Twitter Unveils Exclusive Feature For Verified Users – Twitter Verified Profile

As if reporting an IPO wasn’t enough news for one day, Twitter followed up their major announcement with a new feature Thursday to help its verified users better manage their Twitter conversations.

The update will allow verified users (those with the blue check marks) to filter their Twitter mentions within the “Connect” tab above their feed.

Verified users can now view their mentions in three separate categories: all, filtered, and verified. The idea is to help those users identify the conversations that may be most important to them by sifting out the spam.

Viewing connections in the “Verified” category will only show mentions by other verified users. Users who view mentions under the “Filtered” category will see posts “based on an algorithm we use to filter out spam,” wrote Product Manager Ed Gutman in the company’s blog post.

The new perk is another way to encourage Twitter’s most popular users to stay active on the platform. Last month, Facebook confirmed that it was also working on a VIP-only app to encourage celebs to engage more regularly with fans.

On Twitter any user can, in theory, get a message in front of any other user on the platform. Making it easier to sift through those messages may encourage the verified users to interact more readily with others through tweets — or it may mean that VIPs will be more likely to stick to themselves.

For now, the new feature will only be available on the site’s web version, although Twitter plans to bring it to mobile at some point in the future, wrote Gutman.

Do you believe this will increase engagement on Twitter? Tell us in the comments below.

Images: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images, Twitter

Pinterest Hires First International Employees – Buy Pinterest Followers & RePins

Pinterest is hiring abroad for the first time, adding country managers in France and the UK to help grow the site’s user base in Europe, according to a company spokesperson.

The new managers will build out the local Pinterest communities overseas and connect with brands and partners. Pinterest is also looking to hire marketing managers in London and Paris, and may open international offices after building a larger workforce outside the United States.

“The Pinterest communities in France and the United Kingdom have been growing as people find inspiration for the things they love — such as food, fashion, cars, and art — and go do those things in the real world,” said Matt Crystal, Pinterest’s head of international, in a statement to Mashable.

“We’re continually refining our recommendations to deliver the most relevant and high-quality experience for pinners in these locations, and look forward to making Pinterest more personalized and relevant for people wherever they are.”

The international hires come just months after Pinterest launched a French version of the site in June. Pinterest says its engagement in the UK is also increasing, with more than one million pins per day.

The company’s San Francisco-based headquarters is approaching 150 employees.

Image: mkhmarketing

Facebook Tests Video Autoplay in Mobile News Feeds

Facebook will begin testing a new mobile feature Thursday that plays videos automatically as users scroll through their News Feeds. The videos will begin playing as they come into view on the screen, and users can preview them within the News Feed without clicking on or opening them.

Each video will play silently and can be viewed with sound upon clicking.

The new capability will only be rolled out a small group of random users, and videos will only play automatically if they are uploaded directly to Facebook — not embedded from other sites like YouTube. Still, Facebook hopes the added functionality will let users get more out of the video content on their feed, particularly since Facebook lets users preview the video without interrupting the scroll.

This new autoplay feature only applies to videos uploaded by individuals, bands and musicians. In other words, brand pages won’t be able to use autoplay for promotional videos, and Facebook doesn’t offer video advertisements at this time.

No details were released regarding a timeline for rolling out the feature to all users, or whether it will be available for Facebook’s desktop platform.

Image: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

Facebook-Flavored Ice Cream Is a Real Thing – Facebook Marketing

Can you imagine tasting a social network? Two enterprising ice cream makers at Valentino Ice Cream Shop in Tisno, on Croatia’s Murter island, came up with the novel idea.

One of the owners, Admir Adil, noticed his 15-year-old daughter was incessantly checking Facebook, so he thought it only appropriate to create a flavor for other fans obsessed with the social media behemoth.

Admir and his brother Ibi Adil created their Facebook-flavored ice cream by simply mixing blue syrup atop vanilla ice cream and placing a small sign with a Facebook logo on it. Selling a scoop for a euro ($1.32), the ice cream apparently tastes like sugary sweets and chewing gum, but it’s become a hit as many passersby were immediately drawn to Facebook’s trademark logo — as well as the novelty.

The duo said they have not contacted Mark Zuckerberg for trademark use.

Image: Dusko Jaramaz/PixSell

Twitter Acquires Trendrr to Build Out TV Offerings

Trendrr announced Wednesday that it has been acquired by Twitter as the microblogging service seeks to further integrate its service with TV networks and advertisers.

Trendrr has two products: One, Trendrr.TV, provides TV networks, publishers and media agencies with tools to track TV engagement across social networks, including Twitter. A second, Curatorr, allows those same parties to sort through social streams to visualize data and to help them identify high-quality tweets — tweets that might, say, get retweeted by a TV show’s Twitter account, or show up on air during The Bachelor.

It’s this latter product, a Twitter spokesperson says, that Twitter intends to take advantage of. Twitter already provides ad and analytics products for TV advertisers, including the ability for national advertisers to retarget their TV ads to Twitter users. The acquisition will allow Twitter to offer additional services to networks, publishers and other organizations, the spokesperson says.

