A number of new changes have been added to social sites in the time since I last posted. Here is an overview of those with the most impact.
Facebook
Facebook, in the most recent of changes, added auto-playing videos to their mobile and desktop versions with videos ads set to go live 12/19/13. These ads (commercials) are still in a test mode so only a small amount will see the first one. Apparently, after the ad is allowed to play (by clicking or tapping it and activating the silent video to play with sound), the user will have the opportunity to click on either of two more ads. Yippee. These ads are estimated to run fifteen seconds, the same length as short ads currently running on TV. Facebook's ads will be tailored specifically for the site as opposed to simply rerunning the TV versions because it will first play silently. Mute your TV sometime or watch as you skip over ads on your DVR and notice how much graphics already play a big part of TV commercials. Even more so on Facebook.
Auto-play videos have been showing since September, both on mobile and on desktop. They are easy to block, if you have Chrome. Just go into your settings under advanced settings and choose privacy. Then scroll down to plug-ins and choose "click to play". I have successfully stopped auto-play videos in my news feed that way without resorting to an extension. You may need an extension if you have different browser, so you may want to check out this article:
http://techland.time.com/2013/12/17/how-to-block-facebooks-annoying-new-autoplay-video-ads/
Much of the tech media is calling the ads "annoying" (right in the above link) and "intrusive", saying that they will "infiltrate Facebook News Feeds". If you can block them (the link says that traditional adblockers won't work on them), then they will be none of these. Let me know if you see any and what you think as well as if other means are necessary to block them.
But this is just the latest news. Earlier, Facebook announced a policy change that allowed it to use your likes and comments in Sponsored Stories (ads). Although users can opt-out of regular ads, Sponsored Stories are based on interaction you have with a page, app or event that an advertiser has paid to promote. The only way to opt-out of those is to not interact with them by commenting or liking posts or comments and even not liking pages, apps and events in the first place. If you haven't reviewed your various likes recently, this might be the time to unlike some things that you don't care about any more. I will touch on why you should further down.
This was followed by opening up Facebook privacy controls to make all members profile visible to anyone. What is seen on the profile is under the user's control, but no more hidden profiles.
Facebook has also been tweaking the algorithms it uses to show you stories in your news feed by offering surveys when you click on the caret to hide a story (thereby delaying that option) to outright soliciting your participation by putting the link for surveys in your feed asking you to rate stories (the design of the surveys and the questions and ratings have been modified too) and even asking for users to answer longer periodic questionnaires (I was invited to do this questionnaire and accepted. I have also been rating posts in my feed on occasion using both methods). This tweaking will have an effect on the stories you get from pages, and even from your friends, as memes and viral-types of stories will lose favor over stories from more direct sources (e.g. think Upworthy vs. New York Times or Wall Street Journal). Older stories will also resurface (a six month old birthday post, with no new comments or likes just popped up in my feed) So, if you have the chance to rate stories, do it. I no longer see posts where a big like button appears since I gave those posts the lowest possible rating. The other way to affect your feed is to either change someone from a friend to just a following (they won't know) or to outright remove some of those people whose lives you just aren't really a part of any more. The same goes for pages. If you have lost interest or just lost track of some of those pages, it is time to let them go. There are various ways to organize both into separate feeds, but does anyone really need 700 pages to follow (a woman in a recent article I read confessed to that amount)? Can you really keep track of 400+ "friends" (some of mine have that many)?
Facebook has been busy in other ways that I won't discuss here because they have been either behind the scenes acquisitions and the results have yet to be felt or developments with Instagram, a product I don't use or follow. The new video ads (commercials) have inspired a writer to wonder about Facebook's future and how they don't seem to be working on products that users want that will make them some money but instead on ways to make more money with the limited choices with ways to display ads.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2013/12/17/facebook-should-spend-the-holidays-at-the-movies/
YouTube
YouTube finally completed its full integration into G+ in October by requiring any who wish to comment or receive comments to link their account to a G+ account. Lost in all of the outcry and hullabaloo was the fact that it does not have to be a profile, a page using the YouTube account name will suffice. That page can be anonymously linked to a profile so that a channel does not lose its identity and become e.g. John Doe's channel. That doesn't mean that even users who understood exactly what was happening weren't angry. Some channels (popular ones at that) choose to refuse to accept comments. Part of this was due to the essentially broken nature of the system as it started and the extremely poor marketing and managing of how to update and why it helped a channel. The Google+ Help community was flooded with angry, profane posts, most not even asking for help but instead delivering diatribes and their hatred of G+.
Although it seems that most of the early problems seem to have been fixed, lingering issues with links and ASCII comments continue. I have yet to link my account to a page as I gave up on comments long ago. In fact, when I now view a video, I don't even scroll down any more.
Two brand new updates that I have seen are a new typeface for the titles in the feed and the ability to remove G+ member content from the feed (so-called social sharing). The unwanted and removable channel suggestions still fill the right side column and the un-requested "Popular Videos" selections still adds itself to the feed. The content on YouTube remains good but the presentation too often leaves a lot to be desired.
