The New Flipboard

The free app originally made for the iPad has now been released for the iPhone. For those of you who aren't familiar with Flipboard, it pulls together content from all your social networks and other virtual spaces - Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, fashion magazines, etc. - based on your interests and turns them into magazine-like digital pages. It tells you what's happening all over the Web and brings it to you all in one place. The app is so graceful and integrated; you could delete all your individual social apps and not miss a thing. One new feature specific to the phone app called "Cover Stories for iPhone," even makes suggestions of articles and photos being shared with you and then learns over time what you will want to see the most. As you "flip" through the pages, they refresh each time with only a handful of content at once, keeping you coming back for more.

Facebook Timeline: The Rollout Begins

So this is what your official Facebook Timeline will look like. Facebook is finally transitioning this long awaited feature from beta to all-out feature and has launched in New Zealand. Soon the Timeline will be the default view for Facebook users all over the world but until the rollout is complete, we wait. Are you excited for the day you wake up to this invite at the top of your Homepage or dreading this new reality?

Facebook has also debuted their subscribe button for websites this week. Visitors to a website can now click to subscribe to a profile newsfeed. (The current version works for profiles and not pages - yet.)

How Social Media has Changed the Game

It's pretty obvious that the emergence of social media has changed the advertising game, but by how much? This Infographic from MDG Advertising provides some answers, showing nearly every aspect of how business has been affected by social media. When consumers are online, they spend most of their time on social networking sites, so marketers need to be there too if they want to reach their consumer. This realization has spurred a change in priorities, placing more importance on online marketing services, which translates to an increased social media budget. The last change has been to tactics and metrics. Of course with a new advertising platform, this calls for a new ad model - a new way to entice and engage with consumers, which opens many doors for new ways of measuring social media marketing success.

The Secret of Emotional Engagement

Results from a recent Facebook study has revealed their secret to high emotional engagement. The answer is: your face. The CEO of NeuroFocus, A.K. Pradeep, said that the presence of pictures and more specifically faces, opens a window for emotional engagement. He goes on to say that "since childhood we are trained to read people's faces to discern emotion," so seeing faces connected to each story on your Newsfeed releases an emotion and even more so when the faces are recognizable. An earlier study done by NeuroFocus compared a Visa ad on Facebook to one on TV and it found that the ad on Facebook scored higher for emotional engagement. This goes to show that if advertisers are looking for an emotional appeal, Facebook is the place to do it!

Twitter's Major Redesign

Twitter announced a whole new look for Twitter.com, TweetDeck and its mobile app this week! The new interface will have three new buttons at the top of the page (Home, @Connect and #Discover), each serving a distinct function that will simplify the user experience. @Connect displays your mentions and makes suggestions of accounts you may want to follow. #Discover, which I think is going to be most useful and a great development on trending topics, shows what's trending while linking you to the stories and videos.

The layout of the homepage will look different, too. Your feed will be on the right side and a bit smaller to make room for composing a tweet. Recommendations of who to follow and trends will appear on the left side.

Check out this video for a little tour and sneak peak:

The only problem? Twitter's slogan with their redesign, "Yours to Discover," is a little too familiar for Ontarians because if you've ever been here, seen our license plates or visited the Ontario Tourism Website, you'll know that slogan is ours! But Ontarians are having fun with this on Twitter (making it the sixth most popular hashtag in Toronto)! Dalton McGuinty tweeted, "@Twitter launches "Yours to Discover" campaign. I like it - where have i seen that before..."

Along with this redesign, Twitter has launched their brand pages, allowing advertisers to customize their headers with logo and tagline. Brand pages will also allow for keeping a tweet at the top of the timeline, which can expand to reveal embedded photos or video.

That's not all! Twitter announced the launch of embeddable tweets yesterday, offering website owners the option to embed tweets, allowing visitors to reply, retweet, favourite and follow the feed - all without leaving the page!

Facebook World Records

Have you ever wondered what the longest two-person comment thread on a Facebook status update was? Probably not but if you were wondering, The RecordSetter Book of World Records found that its 5,323! Check out some more of the Facebook records they found here.

Upcoming Webinar

I've saved the best for last! Join Maggie Fox next Tuesday December 13 at 12pm EST / 9am PST, as she hosts an exclusive, live webinar from Social Media Today on B2B vs. B2C Social Media: Whither the ROI?

Is social media going to pay its way or not? For most of Web 2.0's lifetime, this has been a key question. Both B2B and B2C marketers wrestle with this question, and there are few examples of success.

Join Maggie and fellow panelists, Paul Gillin and Sandy Carter, as they explore these urgent questions:

• What can we learn from businesses like Apple that have figured out how to get people to part with their money by leveraging social channels?
• Which platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter (and now Google+) provide the best ROI for B2B marketers?
• How can companies leverage their internal thought-leaders for generating influence and, eventually, sales?
• What barriers block marketers from converting people who used social platforms only for social reasons?
• How do you measure the return on social investment in B2B? What are the best cases for its use?

Will definitely be a great discussion! To register now, click HERE!