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 Tests Mobile Graph Search (Read more at Mashable)

Facebook has started testing Graph Search for mobile with a small group of users. Graph Search launched a year ago for desktop with the promise of connecting users with what they're looking for with the added context of social connections. Graph Search is one of the final features released by Facebook that did not start out for mobile as we see with Paper.

People who have access to the feature are given a drop-down menu on the search bar offering suggestions on what to search for, such as places nearby that friends have visited, photos of certain people and posts from certain people.

Mobile is really where Graph Search will shine because it's about delivering in-the-moment, need-to-know information to guide a decision with the added context of real friends. Finding a restaurant or store nearby with the added bonus of knowing a friend likes it is the real power of Graph Search, and mobile is where it can really come to life.

Twitter Gives User Data to Music Industry (Read more at The New York Times)

Twitter is focusing on how it can deliver value to media properties through its data. It recently partnered with Dataminr and CNN to offer the news channel access to Twitter insights for uncovering news before it breaks. Now, Twitter has another industry in its sights, music.

This week, Twitter began a relationship with 300 Entertainment to offer music-related analytics. 300 Entertainment will use Twitter data in software designed to offer music-related data from Twitter for artists, record labels and consumer brands. The music industry will be able to see how people react to music or even identify potential artists before they break.

It's not just about the ads as we've seen with all social networks, and Twitter's focused on delivering custom solutions to various industries. It's shown this with news, television and now music. The massive amount of public information available on Twitter has been used in many ways to uncover insights, and now, Twitter's offering custom solutions for each industry, depending upon individual need. According to Twitter, music is the largest topic of conversation on Twitter, so this is a natural move for the microblogging service.

Microsoft Invests in Foursquare (Read more at Bloomberg)

Foursquare was given a nice boost from Microsoft. Microsoft is investing $15 million into the location-based network and has signed an agreement to use Foursquare's location data to improve Bing's search products.

Foursquare has been challenged to solidify its business model, but as it's worked to do this, it's been able to leverage its trove of data generated by 45 million people, 5 billion check-ins and 40 million recommendations. Foursquare has sold access to that data to other partners, while introducing paid promotions and check-in ads along with a self-service platform for launching them. Microsoft has already invested $240 million in Facebook, so the move is not out of the ordinary.

Foursquare's data is incredibly attractive to other tech businesses. It understands the relationships between businesses and consumer behavior. Foursquare's still working to determine how to leverage that understanding further. Until it does, Microsoft's investment gives it some time.

Twitter Reports First Post-IPO Earnings (Read more at The New York Times)

Twitter held its first post-IPO earnings report. In terms of revenue, Twitter beat expectations, reaching $243 million, a 116% year-on-year increase. They also generated 2 cents earnings per share, contrary to expectations of a loss of 2 cents per share and $218 million in revenue. Mobile ads made up 75% of revenue, an increase from 70% in Q3. Twitter reported a loss of $511 million, compared to $8.7 million the year earlier. It also has 184 million mobile users, which make up 76% of Twitter's user base. For total monthly active users, it reached 241 million, an increase from 232 million in Q3 2013. This was Twitter's biggest disappointment as user growth was expected to be greater. Expectations set user numbers at 244 million users. Lower than expected user growth led to a decline in stock.

We do see user growth slowing down, and this has led to many analysts justified in saying that its stock was inflated. Twitter's biggest challenge continues to be making itself accessible for the general public. People get Facebook. They get LinkedIn. Twitter requires a bit more digging to get.

Dick Costolo stated, "We simply need to make Twitter a better Twitter." He went on to say, "We can increase high-quality interactions and make it more likely that new or casual users will find the service as indispensable as our existing core users do."

They need to make it easier for new people to sign up and for current users to get more utility out of it. It has taken some steps to do this by making media more front-and-center with media-forward timelines on the platform and making it more conversational with in-line social interactions.

On an advertising front, Twitter has shown positive growth. Advertisers are still figuring out how exactly to get the most out of Twitter advertising, but it's clearly proving itself useful. Ad enagagements (favorites, replies and retweets) were up 70% over last quarter, while cost per engagement was down 18%. In addition, Twitter's ability to provide data to research and marketing firms has solidified Twitter's position as a solid source for consumer insights.

