There’s a lot of buzz about the social world today.  There’s the new two-factor Twitter authentication, WhatsApps’ new voice messaging, and even Facebook has rolled out a few new updates.  So let’s check ‘em out.

Twitter does away with SMS

Most two-factor authentication relies on SMS messages.  If you want to always be secured when you log in your online account, if the service supports it, you can setup two-factor authentication which would require you to enter your mobile number so the service can send a code via SMS, which has to be inputted to login to the service.  This method is pretty secure, but there have been cases where the SMS has been intercepted, which means it’s not 100 percent foolproof.

Now, Twitter has come up with a new two-form authentication procedure that does away with the SMS codes it’s been using since May of this year.  By using either the iOS and Android app, you can enroll your Twitter account for login verification and approve login requests directly from the mobile version.  This new procedure will alert Twitter users immediately if anyone tries to access their account and they can accept or reject the motion.  You can even see browser details and the approximate location of anyone trying to access your account.

Let’s get started

• From the Me tab in the Twitter app, open Settings and then tap Security (Android users: you’ll need to tap your name before you can select Security);
• Turn on Login verification;
• Store the generated backup code in a safe place. You will need to use this code if you need to access your account when you don’t have your phone;
• After you enroll with login verification, you’ll use the Twitter application to approve requests each time you sign in to twitter.com with your username and password.
• And even if you have multiple Twitter accounts, you can all enroll all of them in this new verification process – unlike the SMS-based verification wherein one number could only be associated with one one Twitter account.

Aside from this new two-form verification, Twitter has also updated the search feature for both its iOS and Android apps.  Now, when you do a search, suggestions will include “social context,” which tells you how you’re connected with other people.  A new photo gallery in search has been added too, which allows users to select a new “View more photos” option that will lead them to a photo gallery of all the photos related to that search.

And specifically for the iOS app, users can now view all of a person’s photos in one place, plus they now have the ability to manage lists within the app, making it easier to create, edit and organize lists and subscriptions.

WhatsApp gets voice messaging

Its not only Twitter that’s been revamped. WhatsApp, the mobile messaging app that has captured the hearts of mobile enthusiasts now boasts more than 300 million monthly active users, who between them send around 11 billion messages and receive 20 billion messages per day – the two figures are different because some messages are sent to multiple parties, and users now share 325 million photos per day.

Though Facebook Messenger is more widely used in the US than WhatsApp, that’s not the case in other countries.  In Brunei for example, WhatsApp enjoys 70 percent penetration, while it has 50 percent penetration in Hong Kong, and more than 90 percent penetration in countries in Latin America, while even European countries seem to favor it over other services.

Bolstered by its success, WhatsApp is not about to just sit back and chill-out – instead, it’s aiming to entice even more people to use its service with the addition of push-to-talk voice messaging.  It will be rolling out voice messaging for all of its apps; on iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Nokia.  Recently, some have been questioning if WhatsApp will be able to maintain the loyalty of its users, but with the addition of more useful features, it should stay with us for the long haul.

Facebook gets “Story Bumping” and “Last Actor” factors

If you happen to see old stories appearing on the top of your News Feed, fear not for it’s not a glitch. This is Facebook’s new Story Bumping feature at play.  What it does is bump unseen stories up to the top of people’s news feeds, so that users who missed them have a chance to see it.  Often times when we go on Facebook, we miss a lot of the stories posted by our friends because they’ve been replaced with more recent ones.  With Story Bumping, it’s like Facebook knows which stories you haven’t seen, showing you interesting posts and status updates that were published several hours ago.  It also bumps old stories that people are still interacting with.

According to Facebook, Story Bumping increased interaction with stories from Friends by five percent, increased interaction on stories from Pages by eight percent, and increased the overall stories read from 57 percent to 70 percent.

Story Bumping is now available on the web and will soon roll out to mobile versions.

As for the “Last Actor” factor, this is basically an update to Facebook’s algorithm that helps it to decide what should be shown in user’s News Feeds. Facebook tracks the last 50 interactions you have made on the service on a rolling basis, and uses those interactions as signals to rank stories in your feed.  Though this change has only showed a minor increase in engagement, any slight increase is seen as a positive step by Facebook, thus the factors have rolled out on both web and mobile versions.