Pinterest has announced an interesting piece of news that sees its popular social sharing site begin to categorize pins based on different types of content, while a share button for third-party mobile apps has also been launched.

“From your feed, you can tell when a pin has more information by the icon that appears below the picture,” the company explains on its blog.

Pinterest is starting out with three categories which will each get their own dedicated pins to help make it easier for users to identify the kind of content included. They will be used by an ten initial partners – including Etsy, Fotopedia and Snapguide — and the pins will also include further pertinent details for users, as follows:

• Product pins for things like clothes and furniture with pricing, availability, and where to buy (updated every day!)

• Recipe pins from your favorite bloggers and websites that include cook time, ingredients, and servings

• Movie pins with content ratings, cast members, and more

As well as effecting new pins going forward, existing pins will also be categorized to make things more organized. The move is one that will be of particular interest to brands and companies that are looking to tap into the strong community of users that frequent the site.

Companies that use the new pins are not being charged to do so, a Pinterest representative told GigaOm, but the move is being made to make links more “actionable”. That, essentially, is designed to increase engagement and traffic that brands see from the site, and its a crucial element for Pinterest as it continues to explore strategies to draw revenue from its estimated 48 million monthly users worldwide.

Pinterest says that “this is just the beginning” of their efforts to make pins “more useful” and that we can expect to see more changes over the next few months.

One of those additional changes is the introduction of ‘Pin it’ buttons for other companies’ mobile apps, to make sharing content to the site all the more seamless. For now, that’s limited the aforementioned ten partners, but other companies can get the ball rolling by visiting the dedicated developer site here.

Pinterest users that want to enjoy the new categorized pins need to install the ‘Get it now’ button at the top of their home feed.

What do you think of the new buttons – do they improve your user experience on Pinterest?

Headline image via hydropeek / Flickr

Instagram on Thursday reminded all its users that today is the day its new “Photos of You” section is being turned on for everyone. This means everyone who can currently see your profile is now able to see all the pictures that you have been tagged in.

The feature was first announced two weeks ago but was only available if you chose to opt-in. Now it’s available for everyone, but thankfully you can choose whether photos others add of you appear on your profile automatically or only once you select them.

If you don’t want pictures of you to show up automatically, turn on the option to manually select which photos appear on your profile by following these three steps:

1. Go to your profile and tap the icon for all photos you’re tagged in.
2. Tap the Android menu icon or the iPhone wrench icon in the top-right corner.
3. Tap “Add Manually.”

These instructions remind us that Instagram is still not available for Windows Phone nor BlackBerry. We still think this will change in the coming months, as bringing in more potential users is always more important than adding incremental features like this one:

The new “Photos of You” section is clearly influenced by Facebook, Instagram’s parent company. The world’s largest social network has been keeping track of photos people are tagged in for years. On Instagram though, only the taker of a photo is able to tag people in it, unlike on Facebook where other people can suggest tags of themselves or others.

It’s also one of those features that will be useful whenever Instagram finally decides to offer a full-blown website. There needs to be more on those large screens than just photos and ads.

See also – An inside look at Instagram’s brand new cleaner, more professional logo and Thanks to Facebook Home, HTC First is the first phone to pre-load Instagram

Top Image Credit: Elliot Bennett

Yahoo on Thursday announced a new partnership with Twitter that will see tweets brought directly into the company’s homepage newsfeed. The new integration will be rolling out “over the next few days” on Yahoo’s US site, available to both desktop and mobile Web users.

Yahoo says it plans to include “relevant and personalized tweets” alongside its stories. If the partnership bears fruit, however, it’s fair to say Yahoo will look to expand it to its mobile apps as well as overseas.

If you’re in the US, here’s what to look for on the Yahoo homepage (notice the third item in the middle column):

Yahoo’s justification for the inclusion of tweets is fairly straightforward. The company sees the social network as a source for news, and since its homepage is still largely centered around delivering just that to its users, adding Twitter support is just one of many steps in its attempt to become relevant again.

“Updates direct from politicians, celebrities, media outlets, and other publishers have become an important source of real-time news and information,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said in a statement. “140 characters can connect athletes with their fans, capture live chatter from the red carpet, and inspire global debate.”

Details of the deal were not disclosed, though if money was exchanged it’s very likely Twitter was on the receiving end as Yahoo has more to gain in this case. If its editors can keep up with the constant stream of content on the social network, and choose pertinent ones in a timely manner, Twitter might be able to give Yahoo’s homepage new life.

