The Wall Street Journal
Pinterest is planning to have a big year. The picture-pinning network will start charging advertisers to promote their products on its site, which analysts expect will generate upwards of $500 million by 2016. Founder and CEO Ben Silbermann talks with The Wall Street Journal about the future of the company and changes facing its ad product, “promoted pins.” In tests, says Silbermann, “People interact with those pins in a lot of the same ways that they interact with Pinterest in general.”
The Verge
Tumblr is adding “user mentions,” this week. The Verge sees the moves as part of the company’s evolution from a blog network to a “modern social network.” Now, when users type an @ symbol into Tumblr's compose screen, a list of usernames will emerge so they can directly refer to specific profiles. “The feature isn't a major addition to the site, but is indicative of Tumblr's increasingly contextual user experience.”
Facebook is reportedly pocketing link-sharing service Branch for about $15 million. “Most recently,” The Verge notes, “Branch launched Potluck for iPhone, a Tinder-meets-Circa news app that serves up bite-sized news clips you can talk about with friends inside the app.” In a Facebook post, Branch CEO Josh Miller said his team of nine employees will form a new team at Facebook, “Conversations,” which will help users “connect around their interests.”
With its fortunes increasingly resting on mobile, Facebook has developed new app quality control system. “With millions of people using its apps, it’s hard to continually assess what changes and tweaks are needed,” The Next Web reports. “Enter Airlock, Facebook’s mobile A/B testing framework.” The new process is said to enable better control over “when and how items are downloaded, cached, and freed,” TNW writes.
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