Brand Activity On Twitter Is Skyrocketing This Year

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Brands Ramp Up Twitter Usage (Brand Watch)
According to a recent study, half of brands surveyed this year are tweeting 30 or more messages each week. For comparison, half of the monitored brands tweeted fewer than seven times per week in 2012.

What's more, 63% of brands surveyed now manage multiple accounts on Twitter. In 2011, just 7% had multiple accounts. We've noticed some companies setting-up dedicated Twitter accounts for customer service, and now we might see that trend spilling over into other departments. Read >

Vine Fends Off Instagram Video — It's User Base Keeps Growing (All Things Digital)
Twitter's video-sharing app, Vine, has grown to over 40 million registered users. That's up from 27 million just two and a half months ago. In that span, Instagram also launched its own video-sharing feature, which created much concern about the future of Vine. Read >

Everything You Need To Know About Twitter OAuth (Mashable)
OAuth is an authorization tool that approves third-party applications to use and access your Twitter account, without you having to share your password.

Mashable has assembled a quick overview of how to use OAuth and how to keep your apps secure. Read >

Facebook's Video Audience Remained Flat Between June And July (comScore)
comScore released its monthly data on the top online video video properties by audience size. Google Sites (driven primarily by YouTube) swelled 6% to 168 million in July, followed by Facebook — which remained flat — with 61.3 million, and AOL with 57.9 million. Read >

Facebook's Chief Security Officer Defends White Hat Program (All Facebook)
White Hat is a program that rewards developers with cash when they report a bug in Facebook's code. When Khalil Shreateh found a loophole in Facebook's code that allowed him to post on Mark Zuckerberg's wall without being friends with him, people expected him to be rewarded. However, he wasn't. In fact, Facebook said he had violated its terms of service and his account was temporarily suspended. Facebook's Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan defends the chain of events. Read >

Facebook Levels Playing Field For Android, iOS Developers (Mashable)
Facebook launched an update to its Android software developer kit (SDK) that adds features to the app that will put it on par with the Facebook for iOS version. This eliminates all differentiation between apps on the two platforms — there is nothing an Android user can't do on the Facebook app that an iOS user can. Read >

Instagram Cracks Down On Apps Using "Insta" And "Gram" (TechCrunch)
Instagram has updated its Brand Guidelines to stress the fact that apps working with Instagram are not permitted to use "Insta" or "Gram" in their name. Apps such as Luxogram, which is used by 1 million users every month, were notified of the Guideline change in an e-mail from Instagram. Now that Instagram has reached widespread popularity, you can't blame Facebook for protecting the Instagram name. Read >

Google+ Now Translates Text Into Your Native Language (Sprout Social)
Now, whenever there's a public post or comment on Google+ that isn't in your native language, you'll have the option to translate the text. Read >