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Twitter and Facebook had some news this past two weeks again. Since Jack Dorsey took over the lead with Twitter last summer, we can hardly keep up with all the new options and functions they announce and release. And Facebook has not been known for standing still for a long time either.

So here are some of the developments from the social networks over the past few weeks. This collection is what we think is really interesting and we ourselves will be sure to use in the future.

Twitter releases new Twitter for Websites display option

Are you telling stories with your tweets? Do you sometimes make a collection of different tweets and let them speak? This will now get easier.

(If you have never told a story with tweets, maybe this is an idea for a new post format? Seriously this could be very interesting for events or sports – I myself once wrote an article about a crazy Twitter conversation where I would have loved to use this tool kit).

Previously in order to tell a story with tweets you had to manage a bunch of Tweet-Ids, which you had to manually collect. Twitter now announced a new Collections API that turns multiple Tweets into a single story with a single Collection ID. You may have seen how it is going to look if you already have the new Twitter tab “Moments”, where Twitter uses this toolkit itself for generating the news stories (not everyone has “Moments” yet, Twitter claims they started rolling them out in the US – I am German and I already have them, but only on my personal account).

Now, you get to use this collections API for creating your own stories.

Here is how this is going to look like:

Twitter rolls out Twitter Polls

In our last social news update we already told you that Twitter was playing around with Twitter Polls and had released them to some sports brands and media outlets.

Now they are rolling out this feature worldwide: “everyone will be able to create polls on Twitter. And, with just a couple of taps, people can weigh in on all the topics they care about.”

Facebook updates Facebook search: Search FYI

Many people are looking for information on Facebook. More than 1.5 billion searches per day are conducted on Facebook. The goal is that you now cannot only see what friends and family say about a certain topic, you can also find out what the rest of the world is saying about this topic.

Facebook claims their new Search FYI will give you:

• better search suggestions
• search results from public posts in addition to posts from friends
• allow you to find public conversations

As always this new search is not available for everybody yet. Currently it is available for English (US) on iPhone, Android and Desktop.

Facebook introduced verified badges for local businesses

So far we have known the Facebook verified badge in form of a small blue check mark on Facebook pages of celebrities, sports teams, public figures.

Now Facebook introduces a new badge in form of a small grey check mark for local businesses which have a physical address.

Facebook so far rolled out this feature in the US, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. If this applies to you, you can find some information on how to get the badge on Facebook Help. IF you are in a country where the badge is already available, you can access them in the admin’s settings of your page using your business’ local phone number.

The goal with this badge is to make it easier for Facebook users to find the right and authentic account connected to a certain business.

LinkedIn Pulse on Apple Watch

LinkedIn Pulse lets you self publish articles to the LinkedIN community offering the opportunity of reaching a huge audience. What started as LinkedIN articles was rebranded to LinkedIn Pulse earlier this year following the merging with the Pulse app. The aim is to become THE source for “your daily news, powered by our professional world”.

Now they released LinkedIn Pulse for Apple Watch, so that it gets even easier for everybody to keep informed and browse summaries of the latest articles and stay informed with notifications.

LinkedIn Groups will all become private

Earlier this month LinkedIn announced that they are making all their groups private starting with October 14. It means that only members of the group will be able to see posts within the group and search engines will not be able to crawl the group updates. The aim is to improve the quality of the group conversations and to make it easier to control what is going on in the groups.

From my own experience with LinkedIn Groups some time ago, I see why they are doing this as most groups had a huge problem to get a conversation started in between all the self promotional chatter and link posting.

What else?

Pinterest makes it easier to add location data to pins: “we’re making it even easier to see your favorite spots on a map: Now location info will be added automatically to Pins. That means almost 7 billion Pins will have helpful details, like phone numbers, addresses and store hours.” (Pinterest Blog)

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