Twitter Changes Direct Message Rules: This Week in Social Media

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

What’s New This Week?

Twitter Allows Direct Messages From All Followers: Up until now, you could only send a direct message on Twitter when the other person followed you back. Now you can change your setting so that anyone can send you a direct message even if you do not follow him or her back.

Go to Settings on your Twitter account and check this box if you'd like to receive direct messages from everyone.

Twitter Announces Scheduled Tweets: All marketers who use “Twitter’s ad products can schedule organic or promoted tweets for specific dates and times up to a year in advance.”

"You can create and schedule new tweets from the blue Tweet button on the top right corner of the navigation bar at ads.twitter.com."

LinkedIn Unveils Recruiter Mobile: “A mobile app that helps recruiters interact with candidates like you when they’re out and about.”

Foursquare Opens Ads: “All a business owner needs to do is go to foursquare.com/ads and build their ad—by choosing a great photo of their space and either offering a special or highlighting a great customer tip.”

A business owner can now "tell if someone who saw their ad actually walks into their store."

Pinterest Updates Mobile App: Pinterest has “spruced up the look of the app a bit, and also added a simple way to browse through pins with just a flick of a finger.”

"To try it out, tap any pin in your home feed. Then swipe your finger from right to left to get a peek at the next pin in line. You can go backwards too!"

Twitter Launches App for Android Tablet: “The landscape view fills your screen with tweets, conversations, trends, accounts to follow and more.”

"With a single tap, tweets expand on the right side to show photos, videos and article previews."

Here’s some interesting news to note:

Facebook Lets Teens Share Updates Publicly: Now “when people aged 13 through 17 sign up for an account on Facebook, the initial audience of their first post will be set to a narrower audience of ‘Friends.’ This used to be set at ‘Friends of Friends’.” And teens will also have the choice to post publicly on Facebook.

"When teens choose Public in the audience selector, they'll see a reminder that the post can be seen by anyone, not just people they know, with an option to change the post's privacy."

Here’s some upcoming news to follow:

Facebook to Soon Roll Out New Custom Audience Features: “These new features expand the capabilities of Custom Audiences to allow marketers to deliver targeted ads to people who visited their website or used their mobile app.”  These new features will roll out globally in the coming months.

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Check out this overview of the conference or click here for more details.

What do you think? Please share your comments below.

Instagram Accessible To The Blind

A YouTube video has shown how a blind man can enjoy using Instagram to take photos, edit them, caption, and share the results.

Tommy Edison is blind but has been using the photo sharing app to capture images. Although he cannot see what they look like, he gets plenty of interesting comments on what he’s posted and how they look.

With the help of the “accessibility” feature on the iPhone, Edison can make Siri read out to him every button that he touches. The app itself, filters to select, and where to share the photo are all read aloud amongst other things.

The pictures can then be captioned by using speech recognition to complete the process. Instagram app availability for the visually impaired is just one example of how social media is expanding to be accessible for everyone.

Tommy Edison also has a YouTube channel where he discusses “the fun parts of being blind” as well as performing other general day to day actions.

This is one of many apps that are accessible to blind people with one app using data from Foursquare to help those who are visually impaired the find their way around the streets.

Tommy Edison’s Instagram profile can be found at blindfilmcritic.



What do you think of apps and social media being accessible for the visually impaired?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below

Foursquare Updates Privacy And Makes Service Changes

Foursquare has sent an email to all users that describes updates and changes to its privacy policy and overall service that will happen later this month.

At the moment, usernames on profiles are shown with a first name and just the first initial of a surname (e.g. Daniel B.). But towards the end of January, the location-based social platform will show full first and last names.

The email said that users can edit their names by changing it under the “settings” tab. “We get emails every day saying that it’s confusing. So, with this change, full names are going to be public.”

Companies and business will now also be able to see more thorough details of those who have checked in throughout each day.

These companies can currently only see those who have checked-in during the previous three hours. The update will allow them to see statistics for check-ins that happen throughout the whole day.

Foursquare have also released a “Privacy 101” document that shows the social networks privacy policies in “an easy-to-read way” with businesses hoping to make privacy policies easier to understand.
 
The changes and updates are planned to go ahead on January 28th 2013.

What do you think about the updates to Foursquare?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below

Always Keep Tabs on Your Friends with New Foursquare Notifications

If Facebook stalking or following friends on Twitter doesn’t satisfy your curiosity, Foursquare has got you covered. The location-based social network unveiled updated notifications Tuesday that lets users keep tabs on their friends no matter where they go.
With the new settings, users can opt to “always” receive notifications when family or close pals check in somewhere “even when they’re not nearby or you have all check-in notifications turned off,” Foursquare announced in a blog post.
To select this option, users simply go to their friend’s Foursquare profile, and select “Always On” from the drop-down menu.


The notifications allow you to keep up with globe-trekking friends when they’re backpacking abroad, or to see if they’ve arrived safely at the airport, for example.
Previously, users only got check-in notifications from friends who were in the same city. Alerts for friend activity can be received via email and push notifications on mobile devices.
In July, Foursquare announced new merchant tools that gave business owners the ability to communicate with customers through the platform, including changes to the dashboard and tools, as well as updates and specials. It launched its redesigned app in June.
What do you think of Foursquare’s notifications update? Tell us in the comments below.