The move follows several others Twitter has made in the TV space this year. Most recently, Twitter announced its first head of entertainment sales: Jennifer Prince, formerly the head of media and entertainment sales at Google. The company is also planning to roll out a TV ratings system with Nielsen in the fall, which will provide TV networks with ratings based on Twitter buzz.

Trendrr CEO Mark Ghuneim says the company will continue to work with its current partners following the acquisition, but will not add any new ones:

Curatorr, our Twitter certified product, will work with media companies, marketers, and display ecosystem partners to create compelling user experiences – continuing to pursue our initial charter of focusing on the real-time aspects of TV and media.

We intend to honor existing partner contracts for Trendrr.TV but we do not plan to establish new ones going forward.

Trendrr was founded in mid-2007 and is based in New York.

Note: This story was updated with comments from a Twitter spokesperson, above.

Image: Mashable composite; iStockphoto, belterz

Facebook Sells ‘Social Butterfly Blue’ Nail Polish- Facebook Marketing

You can now wear Facebook pride on your fingertips.

The company is currently selling a shade of nail polish, “social butterfly blue” at its campus store in Menlo Park, Calif. Although Facebook told Mashable it added the polish to its collection of branded swag at the beginning of the year, its existence was recently brought to light by Huffington Post executive tech editor Bianca Bosker, who tweeted a picture of it on sale at the headquarters’ store.

You won’t find the Facebook logo on the packaging, though. Instead, it’s decorated with a small icon of a butterfly.

Unfortunately, you’ll have to visit the shop in person to pick up your Facebook blue polish; no online orders are available. Each bottle costs $4.95.

Image: Mashable composite; images: iStockphoto, gawriloff; Facebook

63% of Brands Have Multiple Twitter Accounts – Twitter Stats

For top brands, one presence on Twitter isn’t enough.

In 2013, 63% of brands have multiple Twitter accounts, according to a report by Brandwatch. This trend represents an 800% increase from two years ago, when just 7% of brands had multiple Twitter accounts.

Statista’s chart, below, breaks down the number of brands with multiple, single and zero Twitter accounts, measured over the past three years.

Do you think multiple Twitter accounts are a must for brands? Let us know in the comments.

Image: mhkmarketing

Twitter Teaches You How to Hashtag – Twitter Marketing

Want to be sure your tweet is shared with the right group of users? There’s a hashtag for that — if you can find the right one.

Hashtags have become synonymous with Twitter, serving to filter what can otherwise be a wide array of difficult-to-categorize information.

Users can join any conversation on the platform by adding the appropriate hashtag to their tweet. The problem is knowing which one to include.

Twitter is trying to solve that. The company unveiled an infographic Wednesday complete with a blog post highlighting tips on choosing the best hashtag for your tweet.

The highlights: Make your hashtag memorable, integrate it with other marketing activity like ads or campaigns, and don’t be afraid to piggyback on a popular term or phrase.

“If people are already using a hashtag, and having conversations, part of your work is already done,” wrote Twitter’s UK editorial manager, Gordon MacMillan, in the blog post.

“All your brand needs to do is ensure that when it joins that conversation it is adding value.”

Image: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Facebook Now Gives More Control Over What You Share

Facebook announced on Thursday that the site’s two-step app permission process has been fully integrated with users worldwide. The feature, which was first announced in April, allows users to have more control over the content they share to Facebook through third-party applications.

When users sign in to an app like Lyft or Words With Friends using their Facebook login credentials, they can now specify exactly what they would like to share with Facebook in a two-step process. The first step asks for “read permissions,” which dictate the information from the app accessible to Facebook. The second step presents “write permissions,” which if accepted, allow the user to post directly back to his news feed through the app.

Previously, the two permissions were a package deal, meaning you couldn’t agree to one without also green-lighting the other. The update in April granted users more control and enabled them to accept just one or the other if they weren’t comfortable accepting both, according to Chris Daniels, director of business development at Facebook. The update is now fully available to all users, and a recent study of certain “high quality” apps by the social network found that 80% of users accepted the permissions when prompted.

Facebook benefits from users logging in to third-party apps using their Facebook profile. Those who log in with Facebook count as “active” users for the platform — more logins mean more content shared back to the site. Facebook has more than 850 million login events per month, and 81 of the 100 top-grossing iOS apps support Facebook login features, according to the company’s blog post. On Android, 62 of the 100 top-grossing apps support Facebook logins.

The new permission option was based on feedback from users and developers who felt they needed more control, Daniels said. Often, users timid about sharing back to Facebook saw the permissions page and simply elected to bypass logging in altogether.

“We understand people’s concerns about apps posting on their Timeline or to their friends,” Facebook posted on its blog. “The recent changes to Login are just the beginning of more improvements you’ll see as we continue working to provide useful services for developers that are easy for users to understand.”

Have you ever skipped logging into an app because of Facebook permissions? Tell us in the comments below.

Image: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images