Social Media Round-up of the Week – 29 July

Welcome back to our weekly instalment of what’s hot in the world of social media. In case you missed what happened over the past week, here’s a run-down of our top five:

1. Twitter introduced its most prominent advertising yet on Thursday by adding “promoted tweets” to users’ main timelines, a gambit aimed at generating greater revenues but that risks provoking members’ anger. Users will see tweets from companies and organisations that they follow appear near the top of the central stream of 140-character messages when they log in, even if they were posted hours or days previously.

2. A month since launch, a new report from Experian Hitwise shows that Google+ has hit a mid-summer traffic slump. According to Bloomberg, the report shows that the number of unique visitors to the site have been falling, as has individual time spend on the site. Google+ is making several tweaks to its social network regarding businesses and public figures, particularly after a small debacle over its policy requiring a user’s real name.

3. In an effort to keep pace with Google+ and its business unit, Facebook has announced a special unit to help businesses advertise with Facebook as well as maintain a presence on the social networking giant.

4. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been ranked Number 1 in a list of the top 100 most powerful people in the media. The MediaGuardian100, which is published annually by British newspaper The Guardian, is compiled based on candidates’ cultural influence, economic clout and political power. Of Zuckerberg’s position, The Guardian writes: “Zuckerberg has been transformed from an awkward and unpromising geek into the world’s richest and most famous twentysomething, listened to by world leaders.”

5. Our latest infographic (right) shows how Facebook effects relationships.