Today, Pinterest is taking steps to make the mobile experience better with updates to their iOS and Android apps. Pinterest for iOS v 2.4 and Pinterest for Android v 1.5 are now available.

First up, Pinterest is unveiling new search suggestions inside the app.

“We’ll now suggest search terms as you type on mobile. You can also see recent searches you made from other places, so if you searched for a soup recipe from your computer, you can do the same search when you’re at the grocery store with just your phone to help you. It’s easy to delete these searches from your settings if you want to,” says Pinterest.

As you can see, searching for something like “apple” now yields suggestions for apple-related content. This also works with user search. It’s a small, but useful improvement.

The other additions to come along with today’s update are a long time coming, quite frankly. With the new versions, you can now @ mention other users. Both iOS and Android users can now get notifications as well.

“Now you can see who commented on your pin or mentioned you whenever you have your phone handy. And if you can’t get enough, we’re also introducing push notifications so you can find out what’s happening without even opening the Pinterest app,” says Pinterest.

The iOS update also brings a couple of new features, including the ability to “pin from more places more easily from the web.” This amounts to a prominent “+” button on the homescreen that lets you enter in the url of the item you wish to pin. Not quite as easy as with the desktop version of Pinterest, with that handy pin button, but it does help. iOS users can also now invite friends to group boards from the app.

When accessing Trends on Twitter’s “discover” tab, you’ll now see the option to get “tailored trends” or also to change location. Here’s what Twitter will tell you when you attempt to change location:

“Tailored Trends are based on your location and who you follow which make them more relevant to your interests. If you change location, you’ll see Trends based around geography only.”

You can then pick from dozens of locations – mostly larger cities across the world. if you do so, your trends will simply be based on what’s popular around you – it’ll have nothing to do with who you follow.

Updates to iOS & Android apps: See Trends from all over the world or choose to have Trends tailored to your interests.

— Twitter (@twitter) May 1, 2013

With today’s update, replies to retweeted tweets now show both the author of the tweet and the user who retweeted it. Here’s the full list of updates to come along with version 5.6:

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.

You can download the updates now in the App Store and on Google Play.

Vine, Twitter’s new 6-second video app, is on the way to Android “soon.”

Speaking to The Verge, Vine Co-founder Dom Hofmann confirmed the “soon” timeframe. Nothing more, nothing less. Just “soon.” We always knew that an Android version of the popular app must be in the works, but this is the first time that we’ve heard that it is indeed on the horizon. Back in February, Vine began looking for a lead Android engineer.

He also said that a new feature is coming to the iOS version – friend tagging. But it’s currently waiting for final Apple approval.

Vine has seen quite a bit of success after its rocky start. Vine launched back in January and immediately found itself in the middle of a porn controversy. Users were shocked to find that people were using the service to post 6-second porn clips. Vine doesn’t specifically ban nudity in their terms, but they did mess up handily when they accidentally promoted an explicit video as one of their editor’s picks.

With poor user feedback and the threat of a ban in Apple’s notoriously conservative App Store, Vine made some changes to bury NSFW content deep down in the app.

But soon, we saw Vine being used in a variety of ways: for promotion and for politics. For comedy and for game teasers. Vine even played a pretty big role in raw footage from the Boston Marathon bombings.

When Vine finally comes to Android, you can expect its presence to rise significantly. It’ll probably look a lot like the moment when Instagram finally launched on Android – but this time I don’t expect iOS users to get all pissy about their favorite app opening up to the masses.

But people are still downloading it and trying it out. As of today, Facebook Home on Google Play has surpassed 500,000 installs.

We don’t know the exact number of installs, as Google Play only gives us an unspecific snapshot of the numbers. Right now, it says that the number of installs is somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million. The Next Web noticed that Twitter users noticed the jump from “100,000 to 500,000″ to “500,000 to 1 million” some time on Sunday.

500,000 may seem like a small number of installs, considering that Facebook has over a billion monthly active users and that something like the Facebook app has between 100 million and 500 million installs. But in a week’s time, to be working its way to a million installs, is pretty good for Facebook Home considering it’s only available on a handful of Android devices.

Still, the news isn’t nearly all positive for Facebook. Facebook Home is still suffering from poor user reviews. Last week, we told you that after just 3 days on the market, Facebook Home had sunk to an average rating of 2.4 out of 5 in the Google Play Store. At that time, 47% of all reviews awarded the app 1 star.

Now, at Facebook Home surpassed 500,000 installs, the negativity is growing. The average rating has fallen to 2.2 and 1-star reviews now account for nearly 52% of all reviews.

And with the added focus on mobile comes the need to improve upon its mobile apps. Today, LinkedIn has launched significant redesigns of both their iOS and Android apps.

“We want to make it easier for our members to quickly discover and engage with the rich professional insights being shared across LinkedIn to help them make smarter decisions from wherever they may be working. We’ve designed the new LinkedIn mobile phone app for every professional, with a richer and more engaging stream and more personalization features,” says LinkedIn’s Tomer Cohen.

