Here’s this week’s round-up of social media (& tech) news. Come by each week for what I hope to be a fun & informative blog post on social stories that caught my eye throughout the week!

• I thought this was an interesting article (and let’s face it, most people who use Instagram have probably thought it at least once or twice): Stop asking me why I didn’t like your Instagram post. Personally, I’d never ask! But the thought has crossed my mind before for my own photos (and it’s sad, I know) but also I’ve wondered if other people I’m following have wondered why I skip out on double tapping sometimes. What a world, lol.

• A strong reminder that if the Internet will take you down if you do bad things – in this case, a comedian / social media star loses his Comedy channel deal (and gets a ton of flack) online for stealing other people’s jokes/images. Check out some of the jokes he’s stolen in this handy Storify.

• Pew Research released their latest numbers on mobile messaging and social media – finding stats like: Instagram and Pinterest user growth has doubled since 2012. Daily usage has increased significantly too (59% of the 300+ million Instagram users check in daily). Facebook is still #1 – with 72% of all online adult users using Facebook and more!

• How powerful Facebook can be for website traffic: Facebook now accounts for nearly 43% of traffic to its network of media sites. Google is still the top referral source when it comes to search/overall web traffic, but Facebook has an edge when it comes to referring to media/news sites in particular.

• Should Medium be worried? Facebook Notes is getting a big revamp in an effort to – well – not be totally useless.

• The big story last week was around the hack of Ashley Madison, a Canadian-based online, dating website. People from the City of Edmonton / Alberta government were among those listed as users, incredibly, signing up for accounts using their work email addresses. Geezus.

• Search for something on Google now and you’ll see relevant tweets pop up! This has been slowly rolled out over the last few months but is now accessible via desktop search. Pretty handy!

• Employee creeping made easy: LinkedIn has released a new app called Lookup that lets you find and search for your coworkers more easily.

• Introducing Promoted Twitter Video ads!

• Did you know 74% of Americans use emojis every single day? Nearly half of all Instagram comments include an emoji? Check out this report which shows the most popular emojis by U.S. state. I tried to see if they did one for Canada but nope! Still, seeing the U.S. state usage is quite interesting!

• Oo. Google entering the food game? Google Maps appear to be capitalizing on the food pics trend by encouraging users to share food photos onto Google Maps itself.

• There’s a new “Donate Now” button on Facebook helping non-profits connect and encourage people to care and contribute to their causes.

• Google Hangouts is going stand-alone: You can now just go to hangouts.google.com to phone/video/message someone. Looks like Google is going through a lot of separations lately.

• Did you see this week’s Cat Saturday photos?! My favourites are 2, 7, 9, 13, 18, 25, 27, 31, and 36!!

Thoughts on these stories? Tweet @ me or leave a comment below!

Linda

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