Twitter Changes Direct Message Rules: 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?

Twitter Allows Direct Messages From All Followers: Up until now, you could only send a direct message on Twitter when the other person followed you back. Now you can change your setting so that anyone can send you a direct message even if you do not follow him or her back.

Go to Settings on your Twitter account and check this box if you'd like to receive direct messages from everyone.

Twitter Announces Scheduled Tweets: All marketers who use “Twitter’s ad products can schedule organic or promoted tweets for specific dates and times up to a year in advance.”

"You can create and schedule new tweets from the blue Tweet button on the top right corner of the navigation bar at ads.twitter.com."

LinkedIn Unveils Recruiter Mobile: “A mobile app that helps recruiters interact with candidates like you when they’re out and about.”

Foursquare Opens Ads: “All a business owner needs to do is go to foursquare.com/ads and build their ad—by choosing a great photo of their space and either offering a special or highlighting a great customer tip.”

A business owner can now "tell if someone who saw their ad actually walks into their store."

Pinterest Updates Mobile App: Pinterest has “spruced up the look of the app a bit, and also added a simple way to browse through pins with just a flick of a finger.”

"To try it out, tap any pin in your home feed. Then swipe your finger from right to left to get a peek at the next pin in line. You can go backwards too!"

Twitter Launches App for Android Tablet: “The landscape view fills your screen with tweets, conversations, trends, accounts to follow and more.”

"With a single tap, tweets expand on the right side to show photos, videos and article previews."

Here’s some interesting news to note:

Facebook Lets Teens Share Updates Publicly: Now “when people aged 13 through 17 sign up for an account on Facebook, the initial audience of their first post will be set to a narrower audience of ‘Friends.’ This used to be set at ‘Friends of Friends’.” And teens will also have the choice to post publicly on Facebook.

"When teens choose Public in the audience selector, they'll see a reminder that the post can be seen by anyone, not just people they know, with an option to change the post's privacy."

Here’s some upcoming news to follow:

Facebook to Soon Roll Out New Custom Audience Features: “These new features expand the capabilities of Custom Audiences to allow marketers to deliver targeted ads to people who visited their website or used their mobile app.”  These new features will roll out globally in the coming months.

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