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.

Facebook Launches Paper (Read more at Mashable)

Facebook's much-rumored Flipboard-like news reader is here, and it's called Paper. But it goes beyond being just another news reader.

Paper is designed to take the News Feed and reorganize it into horizontally scrolling screens for content consumption. Users can read and consume content, but they can go a step further and create it with a WYSIWYG editor, allowing them to post to Facebook and to Paper. The editor allows users to see exactly what their posts will look like prior to sharing. This could encourage users to share more content publicly, something Facebook has struggled to persuade users to do more often.

Paper is built to be gesture-based, lacking many of the buttons people have become used to. Paper is divided into 19 sections like Tech, LOL and Pop Culture, which each feature a cover photo. Users can customize which sections their version of Paper has. Users can scroll through cads that feature snippets of stories. When they swipe up, they're taken to the source content to read the full post.

Paper's content is generated by algorithms and human curation. Facebook has already started recruiting editors to curate the best content to add to the Paper app, which is a new approach for Facebook which has been very algorithm-based in the past. The stories that show up in Paper come from public posts shared to Facebook by a publication, blogger, public figure or just a regular user.

Because the content is both algorithm and human-based, it does create a level of serendipity for users.

Paper will be available for download February 3, and will remain ad-free for the foreseeable future. This is the first product from Facebook Creative Labs, but it is not Facebook's first standalone app. It's launched Poke to compete with Snapchat, and its Messenger app allows users to send Facebook Messages to one another outside of the full Facebook experience.

Facebook offers a lot of features for users. That's a benefit as well as a detriment. Paper strips all of that out to offer users an elegant experience designed for content consumption and sharing. It's essentially a beautiful reimagining of the News Feed. It allows people to leverage their social graphs to gather information, and instead of being about connecting, Paper makes Facebook about sharing.

What's interesting is Facebook doesn't seem to care if users rely on Paper instead of using Facebook. Instead, Facebook as a website acts as a backend for users to consume content, much like Google+ is a backend tying all of Google's products together.

Pinterest Previews Interest Feature (Read more at SocialTimes)

Pinterest has launched a new feature that it calls "Interests." The feature, as described by Pinterest, is designed to help users "explore interests specially designed to help you find Pins you like."

Interests is a recommendation engine that is now available in 'Preview' through the Pinterest menu. It's designed to suggest pins to users based on what they've pinned in the past. These are more specific recommendations tailored to you than Pinterest's broader categories, and the more you use it, the smarter it gets.

Pinterest is following the lead of platforms like Google and Twitter, which have features and services designed to deliver contextual content and information to users based on previous behavior. This move by Pinterest has little immediate benefit for marketers, but we do know a little more about what kind of information they're collecting from users, which will likely be leveraged in the soon-to-be-released Promoted Pins.

Facebook's Q4 2013 Shows Strong Mobile Growth (Read more at Inside Facebook)

Facebook announced that it brought in $2.585 billion in revenue in Q4 2013. $2.3 billion came from advertising. This is an increase from $2.016 billion set during Q3 2013. During that quarter $1.798 billion came from advertising.

According to Facebook, it also now boasts 1.2 billion monthly active users and 556 million mobile daily active users.

Facebook also announced that 54% of its revenue came from mobile advertising, a big step for Facebook, which didn't even have a mobile ad product prior to going public.

Facebook's numbers sent shares up 12% to $59.98 per share, nearly an all-time high.

Facebook has shown that its growth isn't in its users numbers like it used to be. It is, however seeing its growth in revenue, and how much it generates from each user. Its revenue per user increased 24% from Q3 2013.

Facebook's bread and butter is clearly in mobile. Facebook has faced competition from an increasing number social networks, but that hasn't slowed the social network down. It's invested in mobile, and it has leveraged its data to allow advertisers to target users in a way other platforms can't quite compete with.

Twitter Launches Search for Media Partners (Read more at GIGAOM)

Twitter has announced a new partnership with Dataminr and CNN. Dataminr is paying for full access to Twitter's firehouse and sells information to financial companies. Now, it's offering breaking news information to CNN and other companies in the future. CNN noted that it used to he tool to identify the shooting at the Maryland mall before any other news outlet because of Dataminr's notifications.

This isn't the first time Twitter has sold its data to a third party, but this is part of a large initiative to emphasize Twitter's partnership with media companies. Facebook and Twitter are striving to attract the dollars of publishers and content creators. This helps maintain Twitter's reputation as a real-time news resource, but Facebook has also been touting its social TV numbers and focusing on content and information consumption with the launch of Paper.

News Quick Hits

Twitter's Android app received an update this week that allows users to rotate photos and crop to different preset aspects. It's also now pulling in recommended tweets, trending topics and follow suggestions when you pull down to refresh your feed and no new content from those your follow is available. The update makes the app stickier and more photo-friendly. Twitter offered no update on when the updates will come to other mobile operating systems. (Read more at CNET)
The United States Executive branch has reached an agreement with tech companies that will allow them to share more information on how the government monitors them in an effort to curb growing distrust among users over data sharing practices. Tech companies will be able to share aggregate information about government data demands, but the numbers they share must be broad ranges. (Read more at The Wall Street Journal)
Twitter has updated its search with filters that allow users to restrict results to photos, videos, news, people you follow and people nearby. (Read more at The Next Web)
Foursquare has partnered with GrubHup to offer users an icon within the app to place an order. (Read more at The Next Web)