Tumblr has finally given iOS users the ability to share posts via Facebook and Twitter – something that other Tumblr users have been able to do for a while now.

For those who wish to browse Tumblr outside the official app, they’ve also added Pocket and Instapaper support to the iOS app. The new app also features a new email template which lets users easily view messages in either the Tumblr app or their mail client.

Smaller updates include scrolling animated GIFs and a new photo-disposal gesture. Here’s te full list of updates:

• Share posts via Twitter, Facebook, and more
• Save stuff for later using Instapaper and Pocket
• Email an entire post with our beautiful new template
• Fling a photo up or down to close it!
• GIFs animate while you scroll*
• Following list is now alphabetized and searchable

This update comes just a couple of days after Tumblr launched their first-ever in-feed mobile ads for both iOS and Android. Users will now see as many as four ads a day from the likes of Pepsi, GE, and Warner Bros.

And they also just launched their first-ever Window Phone app.

You can grab the updated app from the App Store today..

Netflix will start rolling out the new social features today, and they say that all 27 million U.S. users will have access to the Facebook sharing by the end of this week.

The Netflix/Facebook partnership, which has already been available in other countries for some time, will allow U.S. users to opt in. Those that do will see “Friends Favorites” and “Watched by Your Friends” sections on their Netflix accounts. Netflix streamers will be able to posts about movies and TV that they’re watching and comment on it as well.

“You are in control of what gets shared. You can choose not to share a specific title by clicking the “Don’t Share This” button in the player. You can also visit your “Social Settings” in “Your Account” on Netflix.com to turn on additional sharing to Facebook or stop sharing altogether,” says Netflix

The new social layer was made possible by an update to the Video Privacy Protection Act, a 1988 law that barred the sharing of any video rental history without the viewer’s expressed consent. The law, which originally focused on VHS rentals, disallowed companies like Netflix from giving users the option to share their viewing history on social sites like Facebook.

Netflix lobbied Congress to update the law, and it finally payed off when both the House and the Senate passed the amended VPPA a few days before Christmas last year. President Obama signed it into law in early January.

And it looks like it’s only taken Netflix a couple of months to begin the rollout of these new social features.

The amended VPPA makes sure that the “rental company” (Netflix) gives users a “clear and conspicuous” option to not share their streaming history, and that the viewers permission to share their video history expires after 2 years unless they renew it.

“Quora is a place where people share a wide range of knowledge and experience with others, and many users have already shared stories about professional opportunities they’ve received due to their contributions on the site,” a spokesperson for Quora tells WebProNews. “Now, with the use of LinkedIn’s new profile, Quora is making it easier to share your answers with your professional network to demonstrate your expertise and to give a fuller picture of your professional biography and identity.”

“Answering questions on Quora demonstrates your knowledge as well as other qualities — helpfulness, empathy, a sense of humor, and confidence,” says Quora’s Richard Henry in a blog post. “And Quora’s use of real names makes LinkedIn a natural partner for both of our communities; on both sites, your real-world reputation is tied to what you post.”

To enable LinkedIn sharing from Quora, just connect your accounts from the Quora settings page.

Rolling out over the next few weeks, Twitter.com will feature an option that allows users to share a tweet by email, even to recipients that aren’t Twitter members.

“[W]e’re introducing the ability to email a Tweet directly from twitter.com –– a feature that will be rolling out to everyone over the coming weeks. You can email a Tweet to anyone, whether they use Twitter or not, right from your Twitter stream or from the details view of any Tweet. Just click on the “More” icon next to the reply, retweet and favorite buttons in order to email a Tweet to anyone you know. You can add your own comment, and we’ll send an email with your comment and the Tweet together. Just like that,” says Twitter.

What’s good for the user, in this case, is also good for Twitter. What better way to recruit more users than to have existing users reach them for you? Now, if a non-twitter-user might see a hilarious tweet in their email and think “hey, I really should check out that Twitter thing.” Twitter, for one, has never been shy about promoting their service via email.

Email sharing isn’t the only recent announcement from Twitter. The company also unveiled a new version of their iOS and Android apps that improve upon the discover tab and the search function.

On the developer blog, Facebook said that 62.6 million songs have been played 22 billion times since the launch of Open Graph. To put it into perspective, Facebook says that users have listened to almost 210,000 years of music so far.

The key to all of this success lies in Open Graph, among other specific sharing types for music. Facebook details some music apps that have found success thanks to Open Graph integration. For instance, 8tracks, a social Internet radio service, generates four million Open Graph shares every week, which it turn generates 65 million story impressions.

It’s important to note that all the services that Facebook points to are none of the big name Internet streaming or radio services. These are all less-known apps that are making a splash in the music streaming industry thanks to Open Graph.

That’s not to say that the big guys aren’t using it to their advantage either. Facebook notes that Deezer, a French music streaming site, has seen its user base triple since the beginning of the year. In hard numbers, that’s 50,000 new users being added per day.

So what can a new app do to get these kind of numbers? Facebook says that deep integration with Open Graph and its numerous services are key. For starters, the music app should present a Facebook login button front and center. Beyond that, highlight friend activity so that users will be inclined to stay and share their taste in music.

Finally, all music apps should enable explicit sharing. This allows users to share every facet of your app with the world. Some apps may just share what songs a user is currently listening to. The truly successful apps will let users share playlists, wish lists and other information from the app for their friends to engage.

Music has obviously benefitted from integrating with Open Graph, but just about any app will see some increase in usage thanks to Facebook’s sharing APIs. For more information on how to implement it, check out Facebook’s excellent guidelines and tutorial.

But people really like infographics, apparently. I mean, it looks like they are ready, willing, and able to share them with all of their social media pals – even more so that traditional articles.

