Your Weekly Social Media Snapshot

Surprising correlation between LinkedIn endorsements and recommendations

It has been half a year since LinkedIn introduced their endorsement feature, allowing users to endorse their colleagues and business partners for their skills and expertise with great ease. A couple of weeks ago LinkedIn announced that since last September more than a billion endorsements have been made. Surprisingly, LinkedIn also announced that 1bn Linkedin endorsements have lead to 2x increase in weekly recommendations. This is an encouraging statistic. Despite the dangers of spam and gaming the system it seems as though the Endorsement feature encourages genuine participation due to its simplicity and ease of use.

Hashtags come to Facebook

This week it has been announced that Facebook is considering introducing the hashtag functionality to their social media site. This latest update will allow users to index conversations around a particular topic. Facebook have not yet set a release date, however it has been speculated that they are working on this new update as we speak. Can this introduction be seen as a natural evolution of graph search? It is apparent that the hashtag has the potential to bring many benefits to Facebook, however many see it as Twitter’s iconic feature. Is it something which Facebook should pinch?

Will the new Facebook changes drive teenagers to use other social platforms?

As Facebook develops is it losing its attraction for many young teens, forcing them to discover new social platforms? Recently Facebook announced plans to improve the layout of its home page including the following new features: bigger images, multiple news feed and mobile consistencies. These new updates suggest that the social network is concentrating more on the needs of businesses and older audiences, thus perhaps abandoning the teen market. According to a recent survey of 1038 young adults, teens are choosing to spend more time on microbloging network site Tumblr suggesting that teenagers may begin to look for a cooler place to hang out online.

Channel 4 boldly ventures into new Social TV spaces

Channel 4 is no stranger to social TV. The broadcaster regularly integrates their TV programmes with Twitter hashtags to promote second screen viewing. This week they premiered their new television series Bedtime Live, a programme that looks at the sleeping patterns of the nation and aims to tackle common bedtime problems. What makes this programme innovative is the use of Google+ Hangouts; putting a new spin on ‘calling in’ to a show. The use of Google hangouts is an interesting development extending viewer experience.

Pinterest pins hopes on a more profitable proposition

Is Facebook feeling marginally threatened by the likes of visual counterparts such as Pinterest? Facebook’s latest redesign places a clear emphasis on visual content suggesting that this may be the case. Pinterest has been gaining traction over the past few years with brands such as Ikea and ASOS and is now, according to TechCrunch, only 1% behind Twitter for adult adopters in the US. The platform also recently released its shiny new data analytics tool which makes Pinterest increasingly appealing for businesses and signals a continued shift towards a more monetisable and revenue-generating proposition for the platform.