Social media news: Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter

The social media world was brimming with news again this week. Here is a quick roundup of what happened for Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Facebook

Users had been expecting it for a long time. On Friday, Facebook finally gave them the ability to edit their comments at any time after publication.

To edit a comment, a user must hover over the top right part of their comment, click the pencil icon and select "edit". Once the edit is done, all they need to do is press "enter" on their keyboard.

Erasing a comment just requires a click on the same pencil icon. A user should then select "delete" and click "confirm" in the pop-up screen.

Google 

Note that the original comment will remain available publicly. A clickable link ("edited") will show under the comment, allowing other users to see what was changed.

On Wednesday, Google added two minor features to its social networking site: improved cover photos and a new profile share box. For more information, read Mashable's article.

On the same day, the company introduced the Endangered Languages Project. The project is a website allowing people to come together online in an effort to document and raise awareness of the thousands of endangered languages around the world. The contributions come from a diverse group of individuals and take the form of manuscripts, video and language samples, and articles.

"Google has played a role in the development and launch of this project, but the long-term goal is for true experts in the field of language preservation to take the lead," say Project Managers Clara Rivera Rodriguez and Jason Rissman in the Google Blog. "As such, in a few months we’ll officially be handing over the reins to the First Peoples' Cultural Council (FPCC) and The Institute for Language Information and Technology (The LINGUIST List) at Eastern Michigan University."

For more information about the Endangered Languages Project, visit www.endangeredlanguages.com.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn officially rolled out Targeted Status Updates on Tuesday. As it name suggests, the new feature gives companies the opportunity to tailor the updates they share to serve the needs of specific subsets of their followers.

"Launched in April with a few of our customers, Targeted Status Updates aims to make it easier for members to receive relevant information from companies they follow," says Mike Grishaver on the LinkedIn Blog. "In turn, companies can now communicate with their followers in a very personalized way and provide content tailored to specific audiences."

LinkedIn company page administrators can also take advantage of the new follower insights page, which offers important information, including detailed demographics, growth, and engagement over time.

Pinterest

After last month's introduction of automatic attribution for items pinned from Flickr, YouTube, Behance, and Vimeo, Pinterest announced on Wednesday that credited sources would be extended to the following websites: 500 px, Etsy, Kickstarter, Slideshare, and Soundclound.

"Attribution is gathered automatically from the content source, shows below the pin’s description, and cannot be changed by the Pinterest user," says the Pinterest Blog. "Existing pins [...] will also be automatically attributed, but this will take a little time because millions of you have already been busy pinning from these great sources of content."

Thanks to Inline Play, which Pinterest has enabled for Kickstarter, Slideshare, and SoundCloud, users can now watch / hear the videos, presentations and sounds they curate directly from the comfort of their own boards.

Twitter

Twitter is making it easier for people to follow the handles of their favourite celebrities. The micro-blogging site announcedon Tuesday the introduction of a simplified stream for verified accounts.

"When you visit the profiles of verified accounts, such as @bubbawatson, @NASCAR or @Pepsi, by default you will see their timeline of Tweets without replies: that is, you won’t see Tweets that begin with an @username. If you’d like to see all Tweets including replies, you can easily select “All” above the Tweets timeline on these profile pages," says Michael Sippey, Product Team Director, in the Twitter Blog.

However, the major piece of news is the two-hour long blackout Twitter experienced on Thursday. The event, which triggered unrest among many users, was thought to be the result of an attack by a group of hackers.

Mazen Rawashdeh, VP of Engineering, explained that the outage occurred as a result of a cascading bug. "This wasn’t due to a hack or our new office or Euro 2012 or GIF avatars, as some have speculated today," he said in the Twitter Blog.

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