By opening up Foursquare’s data trove to everyone, they made a pretty big statement: We’re a big name in the location search game, and we want to challenge the likes of Yelp, Google Places, and Urbanspoon.

Now, Foursquare is continuing to revamp itself with a new redesign of location pages on the site. They’re more photo-rich, informative, and indicative of a company who is seeing increased traffic to said pages.

Here’s the current (old) pages design:

And here’s the new design for location pages on Foursquare.com:

What you’ll notice immediately is that photos have been given a much more prominent placement on the page. Also, the map has been moved from directly under the location name to the right-hand corner. In the new design, all of the pertinent information is front and center – the address, hours, rating, phone number, price, etc.

Plus, all of the “similar” suggestions on the right-hand side have been given photos and ratings.

Foursquare Web Engineering head Mike Singleton told The Next Web that Explore usage has double in the past two months. He also said that there are now some 50 million unique visitors to the site every month. Plenty of those are coming from non-members, who just happen to find Foursquare as a service to look up location information.

And that’s exactly what Foursquare wants.

The new design has yet to hit the web for all users, and we’re expecting an announcement from Foursquare in the near future. Foursquare knows that its future is in recommendations and detailed, competitive listings for all web users – not just check-ins and badges for members. This is what the company has been moving toward for the past year (remember that massive app update earlier this month?) and this is simply another step in that evolution.

The new look is all about discovery, as Pinterest wants users to spend more time browsing and pinning. To this end, Pinterest’s new look strongly affects individual pin pages. These “close-up views” now feature other information for people to use as a springboard for other, similar content.

Each individual pin page now features pins from the same board, pins from the same source, and a widget for “people who pinned this also pinned,” which Pinterest notes is exactly what it sounds like. Each of these new content boxes allow users to discover new content from similar users.

Pinterest says that they hope to bring these additions to their iOS and Android apps soon.

Pinterest has also made some updates to how you navigate around the site:

“We wanted to make things simpler and cleaner, without requiring you to learn anything new. What you’ll find are some subtle but useful changes, like bigger pins, so you see more of what you love. We also responded to some feedback from pinners who told us they hated losing their place while browsing. Now, when you scroll through pins and click on something that interests you, the back button lands you right back where you were no matter how far you’ve gone.”

Improving discovery is important for users, but it’s also important for the site, who is looking to show potential marketers that Pinterest is worth their time. Earlier this month, Pinterest debuted an analytics tool for site owners. Currently free, Pinterest Web Analytics shows site owners how many people have pinned from their site, the reach of those pins across Pinterest, and the traffic referred to their sites from Pinterest.

Before, users could only experience the great fun of fragmented tweets on mobile, but starting today you should be able to see line breaks on Twitter on the web.

Now, you can properly view a haiku, or perhaps another type of poem. Of course, that’s the optimistic take on how people will use this ability.

As you can see, this ability doesn’t translate to embedded tweets:

Guess what you can doView line breaks on Twitter webLet the fun begin.

— Twitter (@twitter) March 13, 2013

But here’s a screenshot of what that tweet really looks like now:

Let’s
Just
Hope
This
Doesn’t
Get
Super

A
N
N
O
Y
I
N
G

LINEBREAKS#newattwitter

— Twitter for News (@TwitterForNews) March 13, 2013

Almost. But we’ll get back to that.

The Facebook-owned photo-sharing social network has been around for over two years and amassed over 90 million monthly active users. And today marks the first time that users can browse their feeds on the web.

Instagram, who has admittedly thrown all of their focus into mobile, took the first step into building a passable web presence last June when they launched comments and likes on individual photo pages on the web. Before that, viewing an Instagram photo via a link on a Twitter or Facebook post was simply that – viewing the photo. That was the only web presence that Instagram maintained. Adding comments and likes to the web photo pages allowed users to interact with the network on a very basic level.

Then, in November, Instagram launched profiles on the web, giving users the ability to browse individual users’ photos. Once again, a baby step toward a true web presence.

