Twitter is currently in negotiations to buy Shots, a social network that consists entirely of selfies, which was backed, appropriately enough, by noted narcissist Justin Bieber. According to MSNBC, the potential deal was the subject of Twitter chief financial officer's embarrassing public tweet advocating the acquisition of another company (which highlighted some of Twitter's user interface shortcomings).

While a large number of Americans are okay with sharing at least some personal information with businesses in return for better service, that doesn't include social media companies, who have the distinction of being viewed as more untrustworthy than any other business category. That's according to a new survey of 2,037 U.S. adults carried out by the Harris Poll for Transera, which specializes in data analytics for customer engagement programs.

Chalk up another win for Walmart. The world's biggest retailer also has the biggest social media presence as measured by consumer engagement heading into Black Friday, according to the latest figures from the Digital Engagement Index, a new MediaPost feature powered by ListenFirst, which tracks daily increases and decreases in engagement across major social platforms for top brands (as compiled by Redbooks 500).

A decade into the social media era, the question of return on investment remains largely unanswered. At least that's the message I get from the most recent "Social Business Benchmark" survey conducted by Harris Poll for Hootsuite, which found that social media marketers are still struggling with their inability to produce meaningful metrics for social campaigns, as well as institutional inertia and lack of understanding in the organizations they support.

Twitter has opened up its archives so users can now search every tweet ever made, giving them access to the more than half a trillion (yes, that's trillion with a "tr") tweets made since Twitter launched in 2006. Previously, Twitter limited search results to recent activity, focusing on high-engagement subjects, although some third-party services archived tweets in searchable format. Among other benefits, the new search functionality allows users to recover their own entire tweet histories or those of other users, as well as full conversations surrounding particular topics over time.

Hopefully it's common knowledge that employers often look at job candidates' social media profiles during the hiring process, and for the most part the burden is on applicants to avoid damaging their own prospects with incriminating content. However, employers also need to be cautious in their use of social media screening, or risk running afoul of labor laws in ways they might not even realize.

Snapchat isn't just for naked selfies any more. The mobile picture-sharing app is getting into the peer-to-peer payments business in collaboration with Square Cash, called Snapcash. It's currently available for Android and an iOS version is on the way.

Social media's role in helping office drones goof off is legendary, but "using Facebook at work" may soon take on a new meaning. No longer content with dominating every aspect of its users' personal lives, Facebook is said to be planning a new service -- "Facebook at Work" -- that will bring it into the business social networking arena, according to the Financial Times.

Interpublic's Weber Shandwick PR outfit, which recently launched an in-house advertising agency, has entered into a strategic partnership with Niche, a company that has relationships with over 5,000 social media influencers and through them over one billion followers, in order to leverage the power of online celebrities for its clients, the "Wall Street Journal" reported this week.

Social media advertising spending will more than double in just five years, according to a new forecast from BI Intelligence, which predicts that social ad revenues will jump 40% from $6.1 billion in 2013 to $8.5 billion this year and 195% to almost $14 billion in 2018. That works out to a compound annual growth of 18% over this period.