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.

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.

“When we launched Vine, we described posts as ‘little windows into the people, settings, ideas and objects that make up your life.’ With today’s update, you can display them almost anywhere,” says Vine.

When you reach the embed screen, you can choose your size as well as two modes – simple mode and postcard mode.

Simple embeds simply show the Vine, with the pertinent information like user, description, hashtags, etc. shown when you hover.

Postcard mode shows all of that info in a white frame around the Vine video:

In order to embed a Vine via the iOS app, tap on the “…” button within any Vine video. Click “share this post” and then finally “embed.” you’ll get an email with the code, which will take you to the embed page. Make your size and mode selections and there you go. Copy the code and put it up on your site. It’s not exactly without its annoyances, but it’s about as easy as embedding on through an app could be.

You can embed your own Vines, or anyone else’s Vine as long as they’ve already shared it on Facebook or Twitter.

No, not a suggestion, as in “you should spend more time on mobile in order to better develop for mobile.”

It was more like a “we’re forcing you to use mobile.” And they did it by internally shutting down their access to the desktop site.

Here’s what Facebook product manager Josh Williams (the former CEO of Gowalla) recently had to say at SXSW:

To be honest, a couple of weeks ago, myself and a number of other product managers had access to our website internally shut off,. Basically it forced us to use only mobile devices for a week. It forced us to say, ‘Hey, we have these features that exist in one place but not in another, and we have to remedy.

This is some serious dogfooding (using your own product in order to learn more about your own product), but it’s not the first time we’ve heard of this kind of thing coming out of Facebook.

Back in August of 2012, Facebook released a massive overhaul of their iOS app. It was entirely rebuilt upon the concept of speed – and they succeeded with an app that was slick and blazingly fast compared to the previous version.

Soon after, Facebook instituted an iPhone-free policy around the workplace in order to force employees to use Facebook for Android. The feeling was that users who were hands on with the Android app would be better at fixing it, because it surely needed an overhaul at the time as well. It eventually got that speed boost.

[via FastCompany]

Friendship pages allow you to view your history with any other user, including your mutual likes, photos you’re tagged in together, posts you’ve exchanged, mutual friends, and more. Facebook debuted Friendship Pages back in 2010, but gave them a major update in November 2012 that brought them firmly into the Timeline era.

Starting now, users will begin to see the option to access Friendship Pages roll out on m.facebook.com.

Facebook confirmed that the new Timeline-inspired Friendship Pages will be rolling out to the iOS and Android apps “in the coming months.”

On the mobile site there are a handful of places where you’ll see a link to Friendship Pages. Those include news feed stories about Timeline posts and Gifts, any Timeline posts between you and the friend, and life events. You can also access a Friendship Page via a menu on the specific friend’s Timeline.

As of now, the mobile Friendship Pages do not allow for customization of live events or cover photos.

[via Inside Facebook]

“Now when your friends tap on check-ins that you’ve shared on Facebook or Twitter from their phones, they’ll see a pretty new page with all the details of your check-in – the address, photos, badges, points, comments, and likes,” says Foursquare.

Foursquare provides an example of what that page could look like, considering your check-in contained a photo, comments, and badges:

This page only appears when non-users access one of your check-ins via mobile. And even though non-users can see all of your Foursquare goodies, only your friends can comment on your check-in.

According to Flurry, the amount of time U.S. consumers spent inside mobile apps in December 2012 beat the amount of time spent in December 2011 by a whopping 35% (127 minutes a day from 94 minutes a day). That mobile app usage cut into web usage a little bit (2%, year-over-year). They project that TV viewing stayed flat year-over-year.

If you’re wondering how Flurry obtained their TV viewing data:

“This time around, we add time spent on television using data released by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2010 and 2011. Note that the bureau hasn’t yet released their 2012 numbers, but given the maturity of the TV market, we assume that time spent on TV is flat year-over-year.”

Assuming they’re correct, mobile app usage is gaining on TV – and fast. If the current trend continues, mobile app usage will likely run up on TV viewing by the end of 2013 or beginning of 2014.

“The chart also shows that time spent in apps already totals 76% of time spent on television. With new content released via thousands of new apps each day, we expect this trend to continue. In fact, we ultimately expect apps on tablets and smartphones to challenge broadcast television as the dominant channel for media consumption. Compared to the 60-year-old television industry, apps are just over 4 years old. In particular, tablets will drive growth in app consumption in 2013 as TV-style content and major programming moves to the tablet. Most TV Networks have already adjusted to a dual screen world and are synchronizing their TV content with their tablet app content. We believe that, with the introduction of connected TVs, TV shows will behave like apps,” says Flurry.

If you’re curious as to what Americans are doing with all that time spent using apps, 80% of the app use is defined as social networking and entertainment.

[Image via eelke dekker, Flickr]

The mobile discover tab now features media-rich tweets that allows users to preview photos and article summaries without ever tapping on the tweet.

It’s all thanks to Twitter Cards:

“Using Twitter cards, you’ll now see Tweets in Discover with links to news and photos rather than the former story previews which were not interactive. And supporting Twitter cards on the backend means we can more directly improve the user experience in our native apps, too. You’ll see content from cards partners display as a preview in the stream, so that you’ll get headlines and publication names for story summaries and photo previews rather than shortened URLs,” says Twitter engineering manager Daniel Loreto.

The mobile Discover tab has also become more like the desktop Discover section. Now you can “view all tweets” to see relevant content from users in your network.

“We want Discover to be the place where you find the best of that content relevant to you, even if you don’t necessarily know everyone involved,” says Loreto.

Twitter has also improved on their search function, for both the desktop and mobile experience. Photos and videos are now front and center, as Twitter has placed them above the tweet stream in search results for people, events, and hashtags.

Twitter has also added the ability for users to see the context behind the tailored ranking of search results.

“About a year ago we launched tailored ranking of your search results, but until now you couldn’t see why a specific Tweet might matter more to you. Now you can see context like who favorited or retweeted right there in the Tweet,” says Twitter.

You can download the new version of both the iOS and Android apps today.

The share button is currently only visible on m.facebook.com and with no recent update, there’s still not a share option inside the mobile apps. But of course, testing a share button on the mobile site could mean that Facebook is at least considering adding the function to their iOS apps. Facebook has previously stated that there’s nothing really standing in the way of them allowing mobile users to share posts. It’s not some technical quagmire – they just haven’t done it yet.

The new share button now appears next to new, larger “like” and “comment” buttons under posts:

Having the ability to share posts must be near the top on the list of most-requested features, and frankly it’s surprising that it’s taken Facebook this long to make it a reality.

We’ve noticed that the share button isn’t showing up for all stories in the news feed, but sporadically across all types of posts. This could have something to do with privacy settings, or it could be a product of the test. I’ve reached out to Facebook and will update this article when I hear back.

“Now you can update your profile with a new headline, add recent skills, or add a new position so your professional identity is always up to date,” says LinkedIn in a blog post.

The update to the iOS and Android apps also include enhancements to inMail and “Who’s viewed your profile” for premium members. It also adds support for the iPhone 5.

Last month, LinkedIn debuted an all new profile that updated the interface to highlight activity and display information in a more visual style. It also features the skill endorsements that LinkedIn rolled out in September.