In a simple blog posting today Hulu reveals that its premium Hulu Plus service has finally arrived on the Apple TV. If you're existing Hulu Plus subscriber it's simply a matter of tapping your details into the app on the Apple TV homescreen. But Hulu points out that as well as signing up via their website, you can now also create a Hulu Plus account directly through Apple's TV interface and paying via your existing iTunes account details (and an email will then tell you how to access the streaming service via other channels). A regular $7.99 fee is then charged via your iTunes account every month.

While the addition of Hulu Plus is a coup for Apple and a boon for fans of the service, at least in the regions where it's available, the iTunes pay channel is a very important part of this equation and represents an expansion of its existing Netflix pay service.

Visa Europe's 'Policy Decision' Cuts Off Mobile Phone Pay Startup iZettle

European mobile phone card payment platform iZettle has been cut off by Visa. IZettle must stop processing Visa card payments in Norway, Denmark and Finland, "based on a policy decision" by Visa Europe, iZettle said in a blog post. Visa Inc. is an investor in rival mobile card-swipe giant Square, but Visa Europe is run as an independent entity, so there is little reason to think this is a competitive move (and Square remains U.S.-centric for now). Other cards--MasterCard and American Express in Finland and Diner's Club in Denmark and Norway will continue to work with the reader. In addition to these three countries, iZettle's service is also available in Sweden (where the company is based) and the U.K.--the Swedish service is still live, which has prompted discussion over Visa's motives in quashing some of the value of the mobile card reader.

IZettle started out with an iOS app and reader, but recently started beta tests of an Android app and reader in partnership with Samsung. iZettle closed a $31.6 million funding round in mid-June from funding backers like Greylock Partners, Index Ventures and MasterCard.

Google Links Blogger With Google+, Gives Gmail Hangouts

Blogger, Google's fairly popular blogging tool just got the Google+ treatment. Now that Google's content creation and content sharing streams are hooked up, bloggers on the service can link their blogs with Google+ brand pages (blogs have been linkable to personal profiles for some time now). When new posts are ready, the Google+ integration presents the option of sharing the post as a notification to selected circles of Google+ followers. Upgrading to the Google+ feature also lets existing Google+ users add a blogger's Google+ profile to their website.

Yesterday, Google announced that Gmail and its scores of loyal users would see their video chat powered by Hangouts, a previously Google+ only group chat feature. Gmail users can video chat with contacts logged into Google+, driving a cross-talk between two of Google's services that are believed to have markedly different levels of engagement. Gmail users can play around with Hangouts feature like virtual moose ears, and group chat with up to 9 other Google users. For the full experience, however, they still need to hop over to Google+.

As the year rolls on, Google is integrating more of its existing products with its testy social network which has always had something of a engagement problem. According to a recent ComScore count Google+ user numbers had grown 66 percent since November last year to 110.7 million in June, but a previous study by RJMetrics, 30 percent of Google+ users don't post after their first time. 

Google Acquires Social Ad Manager Wildfire

Companies may now manage their advertising campaigns on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter using a service owned by Google.

The search giant announced it had agreed to acquire social media marketing startup Wildfire in a blog post on Tuesday. Details of the acquisition weren't disclosed, though sources tell All Things D that the purchase price is around $250 million.

Wildfire helps its 16,000 customers, including Sony, Verizon and Amazon, manage social media campaigns, content and advertising across social platforms.

Companies that fit a similar social media genre have been a hot commodity lately. Oracle has agreed to acquire two such startups, Vitrue and Collective Intellect, this summer, and Salesforce agreed to buy Wildfire competitor Buddy Media for $745 million in June.

Facebook Adding Time-Shift "Save" For Later Facility To Updates

Facebook has very quietly added a new feature to its mobile apps that lets users click and hold anywhere on a status update to activate a "save" function that specially tags a long article in order that it can be accessed easily at a later moment. The function seems to act a little like the well-known Instapaper app that is handy for marking long-form web pages in order that they can be quickly accessed later in the day when a user has more time to read them, and it's also been confirmed by TheVerge.com that the new system will be coming to Facebook's main web service too. The system seems aimed squarely at user convenience, keeping a Facebook client engaged in an article found within the social network where previously it may have been left unread due to time constraints and the inconvenience of relocating the same piece of writing later in the day in someone's cluttered Timeline.

Spotify Adds Free Streaming Radio For Android Users

Spotify has given U.S. users of its Android app the ability to stream radio for free, in Pandora-like auto-curated streams based on selected tracks or playlists. The radio feature was late coming to the iOS app itself, only showing up in June, but is now accessible to a larger pool of Android users. The radio feature syncs across devices and comes with a voting feature to respond to songs that worked and those that didn't. (The desktop app made its entry in December.) Before that, mobile access to Spotify was limited to its top tier Premium members who pay $9.99 a month.

Twitter's New Clickable Stock Ticker Tags Track Tweets About Cos.

Twitter is a great streaming service for following updates from followers and lists as they happen, but has been working on its search relevance: The latest move is the addition of a clickable stock tag for companies. Clicking on "$FB" for example, will pull up a search result list for all mentions of the Facebook stock tag as well as tweets mentioning Facebook in plain English, possibly cutting through some of the noise that comes with searching via a hashtag and making it easier to keep track of the price of stock you're interested in.

The search, sort, and old tweets departments have been a bit of a weak spot for the service. In recent months Twitter has taken small steps to improve searching on its site in terms of features and effectiveness. Earlier this year, it added an autocomplete feature to throw up commn hashtags and people you follow, and started suggesting related queries and spelling corrections in listed search results.