Social Media Digest: Tumblr valued, Instagram grows, Flickr Android

Welcome back to our weekly instalment of what’s hot in the world of social media. In case you missed what happened over the past week, here’s a run-down of our top five:

1. Rumours abound that the Google Drive is getting nearer. The Google Drive, which will use native syncing software, will be able to sync files across a range of devices including computers and mobile devices. With the Google Drive sync app, users will be able to drag and drop a file and immediately access that file on other devices. The Google Drive is expected to be located at drive.google.com, which is not currently live. Google currently provides users with an always increasing amount of free storage for Gmail, Google Docs, Picassa, and the other Google services. It is expected that the Google Drive will also provide users with a set amount of storage for free and allow the purchase of additional storage if needed.

2. Tumblr has announced $85m in new funding, which indicates a valuation of about $800m for the fast-growing multimedia blogging site. The investment adds Tumblr to the list of high-growth social media companies that are generating high levels of investor interest before they have generated proven revenues, and in spite of the recent stock market volatility that has forced companies such as Zynga and Groupon to delay their initial offerings.

3. Instagram has announced that it is signing up 78 users every minute. Co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom says Instagram hit a new peak upload record on Monday with 26 photos uploaded every second. In less than a year since launching, Instagram has amassed more than 10 million users, including celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Justin Bieber; comparatively, Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, all hot start-ups at one point, each took over two years to reach the same 10 million user mark.

4.Flickr has unveiled its official Android app, as well as a new feature known as Photo Session that will allows users to share photostreams in real-time. The Android app, available now, lets users take photos, enhance them with one of 10 optional filters, and then post them on social-networking sites like Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook. Before you take a photo, you can adjust camera settings with options like flash, ratio selection, and shutter focus. Once photos are uploaded, you can view them by swiping through a set or tapping to view in full screen or slideshow mode.

5. Our latest infographic (right) shows the incresing importance of loyalty schemes in the social media sphere.