Pinterest
Pinterest has been introducing a number of different pins to its selections. Related pins appear in the feed with a notation that allows users to rate it up or down to signal more or less like it. Rich pins have more text displayed from the source, such as a caption or pricing info. Sponsored Pins are ads and are still in a test phase (Pinterest is yet to be monetized) and include a symbol noting that it is sponsored. Place Pins target travelers looking for hotels, destinations and related info. Also new are Holiday Boards featuring products from various businesses. Even Secret Boards got an expansion from three to six, Although the help page still says the maximum is three, my page shows six spaces.
Pinterest is still growing, but I find that its search capabilities are still weak and discovery by linked pins is the most likely way to find something new. As an example, below the "Also On These Boards" (or other public boards with the same pin) the "People Who Pinned This Also Pinned" display became "Related Pins" an expansion of the previous selections, but not part of the other Related Pins. This section is often much bigger and more likely to show tenuously linked pins. This is accompanied by the continued display of the original board and its pins and additional pins from the same source.
Pinterest also expanded its settings for connecting to social networks to five: Facebook, Twitter, G+, Gmail and Yahoo. Their setting for personalization changed from including or not your activities on other sites to a choice of either your activities only on Pinterest or inside and outside of Pinterest activities.
I have a Pinterest account but only do secret boards (sorry!). I haven't found much to really engage me even though the discovery method is designed to keep users clicking and clicking, going from board to board to board. I don't shop online and have no future interest in doing so. I don't do DIY or cooking projects either. So, Pinterest is going to be a very low-key part of my social media activities.
And it still cannot be deleted.
Yahoo
Yahoo is currently (ahem) a bit of a mess. Their email system has been going through an extended breakdown for a large number of users. It also is reeling from user anger over a redesign that made it look and act more like Gmail (Marissa Mayer's, the new boss, previous job) while removing some favorite features.
The news stream has been including Tweets, columnists and editorials, new sources that have provoked controversy, increased video and extremely lightweight filler stories. Users have been announcing their intent to leave over these changes alone.
Before all of that, a month long display series of various redesigns of the logo led to the unveiling of a new look reported created by Mayer herself. It was a rather mundane and not very inspiring look that seemed to herald the trouble the site has been in ever since.
The home page (My Yahoo) also went through a redesign in the fall. The early offerings for filling the page were paltry, but it has since expanded into a much larger selection. Seventeen categories to choose from, but all have less than thirty apiece with many displaying less than twenty options. Like Facebook, a large portion of the options are of the "viral story factory" sort with a number of established names as well. A TV ad, featuring a celebrity DJ, is currently highlighting the update. It has a definitely snazzier look, but just isn't my cup of tea. Those missing iGoogle might find a refuge there since a migration tool for it exists.
There is an actual social site with Yahoo that I have no idea or clue how to access. But I really don't care to try to add another site to those that I already use. (I mean, after I got the email account, it took months and months before I bothered to find the directory and discovered that the profile page has some kind of link to groups and other activity buried within. Really buried).
Google+
G+ has had its own series of changes this season. Shared Endorsements, an ad campaign that pairs users' comments, +1's and reviews with targeted ads, were introduced. At least it is something that can be mostly an opt-out; info placed on Google Play cannot be included in the opt-out. Although this is an expansion of their policy, these uses were hinted at in generalized language in the previous version. I limited my circled pages before this change, and since, as a result of reading these policies.
Many updates came to photos as well. However, for each update, a bug of some sort seemed to arrive too. Editing tools disappeared and reappeared; photos disappear; the layout change to highlights with albums now hidden in a menu; and clutter starting to take over the page. Even with cute additions, like snow effects, photos remains an area with problems still to be fixed. And this applies to photo display in posts. Depending on what feed or page you are on, the photo will fill the post, edge to edge, or there will be a gray border around the image, shrinking some smaller photos even further.
Notifications have been buggy too. An update to cause read notices to slide off of the screen, instead caused all of them to vanish, unread. This was removed quickly and was gone until just very recently.
Customized URLs were allowed for qualifying users, but the biggest issue seems to be that no one gets the exact one that they want; they have to add extra letters thereby making them less useful or even against a business's organizational rules.
A few other updates (e.g. a section for your moderated communities on the communities page) were helpful for users, but many were ultimately cosmetic (check out the setting page; collapsible menus but no real design change). The Google account page got a redesign (access via your avatar on the top right) so that it resembles the G+ profile layout by using boxes to organize. But you still can't remove products that you no longer want to use or clicked on by accident (mine are Offers, Calendar, Tasks and Moderator, which nothing to do with communities).
G+ still continues to be the butt of jokes (most recently, Stephen Colbert suggested that Google's new robot acquisitions would take over humanity and make them sign up for G+ because no will do it otherwise). I still like it and find it fun and useful too, but I can see the point. With few or none of the face-to-face people they know using it, people are a loss to start posting and not be certain that anyone will care, no matter how many are in your circles. And though Google keeps announcing larger numbers using the sign-in or logging in to Google itself, much of this is up for a closer look since Gmail and YouTube, its two most popular products, keep steering new and old users toward signing up for a G+ membership. That's how I got one, by not realizing just what I was agreeing to and Google's vague threats of limited use of their Gmail if you didn't click through.
G+ has a lot going for it and Google has an ever increasing user base for it myriad products (Android and Drive among many more including the ubiquitous Search), but if they can't get a better team organizing the marketing of G+, it will always be an also-ran, no matter how large the numbers they wave at us.
If you think that I missed an important update or change or that I just missed the point of an update, let me know.
