“Natural curiosity entices many people to wonder, ‘Who’s been viewing my profile?’ each day on LinkedIn. Today, we’re rolling out a new, simplified look and feel for Who’s Viewed Your Profile to make it easier for you to get a snapshot of who, what, and how you are being discovered on LinkedIn,” says LinkedIn’s Udi Milo.

Basic LinkedIn members will be able to see exactly how often people are viewing their profile over the past few weeks, and well as how many times they appeared in a LinkedIn search (and the percent change from last week).

But it’s premium members that will get the most from this upgrade. They’ll be able to get a detailed list of which keywords led to them in search, as well as which industries their profile viewers come from. Premium members will also see a geographic breakdown of those profile views. Of course, they’ll also be able to see more of the profile viewers – basic members aren’t able to see everyone who’s viewed their profile.

LinkedIn has been on an update kick as of late. Last week they finally allowed users to add photos and presentations to updates, and they also unveiled two-step verification for better account security.

Now, you can edit your profile inline (without having to go to a separate profile editing page). Just click the “edit profile” button on your “me” page and you’ll be able to change both your header and profile photos plus your bio, location, and website information.

Either click the image you wish to change and upload or even take a new photo – or you can drag and drop photos from your desktop. You gotta love some drag and drop.

You guys. We did it. Twitter has inline profile editing & drag and drop photo uploads! youtube.com/watch?v=ZkP8ri…Thank @jondkoon, who led this.

— Patrick Ewing (@hoverbird) May 31, 2013

If you’re on-the-go, you’ll still have to click the gear icon and then “edit profile” to make the aforemetioned changes. Plus, if you want to change your background photo on the desktop, you’ll need to go into you settings as well.

It’s a small change, but a good one. Ever since Twitter unveiled their new header photos, they’ve been pushing adoption pretty hard by suggesting users upload one when they first log in. And about the whole profile photo thing – look, if you still have an egg as your pic, you’re doing Twitter so wrong that you may as well just quit.

As Twitter has been known to do, they’re announcing the new profile editing features with a cartoon. Oh, Phillip.

Let’s say you’re a photographer, and in your LinkedIn “experience” section you want to add some samples of your work – now you can do that. Let’s say you worked incredibly hard on a big presentation and wish to showcase that to everyone who views your profile – now you can do that.

“For the first time, you will now have the ability to showcase your unique professional story using rich, visual content on your LinkedIn profile. This means you can illustrate your greatest achievements in the form of stunning images, compelling videos, innovative presentations and more. From the analyst who makes annual predictions on tech trends to the 3D animator who is looking to fund a new short film, the opportunities are limitless for how professionals can now use the LinkedIn profile to help showcase these unique stories in a visual way,” says LinkedIn’s Udi Milo.

In short, LinkedIn is letting users create a more visual resume.

To get started, just edit your profile and look for areas to add visual content in your “summary,” “experience,” and “education” sections. LinkedIn says that they rollout of this new feature begins today with English-speaking users.

Here’s what you may see at the top of your homepage when you log in to Facebook (screenshot courtesy The Next Web). May see, because this is just a small test that Facebook is currently running:

As you can see, the prompt not only tells you how close you are to “completing your profile,” but it also allows you to answer the questions that Facebook asks right in the prompt, instead of taking you all the way to the information edit page on your Timeline.

Of course, Facebook isn’t the only social network that has asked users to make sure their profiles are as complete as possible. Google+ is still doing it on the right-hand side of the homepage:

LinkedIn has been doing it for years. They’ve just recently given you a cool little “Profile strength” meter inside your actual profile, though:

And ever since Twitter unveiled their new header photos, they’ve been pushing pretty hard for users to complete their profile by adding one of those.

The point is, this is a common thing among social networks. They want complete profiles. Complete profiles give them more information about their users, which can be used for a variety of tasks. Of course, that includes ad targeting.

But in the end, you want a complete profile, right? Otherwise, what’s the point of being on the network? Ok, so you don’t want to give Facebook your hometown. Fine. Just click the “x” on the prompt and forget about it.

As you may have heard, the U.S. Supreme Court began to hear arguments in the first of two cases involving same-sex marriage today. The first one involves the constitutionality of California’s voter-approved Prop 8, which bans same-sex marriage. The other one involves the nearly two-decades old Defense of Marriage Act.

Today, Facebook users are showing solidarity with the marriage equality cause by sharing and making a red equals sign photo their temporary profile pic.

The photo originated with the Human Rights Campaign, who posted the image to their Facebook page. As of right now it has over 15,000 likes and over 47,000 shares.

The red and pink equals sign is a play on the HRC’s logo, which is a yellow equals sign on a blue background.

The photo began to spread even faster when Facebook superstar George Takei shared it with his 3.7 million+ followers.