That being said, Twitter also gets quite a bit from the deal: Yahoo users will not only be exposed to more tweets, but they can also discover interesting people and publishers to follow on Twitter. Details on how the integration will work on Yahoo’s homepage were not revealed, though it’s likely Twitter users will be offered more personalized content if they’re signed in.

Top Image Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Facebook on Tuesday announced it has completed rolling out the new sections on its Timeline profiles to everyone. Furthermore, the company says users are now collectively adding almost 200 million items daily.

Two months ago, Facebook debuted the new one-column Timeline. The company emphasized the redesigned sections on user profiles that let people have one place to add items of interest.

Yet everyone realized this was Facebook’s way of admitting the previous two-column design for posts simply wasn’t working. In case you’ve abandoned the service, here’s the new one-column Timeline (posts appear on the right side, and only on the right side, while everything else is on the left):

Content from apps are now more prominent as they have their own sections in the left column of the Timeline and on the About tab. You can add content to the books, music, movies, TV, and fitness sections manually or by choosing to include content from the apps you use. As of today, the music section can play songs Liked by friends with just one click, workouts can be tracked with friends in the fitness section, and you can also rate content directly on people’s Timelines and add ratings from apps:

You can also add an app as a stand-alone section on your Timeline and About page. Each app section gets one or more collections to showcase whatever you want from the app, and developers have the option to configure the data that appears.

The Facebook-owned Instagram app section displays a user’s photos and those they like:

Previously, only top-ranked Open Graph stories and aggregations would appear on a person’s Timeline. Now, when someone adds an app section, it will appear in the same place until they edit its order or visibility.

To add an app as a section, you need to install it and then click the “Add to Profile” button on its app section page. Developers can encourage their users to add their app by linking to it on Web or invoking it on mobile.

If you’re a developer yourself, Facebook has added a new “Collections” tab to help you set up app sections. The company also offers a few best practices:

• Give people a way to add your custom section to timeline: Consider including a URL in your app to give your users a preview of your section and help them decide whether to add it to timeline.
• Choose the right template for your section: Apps with great visual content should use the gallery template to draw people’s attention, and there are also list and map templates.
• Focus on quality and completeness before submitting your section for approval: To make the review process simple, submit your section only after making sure your object images and descriptions are complete and look great from the perspective of your users.

Developers will need to submit collections for review to Facebook. If you’re interested, check out the newly published documentation.

Top Image Credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Foursquare on Friday announced a new feature for its website: location filters. The feature is live now (you can check it out over at foursquare.com/explore) and Foursquare say it plans to bring it to your phone next.

There are multiple filters to choose from, including Specials, Haven’t Been, Friends, Price, Open Now, and Saved. Here’s how the feature looks in action:

Specials and Saved are self-explanatory, the former is for Foursquare to make money (by offering you deals that save you money) and the latter is for your personal use. The rest can be boiled down to: price ranges (based on how much you want to spend), check-ins (both yours and those of your friends), and hours.

Foursquare notes you can personalize these recommendations further, but you’ll need to log in to do so. The company offers some examples to woo you:

• See restaurants you haven’t been to before (new adventures!).
• See bars your friends like to go to.
• See places you’ve saved (make headway on your to-do list!).

Foursquare says it will be rolling out “more options” eventually, but wouldn’t say when. Presumably the company is referring to more filters, though it appears to have the basics covered.

This reminds us of a two-step version of Facebook’s Graph Search. Instead of typing in your whole query all at once, you have to think of a basic query and then filter your results.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this approach: it’s arguably easier for users as they’re used to it. We’re wondering if filters will work the same way on mobile; we’ll keep you updated as the feature rolls out to Foursquare’s apps as well.

See also – Foursquare reportedly keen to sell advertisers check-in data for targeted ads on other platforms and After nearly 3 billion check-ins, Foursquare reveals its top places across the US for 2012

Top Image Credit: Andrew Beierle

Timehop, that marvellous little service that helps you relive and share stories from the past based on your online activity on other platforms, has now added the ability for users to connect their Dropbox accounts.

That basically means you can now get all nostalgic peeking at all those photos you’ve backed up to Dropbox in the past. And if that includes photos you definitely don’t wanna see anymore, worry not, because Timehop will only surface the photos from the folders you pick.

Timehop will also leave out any text files or screenshots you’ve synced to your Dropbox account, and only show you pictures from cameras and phones, automatically weeding out duplicates to boot.

Earlier, Timehop added support for Facebook events and the ability for users to upload their Twitter archive.

