There’s been a lot of buzz about social media this week, especially around social search and visual content. Companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Microsoft have all made some great new additions to their features to improve the social experience for their users. Some of these new features might not have come as a surprise, but we’re certain they’ll give marketers a leg up on their campaigns and strategies. So to make sure you get that leg up on the latest and greatest in marketing, here's what happened this past week. Facebook to Review Which Pages and Groups Can Show Ads After Complaints About Inappropriate Content, The Next Web Bing Experiments With Social Search by Adding New Bing Boards to Search Results, From Search Engine Land Watch Out, Amazon: Square Moves Into Ecommerce, From Mashable LinkedIn Gets a Little More Watchful, Now Tells You Who’s Viewed Your Updates, and Where You’ve Been Looking, From TechCrunch Twitter Is Testing Automatic In-Stream Image Previews on Twitter.com, From The Next Web

Nowadays, it feels like every social network and online service has some sort of tool designed for us marketers. Whether we know it or not, many of these networks and services are adding business pages, analytics, and even automation into their function. Klout Launches Business Portal, is Gunning for Brands, From CNN Money The "social media influence" measuring startup has announced that it will be launching a business portal design to attract big-name brands. Klout is launching Klout for Business, with a goal of providing brands with an insight into their social media audiences. The free analytics dashboard for companies will allow brands to learn what social networks they resonate best on, popular topics, and how influential their fans and followers are. The dashboard also gives companies insight into when posts or tweets are most influential during the day. With 500M Push Notifications Sent Each Month, Mobile Backend Platform Parse Unveils an Analytics Service, From The Next Web Sending 500 million push notifications per month, the application development platform known as Parse has announced that it will be offering analytics on its services. Parse is a mobile backend-as-a-service that provides develops with the tools and services they need to create iOS and Android apps. A huge aspect of those tools is push notifications that developers can use to improve the user experience on these apps. Parse says that not only will they be introducing analytics on its push notifications, but analytics on how many times an app or push notification is opened. Facebook Working on Incorporating the Hashtag It seems that Twitter’s most iconic marker may soon find its way into Facebook timelines across the globe. Facebook is currently working on incorporating the all-powerful hashtag into its social network. For those of you unfamiliar with the hashtag, it is heavily used in Twitter as a word or phrase proceeded by a # symbol that groups similar topics and events. Facebook hasn’t yet decided how far they will follow in Twitter’s footsteps with the hashtags, but we’re certain that Twitter will not be happy. The two companies are already competing for online advertisers, and Facebook’s adoption of the hashtag could affect Twitters bottom line. Small Twitter Advertisers Can Now Target Ads Like Big Brands, From Marketing Land Twitter has announced that it will be providing its more advanced dashboard features, normally available only to big spenders, to smaller companies. This release of “advanced” features gives smaller brands the same tools and options that large-scale Twitter advertisers are using. Twitter warns that once users switch over to the “advanced options” there is no going back. Although these features offer smaller advertisers more options, deeper analytics, and improved targeting, it may be too complex for some. Study Finds Google’s Penguin Update Getting Stricter Over Time, From Search Engine Land A recent study by Portent, an Internet marketing company, illustrates that Google is getting fed up with spammy links floating through its search engine. Google’s Penguin algorithm will be targeting websites for a rank drop if they have as little as 50 percent suspicious links in their link profiles. Portent analyzed 100,000 links from the top 50 sites on the Inc. 5000 list of 2012. Using SEOMOZ and Majestic SEO data, they scored links as spam based on the relation of the page to the page being linked to and the page the link was coming from. Through this process they found more than 250,000 links pointing at penalized websites, and 250,000 links pointing at non-penalized websites.

