It’s Friday already! You know what that means: it’s time to catch up on the search and social media news from this past week. Let’s get to it:
Twitter adds Retweet function to web interface, tweeple revolt
Retweets, normally seen as “RT:” are simply a repitition of someone else’s tweet. It’s been widely used by twitter users in order to repeat an important, useful, or otherwise interesting tweet while giving credit back to the person who originally said it. This week, after some testing, Twitter released the new retweet function, but fundamentally changed how it worked, much to the chagrin of a vast majority of twitter users.
The difference is: when you retweet something (using the twitter web interface) instead of “RT: @originalusername”, the original tweet will simply show up in your followers’ feeds avatar and all (regardless if they follow the person or not). Another fundamental change is that the option to add to or change the original tweet is not a function of this feature. These two differences (despite some advantages they may have) are the focus for most of the dissent. Some users even suggested blocking users who use this feature as a measure to discourage its use.
Google Chromium OS project is official
Google recently (and officially) announced the coming of its open source operating system Chrome OS. The announcement is not a big surprise, as it has been talked about for months now, and seems to be the next logical step for Google (who has their hands in just about everything these days). It appears that the speedy Chrome OS is to be web based (looking and feeling more like a web browser) and probably won’t replace windows or other operating systems meant for hard drive based computers. You can read more about the initial impressions about the launch on Search Engine Journal’s wrap up of the Chrome OS announcement.
Yahoo adds Social Content to search
Social and real time search continues to be a hot topic this week as Yahoo! adds real time functionality to its main search engine results. Like a google news onebox result, when you search in Yahoo! for a topic that comes up with recent news results or buzz, you will now see a result for “Latest News” with options including: news, photos, videos, and Twitter.
Google to test new layout for search results
Google’s advanced features and search options have traditionally been kept hidden from users unless they click on a somewhat difficult to find button. Soon, Google will be testing a new layout of search results that will make these features a static part of the layout. The other main difference is the bolder blue “search” button (as opposed to the traditional white). A screenshot of the new layout can be seen below (courtesy of searchengineland)
Youtube to get Subtitles
Youtube will be rolling out automatic subtitles for the user generated video website in order to make the videos more accessible to the deaf. Mr. Harrinstein, The engineer in charge of the project, is also hearing disabled had this to say about the project:
“The majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me,”
The new feature will only be available on 13 channels at first, and while not perfect, the technology behind the automatic subtitle generator “should improve with time”.
The lighter side of Social Media
- A woman loses her benefits after posting photos to facebook of herself on vacation.
- Another woman uses facebook to her advantage by tracking down her attacker.
- A drunk Ninja impales himself on a fence…
- Here’s 5 “famous” last facebook updates (not real)…
