Anonymous sharing app Secret is shutting down soon, per company sources. There is some talk of current employees receiving modest severance packages. Money isn't the issue; the app raised $35 milliion, but after a major redesign that made the app look like rival Yik Rak, and co-founder Chrys Bader-Wechseler leaving, all bets are off. 

Twitter has a deal with Google: When brands buy ads on Google, they can also order Promoted Tweets as part of the mix. The deal puts Twitters ads before Google's DoubleClick Bid Manager clients. The ad partnership is opportune for Twitter, which has been struggling to break a perception that the company can't grow users like Facebook, Instagram and younger rivals.

Facebook announced a new iOS and Android update for Messenger that brings the ability to video chat other users. The feature is coming to 18 markets worldwide first, including the U.K., France, Greece, Ireland, Mexico, Portugal and the U.S., with more to come over the next few months. With video calling, Facebook is pushing a "fast, reliable and high-quality" Messenger experience, even if you're in San Francisco and your friend is in Laos.

Buzzfeed is sharing more details about a new technology showing how that content actually spreads. Pound (short for Process for Optimizing and Understanding Network Diffusion), goes beyond just counting social media shares and clicks. In a blog post, BuzzFeed Publisher Dao Nguyen  says that will Pound, BuzzFeed can track how a story progresses from user to another, even if it’s across social networks or via Gchat and email.

Pinterest built its first ads API for tech partners. It's also launching a marketing program to help brands increase the amount of unpaid posts. The two programs should change how brands use Pinterest. The new marketing program's partners could build tools that make posting more efficient and provide better measurement about what works and when. Paid advertisers will be able automate the buying of Promoted Pins in a new programmatic system.

Music-based social network Smule has raised $26 million in equity and $12 million in debt funding, Silicon Valley Business Journal reports. “Smule users perform 12 million songs and record 1.5 terabytes of content daily on the Smule network,” it notes. “The company’s revenue doubled year-over-year in 2014 to $40 million.” Adams Street Partners led the round.

Facing widespread criticism for the practice, Twitter’s top executives are no longer selling company stock at regular intervals, Fortune reports. “The move came after Twitter came under heavy criticism -- particularly from CNBC’s Jim Cramer -- for insider share sales that arguably were depressing the company’s stock price,” it writes. “The original plan was a so-called 10b5-1.” 

Among other reasons, news media types are increasingly frustrated with the mysterious process by which Facebook places posts in users' News Feeds. "We are not suggesting that it 'edits' NewsFeed in the same way that a newspaper editor once edited the front page," Jay Rosen writes in his PressThink blog. "It's a very different way. That's why we're asking about it!" Rosen continues: "We are not suggesting that algorithms work in the same way that elites deciding what's news once operated. It's a different way. That's why we're asking about it!"

Path is reportedly in talks to sell its original social networking app, Path Classic, to the makers of South Korean messaging app KakaoTalk. As Re/Code reports: "Selling off Path Classic would extract San Francisco-based Path from its somewhat strange position of making an app that never gained traction at home in the United States, and is primarily used in a country halfway around the world by an audience that has proven hard to monetize."

With the help of Twitter marketing platform Flightly, the Atlanta Hawks are selling some playoff tickets on the social network. “Fans can select ticket quantity and pay with a credit card without leaving Twitter,” Re/code reports. Yet -- while “the move points toward one area of e-commerce where Twitter could break through” -- the social giant doesn’t appear to be profiting from this particular experiment, according to Re/code.