Today, Instagram on the web gets a news feed – one that mimics the mobile experience.

“Your Instagram Feed on the web functions much like it does on your mobile phone. You can browse through the latest photos of people whom you follow with updates as people post new photos. Like photos by double clicking on them or pressing the like button. Or, engage in a conversation around a photo with inline commenting. Browse through pages of the most recent images to keep up on what’s happening with the people you follow in realtime. And shrink your browser down to a single column for your feed to look more like your mobile feed. Simply put, we’ve brought a simple, powerful, and beautiful Instagram browsing experience to the web,” says Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom.

You can click on @users to view their profiles. It doesn’t look like hashtags are clickable yet – but other than that everything else feels like the mobile app.

As it stands, the web experience is 75% or so of the mobile experience. The only thing still missing is the ability to upload and tool photos from the web. As much as you may want that ability, you shouldn’t hold your breath. According to Instagram, that wouldn’t really fit the company’s overall mission:

“We do not offer the ability to upload from the web as Instagram is about producing photos on the go, in the real world, in realtime. On the other hand, Instagram for the web is focused on making the browsing experience a fast, simple and enjoyable one,” says Systrom.

Even so, Instagram has finally grown up and they have an actual website to prove it.

GoDaddy and OfficeMax have just announced a partnership that allows for the sale of GoDaddy website bundles inside OfficeMax stores nationwide. That means that you can visit any of the 900 OfficeMax locations and buy a domain name for $12.99.

Or, you can opt for a premium package that offers 999 pages, 10 email addresses, a domain name, SEO strategy, and online storage for 250 bucks.

“An in-store presence at OfficeMax gives Go Daddy the opportunity to help small business owners and entrepreneurs who are looking to grow their businesses,” said Go Daddy Vice President of Marketing Teri Dhooge. “The Internet is at the heart of today’s economy. If you’re not building an online presence, you’re missing opportunities to capture new customers, yet, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly seventy-five percent of businesses don’t have a website. Partnering with OfficeMax means we can help more people leverage the power of the Internet – people who may not realize how easy it can be.”

“The introduction of Go Daddy websites and domain names in our stores is the first of many steps we’re taking to provide entrepreneurs with industry-leading solutions for starting, running and growing their business,” said Michael Lewis, executive vice president and president of Retail at OfficeMax. “Having a digital presence is instrumental to business success, as it’s increasingly where consumers and businesses go to research and shop. Together with Go Daddy, we’re offering a complete array of products and services to help small businesses boost their online visibility, reach customers and drive sales in the digital space.”

GoDaddy says that out of their 11 million customers, over 70% are small or medium-sized businesses.

[via Mashable]

The news comes from The Verge, who quotes sources close to company. According to them the browser option will begin to roll out today and roll out slowly over the next few months.

According to the report, the web browser version of Spotify will come with a limited set of features – search, Spotify Radio, playlists, and the “What’s New” discovery element. Really, that’s all a user needs to get started. Although, we’d hope that more features (like Spotify Apps) come to the web player at some point.

As of now, it’s unclear what type of tech Spotify will use to power the new web player.

A web player is simply a good idea that will benefit all (and a long time coming). It makes Spotify more mobile, allowing users to access it on the go and on devices that do not have the desktop app downloaded. It will be interesting to see how Spotify shifts up their mobile streaming structure, considering users have to sport a premium account to access most of their music on the go (with the app).

Yesterday we told you that Spotify had just received a new $100 million round of funding from Goldman Sachs, and Coca-Cola.

“We’ve been working on hard on some new updates for you, and are thrilled to pull the curtain off of a big one — our iPhone app is now completely native! We think you’ll love the faster, smoother, and more responsive Tumblr Dashboard,” they say.

The new “native” experience is a pretty significant rebuild, as Tumblr abandons web views. They say that this shift will make the user experience more responsive, and on first impressions they are right.

