What's new on the social networks?

Over the last few weeks, there have been a number of updates made to some of the most popular social networks that have implications for both users and advertisers alike. Here's a round-up of what's been happening.

Twitter has released an update to its “expandable tweets”, which now allow users to view interactive content within the tweet stream on mobile and the Web.

“When you expand tweets containing links to partner Web sites, you can now see content previews, view images, play videos and more,” says Twitter. The feature has previously been limited to viewing YouTube videos and photos, but the micro-blogging site says due to new partnerships with publishers, it can now deliver richer content inside tweets.

“It's easier than ever to discover breaking news and bylines. When you expand a Tweet linking to a news article by The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle or Der Spiegel Online, you can see a preview with the headline, the introduction, and sometimes the Twitter accounts of the publisher and writer.” A partnership with Soundcloud means audio clips from the site will now also be able to appear in tweets.

This week, Twitter announced “tailored trends”, which are aimed at improving the relevance of trends to users based on their location and who they follow. Another recent update was the introduction of hashtag pages, which essentially curate conversations around specific topics.

The concept was revealed in a TV commercial, which focused on the NASCAR hashtag and resultant page. Hashtag pages, however, appear to be geared towards events rather than brands, as the brand itself has no editorial control over content. The resultant pages are a result of a combination of Twitter algorithms and human curation.

Twitter has also improved its Facebook integration, including the embedding of rich media elements such as photos, URLs, mentions and hashtags in tweets cross-posted to Facebook.

According to a TechCrunch report, over the next few weeks all Facebook users will be prompted to improve their account security by providing the social network with a verified phone number. All users will be shown a message at the top of their newsfeed asking them to “Stay in control of your account by following these simple security tips”.

On the advertising front, Facebook is testing “Facebook Exchange”, which will see users being shown ads based on their browsing history. The ads will appear in the ad-sidebar and will be based on a real-time bidding system, allowing brands to retarget Facebook users who are known to have visited their site.

Users will reportedly be able to opt out via third-party platforms, but will not be given the option to opt out completely on Facebook itself.

YouTube has updated its Google+ app to improve the functionality of YouTube videos without Google+ Hangouts. Users can now put together playlists of YouTube videos within the video chat feature of Google+.

According to reports, the intended use cases are for crowd-sourcing music playlists among friends. YouTube software engineer Ullas Gargi says: "Start a Hangout, have everyone load the YouTube app at the top of the screen, and start adding videos. It's like your own VIP table at the world's coolest YouTube party."

YouTube is also rumoured to be undergoing another redesign that will see the video-sharing site looking a lot more like Google+. Google is said to be testing the new look.

Google also recently converted over 80 million Google Places pages into Google+ Local pages. Google Places pages were previously used by companies to combine searches and reviews in an effort to boost their popularity in their area. The shift prompted some concern from businesses over whether their page rankings and search results would be affected.

The merging of Google Places with Google+, however, marks another step in Google's broader strategy to add a social layer to all of its services, creating a more cohesive online ecosystem.