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 Developing Snapchat Competitor (Read more at The Financial Times)

Facebook failed in its acquisition bid for Snapchat, and they are reportedly taking the approach of if you can't buy them, compete. Facebook is working on its own ephemeral video and photo messaging app, according to The Financial Times called "Slingshot."

The product will likely work much like Snapchat with quick visual sharing that disappears after a single view. The report comes about six months after Facebook offered $3 billion to acquire SnapChat.

This has been the year of Snapchat. It's delivered more than 400 million messages, and has achieved much of this usage from the very desirable teen audience.

This isn't the first time Facebook has worked to compete. It launched Poke, which offered similar features to Snapchat. Poke failed and has recently been pulled from the App Store.

Slingshot seems to have more investment than Poke ever received, so it may be Facebook's big attempt to steal some of Snapchat's market share. The app has been in the works for months and will likely be a standalone product. The app's success or failure will not have an immediate effect for Facebook, but this is a long-term play for the social network to recruit teens and to bring them more into its ecosystem.

Twitter Backs Out of SoundCloud Acquisition (Read more at Recode and Mashable)

Twitter was working on a potential deal to acquire SoundCloud, a service that lets users upload and share audio files. It calls itself "YouTube for audio" and has 250 million users. It's valued at around $700 million. Twitter has since backed out of talks because "the numbers didn't add up."

Why would Twitter have been interested in the first place? SoundCloud would have added some core audio competencies to Twitter, while also bringing along some revenue. SoundCloud also has a premium service for users who sign up, and it has plans to bring advertising to the platform, which could have been a potential revenue stream for Twitter.

SoundCloud could have helped Twitter where it was unsuccessful with Twitter Music, an app that was designed to help users find and discover music on Twitter. Twitter Music was shut down in March, but SoundCloud could have revitalized the idea while bringing along a user base that is nearly the same as Twitter's.

Twitter has had trouble showing user growth, which has concerned investors. Acquiring a web platform with the potential to tie into its existing service could be a way to allay some fears. Facebook took a similar approach with the acquisition of Instagram.

While this deal isn't going forward, it does point in the direction of where Twitter may be looking to grow and expand its services.

Pinterest Opens Up Business Platform to Developers (Read more at AdAge)

Pinterest is releasing its data to some tech companies with a new program called Pinterest MarTech Developer Alpha. Tech companies part of the program will be given access to an API to develop products to help brands better leverage Pinterest data to learn what content is working best.

Initial partners include Piquora, Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, Percolate, Spredfast and Curalate. These companies will create more advanced forms of Pinterest analytics, and this is the first time Pinterest has allowed third parties to build on top of its platform.

Pinterest is taking a significant step here. Platforms like Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter have opened up their platforms' data to tech companies to build more advanced marketing products on top of.

This is much more advanced data than is currently available. Information on boards, followers, user gender and so on will be available.

This is a wise move for Pinterest, which just launched a paid test for ad products. More advanced tools make these platforms more measurable and therefore, more approachable, which means more revenue for Pinterest.

Facebook Launches Update to Mobile Apps that Listens to Surroundings (Read more at AdAge)

Facebook has added a new feature to its mobile application that listens as someone is typing a status update to automatically identify music or TV shows in the background. The feature displays a sound icon when it's scanning and then allows you to share the song or TV show along with your status update.

The feature is opt-in, meaning it needs to be turned on by the user, and Facebook says it does not store any sounds.

If a user shares music, a 30-second song preview is also included in the update. When a user posts a TV show, season and episode number is included in the update.

This is an interesting development in the social TV battle Twitter and Facebook are waging. Both are working to earn advertising dollars from networks and other media companies. Facebook's move makes it incredibly easy to share the media you're consuming, so if it's turned on, there's little reason not to share.

Facebook already shares social TV reports with some select network partners. This move is clearly intended to increase the amount of conversation related to TV and music on the social network.

YouTube Working on Deal to Acquire Twitch (Read more at Variety)

Variety lit up the Internet with a report that YouTube is in talks to acquire Twitch for more than $1 billion. Reports on how close the two are to a deal conflict with some saying the deal is close and others saying negotiations are still in early stages.

Twitch has gained notoriety in allowing users to stream video games with live commentary as well as easily upload videos of gameplay, especially through new apps introduced on next-gen consoles, including the Xbox ONE and Playstation 4. Twitch has generated millions of viewers who spend significant amount of time on the platform, allowing for advertising opportunities, unlike YouTube viewers who view short clips and find ads annoying.

A deal like this certainly makes sense for YouTube. Twitch generates a lot of traffic and many Twitch users have become YouTube-like celebrities. For gamers, it does come with the potential to accelerate game streaming behavior with Google dollars available.

Challenges may come if YouTube adds some requirements such as the requirement to use your real name. YouTube will need to strike a careful balance if the acquisition goes through to get what it needs to out of Twitch, while avoiding the alienation of its users.

News Quick Hits

Google has released a Hangouts extension for Microsoft Outlook. The feature does not support chat but will primarily be used to schedule video meetings. (Read more at The Next Web)
Facebook has launched the 'Ask' button, a feature that adds buttons to unlisted relationship statuses on profiles. Users can click the button on someone's profile to ask what his or her relationship status is. (Read more at SocialTimes)
Facebook's new video ads are expanding to be available in seven additional countries outside the United States, including Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia and Brazil. The ads have only been available in the U.S. since March. (Read more at Recode)
LinkedIn has added a "How You Rank" feature to the "Who's Viewed Your Profile" section of user profiles. The feature allows people to see how their LinkedIn profiles compare to those of their connections and potentially feel inspired to get more involved in the network and maybe even upgrade to a paid account. (Read more at SocialTimes)
Facebook has taken steps to simplify user privacy controls. Now, the default setting for new users' posts is set to friends instead of public. In addition, Facebook is rolling out a privacy checkup tool that will walk users though steps to review what information they're sharing with others and applications. Facebook will also remind people when they are sharing publicly. Plus, the mobile application has moved the audience selector on status updates to the top of the screen instead of the bottom. (Read more at AllFacebook)
Restaurants can now include their full menus on Facebook Pages. The menus will be viewable within the "more" tab on Pages and will be available on both desktop and mobile. (Read more at CNET)