Pinterest Updates Acceptable Use Policy (Read more at Mashable)

Pinterest made some updates to its Acceptable Use Policy. Now it forbids users from paying others to follow them or re-pin images. Buying followers and shares is no longer allowed, and those who choose to ignore the new policy will be contacted by Pinterest.

Pinterst is still allowing users to make money by working with brands, and brands can pay others to create boards on their behalf. In addition, users can still receive commission from affiliate partners if pins lead to sales, but they cannot get paid just for pinning.

Fake shares and followers have been something most social networks have had to deal. Now, Pinterest appears to be dealing with the issue as well. Buying shares or followers should be avoided by any user and especially brands. It's never an acceptable approach to improve a brand's social presence.

LinkedIn Reports Q4 2013 Earnings (Read more at GIGAOM)

LinkedIn reported their earnings for Q3 2014. Revenue for the quarter was up 47% over last year, reaching $447.2 million. Adjusted earnings were $111 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. However, the network offered wary outlook for Q1 of 2014.

It expects revenue to be around $455 million to $460 million, but analysts expected $470 million. It's full 2014 outlook also falls short of analysts' expectations.

Worldwide membership grew 6.9% in Q4 to reach 277 million. Unique visitors, however, dropped to 139 million in Q4, down from 142 million in Q3.

Finally, LinkedIn announced that it acquired Bright Media Corp., a data-insights company that connects prospects to employers. Following the report, stock dropped as much as 11%.

LinkedIn had a solid Q4. However its outlook for this year scared investors a bit.

One move that was very interesting was its acquisition of Bright Media, a competitor for one of LinkedIn's biggest value propositions, employee recruitment. Bright Media's technology of scoring prospects and employers to find good matches will be valuable for LinkedIn as it looks to improve matching and results for recruiters.

Klout Redesigns to Help Users Improve Influence (Read more at The Official Klout Blog)

Klout has redesigned itself to be less about measuring influence and more about helping people become more influential. The update includes a cleaner, more organized interface that places less emphasis on your Klout score and more emphasis on content you can create and information you can share with your audience.

Within the Create section, users will find a newsfeed of content based on information Klout believes you're influential in. The idea is to keep you updated on what is going on and inspire you to create content. Users can also share the the stories with their social followers. Content is organized to show content what's about to start trending, content that a users' followers are most interested in, content that a lot of people haven't seen yet and content that is recent and published by a trusted source. Users can hit thumbs up or thumbs down to help Klout optimized what they want to see.

Users can also compose content for Facebook and Twitter and then view results over how content being published is performing and improving one's Klout score.

Klout's update is aimed at helping individuals who want to make a name for themselves online do just that. The challenge is it makes social media less a bout interacting and more about broadcasting content. However, this approach does seem to be more sustainable than being known as a scoring platform. They've added a degree of utility to keep users engaged and using the platform more often.

News Quick Hits

Twitter's redesign, which it previewed in January, was released to all users this week. The update moves Twitter's toolbar, which is now white instead of black, to the top of Twitter.com and features larger icons. The update is designed to be consistent with Twitter's mobile and tablet interfaces. (Read more at NBC News)
Tumblr activated SSL this week, making data transmitted from Tumblr to user computers encrypted, decreasing the ability of individuals to monitor the activity of other users. The feature is not turned on automatically but can be turned on within Tumblr account settings. Tumblr has been criticized for not having the feature turned on automatically for users. (Read more at CNET)
Facebook has been around for 10 years as of Tuesday. To celebrate, Facebook released a tool that allows users to create a short video covering some of their biggest moments on the social network. (Read more at AllFacebook)
Twitter's mobile apps are now showing the number of retweets, replies and favorites tweets within your timeline have received. The feature is not available on the Web version at this time. (Read more at TheNextWeb)
YouTube has announced that it will be auditing videos and getting rid of what it calls "fraudulent views." The move is in response to some users artificially inflating their views. The audit is expected to affect a "minuscule fraction" of videos. (Read more at CNET)
Twitter announced Twitter Data Grants, a program to give data access to research institutions. The institutions will use Twitter to make health predictions, gather cultural insights, evaluate the weather, determine public opinion on issues and so on. (Read more at The Next Web)