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!

• Google+ isn’t dying (yet) – it’s just undergoing a Pinterest facelift, introducing “Collections,” a Pinterest-style way to organize content posted to the platform by topics.

• A sign of success? Facebook says users made 1 million video calls on Messenger in judge 2 days.

• Here’s a quick read on why the Facebook Messenger spin-off was a good one (despite initial user backlash).

• And you thought QR Codes were dead.. Snapchat has introduced Snaptags (like a QR Code) where all users have their own code and if you scan it you automatically follow the user.

• Do you use Tinder? Turns out nearly half of all Tinder users are in relationships! Their significant others must feel so lucky.

• Joss Whedon quit Twitter in another case of online attacks (he says it’s because he realized he doesn’t have time to check what everyone is saying about him, but honestly – wouldn’t be have been an issue if what everyone was saying hadn’t been negative and to the point of death threats.) Can this culture of Twitter shaming / attacking end? I like James Gunn’s post: “Be a little kinder, on the Internet and elsewhere.”

• I don’t know if I would say this means people are sick of social media as this article suggests but apparently user growth has been pretty stagnant with Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Yelp.

• What doesn’t appear to be stagnant: Vine. There are now 100 million users watching Vine videos every month and more than 1 billion “loops” (views) per day – but monetization is not their focus right now.

• LinkedIn is introducing deeper analytics for those who use its blogging/publishing platform!

• I always wonder if I go through way more effort finding links for things to share on Facebook (or any last form) – now Facebook is trying to help ease that process and keep you in their app longer: letting users search for some news or links without clicking off to Google.

• This is incredible: a woman in a hostage situation convinced her hostage taker to let her order pizza from the Pizza Hut app – she wrote please help, 911 hostage in the additional info section of the order and thank goodness the Pizza Hut workers called the police.

• North America’s first YouTube Fan Fest took place in Toronto – with popular video bloggers coming together to meet their fans. A new breed of celebrity! I’m actually surprised it was held in Canada and not somewhere in the U.S.

• Why do people keep trying to ban selfies (/sticks)? The latest selfie ban was at the MET Gala but obvs celebrities ain’t NOT gonna selfie.

• Alberta has a new government (yay!) Check out this interesting wrap-up of the #abvote “hashtag election” from Kickpoint.

• Edmontonians celebrated the best in local social media content creators over the weekend – check out the list of winners! Congrats everyone!

• Did you see this week’s Cat Saturday photos?! My favourites are 2, 3, 8, 18 and 28!!

• The Edmonton International Cat Festival is coming up fast – May 30! Get your tickets!! Come watch cat videos & do other fun cat-themed stuff, including meeting celebrity cat Pudge, all for a good cause! Here’s the schedule for the day! And head here to buy tickets in advance!

• I’m in Fort St. John, B.C. this week doing a social media presentation at the Spark Women’s Leadership Conference! Follow along on Twitter at #LINDORKinYXJ for my experience in the city!

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

Linda

Follow @lindork