Social Media Marketing

Instagram on Thursday gave users a taste of what its upcoming sponsored photos and videos will look like. Instagram has assured users that the posts will feel natural and not compromise the network's aesthetics. The photos and videos will appear in the same format as an ordinary Instagram Post, with...

LinkedIn on Wednesday announced three new mobile apps designed to increase users' productivity and mobile reach. First and foremost, LinkedIn Intro is a brand-new mobile app for iPhone Mail that gives users a preview of the credentials of people who send them email from popular email accounts. With ...

Facebook has introduced Stories to Share, a tool to help media outlets -- from online publications to TV broadcasters to music startups -- maximize value. Appearing in the media panel of a publisher's Facebook page, Stories to Share makes recommendations based on the number of shares a post has rece...

Google has announced changes to its Terms of Service that will take effect Nov. 13. In short, users' profile names and photos will be served up together with content such as reviews they share, ads they +1, comments they post, or who and what they follow. Only people users choose to share content w...

LinkedIn has responded to claims in a class action lawsuit filed against it, maintaining that it does not break into users' email accounts and insisting that it asks for permission before using information from anyone's email accounts. Four LinkedIn users filed the suit, claiming it had appropriated...

Pinterest on Thursday announced that it would begin experimenting with promoting certain pins from a select group of businesses. The announcement came via a blog post from CEO Ben Silbermann, who hastened to assure the site's users that this move would not be a descent into ad madness. "I know some ...

Tumblr has teamed up with social analytics company DataSift to provide users with information about consumer engagement and sentiment. As of Monday, DataSift subscribers gained access to both historic and real-time data about what consumers were posting about their brands in Tumblr's 5.5 billion mon...

Twitter is acquiring mobile advertising exchange MoPub in order to support advertisers' efforts to optimize their ad buys. MoPub helps advertisers and publishers buy, manage and maximize performance of a variety of ads, especially those on mobile platforms. Twitter plans to invest in MoPub's core bu...

Facebook and Twitter both added embedded-post capabilities to their platforms last month, and now Google has brought similar functionality to Google+. Both embedded posts and an author-attribution feature were unveiled by Google earlier this week, in fact, giving individuals and businesses a way to ...

Twitter has hired former Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard as its first head of commerce, with the goal of adding an online shopping component to its offerings. Twitter plans to provide partners with tools to more effectively offer their goods and services, perhaps then taking a commission on any tran...

Canonical raised more than $12 million over 30 frantic days of crowdfunding its ambitious Ubuntu Edge superphone project, but it was still short some $20 million by the time the effort closed on Wednesday. The company's target was $32 million. "We raised $12,809,906, making the Edge the world's bigg...

In an abrupt about-face, Instagram has begun cracking the whip over developers using "insta" and "gram" in the titles of their apps. In a letter sent to several developers earlier this week, Instagram said it had "clarified" its guidelines and determined that "use of 'INSTA' and 'GRAM' for an applic...

The war of the words between tech giants Microsoft and Google heated up considerably this week when Google blocked a relaunched YouTube app for Windows Phone, causing Microsoft to lash out and question the validity of Google's complaints. "It seems to us that Google's reasons for blocking our app ar...

Facebook reportedly is testing a VIP-only mobile app that would encourage celebrities to choose it over other social networks for posting photos and updates, as well as interacting with fans. The mobile app would make it easier for celebrities or their staffs to post content and status updates, as w...

Hard on the heels of its recent venture into mobile gaming, Facebook on Wednesday debuted its latest social networking innovation: embedded posts, a feature that allows users to add public posts from Facebook to their blog or website. Embedded posts can be most any type of content seen on Facebook, ...