, and will now be accessible on the apps.

In a release from Twitter, the company said the upgrade represents “our mobile-first strategy.” The company says that if you upload an all-new header photo on Twitter’s mobile apps or on twitter.com, “the same image will appear whenever anyone views your profile on these apps or the web. These new profiles are available for everyone.”

Twitter also updated its iPhone and Android apps to support new profiles and photo streams on profiles: “Swipe through the stream to see the photos that other users have shared, or tap any thumbnail to view their photos in fullscreen.”

The announcement also includes a new iPad app: “We’ve rebuilt the app from the ground up to make it fast, beautiful and easy to use. Tweets come alive with in-line expansion and support for photos, videos and web site summaries. Like Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android, this new version of Twitter for iPad also supports new profiles and photo streams on profiles. “

Apple Unveils New iTunes, Coming in October

Apple unveiled the newest version of iTunes Wednesday. The revamped version of the desktop app has a new edge-to-edge design. When you click on an album within iTunes it expands in place, somewhat like when you click on a folder in iOS.

Each album has a feature called “In the Store” where you can see at a glance all the top songs on that particular record.

Artists can opt to share photos with fans through iTunes. Coldplay, for instance, has already uploaded some photos to the service for fans to check out.

A split-screen view allows you to see your library while you’re adding songs to a playslist. The “Current Playing” window also has a drop-down menu available in the top-right corner that you can click on to see what’s coming up next in your playlist.

The mini-player within iTunes also saw a redesign, and now allows you to manage playlists and upcoming songs. iCloud is also now built into iTunes.

Apple says to expect to see the next-generation of iTunes launch in October, however, it did not provide an exact release date. The iOS version of the app also saw an upgrade today and is expected to be released later this month.

What do you think of the new iTunes? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Social Media Marketing: Don’t Forget the Message

In today's digital age, an increasing number of businesses are utilizing social media marketing services to help bolster their brand’s online presence. However, without an integrated social media marketing strategy that includes online content, the likelihood of success on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and the countless other platforms sprouting up will only get more difficult. Social media marketing alone is not enough to really connect with your target audience. To do so, it requires an extremely important element: a relevant message.

An Integrated Social Media Marketing Strategy

It seems like the Internet has been around forever, but in the realm of technology, it is still somewhat in its infancy. Just like an infant, the Internet is constantly changing and evolving, sometimes daily.

Social media has become both an extension of this - a symbol for it. Thanks to the likes of Facebook and Twitter, the Internet -- and the world of marketing -- has changed in ways that no one could have predicted. It is no longer sufficient for a business to promote with newspapers, magazines, fliers left on car windshields, and television commercials. Rather, businesses must also employ an integrated social media marketing strategy that not only exemplifies their business goals, but speaks to the wants and needs of their target audience.

Creating That Perfect Message

It's all about the message. Each business stands for something. It doesn't matter if you're involved in the world of banking, film production, or underwater basket weaving, you must create that perfect message if you can ever hope to connect with your audience in a meaningful way.

For this "message creation," you have to take a step back and look at the big picture. You need to focus on what you would like your business to achieve and the types of consumers you are trying to reach. Your company's online message is defined by its online content. This content must reflect both your business goals and the demands and desires of your target audience.

Once you’ve crafted online content that accomplishes these two fundamental things, you are ready to construct an integrated social media marketing strategy that will efficiently and exponentially promote your message.

Promotion, Promotion, Promotion

When it comes to promoting your message, social media is an extremely powerful business tool. Before the advent of social media, promotions such as discounts and contests had to be waged on a smaller scale thanks to the logistical and cost limitations of the various offline channels. In those instances where a promotion could extend to a larger audience, the cost could be quite high and the time involved in coordinating and/or producing the message prohibitive.

With an integrated approach to social media marketing, however, promoting your business' message is much easier to accomplish. Social media allows a business to not only reach what might be considered a countless number of potential customers, the time and cost involved in doing is much less. In the past, an organized promotion might take several employees to pull off. Now, a single person or a small group can run a rather involved social marketing promotion to great effect.

The Bottom Line

Without the proper messaging, your social media marketing risks having a context-less, two-dimensional feel to it. By taking an integrated approach to social media marketing that infuses online content relevant to your target audience, you give context and meaning to your message, providing the best return on your social media investment.

Most Facebook Apps Can Post Behind Your Back

How many apps have you installed on Facebook? More importantly, how many of them could post something in your name right now, without your knowledge? Chances are, it’s more than half of them.

Privacy protection company Secure.me analyzed some 500,000 Facebook apps, and shared the results exclusively with Mashable. The biggest takeaways: 63% of those apps ask for the ability to post on your behalf — and 69% of them want your email address.

”It has become second nature to connect various apps like Instagram, SocialCam, AngryBirds, CityVille, and Spotify to your Facebook ID,” says Secure.me founder Christian Sigl. “You just click ‘agree’ without even really knowing what you are agreeing to. What you don’t realize is that social apps linked to your Facebook profile can pretty much track your and your friends’ whole life.

“It doesn’t matter what your privacy settings are, the apps still get this information.”

What the app makers could do with that information beggars belief. Not only could they effectively hack your Timeline and sell your email address to any unscrupulous buyer — they’re also potentially well on the way to stealing your identity. Some 30% of those apps know their users’ birthdates, which would in theory allow them to uncover their social security numbers.

The permission puts your friends at risk, too. According to Secure.me, 21% of apps — 1 in every 5 — can access the personal data of the user’s friends including friends‘ birthdays, education and work history. Some 12% of the apps can grab your location information at will.

Of course, few of us are concerned about the big name apps — the Instagrams, the Spotifys. These are companies that have won our trust. But big-name apps make up just a small portion of the 500,000 total. What do you really know about the maker of that personality test or music quiz you just posted to your Timeline?

Part of the problem, as Sigl suggests, is the fact that there’s no granularity here. You can’t initially decide which permissions the app really needs, and which go beyond its remit. You can’t give an app limited permission for a day or a week. App permissions, when they first pop up, are far too one-size-fits-all.

We reached out to Facebook, and here’s an official response from a spokesperson: “We give people a variety of tools to control their app experiences on Facebook, and hold developers to our Platform polices. Apps must specifically request the data they need to operate, including email addresses and publishing capability.

“After a user installs an app, apps are not permitted to post to that person’s Timeline without their consent. If an app is found to be in violation of these policies, we will take action against it.”

How many Facebook apps have you given permissions to? Let us know in the comments.