Social Media Digest: PostRank Purchased, Baidu Spends & Instagram Wins
- Social Media
Welcome back to our latest instalment of what’s hot in the world of social media. In case you missed it, here’s what happened over the last week:
1. Google has announced that is has bought PostRank, the online social media analysts. A message on their homepage reads: “We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished, and we now look forward to working with Google’s team to build more useful tools for measuring engagement online, and we’ll be sure to share details on our progress in the coming months.” Whether this will lead to further analytics tools for the web remains to be seen.
2. Chinese search engine Baidu will reportedly spend nearly a half-billion dollars to bring small businesses online and, among other things, train 100,000 search marketing professionals in China. As reported by both NASDAQ and AMP, Baidu will make a $470 million investment in China’s online market between now and the end of 2015.
3. Mark Zuckerberg fell foul of his own social media platform this week when it was revealed that a glitch in the security systems meant his private photos became public property. Whilst the photos were limited to holding a live chicken, killing said chicken and eating said chicken’s remains, the world tuned in to see behind the veil and glimpse the private life of the man who has made all of ours public.
4. Twitter has unveiled a new look today, features of which will be rolled out over the coming weeks. The general idea is to grow revenue through advertising. “We have to provide the simplest and fastest way for people around the world to connect to everything they care about,” Twitter Chief Executive Dick Costolo said as he introduced the new version of the site at an event at the company’s future headquarters in San Francisco.
5. Apple has released its annual iTunes Rewind, a look back at the most popular content available in the App Store over the past year. This year, top honors went to photo-sharing app Instagram, which Apple named “iPhone App of the Year.” As Apple’s reigning favorite, the app will be featured prominently in the App Store and is likely to see a significant surge in downloads. Instagram lets you shoot photos, apply polaroid-like filters and share your creations on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and other popular social networks.