LinkedIn Polls: This Week in Social Media

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

What’s New This Week?

LinkedIn Makes It Easy To Publish Polls In LinkedIn Groups: With this latest upgrade, the LinkedIn Polls application is the the first application rolling out within LinkedIn Groups.

"Voting on polls now provides the same quick convenience of clicking “Like”, but with also the richer point of view of a comment."

Google+ Hangouts Go Beyond the Status Update: Google+ is “rolling out a number of improvements that make it even easier to say hello to your loved ones, face-to-face-to-face.” There are Hangout buttons underneath each update. “Just click ‘Hangout’ underneath a post that you’re passionate about, and we’ll add your invitation to the comments. If others are hanging out already, you’ll see their invitation in the comments as well.”

It's easy to start a Hangout from a post and join a Hangout already in progress.

Facebook Timeline Rolls Out Everywhere: Note that “when you upgrade to timeline, you’ll have seven days to review everything that appears on your timeline before anyone else can see it. You can also choose to publish your timeline at any time during the review period. If you decide to wait, your timeline will go live automatically after seven days. Your new timeline will replace your profile, but all your stories and photos will still be there.”

Google Map Maker Gets a Makeover: “You can easily go into Google Map Maker and make changes to make the map reflect the real world for millions to see.” Check out your  business location and make any edits needed. Google Map Maker is now live in over 180 countries.

Here are a couple of social media tools worth noting:

Voxer: “Voxer is a walkie-talkie application for smartphones. Voxer lets you send instant audio, text and photo messages to your friends (one or more!). Messages stream live as you talk and your friends join you live or listen later.”

Wajam: A social search extension for browsers. “Wajam makes search more personal by adding results from your friends to your favorite search engine. Every day you and your friends share lots of useful content on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Wajam lets you find this content in Google and Bing when you need it.”

Here’s an interesting infographic:

Gamification Goes Mainstream:

Note how businesses will adopt gamified applications.

Here what’s coming in the future:

• Ebay’s PayPal Business To Challenge Groupon In 2012.
• More Businesses To Personalize Their Facebook Like Buttons.

And don’t miss this:

Social Media Examiner presents Small Business Success Summit 2011! (online conference)

Join 25 experts, including including John Jantsch (author, Duct Tape Marketing), Anita Campbell (founder, Small Business Trends), Michael Stelzner (founder, Social Media Examiner and author, Launch), Mari Smith (co-author, Facebook Marketing), Jesse Stay (author, Google+ for Dummies), Hollis Thomases (author, Twitter Marketing), David Siteman Garland (founder, “The Rise to the Top” and author, Faster, Smarter, Cheaper), Joe Pulizzi (founder, Content Marketing Institute and co-author, Get Content, Get Customers), Brian Clark (founder, Copyblogger Media), Lee Odden (founder, TopRank Online Marketing), Ramon Ray (founder, Small Biz Technology and author, Technology Solutions for Growing Businesses) and Lewis Howes (co-author, LinkedWorking)—just to mention a few (scroll down to see full list)!

Go here to learn more.

What social media news caught your interest this week? Please share your comments below.