George Takei2 hours ago

For those friends wondering, this special “red” equality symbol signifies that marriage equality really is all about love. Thanks to the Human Rights Campaign for this effort. Please consider changing your profile today in support–esp if you are a straight ally. Powered by socialditto  1,000+ likes ·  1,000+ comments

Whether changing your profile pic in support of a cause is worthwhile or simply slacktivism is up for debate. But there’s no denying that the HRC’s campaign is one of the most successful campaigns of this type that we’ve seen in a while (ever since KONY 2012, really). Maybe it’s just the company I keep on Facebook. Are you seeing a lot of red in your news feed today?

Starting today, you can now use an animated GIF as your profile picture. The GIF will animate on profile pages on both mobile and desktop. As of now, the GIFs don’t animate in the stream – so make sure that the still image for your new profile GIF is also presentable.

Matt Steiner54 minutes ago

You can now use an animated gif for your profile photo!  It will animate on the profile page on both desktop and mobile

edit:  like newspapers in Harry Potter 197    60 Powered by socialditto

Google software engineer Matt Steiner has implemented the new profile GIF, and you can check it out here.

Speaking of Google and GIFs, they recently made it easier to find animated GIFs by adding a new “animated” search filter in Image Search.

The patent, US20130030987 A1, doesn’t actually mention “Facebook” in particular – instead goes with less-specific terms like “social networking environment.” But it was definitely filed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with Facebook ads product director Gokul Rajaram and former Facebook product management director Prashant Fuloria.

The patent abstract cuts to the chase:

In one embodiment, a system includes one or more computing systems that implement a social networking environment and are operable to provide paid profile personalization functions to users. In particular embodiments, the user may select one or more social networking objects to replace advertisements or other elements that are normally displayed to visitors of the user’s profile page that are otherwise controlled by the social networking system. In particular embodiments, the user may edit elements on their profile page that are otherwise automatically generated and controlled in design and content by the social networking system. In particular embodiments, the user is billed on a recurring basis for profile personalization.

Key words: Billed, replace ads, edit elements.

The ad replacement model would see them replaced with popular photos or videos or the user’s choosing. The profile customization could come in this form (straight from the application):

“For example, after receiving a large number of comments or “likes” on a particular status message, the user may receive a dialog box prompting the user with the text: ‘Would you like to personalize your profile with this status message for 10 credits a month?’”

Notice the mockup below, that features “favorite memories” and videos on the right-hand side instead of ads:

A patent application doesn’t connote intent. There’s no reason to think that some sort of profile subscription offering is on the way any time soon. The patent, which was just published on January 31st of this year, was actually filed way back in July of 2011. That’s why all of the mockups feature a profile that looks severely outdated.

Having said this, the patent is there and it is clear about what it could do.

Despite what plenty of hoaxes have told you, Facebook will continue to be free. You’ll never have to pay a subscription fee to access the core service, or pay a fee to keep information private. But charging for customized profiles, or to get rid of those pesky ads? That is most certainly a possibility. Would you do it?

[h/t GigaOm]

When you visit your profile today, you’ll see a prompt that says “Cover photos just got bigger” and asks you if you’d like to update yours now. The bigger cover photos now allow for 2120px by 1192px images.

“This way more images can be used as cover photos, and there’s more room for your selection to shine,” says Google’s Sara McKinley in a Google+ post.

Your “About” section has also received an update. It’s a completely new design that puts all of your separate pieces of information into their own color-coded cards. Each info card features its own “edit” button as well.

Lastly, a new “Reviews” tab has been added to the top of your profile alongside the ones for your +1s, YouTube videos, photos, and posts. As you would imagine, this tab houses all of your Google Local reviews.

“Highlight your favorite restaurants, or hide the tab completely via settings – it’s completely up to you,” says Google.

If you don’t see your new Google+ profile yet, be patient. Google says that it’s rolling out gradually.

First off, Twitter is no longer making you leave the page to view photos when you click them from inside a profile page. Now, these photos should pop up in a lightbox. Another bonus to the new and improved photo-viewing experience is that the photos will also be bigger.

You’ll also see more video content inside the media galleries on the left-hand side of users’ profiles.

“Media galleries now include videos from Vine, YouTube, Vimeo, and other partners whose videos appear in expanded Tweets,” says Twitter.

Twitter also announced another cool update today. They’ve expanded individual tweet pages to allow users to scroll through all the replies – not just a handful. This is a long time coming and allows users to better explore the conversation stemming from popular tweets from popular users.

Today, Twitter says that no matter what, all users will have the new profile look by Wednesday, December 12th. And since you’re going to have it, you may as well make it look pretty:

“On December 12, we’re rolling this out to all users: you’ll automatically get this new version of the profile on twitter.com. If you don’t upload a header photo by then, you (and everyone else) will only see a default grey image on your page. That’s not fun!” says Twitter.

While the grey space surrounding the profile pic isn’t quite as atrocious as the default “egg” profile pic for lazy users, it’s pretty bad. Uploading a header photo lets you better express yourself on the network and honestly makes you look like you give a damn about your social media profile. Anyone who relies on social media for contacts (as more and more people are nowadays) should know that looking like you care is half to battle.

Back in November, Twitter published an animated video detailing how and why users should update their Twitter profiles. Today, they’re publicizing that video again: