Check out this week’s summary of all the latest social media news, including changes and new features for Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest:
- Facebook to shut down ad program – on April 9th, Facebook will shut down its controversial ad program Sponsored Stories; the ads were under fire from privacy advocates, though Facebook’s newer ad versions won’t offer any more privacy protection, unless users opt out by changing their privacy settings (WSJ)
- Facebook officially acquires Little Eye Labs – Facebook acquired the India-based startup, which creates performance-enhancing tools for Android developers (AllFacebook)
- Facebook acquires Branch Media team to lead new “Conversations” group – the Branch Media team (creators of Branch and Potluck) will be joining Facebook as a talent acquisition (TechCrunch)
- Twitter continues to experiment – Twitter is now experimenting with the @AchievementBird account, which DMs users the ‘achievements’ that they earn with tweets (aka how a particular tweet performed) (TechCrunch)
Google+
- Gmail-Google+ link makes you easier to reach — for better or worse – any Google+ user will soon be able to send emails to another Google+ user (through Gmail) without ever actually knowing that user’s email address; messages sent via this method will land in the ‘Social’ Gmail tab (re/code)
- Pinterest buys image-recognition startup VisualGraph – Pinterest acquired visual search startup VisualGraph, “a sign of growing demand for engineers with expertise in computer vision, a technology that helps computers learn to recognize people and objects inside photos and video” (WSJ)
Any social media updates we missed? Let us know in the comments below.
