Tis the season of giving and the social media giants celebrated accordingly! Facebook’s founder is taking a tremendous pay cut for the benefit of humanity, LinkedIn is simplifying the way you use their services, and soon the general public will start taking advantage of a feature that was once exclusively for celebs. Here’s a look at what you might’ve missed in social media news this week.
Facebook’s First Family Grows
This week Facebook’s first family grew by one. Founding father Mark Zuckerberg announced the birth of his baby daughter, Max, on Tuesday. Coupled with the milestone was a major announcement about where the founder’s future funds will be headed. Zuckerberg said 99% of his Facebook stock will be donated to “further the mission of advancing human potential and promoting equality by means of philanthropic, public advocacy, and other activities for the public good.” Currently this generous gift is worth a whopping $45 billion! While the donation is enormous, it’s also incredibly tax efficient. When a stockholder donates shares, not cash, they receive a charitable contribution deduction based on the value of the shares.
LinkedIn Revamps its App
On Tuesday the nation’s largest professional networking site debuted a new streamlined version of their mobile app. LinkedIn’s latest mobile platform is broken up into five sections: Your Feed, Me, My Network, Messaging, and Search. The “Your Feed” portion works just like a home feed in helping you network with other professionals’ content. Consider “Me” the section that represents your personal brand, better known as a profile page. “My Network” gives you updates on what’s going on with your connections. For example, if someone is celebrating a work anniversary, you can congratulate them in this section. The “Messaging” and “Search” tabs do exactly what their titles infer. The new app is available on iOS and Android.
Facebook Expands its Live Streaming Feature
It’s no longer just for famous people! The world’s largest social networking site announced on Thursday they’re beginning to expand live streaming capabilities to more people. Previously, this feature was only available to people with verified accounts. “Live” will begin rolling out to a small percentage of iPhone users living in the U.S., but it’s unclear how soon. To find out if you have the live-streaming capabilities, a “Live Video” icon will appear in the bottom center of your status update.
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