Pinterest has reportedly hired San Francisco Chronicle president Joanne Bradford to head up “partnerships.” Assuming that title sounds broad, it's  because Pinterest is still very much in the early stages of identifying the best ways for it to work with advertisers and media partners, and start bringing in revenue from its network,” AllThingsD writes.  “Sources said Bradford will play a lead role in crafting strategies for these partnerships, and will oversee the company sales organization as it builds it out.”  

How are Instagram uses responding to the recent addition of ads? Remarkably, the Facebook unit says over 5% of ads impressions have resulted in Likes. “That’s pretty tremendous considering most of the ads we see on the Internet we ignore,” Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said this week, as reported by TechCrunch. One ad for Michael Kors ad was seen 6.15 million people, and received over 218,000 Likes, according to analytics firm Nitrogram. 

Amid an avalanche of analysis set off by Twitter’s IPO, The New York Times’ Peter Eavis makes this all important point: The social giant’s valuation of about $18 billion shows that the market sees huge growth potential for Twitter. “Investors are betting that Twitter is virtually destined to become wildly profitable as advertisers pay it increasing amounts of money to reach consumers who use the service,” Eavis writes. “The company, according to analysts, could post revenue of $1.9 billion in 2015, three times what the company is expected to make this year.” 

Why do some of the most promising tech startups fail? Approaching the question from a unique angle, The Verge investigates the rise and fall of Everpix. “In two short years, Everpix [had] gone from a dream shared by two French graphics experts to one of the world's best solutions for managing a large library of photos,” it reports. “But while its talented team obsessed over the look and features of its product, user growth failed to keep pace.” 

Instagram competitor Mobli just landed $60 million in funding led by Carlos Slim’s Latin American telecom company America Movil. “As part of the deal, America Movil will introduce Mobli to its users,” Mashable reports. “Often described as a ‘visual search engine,’ Mobli lets you scrape your Facebook, Twitter and Google+ contacts for photos.” Helping Mobli raise $86 million since 2011, other investors Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, and Lance Armstrong.  

Putting other music streaming services on notice, Deezer just released some very impressive numbers. According to the startup, it now has 5 million paying users worldwide -- double the number it reported in late 2012 -- each of whom has access to roughly 30 million tracks. “Taking a page from Spotify’s playbook, it also took the covers off two new discovery features to improve engagement on the platform,” TechCrunch reports. 

Sources tell Reuters that Microsoft has five execs in mind to replace Steve Ballmer as CEO. As was rumored, Ford Motor head Alan Mulally and former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop are both on that short list. In addition, Microsoft has “at least three internal candidates on its shortlist, including former Skype CEO Tony Bates, who is now responsible for Microsoft's business development, and Satya Nadella, the company's cloud and enterprise chief,” Reuters reports. 

Paul Allen thinks Microsoft is too big for its own good. As Forbes reports, Microsoft’s co-founder (and people who manage his mountains of money) recently said it’s high time that the software giant be broken into smaller, more focused companies. Forbes concurs. “As Allen suggests … get rid of those parts that aren’t part of [Microsoft’s] core and concentrate purely on running that core business as leanly as one can for as long as it lasts,” it writes. 

BlackBerry gadgets will live on (!), or so John Chen tells Bloomberg. Blackberry’s newly named executive chairman and interim CEO vows not to sell the company; not to let the company’s pioneering devices disappear; and not to keep hemorrhaging money. “I know we have enough ingredients to build a long-term sustainable business,” Chen tells Bloomberg. 

If Justin Timberlake has a social network, then, of course, Justin Bieber needs one, too! Yes, like Timberlake’s minority investment in Myspace, Bieber has reportedly led a $1.1 million seed round in Shots Of Me. The teen-focused social net was developed by the same team behind those popular RockLive-branded social mobile games. “We got to know Justin after he began playing our games and tweeting about it," RockLive CEO John Shahidi tells Fortune.