LinkedIn Enhances Mobile Experience: 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?
LinkedIn Announces Their Next-Generation Mobile Experience: Their latest mobile app is available on iPhones and Androids and helps professionals be even more productive on the go.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-VARh15ZJE
Google Adds Public Google+ Posts in Google Search Results: When your Google+ friends share public updates on Google+ about the topic of your Google search, you’ll see this in your Google search results.
The person making this search is connected to Andrew Hyatt on Google+. This is why Andrew's update is mentioned in this Google search result.
Foursquare Now Has Events: Foursquare is starting to pull major events into their database. This means that when you check into an event’s location you will also be able to check into the event and tell your friends.
Each event appears in the Foursquare app a couple hours before it starts.
Say Hi to Foursquare Lists: Foursquare adds a list function and makes it easier for you to keep track of interesting locations.
Share a blank list with your friends and ask them for tips.
StumbleUpon Introduces the Explore Box: StumbleUpon unveils “a beta version of our Explore Box, a new way for you to explore even more of the things you love. Now just type a word or phrase into the Explore Box and we’ll bring you to community-endorsed content related to your specific interest or passion.”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIu7BMKruAY
Skype Lets Users Find WiFi Hotspots: Skype just launched a new iOS application for iPhones, iPads and the iPod Touch that allows users to find WiFi hotspots—and only pay for the minutes used, which is nice when traveling.
Click through to find out more about the free Skype WiFi special from Saturday, August 20, 00:00 until Sunday, August 21, 23:59 BST.
Here’s a social media tool worth noting:
Bizo Switchboard: This URL shortener gives users business demographic insights and is currently in public beta.
"Are your shared links reaching your target audience
? Understand in real time the business demographic or 'bizographic' makeup of people who click your shared links (company size, industry, job function and seniority)."
And don’t miss this:
Social Media Examiner presents Facebook Success Summit 2011! (online conference)
Watch this video from Mike Stelzner (founder of Social Media Examiner).
Join 19 Facebook marketing experts at the web’s largest Facebook marketing conference. This is a special online conference designed to help you master Facebook marketing (brought to you by Social Media Examiner). Join Guy Kawasaki; Mari Smith; Dave Kerpen; Paul Dunay; Jesse Stay; Robert Scoble; Michael Stelzner; experts from Intuit, PETCO, Applebee’s and Intel; Jay Baer; Chris Treadaway; Amy Porterfield and Andrea Vahl—just to name a few. Go here to learn more.
What social media news caught your interest this week? Please share your comments below.
Read MoreApple, Android Up, BlackBerry Down in Wattpad e-book Stats
Smartphones remain the most popular device to read e-books in the US, driven largely by iPhones, iPads and iPod touch and Android handsets. The use of Apple and Android devices to read e-books has grown by 25 per cent over the last quarter, while BlackBerry devices have experienced a 9 per cent drop in usage.
Excerpt from: Apple, Android Up, BlackBerry Down in Wattpad e-book Stats
Read MoreGoogle Makes Buzz Available From More Mobile Devices
We’ll let you judge whether this is a good or bad thing, but Google is not giving up on its Buzz service. Today, in addition to introducing a "reshare" feature, the company decided to make Buzz available to people using many more types of smartphones.
You may recall that Buzz only worked with iPhones and newer Android devices when it launched. Obviously, that left a lot of folks out in the cold.
So on the Google Mobile Blog, Alex Kennberg, a software engineer, wrote this afternoon, "Today we’re a releasing an XHTML version of the Buzz website which can be accessed from many other mobile devices, including those running Android pre-2.0, Blackberry, Nokia S60, and Windows Mobile." Plus WebOS.
No downloads or hurdle-jumping is necessary to take advantage of the upgrade; a visit to buzz.google.com in the browser is all that’s involved. Google Buzz for mobile is even available in 37 languages. Just note that not everyone will have the opportunity to enable one geolocation feature.
Still not a fan of Buzz? Well, at the rate things are going, Google may offer you a few more reasons to change your mind next week.
Mozilla Readies App to Sync Firefox to iPhone
Mozilla is working on a new iPhone app for Firefox users, called Firefox Home. It’s based on Firefox Sync (formerly Weave Sync), and allows users to access their Firefox browsing history, bookmarks, and tabs from the most recent browser session on the desktop.
"Firefox Home for iPhone is part of a broader Mozilla effort to provide a more personal Web experience with more user control," says Mozilla says. "For devices or platforms where we’re unable to provide the "full" Firefox browser (either technically or due to policy), we aim to provide users with “on the go” instant access to their personal Firefox history, bookmarks and open tabs on their iPhones, giving them another reason to keep loving Firefox on their desktops."
Mozilla has offered this "sneak peek" at the app, which is still under development:
Firefox has been losing some ground in the web browser market share space, to Google Chrome, which just released a new stable version for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Creating a useful mobile experience across multiple platforms could go along way to help the Firefox cause. Firefox home would be a step in the right direction. A solid Android offering would also be helpful.
Mozilla says Firefox Home will be ready to submit to Apple’s App Store soon.
AdMob Compares Android/iPhone Stats
AdMob, which Google recently got the green light from the FTC to acquire, has released its monthly Mobile Metrics Report (pdf), this time detailing the global base of Android, compared to that of the iPhone.
During a keynote presentation at Google I/O, in which the company unveiled the latest version of Android, Google announced that Android sees about 100,000 activations a day. Apple claims to have sold 85 million iPhones and iPod Touches in three years.
AdMob finds that Android had its greatest concentration of unique devices in North America (75%) in April, followed by Asia (12%), and Western Europe (11%). Sitting in on an Android press conference last week, I heard the Android team talk about some of the challenges their OS faces, and one that they mentioned was international expansion.
For example, one person at the conference expressed some dissatisfaction with the availability of Android devices in Latin America.
Sidenote: We spoke with Andrew Kameka of Androinica at Google I/O about some of the challenges surrounding Android:
In the US there was a 2 to 1 ratio of iPhone OS devices to Android OS devices, worldwide that ratio expanded to 3.5 to 1, according to AdMob. In the company’s network there were 8.7 million unique Android OS devices and 10.7 million unique iPhones in the United States in April, but with non-phone devices running the iPhone OS (iPod touch and iPad), the number of unique devices jumps to 18.3 million in the US. Worldwide there were 11.6 million unique Android OS devices, 27.4 million unique iPhones and 40.8 million unique iPhone OS devices.
Some other key findings from the AdMob report:
- The top five countries with the most unique iPhone OS devices were the United States (44 percent), United Kingdom (nine percent), France (six percent), Canada (five percent), and Japan (four percent).
- Over the past 12 months, unique iPhone OS device growth was strongest in Asia (474 percent), followed by Oceania (367 percent) and Western Europe (269 percent).
- The top five countries with the most unique Android OS devices were the United States (75 percent), China (eight percent), United Kingdom (three percent), France (two percent), and Germany (two percent).
- There were more Android devices than iPhones in China in April 2010 in the AdMob network. The top three Android devices in China were the HTC Hero, HTC Magic, and HTC Dream.
The iPhone OS vs. Android OS outlook may be put into greater perspective in another year. Android-based tablets are expected to be on the way, and Google TV, which integrates with Android could play a significant factor in itself. Not to mention that Andy Rubin is talking about how the next six months of Android are going to be "mind blowing."
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