VatorNews’ Faith Merino is hooked on Pinterest -- and she’s not the only one. Indeed, one in five U.S. women are now using the picture-sharing site, according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Why is the site so popular among women? “It is usually the case that people gravitate to services that match their interests and their needs,” according to Pew’s Lee Rainie. “Some of the more popular subjects on Pinterest are likely to be especially interesting to women, such as food, fashion, interior decorating and design.”  

Last week, The New York Times’ David Pogue finally got to fiddle with Google Glass. What does the nation’s top tech critic make of the prototype? First off, it’s “an absolutely astonishing feat of miniaturization and integration,” he marvels. “The hardware breakthrough, in other words, is there.” Pogue, however, refrains from judging the software because Google is still working on it. As for the existing design and $1,500 price tag, well, Pogue admits Google has some work to do in those key areas, and, as such, stops short of predicting the gadget’s ultimate success. 

A University of California patent licensee is suing Facebook for alleged patent infringement -- but at least the social network has some company. Eolas Technologies Inc and the Regents of the University of California also filed lawsuits against Wal-Mart and the Walt Disney over four patents they believe the companies are infringing. As Reuters reports, the patents for interactive technology, including hypermedia display and interaction, were issued to the university and licensed to Eolas, a Texas company chaired by Michael Doyle. 

In Washington this week, Rep. Ed Markey introduced a cellphone privacy bill that would require companies to alert consumers if tracking software is installed on a mobile phone or app. “Just because a mobile device is hand held doesn’t mean it should hand over personal information,” Markey, the Democrat from Massachusetts and co-chair of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, stated. As The Hill notes, the bill would also require companies that want to transfer device data to third parties to file such agreements at the FTC and the FCC.  

Has Facebook lost its cool factor? Evercore analyst Ken Sena thinks so, and has the numbers to back it up. Under the headline, “Accelerating U.S. traffic declines and younger demo exodus create fundamental concerns,” Sena reports: “U.S. comScore data show [August] time spent down 12% pro forma … y/y … primarily attributed to age groups 12-17 and 18-24, which declined 42% and 25%, respectively.” Of course, as Business Insider notes, “The silver lining is called "Instagram" -- which Facebook recently bought, and, last time we checked, is still sufficiently cool. 

Enterprise cloud service provider Zendesk just closed an additional $60 million in funding led by Redpoint Ventures, along with Goldman Sachs, Silicon Valley Bank, Index Ventures and GGV Capital. “And the timing for that could be most opportune,” GigaOm writes. “The news coincides with a significant revamp of the browser-based user interface for the customer support suite and the revelation of significant European expansion plans.” 

After co-founding Quora in 2009, Charlie Cheever is stepping back from a day-to-day role at the question-and-answer company. The departure, however, isn’t anything out of the ordinary, according to TechCrunch. “It’s not uncommon for co-founders to leave a company as it scales or reaches a new life stage,” it writes. “Sometimes people burn out. Sometimes a person who is great at early product development isn’t happy or isn’t a good fit at a company that is substantially larger.” Quora just closed $50 million in funding from co-founder Adam D’Angelo’s personal capital and Peter Thiel. 

Will billions of dollars on the table, Yahoo is reportedly close to selling its assets in Alibaba Group. Sources tell AllThingsD that the Chinese Internet giant will pay Yahoo $7.6 billion to buy back 20% of Alibaba, while Yahoo will retain a separate 20%. “Yahoo will get $7.1 billion in the transaction, as well as a $550 million payment related to the ending of licensing fees that Alibaba has paid annually to Yahoo,” AllThingsD reports. “It’s a huge return from when Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang led a $1 billion investment in the then-fledgling Alibaba seven years ago.”  

By the end of the year, mobile app downloads will approach 46 billion, according to new estimates from Gartner. That would be nearly double the 25 billion downloads recorded 2011, TechCrunch notes. “Among those downloads, free will continue to reign supreme: 89% of those downloads worldwide will cost nothing.” Likely driving down the cost of paid apps, Gartner says 90% of paid apps will cost less than $3 by year’s end. By 2016, meanwhile, Gartner is predicting the mobile app market will see almost 310 billion downloads, with 93% of those free apps. 

ReadWriteWeb takes a closer look at the starkly different business models of Apple and Amazon. “Amazon's Approach: Sell Now, Profit Later,” it writes -- which is exactly how Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos described his company’s philosophy, last week. "We want to make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices," Bezos said. (Amazon, if you recall, knows a thing or two about ecommerce and media sales.) Apple's approach, by contrast, is all about “Big Profits From Small Devices,” as RWW puts it.