It’s official- micro blogging giant Twitter is now a public organization.
The company’s IPO yesterday launched investors into a trading frenzy, sending the stock price soaring. After opening at around $45 a share, the stock ended the trading day 73% more valuable and deemed an overall success. The Twitter team worked hard to have a prosperous debut, aiming to avoid a fiasco similar to last year’s Facebook IPO.
In Facebook news, the social media site announced on Wednesday that the platform’s “like” and “share” buttons will be getting a makeover. The redesign was prompted in order to become more visibly appealing on high resolution screens, in addition to easing functionality on websites who use the features to drive traffic. The most noticeable different will be the absence of the thumb on the “like” button, but will otherwise only serve to enhance both features.
Pinterest was making headlines this week as well. The site was announced this week to be the fastest growing content sharing platform in use. This means that they have passed the popularity of Facebook, LinkedIn, and even email for online content distribution.
Unlike their social counterparts, Pinterest has no plans of going public in the near future. The CEO announced recently at a conference that the company’s goals remain focused on building usership and expanding the website’s reach. However, they have started to play with potential advertising strategies, such as promoted pins, in order to gauge just how valuable the company could become.
With social media use continuing to grow at such a substantial pace, a recent trend has emerged attempting to protect younger users against just how public their lives have become. With job recruiters starting to look at social media pages of possible hires, it is more important than ever to watch what is posted. Back in September, California legislators passed a law that required social media platforms to allow for users to erase potentially incriminating or inappropriate posts they made in the past that could hurt their chances of future employment.
Different websites and apps have emerged in the aftermath in order to help with the efforts. A new tool called Persona is only one of many resources that could be used for this purpose. Persona works by scanning through users’ social media pages for certain key words and flags anything that it detects could be inappropriate. These efforts could prove to be career saving for some, although it is important to keep in mind that it is practically impossible to totally erase anything put on the internet.
