Flickr has taken a backseat to other social sites like  Instagram, Facebook, Twitter & Imgur, but still has more than 80 million monthly users. Upon arrival, of new CEO Marissa Mayer, Flickr was actually dropped from the Yahoo! homepage during an initial re-design. When Mayer took the reins, the Flickr community was abuzz and pleaded with Yahoo! (and Meyer) to make the service awesome again.

Flickr tried launching differentiating elements last year like a faster image uploading for larger photos and an overly visual new design. An integration of Flickr along with Tumblr would make quite a bit of sense seeing the visual nature of Tumblr, but no rumors  on what will occur in this update have been leaked.

For more information, see Bloomberg.

Google+ Games launched in the Summer of 2011, but whether it be demographics or just the platform itself, Games continually under-performed. Some developers jumped ship on Google+ Games last year as the adoption on the social network didn’t have a high enough impact on customers.

In an unglamorous announcement, Google directed users who have unused payments to contact the game developer to gather more information. A list of links to the support pages for a handful of developers is included on the page.

For more see the official Google+ announcement.

In 2011, Mass Relevance became the first Certified Twitter partner that was licensed to re-syndicate Twitter content for display, and they also tie in updates from Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and YouTube. This curated social content is pushed to the following mediums:

• TV and second screen
• Billboards
• Stadium displays
• Websites
• Mobile apps
• Conference centers
• In-store displays

Founder and CEO of Mass Relevance Sam Decker stated the following about the new milestone in a recent release:

“We’ve curated billions of social conversations and photos into the largest scale TV, brand and sport experiences. Our innovation continues with several patents pending and plans to double our R&D team over the next year.”

For more information, see the official press release from Mass Relevance.

Previous to this update, users were required to add the RT symbol in-front of the user’s text when scheduling retweets. The new changes will feature the “true” retweet where the actual Tweet (along with the author’s icon and timestamp) will be shared directly into the stream.

For more information, see the official Buffer blog.

The overall spends will continue to grow, with an estimated $9.06 billion dollar spend in 2017. The growth of video ad budgets has plateaued, however, as the saturation point has been hit. The estimated video ad spends drop year-by-year with just 12% of yearly growth in 2017.

Advertisers are flocking to online video because it works. The study shows that online ad-types see higher brand awareness, message association, purchase intent and favorability. The interactivity of various ads help to drive a higher percentage as well as it drives higher online ad awareness and message association:

For more information and the full report, see eMarketer.

One of the biggest arguments that brands are making as to why they aren’t participating as much on Google+ is that their customers are all on Twitter and Facebook. According to Reuters, the average U.S. visitor to Google+ spent 6 minutes 47 seconds on the site in March while visitors spent more than 6 hours on Facebook. Warby Parker founder Dave Gilboa told Reuters that customer engagement on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest was “orders of magnitude higher” than what the brand saw on Google+.

An additional source of frustration for brands is that the platform hinders creativity. Custom tabs and pages can’t be created on Google+, something that many large brands take advantage of on Facebook. The stunted Google+ API was also referenced as an issue for many marketers looking for custom solutions.

For more information see the full Reuters article.

Brands have joined the filtered-photo migration as well, with 67% of the top 100 brands now on Instagram as of May 1st. This number jumped a whopping 14% from February 1st, making it the fastest growing social network for brands this quarter. Both Pinterest and Google+ were close behind with 10% growth at 78% adoption and 77% adoption, respectively.

While the growth of Instagram adoption has been impressive, the overall reach is jaw-dropping. According to SimplyMeasured, the collective audience of the 76 brands on Pinterest was 500,000 users, while Instagram’s 67 brands saw over 7 million followers. Followers are interacting with brands on Instagram, as well. These 67 companies on Instagram are seeing 5,603 engagements per photo on Instagram:

However, the overall Twitter engagement has continued to drop since being pulled from Twitter with engagement declining 29% this quarter. Facebook’s continued support of Instagram has been successful, with a 23% increase in engagement for brand photos shared from Instagram to Facebook.

The brands on Instagram are also quite active. Of the 65 brand on Instagram, 40 are posting at least one photo per week and 34 have lured in at least 10,000 followers:

To see the full report, head over to the official Simply Measured report.

As of today, 15% of Klout users will have access to the Klout Experts questions as they will be rolled out to those influential in travel, movies, music, cooking and technology. Answering questions will have a direct contribution on one’s Klout score.

A series of 5 questions will be asked to all Klout users in an “on-boarding” experience to pre-quality users. After this on-boarding session, specific questions will be asked based around influence levels. Sample questions could include “What is the best food processor on the market?” or “What is the best Nikon lens?” Much like Quora, Klout Experts pages will aggregate answers that can be socially shared by users and indexed by search engines.

Additional benefits of this feature include direct integration with Bing search. Selected queries will feature in-line responses directly in Bing’s main search pane, not the lesser-viewed social sidebar. These answers will provide much exposure and visibility as the Klout results will link directly to the author’s main Klout profile.

Unlike Quora, where specific answers are voted up, value can be assigned to specific Klout profiles. With all of the social influence data available to Klout, specific data around profile importance can be derived and used to estimate what the best answers may be. Each answer from a Klout Expert will also have a value (in +K endorsements) along with shares and overall views.

Here are a few examples of live answer pages:

Klout Experts is officially launching today, and full rollout is expected in “weeks, not months.” For more information, see our article on Search Engine Land about the Bing/Klout Experts integration or the official Klout post.

The skit played off of head motions, lack of surroundings and poor voice communication to show what could happen with Google Glass. While an egregious over-exaggeration of Glass, the skit did did have some salient moments when he was talking to himself, trying to communicate with Glass and, of course, the style and look of Glass. The full SNL skit is below (for US users only):

Or view directly at NBC.

A global change for both apps included support for the new 160 markets that Twitter Trends announced last month. Users in these locations will be able to view all local data directly from the app.

For iOS, users will now be able to invite friends to Twitter directly from the app, a feature that should help to continue to increase adoption of the social network. Additionally, iOS users will now be able to view both the original author and “retweeter” of those tweets that have been properly retweeted. Lastly, iOS users will now feature a better Vine experience that enhances video playback from users’ Vines.

From iTunes:

See what’s happening near you or around the world by viewing Trends in hundreds of locations.

Also: • Invite friends to join Twitter from within the app • Improved playback of Vine videos • Replies to retweeted Tweets now include both the author and person who retweeted the Tweet • Enjoy a smoother experience due to bug fixes and other improvements.

Android users received the trends update, bug fixes and also a handy “switch accounts” feature from the menu button. Users can tap the menu button now to switch accounts from any page, a nice touch for marketers who struggle with switching accounts:

Other changes directly from the Google Play change log:

• See what’s happening near you or around the world by viewing Trends in hundreds of locations. • Get quick access to account switching and settings via the menu button. • Enjoy a smoother experience thanks to bug fixes and other improvements.

To download the new apps, simply head to the App Store or Google Play.