Platform Five – This week’s most talked about social media tools and platforms

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Welcome to this week’s edition of Platform Five – our regular look at the social media tools and platforms that we recommend you keep an eye on.

If you’ve visited our blog lately, you’ll know we’ve been talking about YouTube a lot so we kick off this week’s post with news of a tool that can help turn your blog into a mini TV station.

Sound good? Let’s dive in…

1. YouTube Direct brings full YouTube functionality to your blog / site – YouTube fans have been making the most of YouTube’s video embedding capability for a while now, but this tool from YouTube essentially turns your blog into a YouTube channel. This means people can submit videos to your blog for review / consideration and you can add them to your blog within the one, contained dashboard. Although this service has been around for about 18 months, personal technology is finally at a level to make it more relevant. Check out the introduction video here.
2. Create your own ‘how to’ page with tildee.com – Over the last few years, smart brands have realised that being useful is the best way to develop relationships with customers. Tildee is a central bank of ‘how to’ guides and posts, allowing you to create and learn with similarly-minded people. Learn about how to create your own tutorial here.
3. Create and manage social web apps with SnapApp – This one is sent straight from heaven, especially if you manage Facebook pages. SnapApp is a self-serve platform that allows you to create custom applications including quizzes, surveys and polls, and then share them across the social web. Check out some of the great examples here.
4. The creating continues with Minigroup.com - Minigroup is a completely private platform that lets you share the right stuff with the right people, without intrusion from strangers, friends-of-friends, or search engines, all from a single account. It also enables the use custom identities to share appropriate personal information with various groups. Check out the Minigroup blog here.
5. Recruitment blended with social influence served up at Labels.io – This is an interesting concept and one that may spur others like it. Labels.io is a recruitment and resume service but added a new feature this week which helps put a value on your knowledge of topics relating to your vocation. Check out Labels Weight here.

We leave you with a couple bonus links this week.

First up is our recent post which profiles 15 nifty YouTube resources, tips and tricks – full of goodness.

And, to finish things up, we urge to check out Doggleganger – a facial recognition software tool that pairs you up with your canine look-a-like.

That’s it for this week, catch you again in seven days!