Steve Aoki, the popular DJ will be the first person to actively use snapchat’s newest feature, QR codes.  While projected on a massive screen at his concerts and stamped on the back of his tour t-shirts Steve will paste his Snapchat QR codes so anyone who has snapchat can instantly add him as a follower when there camera comes across the unique QR ID.  I really like this new feature because it allows people to promote there snapchat in the real world rather than just the digital world. 

Similar to Pinterest, Google+ has just introduced a new feature called “Collections” which lets users organize content similar to a pin.  Characteristic of Google+, you have control over which “circles” are allowed to see each collection of content you have posted.  This feature makes sense for Google+ because it will hopefully influence users to share more content which currently lacks on this social media platform.

Today, Pinterest has announced that it will enable an open source platform that lets the public build applications around the popular social application.  I think this is a genius move by Pinterest because this makes their application more user friendly and enables people to use the applications in new ways.  For example an individual could create a travel website that seamlessly lets you book a vacation at a desired location you have previously pinned about.  Also a travel application like this could gage what locations you prefer based on what you have pinned.  Just like the success of Twitter’s open source platform, I think Pinterest will benefit immensely from this decision 

This article published on Venturebeast.com compares Facebook and Google on multiple trends that are consistent with social media today. Some of the trends include the movement from PC’s to Mobile, the shift from Search to Social when looking for news, and the increase in mobile advertising.  I personally think that the trends the author shows do favor Facebook but if you look at the bigger picture (and other important trends like financial data), Google will be the winner in the end of the day.  I also think that google owns a stronger portfolio of tech companies that could lead to more rapid innovation within all of Google’s businesses.

Yik Yak is in the early stages of testing photos on some college campuses for limited periods of time, sometimes as brief as several hours.  This development could create many potential issues on campus’s across the country if a user decides to post inappropriate pictures.  I think this is the logical next step for this anonymous public bulletin application but I also think this will increase the amount of issues similar to the ones that are in the news regarding inappropriate text posts.  Controlling and policing inappropriate pictures will be Yik-Yaks biggest challenge before fully integrating this new feature.

NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly nixed usage of Periscope and Meerkat in a memo.  Both of these new applications are used for live streaming from mobile devices.  The creation of these applications are consistent with the social trend of increasing the amount of information that is posted in real time.  I think it is very interesting that the NHL is fighting to ban live broadcasting (streaming) from attendees of their games because both applications are very new and the quality of the video at this stage are un- comparable to watching the program in TV quality

The ever so popular “mobile dating” application tinder just recently integrated their platform with the the picture sharing application Instagram.  Also tinder has added a social graph that displays if someone in your social network is also connected with the user you match up with.  I think both of these updates are very positive because they let users create connections based on who they know and what they enjoy posting on instagram.  Connecting this to our class, these updates create more social objects to converse about with a user you matched with and initially know nothing about.

First off, I believe most millennials can relate to these comical social interactions with their parents via text messages. Secondly, I think this is a really neat video that displays funny content created by the well known blogging company BuzzFeed but also contains a brief advertisement at the end for cricket wireless.  This form of advertising is extremely clever because BuzzFeed content is always being reposted by millennials on social media sites like twitter and facebook.  For Cricket wireless this may be a smart move to connect with this possible target demographic.

In today’s age marijuana is constantly creating headlines as more and more states in America are decriminalizing the sale and use of the plant.  At the same time many new Weed-tech startups have been popping up all over the country.  This specific app called “Who is happy” lets users check in to locations on a world map for a 4 hour span when they use marijuana.  Although this seems like a simple social platform, I think more and more social weed-tech startups will pop up more in the future as other states legalize the use of marijuana.

Lobster, a marketplace for licensing user-generated content, is now launching a universal search feature that allows brands and publishers to search for user-generated content across multiple social media platforms like Instagram and Flikr.  Now, if a company wants to use a specific picture from a person’s Instagram account, Lobster will contact the user in order to facilitate the deal, where users can earn on average $3 for the use of one picture.  I think this is a great new way to organize and value user-generated content online.  Like we talked about in class, the amount of user-generated content is rapidly increasing, so this platform fits perfectly to connect companies with the users.

In class we have touched upon the increased value of social media to a small business.  This article reinforces some of the key advantages to using social media for any business including reputation management, contributing to conversation, target marketing, expanding reach, low cost advertising, and crisis management.  I believe that at least one of these advantages can help any business benefit. 

In recent news Twitter has teamed up with Rhapsody to let users of the popular music application share music through tweets. This may generate a larger music sharing community on twitter and may increase the amount of monthly subscribers.  I think this is a powerful move for Rhapsody because this will give them an opportunity to regain market share within the online music streaming industry.  I also believe that this move is not strong enough to beat leading companies within the industry like Spotify. 

Adding to my previous post, Giphy has developed a Facebook Messenger application that lets you search the the Giphy website for the perfect gif to send to your friend while still in the messenger application.  I believe this will be a successful application because sending gifs in a text conversation is becoming very popular.  

At Facebook’s annual developer conference, the company unveiled their newest upgrades to the Facebook platform including new messenger, new real time comments, spherical video integration and more.  The new messenger upgrade allows developers to open up messenger as a platform in order to create new applications.  Real time comments is a very cool concept as well, where comments will show up at the top of the comments box immediately when someone posts a comment.  This creates a very “twitter like” comments section that should be easier to use then the current system.  Both of these additions to Facebook relate to trends we have talked about in class that create easier functionality, and more participation by the online communities on social applications.

In recent news just based on monthly users, Twitter and Instagram are direct competitors.  This article breaks down the strengths and weaknesses of each platform and how they are generally being used.  I really enjoyed this article because it exposed some problems with twitter like “too much noise”.  This means that so many people are tweeting, that finding useful information or having useful interactions with users is becoming harder with the increased traffic.  The Author makes a good point when he talks about how years ago when less people used twitter, they had generally more engaged users.