With Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 6, the company has reportedly resumed tracking users so that advertisers can target them. “Previously, Apple had all but disabled tracking of iPhone users by advertisers when it stopped app developers from utilizing Apple mobile device data via UDID, the unique, permanent, non-deletable serial number that previously identified every Apple device,” Business Insider reports. “In iOS 6, however, tracking is most definitely back on, and it's more effective than ever, multiple mobile advertising executives familiar with IFA tell us.” 

Google is reportedly changing the way it collects local business reviews, and displays them in search results. As a result, the search giant is reducing the prominence of the Zagat score, according to Search Engine Land’s Matt McGee. “That’s a good thing in my opinion, and many people -- myself included -- hope it’s the first step toward the complete removal of the Zagat system.” Why? “In short: No one understands them,” according to McGee. “We’ve been trained to understand the five-star scale and seeing something like ‘This restaurant has a 21 overall score’ doesn’t resonate as well with consumers …

Fast Company does a deep dive into Hipstamatic, and why the Instagram rival -- which takes analog-style photographs and sells in-app digital lenses and films -- has failed to live up to its full potential. The short answer? “Negative press, ex-employee reprisals, and a public perception that his company is approaching bankruptcy.” It also didn’t help that, “for a startup that prides itself on the originality and creativity of its users, Hipstamatic spent much of 2012 chasing many other companies’ ideas.” 

Making the future a little less certain for Groupon, eBay is reportedly testing an online marketplace for deals on local services. Dubbed eBay Lifestyle Deals, the offers are being run in a limited number of urban areas, including the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles and Washington D.C., Reuters reports. The news is not all bad for Groupon, however. "This is more competition for Groupon, but also more validation for Groupon's business," Arvind Bhatia, an analyst at Sterne, Agree & Leach, tells Reuters. 

E-seller eBay just unveiled a redesigned Web with what The Next Web calls a “very familiar yet cleaner look across search, product and checkout pages.” Of particular interest is a new Pinterest-like feed, “which hopes to merge discovery and search together, a la the ever-familiar masonry layout,” TNW writes. The new feed is expected to roll out domestically over the next 100 days, but can be activated immediately by visiting eBay.com/feed. Additional improvements include a new product pages, a one-page checkout process and clearer visual cues. 

Twitter this week announced the acquisition of video-sharing startup Vine. The terms of the deal are not known, but AllThingsD smells an “acqhire.” Indeed, Vine is a three-man company, which didn’t even have time to launch to the public before getting scooped up by Twitter. Although, as AllThingsD writes, the Vine deal is “maybe not a garden-variety acqhire, we’re told. For instance, there’s a possibility that Vine could still live as a standalone service.” Either way, “if Twitter ends up running its own video service, this should help.” 

Widening what is known in political circles as a credibility gap, Facebook reportedly did everything possible to mask its true revenue potential prior to its IPO in May. Letters published by the SEC “depict a [Facebook] management team hesitant to disclose information and still guessing at even rudimentary aspects of its business just weeks before the company held the largest-ever technology initial public offering,” Bloomberg reports. Facebook was particularly oblique about mobile business strategy -- “holding back crucial details until the SEC pushed for further disclosure.” 

Riding a wave of interest in recommendation services, Art.sy debuted this week with a massive (and free) collection of fine-art images, and an online art appreciation guide. “It is predicated on the idea that audiences comfortable with image-driven Web sites like Tumblr and Pinterest are now primed to spend hours browsing through canvases and sculpture on their monitors and tablets, especially with one-click help,” The New York Times writes of the site. “The site aims to do for visual art what Pandora did for music and Netflix for film: become a source of discovery, pleasure and education.” 

Are some search engines safer than others? It would appear so, according to new data from Web security firm Sophos. In recent weeks, 65% of malicious search results that its Web appliance blocked were from Bing, while Google was responsible for far less -- 30% -- of the blocked redirects. “Image search is particularly vulnerable to this kind of attack,” Search Engine Land notes, citing Sophos’ reports. In fact, Sophos reports that 92% of the malicious redirects that it found were in image search results.             

In what would be the biggest public event (for a consumer-Web company) since Facebook, everyone’s asking when Twitter is planning its IPO. Yet, Ali Rowghani, the microblogging leader’s CFO, isn’t saying. In a cautionary note, Bloomberg writes of Rowghani: “He hasn’t guided a new company through the process and has little experience holding the top finance job at a publicly traded company.” But, Twitter CEO Costolo isn’t worried. “He’s a calm and strategic thinker,” Costolo says of Rowghani.