➤ Timehop 1.4.0 for iOS

Top image credit: Thinkstock

Disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link. While we only ever write about products we think deserve to be on the pages of our site, The Next Web may earn a small commission if you click through and buy the product in question. For more information, please see our Terms of Service

Just when the buzz surrounding celebrity social networks was starting to get a bit stale, Upfront is livening things up with the launch of a new premium platform that grants fans access to exclusive videos, text messages, emails and other perks from influencers they follow.

Created by HopeMob founder Shaun King and Ray Lee, Upfront plans to sign deals with popular musicians, authors, chefs, brands and even religious leaders to have them share content to the social network. Users can pay between $0.99 and $5.99 a month per account they want to follow to enjoy different levels of access.

The base level includes access to questions, thoughts, communications tools and photos, while a $3.99 per month plan adds exclusive audio and video content. The top level ($5.99 per month per creator) adds on live webcasts and in-person events.

Upfront is launching with a Web version and iPhone and Android apps.

Though musicians, bands and actors seem like the the most obvious fit, King said in an interview that the platforms influencers could basically be anyone with a “devoted base of supporters and fans”

King noted that he’s not trying to replace existing social networks, as he’s a fan of Twitter, Facebook and Path. Upfront draws a lot of its inspiration from the intimacy of Path, but tailored to allow celebrities to interact with fans.

The paid aspect of the network is designed to keep out haters and spam. It also serves to quickly monetize content for celebrities so they can invest resources in keeping the goodies coming on their Upfront accounts. Revenue sharing will follow a standard 70/30 split, and Upfront will cover the costs associated with sending out messages from its 30 percent take.

King said the startup is rolling out its partner influencers slowly in order to spend time prepping each of them. It currently has 40 partners from a “broad spectrum of genres” signed up to start sharing and is launching with Maxwell and Hillsong United. Both artists have over 3 million likes on Facebook, so they have proven fan bases. The rest of the influencers will jump onto the platform in coming weeks and months.

The idea for the startup came while King was managing social media accounts for celebrities.

“At the time, both of the people I was helping had close to a million followers on Twitter. I was personally shocked by how much spam, hate and weirdness they could get on their @replies,” he said.

Out of a thousand replies to a post, King estimated that only a few hundred would be from genuine fans. One young artist that he worked with even deleted her Twitter account at one point because of all the hateful messages she was receiving.

“I started thinking a couple years ago about how difficult it was in the current social networking space to be able to isolate and communicate with just your fans. Today, it’s exponentially harder than it was just a few years ago,” he said.

He expects celebrities to continue to use Twitter and Facebook to communicate with the general public, while Upfront will be reserved for dedicated fans.

“We really feel that we have created a platform that’s spam-free and ad-free. I like to say that we’re hate-free. We’re constantly monitoring to make sure that it’s a positive environment. We have policies as far as that concerned,” he added.

While the fan side of the app performs as a fairly regular social network, the celebrity side comes loaded with plenty of unique features.

“What’s most powerful and unique about our platform, most fans will never see. We have a series of tools that we provide our influencers to connect with our fans,” King said, adding that the company has patents for some of its work.

Upfront has built a communications system so that celebrities can send text messages, pre-recoded calls and emails to their followers. While some of those might get annoying to casual fans, I can see how plenty of Beliebers would love to get voicemails from Justin himself. Upfront will also impose limits on how many messages influencers can send out per week.

Celebrities will also be able to live-stream to their accounts from within the app.

Upfront is going to live or die by the strength of its celebrity partnerships, so I asked King what kind of response the startup has gotten from those it approached.

“Without fail, everybody that uses our platform is really amped to be able to have in their own hands the ability to communicate directly with their fans,” King said.

As I mentioned earlier, there’s a bit of fatigue in the celebrity social network space. When asked what sets Upfront apart from other attempts, such as Backplane and Hang w/, King replied that there was still room for growth in the sector. He noted that some services were well-designed, but they lacked engaging content.

“We’ve really tried to say, ‘What are influencers missing on current platform?’, ‘What is it they need that they’re not currently able to do?’”

While the startup didn’t approach the service from the fan perspective, King said it will end up benefitting the fans.

“The tools that we’re giving people of influence are going to allow them to share more content and better content with fans,” King said.

I’m personally having a hard time thinking of a celebrity that I’d be willing to pay $0.99 a month to receive updates from, it’s not hard to imagine that there are plenty of people who would be. Friction’s going to be an issue, however, as Upfront will need to market itself well to get users to jump the paywall…up front. With just a handful of influencers at this point, it’s too early to tell how popular this will be, but it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.

➤ Upfront | iPhone | Android

Image credit: iStockphoto

Disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link. While we only ever write about products we think deserve to be on the pages of our site, The Next Web may earn a small commission if you click through and buy the product in question. For more information, please see our Terms of Service.