Cracking The Formula to Viral Videos - Marketing Update - Episode #229 With Mike Volpe (@Mvolpe) and Laura Fitton (@Pistachio) This weeks round up will give you some insight into what changes are going on with our social networks and how new technologies are being used to serve and deliver marketing to individuals on many different levels. Twitter Now Reducing Some Tweets to 117 Characters, From Mashable (http://mashable.com/2013/02/20/twitter-tco-length/) If a limit of 140 characters per tweet wasn’t difficult enough to get your thoughts across, try doing it in even less. As of Wednesday, Twitter has reduced the limit of characters to 118 for tweets sent with a URL and 117 for tweets sent with an https link. This is going to be an important change for marketers to take note of because it could affect any scheduled tweets you created prior to these new limits. 59% of Top Brands are Active on Instagram & Those Photos Are Shared to Facebook 66% More Than Twitter, From Marketing Land (http://marketingland.com/report-59-of-top-brands-are-active-on-instagram-photos-shared-to-facebook-66-more-than-twitter-34062) We all know why we love Instagram and Pinterest; it’s all the pretty pictures that tickle our fancy. Recently, these social networks have grown to be more than just digital catalogs and photo albums. In the past three months, top brand adoption of Pinterest has risen by 10% and Instagram by 9%. This is a strong indication that marketers are utilizing the potential of Pinterest and Instagram to build social engagement and expand overall reach. ESPN is Now Targeting You Via Online Radio, From Ad Week (http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/espn-now-targeting-you-online-radio-147388) It seems ESPN is looking to up their game in the world of digital advertisements though its online radio. With over 3 million downloads of its mobile radio app, it make sense that ESPN has been concocting ways to tap into this audience with some well targeted ads. This new cloud-based ad insertion program aims to target listeners by location, device, age, and gender in real time during live national broadcasts. The company responsible for this new age technology is the online radio provider known as Abacast. Contextual Content Engine Vurb Raises More Than $1.5M From Max Levchin and Others, From Tech Crunch (http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/20/contextual-content-engine-vurb-wants-to-make-the-internet-seamless/) With the hundred of online services, search engines, and social networks, it is still a chore trying to compile all our information into one place. I’m sure many of us have wanted to make a reservation at a restaurant through Open Table and wished that it would also suggest show times for new movies, buy the tickets, and send us directions without having to open the quadrillion tabs we normally would. Well, the start up Vurb is working on a contextual content engine that connects and compiles relevant information from services like LinkedIn, Yelp, Google Maps, Amazon, and many others in an attempt to unify our Internet shenanigans. LOL + WTF = $: An App That Shos Why Videos Go Viral, From Fast Co Create (http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682441/lol-wtf-an-app-that-shows-why-videos-go-viral) Ever wonder how to you can make the next Gangnam Style or Harlem Shake? Well TubeRank may have found a way to help you figure out what you need to do to create the next viral video on YouTube. The app was recently launched by Rubber Republic, a London-based content creation studio responsible for a number of viral videos.

Social media is quite the valuable tool in an inbound marketer’s repertoire, and this is far from a secret. As social networks continue to grow, evolve, and sometimes fall out of relevancy, we must always stay up-to-date with the latest developments in the world of social media. Any inbound marketer can tell you how effective and inexpensive a well-run social media campaign can be, and that is exactly why it’s a must-have tool in your marketing arsenal. This week’s round-up will fill you in on all of the latest changes in social media that you’ll need to know to keep that edge. Enjoy! What HP’s 1 Million LinkedIn Followers Means for Marketers, From LinkedIn Blog (http://blog.linkedin.com/2013/02/28/what-hps-1-million-linkedin-followers-means-for-marketers-infographic/) HP has officially become the first company to draw in one million followers to their LinkedIn page. This is a huge win for HP because these aren’t followers you would find on Twitter or Facebook, these are a highly targeted audience of professionals that matter to their business. This means that HP is now indirectly connected to 43 million other professionals on LinkedIn, which makes up roughly a quarter of the entire LinkedIn population. Google Offers Social Sign-In Alternative to Facebook, From Ad Week (http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/google-offers-social-sign-alternative-facebook-147561) We all know that Facebook has had a pretty big monopoly on the world of social sign-ins and security, but that may be changing very soon. Google has released its own social powered sign-in option for online publishers and apps. This means that users will be able to connect with sites like USA Today, The Guardian, FitBit, Fancy, OpenTable, and more with their Google + accounts. Trendrr Reports: Social TV Oscar