The social space online changes rapidly. Feedback stays on top of emerging media news so you don’t have to. Here are the must-read social media articles of the week of June 5, 2011.

Apple Event Announcements

Apple held a press conference at the WWDC Conference this week and made several major announcements:

• iCloud: The biggest announcement made by Apple this week was iCloud, a service that seamlessly syncs personal content (music, documents, contacts, etc.) across a range of connected devices (computer, iPad, iPhone…).  The best thing about this free service is the simplicity. As Jobs explained, “ICloud keeps your important information and content up to date across all your devices–automatically and wirelessly. And because it’s integrated into our apps you don’t even need to think about it. It just works.”

• iOS5: iOS5, Apple’s advanced mobile operating system, will be available in the fall with new features. In this version Apple built Twitter into the operating system, created a chat for iOS devices called iMessages, and more.

• Lion: Apple announced 250 new features for the next version of Mac OS X Lion, Apple’s advanced desktop operating system. See a full list of features here. Lion will be available in July for around $30.00.

 

Facebook Recoginition

Facebook always seems to be under scrutiny for privacy issues. Their latest update is no different. And this time European Union privacy investigators are looking into it. The issue is surrounding Facebook’s Facial Recognition feature, which uses software to identify users in photos to make it easier to tag friends. Facebook upset more than a few people when they made this feature default rather than letting users opt in.

 

 

“Happening Now”
Facebook is testing a new “Happening Now” feature on the news feed. The feature, which is currently only available for select users, provides real-time updates about friends. The “Happening Now” feed is located to the right-hand side of the news feed. Real-time updates include friend events, recommended Pages, ads, and pokes. As the Mashable article stated, “the resemblance to the Twitter feed is unmistakable.”

 

 

-Anna (@alucas9)