Digg - Once the former king of surfacing unique stories online and then sending a massive amount of traffic to them, Digg re-launched this week after a frantic 6-week reboot by new owners, Betaworks. It’ll be interesting to see if they can turn the site around, but at least the initial attempt looks promising.
Instagram Community Hits 80 Million Users – Instagram recently announced that they have 80 million users, who have shared more than 4 billion photos. Thanks to the addition of an Android app, Instagram has actually accelerated its growth since the Facebook acquisition, despite what many feared.
Foursquare: Introducing Promoted Updates - In the wake of their re-focus away from the check-in and towards discovery, Foursquare has introduced their first mainstream revenue attempt: Promoted Updates. Brands can now pay to promote their local specials, which will appear when a user accesses the ‘Discover’ area of the app to find something interesting to do in their area. It’ll be interesting to see if they can avoid the promoted content backlash that Facebook has seen, but initially it looks like a smart way to generate revenue while still providing helpful information to the user.
Twitter: Our Approach to Trust & Safety and Private Information – After suspending the account of a journalist for Tweeting the email address of an NBC executive, Twitter felt it was necessary to respond to the criticism by clarifying their policy around trust, safety and private information. However, their actions have caused many to question that relationship between Twitter and sponsors, and how much power they are giving to those with money to spend.
In addition to the @ and # symbols, Twitter now officially recognizes $ as a way of classifying data. When you add $ before a stock symbol in a Tweet, users can click that symbol to view additional Tweets about that company. (An idea conveniently ‘borrowed’ from StockTwits.)
Twitter Election - If you’d like to keep up with the latest trends surrounding the election on Twitter, they have developed a microsite that compares the buzz around Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.
Facebook Stories - To highlight some of the unique ways that people use Facebook, the social network developed a site that allows users to tell their story with video, photo, and text. (At the very least, make sure to check this one out to see the interesting combination of cinemagraph and video thumbnail that they made for their first video.)
Facebook Estimates 8.7% of Users are Duplicate, Miscategories or Spam Accounts - According to Facebook’s quarterly report, 8.7% of their accounts (about 83 million accounts) are either duplicate, miscategorized, or spam. While this still leaves them with nearly 900 million legitimate accounts, it does highlight one of the unique challenges of running a social network that aims to reach ever single person in the world.
