This Week’s Social Media Top Stories
How to Use Twitter’s New Search Features
Joan Pan via Mashable writes about the new search feature that was added to Twitter. The new feature makes it much easier to find people, hash tags or posts a whole lots easier. Previous to this update you would have to type in a search word correctly or you would get a blank page. With this new update Twitter pulls up a list of words that it thinks you are looking for even if you have misspelled the keyword.
Some of the other welcome additions that will be rolling out soon if most users haven’t already seen them are autocomplete, related suggestions, results with real names and results from people you follow.
- Autocomplete: This feature will populate a list as you type in the search box to find pertinent topics in a much quicker time. This feature can be helpful if you are looking for a certain topic but don’t necessarily have any idea what users names are.
- Related suggestions: When you search for a person or keyword now you are given a list at the top of people or topics that are related to your original search. This can help you explore other users or topics that you might be interested in but weren’t following previously.
- Results with Real Names & Usernames: Now when you do a search, like the one shown in the Mashable article, Twitter will populate posts that contain the user name of the search word as well as the person’s real name.
- Results From People You Follow: This feature basically gives you the option to search for a certain topic or keyword, but once Twitter populates the list, you can further filter by Top posts, all posts or people you follow.
The new search additions that Twitter has added is a welcomed one, since now it will searching a whole lot easier and efficient.
Facebook Updates Events With Impressive New Calendar, List Views
This article from WebProNews written by Josh Wolford talks about how Facebooks new calendar works and what was changed. The new updates to events and calendars make things much easier by giving you different ways to view what is going on in your life or your friends lives.
The new calendars view show your upcoming events, birthdays, invitations in a easier to navigate way. You have the option to view events in list view, which will show you a small calendar on the left side of the screen while listing the events or birthdays on the right by date. You can click a date in the small calendar and Facebook will populate the events on the right side for that day. This allows you to easily search for the days you would like to see.
The next view is Calendar view, which will bring up a month calendar and have thumbnails or description of the events in each date. You can hover over each day to see a larger pop up, which you then have the option to respond to the event right in the pop up.
These calendar events can also be exported to iCal, Outlook or even Google Calendar by simply clicking the settings button at the top of the events page next to “Today”. This is a great feature that will allow you to pick and choose which events or birthday you want to sync with your personal calendar. I personally like this since I would rather decide which birthdays/events I can sync to my calendar on my phone instead of having everything show up. Do you agree?
Facebook celebrates weddings and engagements with new homepage feature
In this Venture Beat article Jennifer Van Grove writes about another new feature Facebook has rolled out. This one is all about celebrations. Facebook realizes the importance of engagements, weddings and births so they have made it that whenever these two scenarios happen with your friends they will try hard to get you to see this.
These celebratory notifications (a heart) will appear above the normal birthday/events on your homepage until you engage with the event by responding with a message to the happy couple or by dismissing the event. If there is more than one of this special celebration in your “social circle” Facebook will rotate these events on your homepage.
This little addition that Facebook has added is a way for them to try and make a personal connection with user of Facebook. User will now feel more involved with important events that are going on in their friend’s lives.