Vineloop is a social platform that enables users to create an exclusive network of friends in order to hear their trusted recommendations on a range of subjects.

Commonly, the personal value of a social media platform is measured by the number of friends, contacts or followers. However, when it comes to recommendations, startup Vineloop believe the smaller the network the better, and this month launched a platform that enables users to create an exclusive network of friends in order to hear their trusted recommendations on a range of subjects.

This past week, Facebook launched a subscribe button, which allows you to choose on a user by user basis “whether you’d like to see all updates, most updates, or just important updates from another user.” It also allows you to open up your profile to subscribers who are not your friends on Facebook.

By opening up more of its content to the public, Facebook is increasing your content’s chances of showing up in search engine results. Facebook’s subscribe option also allows individuals to grow their following and determine which content they want to make viewable to certain groups of friends or subscribers.

The No. 1 reason for Americans to go online? Social networking by far. The Nielssn Company, the longtime TV analyzer, released its first report on Internet traffic patterns today, and concluded that social media represents 22.5 percent of the time Americans spend online. They spend 9.8 percent on online gaming, and just 7.6 percent for email. Not surprisingly, Facebook was the most visited social media network, according to the report. Americans logged 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook from home and work computers.

If you’re looking to boost engagement on your brand’s Facebook Page, a new report from Buddy Media has some key findings for you. The social media marketing company collected data from 200 of its clients’ Pages* over a 14-day period and found that time is an important factor in determining the success of a Facebook post. The study reveals that more often than not, a Facebook post is ill-timed — in fact, office hours could be the worst time to blast content.

“While marketers may work Monday through Friday, Facebook is humming with activity 24-hours a day, seven days a week,” says Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow. And so, brands must adapt to their consumers’ schedules in order to optimize their engagement.

To update or not to update… for WordPress users…that is the question. Those of you who are WordPress users have all seen the message at the top of your Dashboard telling you that a new release is available. Should you do it? You most likely would want to update. You’ve been notified because something’s changed. There might be some useful new functionality, or it might be because a security fix has been released.