This month in social media: everything you need to know from September - Fun stuff

It’s nice to see Google+ featuring heavily in September’s edition of our monthly round up of social media news. While there is a constant debate about how much of a social media marketer’s time Google+ should be worth, Google is regularly adding attractive new features, and is constantly reminding us that there is one good reason not to forget about the network: its search engine.

So, if you need to catch up on your social media, here is what you need to know from September.

More photo editing tools for Google+

Google is trying to make its social network more attractive to photographers with another enhancement to its photo editing tools and filters. Google+ now has selective adjust for editing only specific regions of an image, filters for Instagram style looks, and frames for the finishing touch. So far, these photo editing improvements are rolling out gradually, so you might not have access to them straight away. However, you can only access these new features on your desktop using Chrome, while on mobile they’re available on both iOS and Android.

Advertising comes to Pinterest

The pinboard-style social network, Pinterest, is planning to make its offering more attractive to businesses by introducing advertising. The three-year old business, who until now showed a lot of reluctance to introducing ad products, is changing its mind with the launch of “promoted pins”. This new opportunity will allow businesses to pay for sponsored pins that users will be able to notice at the top of search results and category feeds. According to the news, we may see this new advertising experiment appearing in the coming weeks as the aim is to create revenue around seasonal events such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

Google+ introduces embeddable posts

Google+ has made it easier for you to share your content from the platform across the web thanks to the introduction of embedded posts which fully support text, photo, and video posts. Now, you are able to embed public Google+ posts or articles anywhere using HTML/Javascript code. To share a post, simply select ‘Embed post’ from the drop-down menu in the top right corner of your post and copy the code shown. Because these posts are fully interactive, they encourage further Google+ engagement, with the ability for visitors to +1, comments, and follow, directly from the post.

If you can’t wait to test it yourself have a look at how Business Insider, Elle, Eurosport, Financial Times, and National Geographic are using this new feature.

Author attribution with Google+ Sign-In

Also part of the same announcement, Google have made it easier for authors to attribute the content they produce with their Google+ profile through Google+ Sign-In. Beginning with WordPress.com and Typepad, when users sign-in to Google through these services, the content they publish on them will have authorship information displayed in Google search results. If all goes well, the integration will be used with other publishing websites such as About.com, WikiHow, and Examiner.

Facebook ad images get bigger

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Have you noticed that the images in Facebook ads have gotten bigger? Facebook have launched larger images for desktop and mobile ads, in some cases 3.5 times as big, primarily as a way of increasing click-through rates on ads. Continuing with their commitment to making cross-device campaigns easy to manage, advertisers won’t need to upload multiple image sizes. Larger images will also appear in other posts that share a link, such as when users share a news story for example.

Twitter experiments with ‘Related Tweets’

As part of Twitter’s aim to improve discovery and the overall user experience, the company has been testing its latest feature: Related Tweets. As the name suggests, it highlights tweets that share common words or links as the original tweet. The context for the ‘Related Tweet’ may be generated from people who the individual is following as well as tweets from others. The feature is supposed to show the story behind every tweet as well as help to spread news about a story more accurately. Currently, this feature is being tested, and won’t be available to everyone (for example, we couldn’t get it working here in the office).

YouTube to launch offline video viewing for mobile devices

Soon, YouTube users will be able to watch videos no matter where they are and more importantly, when they are offline. YouTube is planning to enable viewers to add and store videos to their devices and watch them even if they are not connected to the Internet for up to 48 hours. It is a very significant step as downloading videos has been against YouTube’s rules, with some users relying on third-party apps and browser extensions to get their offline fix.