Platform Five – The social media tools and platforms that made headlines this week

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It’s Friday which means it’s time for Platform Five – our weekly look at the social media tools and platforms that are worth keeping an eye on.

1. LiveShare rocks the party in real-time – LiveShare provides a simple answer to a historically challenging question, “Where’s everyone’s photos from the party?” It makes it easy for you and your friends to snap photos at events and enjoy them in real-time (via a stream direct to your smartphone) without having to hunt through emails, social networks and photo sites after the event. The makers of this app also have something else cooking that will re-define real-time sharing which you can read more about here. Keep both your eyes on this one.
2. IconSeeker delivers a search engine for web icons – This has been around for a little while, but if you’re regularly creating web content, you’ll love this site. It helps you track down any icon you can imagine for your sites / blogs and breaks them down by size. Introduce your bookmarking button to this site.
3. Summify makes personal news aggregation nice ‘n easy – Summify takes feeds from your online portfolio e.g. Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader and brings them together in the one place for you to scan / read at your leisure. If you don’t have time to spare watching Twitter and Facebook tick over all day, this is a good option for you.
4. Unlock your car direct from your smartphone – This is a clever idea and might get you thinking about what else can be done via smartphones. Read more about it at AppScout.
5. Empire Avenue brings Wall Street to social media profiles – This has been getting a fair bit of buzz lately as social media enthusiasts have adopted it with open arms…and wallets! Here is the more official explanation of what it is about: Empire Avenue is the Social Media Exchange, where you can invest in any social media profile by buying their shares, meet new people, unlock Achievement badges, and earn boatloads of virtual cash by being active and social online! Buy shares in your friends, your followers, people with similar interests, brands you love, celebrities – anyone! All using a virtual currency and all for free! More here.

Catch you next week!