This Week in Social is a weekly digest of some of the biggest stories in social media marketing news. These stories are the show notes for the Brave Ad World Podcast. Each story is discussed at a deeper level on the podcast.

Pinterest Acquires VisualGraph (Read more at The Wall Street Journal)

Pinterest is getting into image recognition with the purchase of VisualGraph, a startup that has focused on visual search, for an undisclosed sum. The move follows acquisitions by other companies looking to gain the technology to recognize people and objects in photos and videos. Yahoo acquired LookFlow. Facebook acquired face.com to help identify faces in photos.

The data potential for Pinterest is immense. People are constantly collecting their hopes and dreams on boards, but sometimes pins aren’t tagged or categorized correctly. This technology could help Pinterest get a better handle on its own data, benefiting them by cleaning up the information they already do have but also benefiting users by making existing content easier to find through search.

Making its data set more actionable allows it to diversify its monetization plans. Promoted Pins are already being tested, but promoted content goes so far when user experience must be protected. With better data, it can follow the path of Foursquare by selling its data and integrating into other platforms interested in understanding what users are pinning and why.

Yahoo Relaunches Advertising Offering (Read more at AdAge)

Yahoo unveiled Yahoo Advertising, an attempt to make it easier for advertisers to purchase ads on Yahoo properties, including Tumblr and Flickr. The relaunch includes its ad exchange, now named Yahoo Ad Exchange and an updated targeting program called Yahoo Audience Ads. Yahoo shared its plans to focus on ad tech in the coming year.

Flickr will soon get native advertising. Perhaps, the biggest update was how Yahoo plans to strengthen the advertising power of Tumblr, which offers Sponsored Posts. Soon advertisers will be able to target Tumblr ads by gender and location. Advertisers will then only pay when users take action from the ads, such as following, liking or reblogging. Advertisers will also have access to A/B testing to try multiple layouts and styles. In addition, analytics tools will be provided.

Much of this is Yahoo playing catch up after falling behind over the years, but this is a big step for Tumblr. Tumblr’s ad offerings paled in comparison to Facebook, Twitter and others in its lack of targeting capabilities and data. Advertisers are expecting more from their social ads, so making Tumblr more sophisticated may allow them to justify investing in the platform more.

Facebook Sunsets Sponsored Stories (Read more at VentureBeat)

Facebook sponsored stories will no longer be available for advertisers after April 9 as it stated would be the case when it announced that it would be streamlining ad offerings in the summer.

Sponsored stories brought social context to ads in the past. They allowed advertisers to show their targets when their friends interacted with a sponsored page, app or event. Instead, Facebook says that social context is now available in all ads, making sponsored stories redundant.

All of this is part of Facebook’s efforts to make advertising through the platform more objective based. That’s a smart move by Facebook that wants to show advertisers the return on what they set out to accomplish.

Social context can appear in any ads, so advertisers aren’t losing anything here. They’re actually gaining a more streamlined process. There will be some missing features, such as the ability to create domain sponsored stories or open graph sponsored stories. However, the move seems to come with greater benefits than detriments. Plus, bringing them to an end allows Facebook to avoid any further issues it had with users filing a $20 million lawsuit over the network using their information in ads. User names will, however, still display in ads to give them social context.

Google Allows Any Google+ User to Send Email to Other Google+ Users (Read more at The Wall Street Journal)

Google is allowing users to send each other emails without having the recipient’s email address as long as both the sender and the recipient have Gmail and Google+ accounts.

Senders must follow the recipient on Google+. If the recipient replies, his or her email address is shared with the original sender.

Many users were upset, saying that the move opened the door for unsolicited emails to inboxes users feel should be private. Google argues, however, that it allows users who know each other to connect over email even though they may not have exchanged email addresses. Users can opt out of the feature, which means it’s turned on if you haven’t turned it off under the Gmail Settings page. In addition, a user who you haven’t circled back can only email you once.

This follows Google’s efforts to make Google+ more ingrained in other Google properties, the latest of which is requiring Google+ to leave YouTube comments. While this is consistent with Google’s strategy, the inbox is very different from YouTube comments. This will upset some users. Still, Google is getting behind its vision to make Google+ a layer over everything it does, making communication as seamless as possible and getting close to creating a single online identity for its users.

Vine Launches Web Profiles (Read more at Vine)

Vine has introduced web profiles and TV mode. Web profiles will allow users to access Vine feeds through a web browser (vs. through the mobile app), using the user’s custom URL. The web profiles contain the entirety of the user’s content.

The second feature, TV mode, allows users to see a series of videos in full screen mode. This allows for multiple Vines to be created and sequenced together, telling a story longer than Vine’s typical 6-second limit.

The updates make Vine more useful for brands and users alike. With a web profile, it’s easier to send others to your personal Vine presence to view all of your content. TV mode allows for content creators to overcome Vine’s time limitations to tell longer, richer stories.

News Quick Hits

Snapchat was hacked, and 4.6 million account usernames and phone numbers were made available for download on a site called SnapchatDB.info. SnapchatDB claimed that its goal was to raise awareness around a security exploit and to pressure Snapchat to fix it after the Snapchat team had reportedly ignored warnings to fix the issue. (Read more at TechCrunch)
Facebook was forced to respond to an online petition in which users requested Facebook not gather information on unpublished posts, comments and status updates. Facebook responded by saying that it does not collect or track content people have chosen not to post. (Read more at Mashable)
Facebook added a “Create Post” shortcut to the top of pages, saving admins from using the status update box. (Read more at AllFacebook)
Indiegogo, a crowdfunding platform similar to Kickstarter, has launched Indiegogo Outpost, a tool that allows users and companies to embed crowdfunding campaigns on their own websites. This does away with the question of running a crowdfunding campaign through a third party or on your own. Now, users can do both. (Read more at VentureBeat)
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone launched a new app called Jelly. Jelly allows users to add pictures to questions and then solicit answers on social networks. So if a user snaps a photo of something and adds a question, Jelly will distribute it to the user’s social connections on Facebook and Twitter who are also using Jelly. (Read more at The Wall Street Journal)
Facebook acquired Little Eye Labs, the creator of performance enhancing tools for Android developers by analyzing and optimizing application performance for developers. The team from Little Eye Labs will join Facebook’s mobile engineering team in California. (Read more at CNET)
Vine has added a new feature that allows users to lock focus and exposure, helping Vine quality by overcoming poor lighting and overexposure. The feature offers a focus button in the tools menu that users can press and hold, so the exposure level adjusts appropriately. (Read more at TheNextWeb)