BitRebels looked at their last 500 infographic articles and their last 500 traditional articles, and compared how they were shared across Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc.

And what they found was a stark contrast in shareability – especially on Twitter.

Retweets of infographic drawrfed those of traditional articles by 832%. Shares on StumbleUpon also increased dramatically, at 746%. The number was similarly high for LinkedIn – a 629% increase.

So, looking to create an infographic? Make sure it’s a good one. “Pick a good one and your infographic can achieve a reach of up to 15 million people, if not more within the social media networking world. That’s a pretty good promotional tool for a company that is looking to expand their client base and present their product to the masses,” says BitRebels.

Check out their full infographic on infographics below:

[via AllTwitter]

Facebook calls it explicit sharing and it’s a pretty big change for Open Graph. It’s described as a “new, optional explicitly shared parameter to signal which actions users want to prominently share on Facebook.” In other words, certain apps can now post stories on a user’s Timeline that look just like an entry that was entered from Facebook proper.

The social network says that explicitly shared actions are “eligible to appear as stand-alone stories in news feed and they’ll appear consistently on the left side of a person’s timeline.” Explicit sharing is optional so users can pick and choose which apps they want displayed prominently on their Timelines. Everything else will continue to appear in tickers and news feed aggregates.

With all that being said, only certain stories can use the explicitly shared action functionality. These include:

Facebook seems to realize that allowing all apps access to explicit sharing would just be a mess. There are people who would love nothing more than to display their likes and games prominently on their Timeline. To counter that, these stories are not allowed to use explicitly shared actions:

To implement explicit sharing, you only need to add one little line of code to your app. Facebook warns that users may want to explicitly share some content from an app while keeping the other content off their main Timeline feed. In that case, they suggest that developers only “include this new parameter in the instances where a user clearly intends to share their activity on Facebook.

To make sure that app aren’t abusing explicit sharing, Facebook will begin reviewing every action that enables the feature. That means that developers will have to resubmit every action from their apps if they want to use it.

It almost seems like Facebook has taken a page out of Google+ History with this latest change to Open Graph. If you recall from Google I/O, the Google+ History API was a method for people to share what really mattered to them on Google+. It was similar to Open Graph, but it gave greater control of what content was shared to the user. Explicit sharing seems to be that greater control that Open Graph on Facebook was lacking.

To learn more about implementing Explicit Sharing into Open Graph, check out Facebook’s documentation.

Monday’s version 2.5 update gives users the opportunity to optionally share their photo “likes” to Facebook

That means that every time you double-click one of your Instagram pals’ photos, or click the “like” heart below it, that photo will be pushed to your Facebook Timeline as well as your friends’ News Feeds and Tickers.

The “like” sharing is not active by default. to enable it, simply go to your settings > sharing settings > Facebook and you’ll see the option:

Authorizing through Facebook will prompt users to confirm sharing their “likes,” which will also notify them that thy can always change their minds and reverse the frictionless flow in settings. Indeed, one drunken like-happy evening may force you to rethink your decision.

If you continue on with the “like” sharing and actually like one fo your Instagram friend’s photos, here’s what it will look like on your Facebook friends’ News Feed:

Of course, we all remember that Facebook acquired Instagram back in April for a cool billion dollars, and that month saw Instagram traffic shoot up 78%. The Instagram app allows social sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Foursquare, and Tumblr. Facebook is the only one of them that currently has this kind of frictionless sharing of “liked” photos.

Here’s what they had to say in a blog post:

Whether you’re a trendsetter, collector, shopper, browser, gifter or maker, we all share a common delight: making discoveries on Etsy. Today, millions of Etsy items have been added to Favorites and shared across the marketplace. Yet time and time again we hear friends ask, “Where did you find that?!” Now you can answer before the question’s asked by adding your Etsy Favorites to your Facebook Timeline.

Indeed, your Facebook friends will never have to wonder where that awesome custom iPhone cover came from – as all of your favorites will be pushed to Facebook via Open Graph. That means that any time you click the “Favorite” button (the one with the heart) on Etsy, that info will appear on both your Timeline and inside your friends’ News Feeds.

Etsy makes a point to say that your Favorite Shops and Treasury Lists will not appear on your Timeline.

To enable this feature, you have to manually link your Etsy and Facebook accounts. Of course, you can always go back and opt out of this sharing if your Etsy tastes become a little more… eccentric.

The iOS update includes the ability for iPhone and iPad users to automatically upload photos and video over either Wi-Fi or data. To encourage Apple fans to use this new capability, Dropbox is offering, in 500 MB increments, 3 GB of extra storage space to users to activate the automatic uploading feature. To take better advantage of the new feature, users are now able to upload files of any size, and can now move and delete sets of files. The gallery view in Dropbox now allows users to see all of the pictures and videos they have uploaded, regardless or whether they were uploaded automatically. The app is available for free in the Apple App Store.

As for the public folders news, it was first reported by German site Mobi Flip that Dropbox developers were receiving an email from the company stating that new Dropbox accounts will not be able to create public folders after July 31. It is stated in the email that currently existing public folders will be left alone, and will continue to function. This email was sent to developers because many apps that use Dropbox make API calls to a user’s public folder, which obviously won’t exist for new users in a couple of months.

Dropbox is dropping public folders in favor of a new public link feature it announced in April. Mobi Flip speculated that public folders used for hosting copyrighted or malicious content may have been part of the reason for the change. What is clear is that, even with bandwidth limits, non-dropbox users who download from public folders are costing Dropbox money. The new link feature directs those who click on a link to a Dropbox page, where the linked content can be securely displayed by Dropbox.

(via Mobi Flip)