Probably the biggest part of the redesign is the new activity stream. Not only is it more media-rich, with bigger photos and links to outside content, but it’s generally better looking. It’s also better at bringing in all types of content, including updates from connections, news, and posts from LinkedIn’s top influencers. In most every way, the new mobile apps mirror what LinkedIn has done to improve the desktop feed over the past few months.

It’s also easier to get around the app with a brand new navigation page. All you have to do is swipe right to reveal a customizable menu complete with you messages, invitations, calendars, and more.

LinkedIn says that 64% of their members are located outside the U.S. To that end, they’ve also expanded the language offerings of the apps – Dutch and Norwegian for iOS, and Turkish, Dutch and Norwegian for Android. As of now, 15 languages are supported across both apps.

Finally, ads. Lead Mobile guy for LinkedIn Joff Redfern confrimed to TechCrunch that LinkedIn will be bringing more sponsored content to mobile. They’ve been doing the same on the desktop and iPad version of the app.

“We’re now expanding this test into the mobile phone experience,” he says.

You can grab the update on both iOS and Android today.

Is Twitter thinking about doing the same?

Speaking at All Things D’s Dive Into Mobile, Twitter VP of Product Michael Sippey left the door open for such a product.

“There are a lot of things we’re looking at on Android,” he said. “I think [Facebook Home] is an interesting product. I’d like to see tweets there. So we’ll see.”

So, what would a “Twitter Home” product look like? And would you want it?

Well, we can imagine an Android launcher that displays your tweet stream on the homepage in the same way that Facebook displays the news feed. Although Twitter can also be media-rich, the fact that Twitter users typically follow hundreds and even thousands of users, all of which appear in the stream unfiltered (unlike Facebook) makes it seem like there would need to be some tweaking to make sure the user isn’t flooded with too much content. It would be pretty easy to integrate Twitter notifications and messaging into the base Android experience, though.

Of course, there’s no telling what a Twitter-based Android OS-lite interface would look like. And Twitter hasn’t said that they are working on or even seriously thinking about something like this. But Sippey makes it clear that Twitter is curious about users being able to turn their devices into “Twitter Phones.”

What do you think? Sound like something you might want to play around with?

As of right now, you can only download Facebook Home if you have one of these four Android devices: HTC One X, HTC One X+, the Samsung Galaxy S III or the Samsung Galaxy Note II. In the future, the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4 will also allow for Facebook Home.

And then, of course, there’s the HTC First – the first phone to launch with Facebook Home ready to go. Don’t want to call it a “Facebook Phone” – then don’t. But it’s definitely the first Facebook centric phone on the market. It also hits the shelves today.

“Facebook Home is the mobile experience that puts your friends at the heart of your phone. From the moment you turn it on, you see a steady stream of friends’ posts and photos on your home screen. Upfront notifications and quick access to your essentials mean you’ll never miss a moment. And when you download Facebook Messenger, you can keep chatting with friends when you’re using other apps,” says Facebook.

And about those chat heads that let you “keep chatting with friends when you’re using other apps.” If you have an Android phone, want to download Facebook Home, but alas, your Android phone isn’t supported – all is not lost. Today, ahead of the Facebook Home launch, Facebook added chat heads as a part of the Facebook Messenger app for Android. Now you can make use of/be incredibly annoyed by chat heads no matter which Android device you own, depending on how you look at it.

Here’s how Foursquare describes all the changes they’ve made to the app:

With the new Foursquare 6.0, we’re crunching all our data to show the best of what’s nearby, anywhere in the world, the second you open up the app. To help you discover all this, we totally redesigned the Foursquare app into four main sections. Here’s what you’ll see:

Search is now front-and-center at the top, so you can quickly find what you’re craving, or see things like trending places (in real-time) and top picks. Below that, you’ll see a map with nearby friends and interesting places highlighted. Tap on the map to expand it so you can see great places around you. After that, we show you the best things at that moment – our top personalized recommendations, along with your friends’ check-ins around the world. And, at the bottom, we have the new check-in button, for when you want to share and remember the places you go to.

Gone are the three tabs at the bottom of the screen that graced the previous versions (friends, explore, and me). Explore and your friend feed is all contained in the main feed, with search front and center. This is your “Home” screen. To access your profile and history, to-do lists, and more – just swipe right.

“Our goal with the new Foursquare is to reveal more of the world around you the moment you open up the app, and help you find exactly what you’re craving,” says Foursquare.

And to that end, Foursquare has completely redesigned both their iOS and Android apps to help achieve what the company has been working toward the last couple of years – moving beyond the check-in.

You may have heard that phrase a lot in reference to Foursquare in the past year or so, and with good reason. Foursquare launched back in 2009 with a focus on check-ins – and that’s about it. You checked in, earned some points, and maybe unlocked a badge. Yes, the app had a small social networking element to it – in that you could track your friends’ check-ins and see how you stacked up on a points leaderboard. And yes, you could browse nearby places. But in 2009, nobody would have called Foursquare a “local search” app. And they certainly wouldn’t have called it a premier place for “local discovery.”

Like I said before, Foursquare hasn’t just launched version 6.0, with its heavy focus on local search and recommendations, out of the blue. There has been a long march to this new vision of Foursquare. Let’s look at that march, starting about a year ago when Foursquare unveiled the “all new Foursquare.”

That update brought a completely redesigned friend feed to the mix – with larger photos, more information on tips, comments, and the ability to “like” individual check-ins. But the real work was done on the Explore tab. Foursquare integrated even more of their millions of data points to give users a better idea about what was going on around them, and why they should frequent nearby locations. The Explore tab began to notify users of nearby specials, “top picks” that ranked venues on the popularity in the Foursquare community. They added new categories to search like “food,” “nightlife,” and “trending,” all of which relied heavily on you and your friends’ past check-in data.

“This isn’t just a fresh coat of paint, it’s a whole new app. And, as such, it’s just the beginning. We’ve got lots more coming…” said Foursquare at the time.

Shortly after that, Foursquare updated their app to improve the map and give it even more search categories. Then, they introduced a new kind of rating for venues – a number between 1 and 10 that is based on user likes. Later, they added a “recently opened” category to the Explore tab. A few weeks after that, location pages were improved with larger, highlighted location photos. In the past couple of months, Foursquare crammed even more recommendations onto the Explore tab and bolstered the info on venue pages.

See what I’m saying? Foursquare has made tons of small tweaks leading up to this new Foursquare, one that truly looks and feels like a culmination of Foursquare’s true goal of becoming a top local search and recommendation engine to compete with the likes of Yelp, Urbanspoon, and yes, Facebook.

Of course, Foursquare isn’t abandoning the check-in. The check-in is one of the metrics that powers the service. Without it, the whole recommendation engine falls apart. That’s why you’ll see an ever-present check-in icon front and center at the bottom of your feed at all times.

To survive, Foursquare cannot simply be about the check-in. It has to be more. This update shows that it is more – a lot more. But whether or not users recognize this is left to be seen. You can grab the update today in the App Store and Google Play.

You can grab Burner at the Google Play Store today.

Burner allows users to easily create disposable phone numbers for both voice and SMS communications. All you have to do is open the app, tap to create a new burner, pick an area code, and tell the app which number the burner should forward all messages to. Now you have a temporary number to use in any variety of dealings, one that prevents any contact from knowing your true phone number.

Upon downloading the free app, users are given one free burner applications. After that, additional numbers can be purchased through credit packages starting at $1.99.

“We’re really excited to launch Burner for Android. Android is a huge market opportunity for us, and along with making Burner for iOS free, is a key step in making Burner available to everyone,” said Greg Cohn, CEO Ad Hoc Labs. “As privacy is becoming an increasingly hot issue in the mobile space, Burner is an important tool for users to protect themselves by adding an extra layer of anonymity to their phones.”

If you’re like me, the word “burner” brings up thoughts of The Wire and cheap dumbphones that can be used for illicit activities. But in reality, there’s a host of reasons why you would want to call and text from a number that’s not your own.

Think communications with buyers on a service like Craigslist. Or even dating – you sure don’t want that guy to have your real number if he turns out to be a creep. Burner suggests that their service is perfect for things like job searches, short-term projects, and social networks. It’s also ideal for professionals who don’t really want clients ringing them at all hours of the night – think doctors, lawyers, or teachers.

Along with the big Android launch, Burner has also made significant improvements to their iOS app:

“Burner has also made significant upgrades to its iOS app. New features include: customizable voicemail greetings; the ability to manage call history by starring, renaming or hiding conversations; improved notifications of in-bound calls, missed calls and voicemails; and other enhancements. In addition, consumers can now refer Burner to friends to earn credits for their account.”

Although you’re not going to be able to use the Burner app to completely hide yourself from the prying eyes of the law, it’s an incredibly useful app when you want to hide yourself from people you don’t know, don’t trust, or don’t particularly wish to have long-term communications with.

After some time as an iOS-only service, Instagram finally launched on Android in April of 2012 and quickly racked up over a million downloads in less than 24 hours.

Thus began the great, but short Instagram platform war that saw iOS users whine about their beloved service opening up to the Plebian droiders. In less than six months, Instagram for Android hit 50 million downloads.

And now, in just one year, Android users have risen to become almost half the user base. The photo-sharing network broke the 100 million monthly active user milestone about a month ago, so we can assume that almost 50 million active users are snapping, filtering, and uploading via Android.

In a celebratory blog post, Philip McAllister of Instagram’s Android team acknowledges that the the Android community has been vital to spreading the service around the world:

Instagram for Android has helped make this community more global than ever. Major events such as Brazil’s Círio de Nazaré festival, the 85th birthday of Thailand’s King Bhumibol, and a streak of severe thunderstorms throughout Malaysia have been captured by Android Instagrammers and shared to global audiences like never before. We’ve also seen Android Instagrammers contribute to the community in innovative and powerful ways, including @daveedgamboa’s incredible jumpstagrams around Southern California, photos of England’s beautiful Lancashire county from @adamgrayson and even a glimpse into the life of Kenya’s nomads from @grantsmind.

So, Android Instagram users: How’s your first year been?