Activity Tripled, From Marketing Pilgrim (http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2013/02/trendrr-reports-social-tv-oscar-activity-tripled-and-the-ratings-were-up-too.html) The Oscars; usually spent in the comfort of our sweat pants while we obnoxiously rant and rave about who was dressed best, worst, and stupidest. Yes, stupidest. You know you've seen some pretty stupid looking outfits at the Oscars before. But, I digress. This year was different. This year, we made our voices heard. We took to the streets…okay, we took to our respective social networks. During this years Oscar broadcast, real-time social media tracking company Trendrr kept tabs on all of our witty and not so witty comments across the Facebook, Twitter, GetGlue, and Viggie. Spotify’s Social Network Arrives: New Follow Tab is Now Gradually Rolling Out to Users, From The Next Web (http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/27/spotify-the-social-network-arrives-begins-rolling-out-follow-features-to-users/) A little ways back in December of last year, Spotify announced that it would be rolling out a slew of social media features to its popular music friendly app. Well, the time has come for Spotify to announce that its social network is ready to start shipping to a desktop near you. The latest feature to grace our computer screens is the new Follow tab that will list all of the users you are currently “following”, and will be replacing the current People tab. Spotify sees this move as a way to lessen their social dependency on Facebook, which has not reaped them many benefits. Facebook Lets Advertisers Tap Purchase Data Partners to Target Customers, Categories, Like Car-Buyers, From Tech Crunch (http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/27/facebook-ad-data-providers/) It’s no secret that Facebook has been looking to dive deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of online advertising. The most recent news reveals that Facebook has partnered up with top online and offline purchase data providers like Epsilon, Acxiom, Datalogix, and BlueKai to provide advertisers with a hashed list of existing customers, potential prospects, and categories of people like pet lovers, soda drinkers, and car buyers. The goal is for Facebook to attract some big spenders by offering them a way to target the exact customers that have or will buy their products.

The Future of Social Media Advertisement - Marketing Update - Episode #228 With the growing demand for more sophisticated, automated, and farther reaching ad services, a number of companies are making serious moves to give these marketers what they want. This weeks marketing round ups will fill you in on what you need to know about upcoming products and changes to existing social networks around mobile and social advertising. Facebook Prepares to Amp Up Its Ad War With Google With Atlas (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57569212-93/facebook-prepares-to-amp-up-its-ad-war-with-google-with-atlas/) The social networking giant, Facebook, is expected to purchase an extensive ad-serving technology known as Atlas, from Microsoft. The advertising platform will be tasked with handling Facebook’s ever growing advertising empire in an effort to overthrow Google as the current king of display advertising. This purchase will allow Facebook to deliver socially powered ads outside of the social network and tap into a much larger market of advertisers. Twitter Prepping Bigger Ad Play (http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/twitter-prepping-bigger-ad-play-147209) With social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn offering ad APIs of their own, Twitter has decided to jump on the display advertisement bandwagon. Twitter will be turning up the heat on its advertising platform by introducing its new ad API this quarter. The product will allow brands to create and run a variety of ads in a more automated and sophisticated manner, like they would on Facebook. Twitter has been busy promoting its ad API to a number of agency execs and social ad firms in preparation for its launch. Social Authority: A Measure of Twitter Influence (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/social-authority) SEOmoz has recently announced the release of "Social Authority," their new metric for determining the influence of Twitter users. Social authority’s metrics are based on the number of retweets a user receives. The metrics give users a number of features that include ordering all active Twitter users by influence, dissecting your social graph, and finding new followers who are most important. Salesforce Alums Raise $3 Million to Bring Analytics to Stores (http://mashable.com/2013/02/12/nomi/) It’s no secret that brick and mortar retailers sometimes lack the tools they need to track and nurture their customers like online retailers are able to. Marketers for e-retailers can tap into a number of metrics to ensure their marketing is working. That's why it's pretty cool that a company called Nomi is stepping up to the plate and offering brick and mortar retailers a solution to this problem. Nomi has created a platform designed to "track customers’ movement across online, mobile, and in-store channels." The company was founded by three Salesforce alums in August of 2012, and has raised $3 million in funding from various investors to get the product off the ground.