The new version of Instagram now features a “Photos of You” tab as well.

Not digging the fact that people can tag you? No worries, like on Facebook, you can set the privacy options so you have to approve all tagged pictures.

What do you think about the new feature? Love it or hate it?

Ever heard of The Webby Awards?  Well it’s about time you get familiar.  It is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including websites, interactive advertising and media, online film and video, mobile and apps, and of course, social media.  The awards were established in 1996 and received nearly 11,000 entries from all 50 states and over 60 countries last year.

The nominees for 2013 were just announced this past week; some of the big contenders are Nike (with 17 noms), Google, The New York Times and HBO (all with 12 noms). Yet, the two nominees that caught my eye were under the category “Best Social Media Campaign.”  And that’s correct- Obama for America, For all Campaign and Justin Bieber’s “Girlfriend” Fragrance Launch is up against one another.

When I mentioned this to my lawyer gal pal and big Obama supporter, she retorted, “What has the world come to!?  This is so sad.”  Ridiculous, or not – it’s all about the numbers, baby!

Obama for America – For All Campaign:

The campaign provided young Americans the opportunity to share their own visions for the future. The idea: write an issue on your hand, take a photo, post it on Instagram and Twitter. The results were more than 5k responses on Instagram and  76,000 Twitter users tweeted with the #ForAll hashtag, reaching more than 150 million people between September and election day.

18% of young Americans turned out in 2008, with 66% voting in support of the President. In 2012 they came out again and in record numbers. Young people made up 19% of the electorate, an all-time high, and 60% of them voted for President Obama. Analysts have said the youth vote made the difference in VA, OH, FL and PA, key battleground states that put the President over the top. Moreover, the ad was named Time’s #3 ad of the year.

(Information Cited from SS & K Agency http://bit.ly/ZiEre8 )

Justin Bieber’s “Girlfriend” Fragrance Launch:

For Justin’s second fragrance, entitled “Girlfriend”, his team concentrated on social media sites, such as Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter, as well as traditional media and promotion.  The star invited fans to enter a “sing-off” on Tumblr to help create a 60-second television commercial for Girlfriend.  The commercial was composed of video clips of fans performing their versions of the song “Boyfriend” with lyrics they rewrote to change the song to “Girlfriend.”

Justin’s fans from all social media sites began entering – the biebs has over 37 million Twitter followers and 52 million plus Facebook “likes.”  The numbers he pulls from fans is staggering.  When the perfume launched in June 2012 it raked in over 3 million in sales over three weeks and was dubbed as the most successful celebrity fragrance launch in history.

For More Information on The Webby Awards:

For a complete list of The Webby Awards nominees, visit  http://winners.webbyawards.com/2013

Key Dates Coming Up:

April 25, 2013: People’s Voice Awards voting ends

April 30, 2013: Webby Award and People’s Voice Award Winners announced

May 21, 2013: The 17th Annual Webby Awards will be held at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City.

This is an interesting award show to say the least, will the winner be the president or the pop star – we will find out in May.  Stay tuned!

Melissa’s Note

I just want to thank the Socially Tangled team for having me as their first guest blogger, this will be the first of many posts from me.  I hope you enjoy.  Please follow and interact with me on Twitter @MelissaMariePR.  Also, I will be launching my own website and blog at www.prpitchperfect.com very soon!

Now for a little about Melissa (written in her own “voice”).

“I received my BA in Public Relations and Fine Arts from Hofstra University in May 2011. While there I built relationships with well-established mentors in the field and gained valuable knowledge of the PR industry.

So what does this have to do with social media? Justin Timberlake helped boost the social scales by almost 80% in one night alone! Not only that, but his appearance led SNL to their highest ratings in over 14 months since Charles Barkley hosted. In addition to hosting, Timberlake was also the musical guest, performing “Suit and Tie,” which featured Jay-Z, and “Mirrors.”

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a conference last Thursday, demonstrating the how the newsfeed will soon, have a new look.  that users should expect changes as early as Friday, to their newsfeed. Here’s what you can expect to see:

1)The layout.  Content is now displayed in a larger form; your business will no longer have to fight against a cluttered feed to catch attention. The whole intent with the redesign of News Feed is to highlight media over the standard text status updates.  Over recent months photos have  dominated the content available on News Feed.  Over 50% of all content posted on Facebook is visual. Also, your sidebar will solely be on the right and now has more organized categories.

2) Currently, when you paste an outside link into Facebook, a small thumbnail image would occompany the link text. Now, the image is much larger. This is GREAT if you’re a blogger. Make your images more dynamic so that the image attracts the content viewer, which leads them to click the link. Remember, social media is suppose to drive traffic to your website.

3) When people check-in to a location using Facebook, maps and other images will be displayed. This means your data NEEDS to be up to date. Remember, people also check-in to places via FourSquare and sync it to their Facebook. Not on FourSquare? Get there! ((We can help))

4) More ads…and video ads. Yup, you’ll see more ads within your feed than ever before. Hate the ads and don’t want to see them? Just PAY Facebook, and you can turn them off. Facebook isn’t an organic social media site anymore, and this can be bad. When people have to pay for things, they get turned off from them. This could lead to a huge increase in Google+ and Twitter.

Our opinion? The new look has a Google+ feel and many changes that we’re not sure users will like. So what’s the main reason for the big change? Teens were getting bored and turning to other networks based on images such as Instagram and Pinterest. What Facebook is forgetting, is that it’s main demographic at the time are users between the age of 45-60. We’ll see how this pans out in a few weeks.