There have been some great developments in the world of social this week as well as some exciting news from Yahoo and Bing. But are any of the stories as big as the announcement that Terry Wogan was not presenting Children in Need, for “health reasons”.

Facebook Notify – A Twitter Alternative?

notify pairing 14 SEOcial: Your weekly SEO and social media summary #9

You may remember in SEOcial #6 we mentioned Facebook were testing a news feature which meant they could deliver news to your phone directly? Well, following a stream of recent updates Facebook has rolled out a news focused app called notify. So if you want to get the final scores, get a daily weather forecast sent to you every morning, or just the latest news headlines, notify will deliver these notifications to you.

The notifications will be delivered right to your lockscreen and you will have the ability to glance through or tap to open the link. Looks like Facebook has taken over our homescreens and now it wants the lockscreen too.

Hearts Win Over Stars – Fact!

twitter app hearts SEOcial: Your weekly SEO and social media summary #9

Apparently Twitter knew what they were doing when they changed stars to hearts claiming there has been a 6% rise in likes over favourites since the change. This is even more pronounced for new users with an increase of 9%. So whether you like it or not, hearts are here to stay.

Facebook Unleashes 360 Adverts

facebook 360 vide SEOcial: Your weekly SEO and social media summary #9

We’re set to see more 360 degree videos appearing in our news streams as Facebook launched 360 video adverts in the US on Thursday. With VR headsets like the Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Rift set to launch over the coming months the 360 degree videos should help whet our appetites.

YouTube Red – Now Serving Music

As part of the paid YouTube Red subscription service YouTube has now launched a music app in an attempt to rival services such as Spotify and Pandora. While there is a free version of the app the features that make it worth having such as: ad-free videos, music on the lockscreen and caching of music, are only available with a paid subscription to YouTube Red.

Fun Feature Alert

Twitter’s latest feature lets you scrub GIFs like digital LPs meaning your favourite funny cat GIFs could be about to become even funnier. The new feature only seems to be available on SnappyTV published content currently but we would love to see this available on all GIFs shared on Twitter.

Bing launches a mobile-friendly testing tool

Trailing behind Google, Bing has launched its own mobile friendliness test tool a year after the search giant. The tool evaluates a page telling you if it is mobile-friendly based on criteria such as: viewport and zoom control, width of page content and spacing of links. But with less than 10% of the UK population using Bing will anyone use it?

Yahoo launches product adverts

With the run-up to Christmas in full swing businesses are desperate to dominate advertising and generate more online sales. Yahoo is now offering another way of doing just that with its take on product adverts launched on Thursday. The move comes just 2 weeks ahead of Black Friday with searchers being served product adverts similar to Google Shopping.