Social Media News snippets: 29 July-12 Aug

Facebook bans ‘like-gating’ – Facebook has given notice that from 5 November, the practice of requiring customers to Like a page to be able to receive a discount or enter a promotion is to cease. Facebook stated in a blog post for developers on 7 August: “You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, checkin at a place or enter a promotion on your app’s Page.”

Facebook searches now exceed 1 billion – Mark Zuckerberg has announced that users make more than a staggering 1 billion searches per day on Facebook.

Messaging only possible on Messenger App– In the US, it’s no longer possible to message someone via the main Facebook App and it won’t be long before users in the UK are forced to use the separate Facebook Messenger app too. US users are not happy with nearly 94% of those who rated the app  gave it just one star. You can avoid the forced switch to Messenger by stopping the prompted installation part way through or deleting the app once installed. If you re-open the standard Facebook app chat should still be available as before in Messages. No doubt Facebook will close this loophole but it works for now.

Twitter hosting #HitYourGoals webinar TONIGHT – Twitter Small Biz is holding a webinar this evening at 6pm GMT/10am PDT demonstrating the latest changes to Twitter Ads. You can register here.

Pinterest introduce messaging – When you see a Pin in your feed you can now reply with a message and send a Pin back. Pinterest say, ‘Our goal is to help people plan projects, swap creative ideas and share their best discoveries. Bonus? It’s easier than ever for Pinners to share your Pins, boards or profile with their friends!’

LinkedIn Contacts now called Connected – LinkedIn have replaced their Contacts app with LinkedIn Connected which at present is only available on iOS. The aim is to encourage engagement with members of your network by providing up to date information about them. For example, birthdays plus promotions and new jobs are flagged up. LinkedIn state that members who use the new app can expect six times more profile views and seven times more endorsements than members who don’t. Having tried it, I can recommend as a great way to stay in touch with and strengthen relationships with your network.

Gmail makes it easier to unsubscribe – It’s now easier for you to unsubscribe in Gmail. If an unsubscribe link is included in the content of an email, an unsubscribe link is displayed at the top to the right of the sender’s email address. (See below).

YouTube is more popular than Facebook – According to Quantcast, YouTube us now more popular than Facebook. Facebook.com had 138,991,062 monthly unique visitors between 31 May 31 and 29 June 2014 while YouTube.com had 180,309,305 monthly uniques during the same period.

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