This Week’s Social Media Top Stories
Facebook Testing Subscribe Feature For Pages
Justin Lafferty via Allfacebook.com writes about a new feature Facebook is in the process of testing out. This feature, which is currently open for users is, the capability of subscribing to other users without having to add them as a friend. This is a way for people to connect and read statuses without having to have a personal connection.
When Facebook finally rolls this out for Pages, the issue will be how can these subscriptions be tracked. Companies’ use “Likes” as a way to gage their fan base. When subscriptions launch, marketing strategies and evaluations will have to change to reflect the new way that fans can follow you. When users like your page now, it is shown on their friends news feeds which is a great way for businesses to get a bigger following. Will subscriptions hurt the amount of reach a page can have? Hopefully we will find out soon how this new feature will affect pages.
7 Steps For Getting More Instagram Followers
In this Social Fresh article Brian DiFeo writes about how to get more followers on Instagram in a few simple ways. Instagram is one of the most popular photo sharing communities out now. Companies are starting to realize this and have jumped in on the new craze. But how can companies get more followers.
Brian gives us 7 ways of doing this. The ones I like best are announcing to your current customers that you are now utilizing Instagram. You can do this by posting on your other social networks, sending out newsletters or posting an Instagram icon on your website. Another great way to grab the attention of Instagram users is to post interesting photos with relevant hashtags. Users can explore certain hashtags or keywords on Instagram and if you are using certain words, your brand name and photos will populate. In the end it will hopefully grab a bigger audience. To find out more ways to use Instagram for business read the rest of the article.
Camp Google+: Summer Program for Teens Kicks Off in Cyber Space
This article written by Zoe Fox on Mashable talks about a unique opportunity for teens to learn new things in “camp”. The interesting thing about this camp is you don’t physically have to leave your room. The way this camp works is by using the amazing feature of Google+ Hangouts.
All you have to do to get started is add Make Magazine to your circles. The whole purpose of this camp is to get teens thinking in a different way, and to learn how to make just about anything. This program also goes on field trips, Yes, field trips. One trip the director broadcasted from Ford’s research center in Michigan. The day starts out with a learning instructor teaching you how to create something. Then in the afternoon campers show of their creations in the Google+ Hangout.
To me this is a great idea, using Google+ to interact with kids who may not have the opportunity to go to a camp. The teens will learn new skills as well as go on virtual field trips to see things they might never have seen before. More companies should use Google+ in a similar way that Make Magazine has. The only downside of this is keeping teens inside which they do enough of.
I Already Have One Big Problem With Apple’s Mountain Lion
Steve Kovach lets his emotions out in this well written article on Business Insider about the new social integration in Apples new Mac OSX Mountain Lion. This OS was released the other day and while some new features are welcomed, others seem to be missing key ingredients.
Mountain Lion adds Twitter support natively in the OS, just as it is in the iPhone. All you need to do is set up your Twitter account in account settings and you are ready to go. Now with the new notification center in Mountain Lion you are able to see direct messages or mentions, as well as compose a tweet and send it off without leaving notification center.
One of the downsides that Steve points out is clicking on a notification about a mention or direct message will not open up a native Twitter client but rather bring you to Twitter.com. This can be a major announces since it take more time for the computer to open up the web to see the tweet rather then having an option to use an app right on your computer.
Hopefully Apple will update this integration to make it more practical for people to use. Facebook integration should be in the works for Notification center as well. With the social integration being baked right into the OS, this could lead to more users engaging on these networks that might have never done so before. If we end up seeing a spike in new users or even more engagement on these networks, will other social networks open up to this integration idea?