Here’s a full list of the updates the shipped along with version 3.2:

• Redesigned dashboard — enjoy bigger photos and faster post loading.
• Spiffy new notification previews so you can see exactly which posts were liked, reblogged, or replied to!
• GIFs now play automatically on your Dashboard! Slide your finger across a GIF to view frame by frame.
• New gestures — swipe right on any screen to go back to the previous view; long tap photos, links, tags, and post headers for more options.
• Brand new blog screens with blog portraits and descriptions.

Last month, Tumblr launched their spiffy Photoset app for iOS, allowing users and non-users to create their own photosets quickly and easily. Android is still waiting on its version of the new Photoset app, but they did get some improvements to their Tumblr app a couple of weeks ago.

You can grab the new Tumblr app today on iTunes.

But although Instagram’s history is rooted entirely on the web, their future may not be.

The latest find to suggest this comes from web designer Cole Reinke, who says that his Instagram web experience now comes with one extra option.

In a photo posted to his blog (seen above), you can see that he has a “View Profile” option right above “Edit Profile” and “Log Out.” That’s odd because currently, Instagram doesn’t allow you to browse profiles on the web. I double checked my Instagram account on the web and I see no such option.

He says that clicking on it takes him to a 404 error page.

Is this the first sign the Instagram is about to add more features to the web?

For a long time, the web version of Instagram only allowed you to change your password and edit profile information. You could view photos on the web, but only if you got there through a link on Twitter, Facebook or the like.

Last month, Instagram made a pretty significant move to make their web version a little less worthless. Now, if you are linked to an Instagram photo on the web, you can comment and “like” it.

Baby steps, I know. But if Instagram is really planning on creating a full-on web experience, this is a good place to start.

I’ve reached out to Instagram for comment and will update this article accordingly.

[via TechCrunch]

Before, an individual page for an Instagram photo was sparse – and the only real functionality of the page was viewing the photo. Now, users can “like” and comments on the photos thanks to a slick little update that went live on the web late Thursday.

If your social networking takes you to a photo taken with Instagram, here’s what you’ll see:

Awesome, right? It’s a simple but effective update to Instagram on the web that could make a big difference in engagement. That being said, this is about all that’s new about accessing Instagram on the web. Still no full experience complete with your photo stream and such.

It looks like Instagram is dipping its toes in the water, however.

Users can also access their accounts from the photo pages, which allows them to edit their profiles, change their passwords, and manage their app permissions.

Earlier this week, the Instagram app for iOS and Android received an update which allowed users to have their “likes” automatically post to their Facebook Timelines and to appear in their friends’ News Feeds.

[h/t The Next Web]

Yew Jin Lim, a software engineer with Google, penned a piece today on the Docs Blog about his team bringing search spell check to Google Docs. The key advantage here is that the spell check in Google Docs will no longer rely on a dictionary for the words you spell. Like Google Search, Docs spell check will now adapt with the Web.

Lim shows off a few pretty impressive examples of Google’s new spell check. The first shows him typing in “Icland is an icland.” As I typed that into my text editor, both instances of “icland” are underlined and the spell check gives me three choices – Iceland, inland and island. Google claims that their spell check is contextual and once it knows that the first word is Iceland, it will correct the second “icland” to “island.”

It will also fix that little problem of people using the wrong, but properly spelled, word. Lim uses the example of “Let’s meat tomorrow morning for coffee.” He says that Google’s spell check will correct the “meat” to “meet” based on context.

Google is also taking into account the fact that the Web is constantly evolving and making up new words. If the word becomes popular enough, it will be added to the spell checker. Lim uses the example of Skrillex being included as a word now in Google Docs.

The new spell check system is available right now for Google Docs and presentations in English. They are hoping to roll out the new system to other languages soon.

As a writer, this makes me excited. Having a constantly evolving spell check would solve a lot of the problems current spell checks have, especially those that automatically change the word on you.