While sharing its financial results for its first quarter, Facebook on Wednesday announced a number of new milestones. The social network has now passed 1.11 billion monthly active users. Of those, daily active users passed 665 million on average during March 2013, and the number of monthly active mobile users hit 751 million.

Here’s the breakdown from the release:

• Daily active users (DAUs) were 665 million on average for March 2013, an increase of 26 percent year-over-year.
• Monthly active users (MAUs) were 1.11 billion as of March 31, 2013, an increase of 23 percent year-over-year.
• Mobile MAUs were 751 million as of March 31, 2013, an increase of 54 percent year-over-year.

Out of all these numbers, the most important one is of course mobile: Facebook needs to keep growing the number of its users signing in on phones and tablets to stay relevant. In fact, it’s worth noting that 67.66 percent of Facebook’s total user base now accesses the service from a mobile device.

To put things into perspective, that number has been slowly growing from the 40 percent mark in 2011 through and past the 50 percent mark in 2012. Either this quarter or next, it will likely end up passing the 70 percent mark.

In Q3 2012, Facebook announced it had passed 1 billion monthly active users and 600 million monthly active mobile users. Last quarter, Facebook passed 1.06 billion monthly active users, 680 million mobile users, and 618 million daily users.

While the year-over-year growth numbers are above, it’s also interesting to see Facebook’s growth from quarter to quarter. Between Q4 2012 and Q1 2013, the company was up 4.72 percent in total monthly users, 10.44 percent in mobile users, and 7.61 percent in daily users.

Now let’s see what that looks in the form of some graphs. Here is Facebook’s growth for total active users:

Here is Facebook’s growth for monthly mobile active users:

Last but not least, here are daily active users:

See also – Facebook sees 751M mobile users in Q1 2013 with $375M or 30% of ad revenue coming from mobile

Image credit: Ryan Glanzer

Facebook on Tuesday announced the worldwide rollout of Promoted Page Likes, a feature that makes it easier for Page owners to run ads that promote their Pages. Advertisers can already run ads on Facebook to do this, but Promoted Page Likes are specifically meant for “new advertisers without sophisticated targeting needs” looking to acquire Likes, according to the company.

Facebook first rolled out Promoted Page Likes to US businesses in December 2012. The feature had to get quite a few Page owners to create ads right from their page and gain new fans, or else the company wouldn’t bother launching it worldwide just over four months later.

To use Promoted Page Likes, just open up the Page admin view, click the on Promoted Page Likes panel, and select a budget. From there you can start running campaigns both on mobile and desktop News Feeds, with ads targeted at an audience in a location you specify.

More specifically, here’s how it works:

• Pick Your Daily Budget: See the estimated number of new likes your Page can get each day.
• Target Your Ads: Choose between showing your ads to people near your business, city, state or country.
• Promote Your Page: Your ads will include a link that makes it easy for people to like your Page.

While this is certainly good news for businesses, many Facebook users are most likely groaning. Facebook presumably tested the feature’s impact on both users and businesses, deciding that the pros outweighed the cons (and that driving growth to keep investors happy mattered the most).

See also – The Web just got a speed boost: Facebook rewrites its Like Box plugin to be up to 4x faster and Facebook updates Ads Manager to help advertisers track performance against specific goals, calculate ROI

Top Image Credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GettyImages

Today sees the beta launch of Solaborate, a new social networking platform focused on technology professionals and companies.

In addition to the debut of the new service, Los Angeles, California-based Solaborate is today announcing that it has secured over $1 million in seed funding from unnamed business angel investors.

Solaborate basically lets technology professionals (whether they work in hardware, software or services) publish questions, share documents and presentations, chat, video conference, and share best practices.

Solaborate enables users to connect, discover and follow other tech professionals, companies, products and services. It sounds a lot like LinkedIn with a real-time collaboration layer on top of the networking part.

Built on Windows Azure and leveraging HTML5, WebSockets and the WebRTC protocol for real-time communication, Solaborate integrates with existing social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

“There are a lot of places on the internet where you can share information or network with others, but you can’t collaborate in real time,” argues Labinot Bytyqi, founder and CEO of Solaborate.

“By incorporating the best of social media, then taking it a step further, Solaborate makes it easy to share relevant content from a central platform with peers, colleagues, vendors and customers. We are building a community around products and services, all in one dedicated place for technology professionals.”

We’ve requested beta access to the new site and will poke around as soon as we get in, to see if it’s any good.

Image credit: Thinkstock