Google+ Stories: This Week in Social Media

By Cindy King
Published May 24, 2014

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.

Google+ Introduces Google+ Stories: You can “automatically weave your photos, videos and the places you visited into a beautiful travelogue.”

“Stories will be available this week on Android and the web, with iOS coming soon.”

The 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report Is Out: Check out Social Media Examiner’s sixth annual social media study, where “more than 2800 marketers reveal where they focus their social media activities, which social tactics are most effective and how content plays a role into their social media marketing.”

Be sure to download a copy of the 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report before May 30th.

Google+ Announces Google+ Movies: You “can produce a highlight reel of your photos and videos automatically—including effects, transitions and a soundtrack.”

LinkedIn Introduces How You Rank Feature: “You can now see where you stack up to others in your network with profile views (this feature is coming to mobile).”

“Take a look at the top profiles in your network to gain inspiration for changes you can make to your own profile, or content you can share to increase views to your profile and drive opportunities for advancement.”

Facebook Introduces New Way to Share and Discover Music, TV and Movies: “When writing a status update—if you choose to turn the feature on—you’ll have the option to use your phone’s microphone to identify what song is playing or what show or movie is on TV.”

“That means if you want to share that you’re listening to your favorite Beyoncé track or watching the season premiere of Game of Thrones, you can do it quickly and easily, without typing.”

Facebook Rolls Out Privacy Checkup: “A new and expanded privacy checkup tool, which will take people through a few steps to review things like who they’re posting to, which apps they use and the privacy of key pieces of information on their profile.”

The Privacy Checkup will be available for existing users.

Facebook Sets Default to Friends for New Users: “When new people join Facebook, the default audience of their first post will be set to Friends.”

“First-time posters will also see a reminder to choose an audience for their first post, and if they don’t make a choice, it will be set to Friends.”

Facebook Goes International With Premium Video Ads: These ads will now be introduced to “a limited group of advertisers in select international markets including Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom.”

“Premium video ads are designed for advertisers who want to reach a large audience with high-quality sight, sound and motion.”

Shutterstock Introduces Shutterstock Music: “A new product from Shutterstock that expands [its] content offerings for customers and generates earnings for musicians looking for new ways to monetize their craft.”

“When searching the site, you’ll find awesome, high-quality music to add to your project, be it something serene to represent nature, something bluesy to signal playfulness or maybe a classical track by Vivaldi that will flow perfectly in your story.”

New updates to follow:

Twitter Rolls Out New Profile by May 28: “Beginning May 28, all Twitter users will have the new profile, which has already been rolled out to new users and some existing users in the past month.”

New http://t.co/JbzACuw5a2 profiles will be turned on for everyone May 28. Get ahead of the curve & update yours: http://t.co/GpCan7yXGw

— Twitter (@twitter) May 6, 2014

Facebook Rolls Out Video Metrics: As a page owner, you’ll start to “see information like video views, unique video views, the average duration of the video view and audience retention.”

“Video metrics will be available for all paid and organic videos uploaded directly to Facebook pages, including premium video ads.”

Here are a few cool social media tools worth checking out:

Epoxy: “Custom-tailored for Facebook and Twitter, and fine-tuned for every screen and device, Epoxy video apps are designed to keep your audience’s attention and keep them watching.”

“Your videos the way they should be viewed.”

Tunepics: “For the first time, share the true emotion of your moments by adding tunes to your pictures.”

Screenshooter: “The simplest way to organize and manage mobile screenshots.”

You can “automatically separate your photos from your screenshots.”

What do you think? Please share your comments below.

Tweet!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,'script','twitter-wjs'); About the Author, Cindy King

Cindy King is the director of editorial for Social Media Examiner. She spent 25 years abroad in international business development and then built her own international business from scratch by using social business networking. Other posts by Cindy King »

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