“For a while Yahoo has been looking for a home here in New York. We recently took out the lease on 229 West 43^rd Street, right here in Times Square,” Mayer said.

The offices will house Yahoo’s 500-count staff in New York and leaves room for 200 new hires. The newly acquired staff of Tumblr will remain in their Union Square headquarters.

On the same day that the company announced its first major acquisition in years, Yahoo launched a major upgrade to its most famous failed acquisition of its heyday: Flickr.

The upgrade offers a terabyte of free photo storage to all users and full resolution uploads and displays by default. The company is shuttering Flickr Pro products, which offered additional storage. The website also moved to a Pinterest-like layout, which fills the page with photos without cropping. A full-screen slideshow sharing option is also available.

“It’s heart-stoppingly beautiful. It’s all about the photos,” said Mayer.

The update is live as of moments ago, and nearly a dozen billboards in Time Square have been lit up with Flickr advertising.

The company also launched an Android app to match its iOS app.

“When I came to Yahoo the Internet petitioned me to make Flickr awesome again, and I do think Flickr is awesome again today. But it wasn’t me who made it awesome. I really want to thank the team,” Mayer said.

Of the Tumblr acquisition, Mayer said the talks began as conversation about potential partnerships, but turned to acquisition talks as the companies saw how they could “operate independently but sort of complement each other.”

Yahoo has no plans to restrict content on Tumblr, Mayer said.

“That said, we think it’s important to have great user tools like ‘not safe for work’ so people who are looking for [adult] content can find it but those who aren’t won’t stumble on it.”

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But to succeed, Glass will have to appeal to average users. And to do that, it will have to clear several substantial hurdles.

Will women wear it?
Google is already endeavoring to address concerns that the product is the fashion equivalent of a pocket protector, which could limit use to the tech set. The company put Glass’s industrial designer, a fashionable woman named Isabelle Olsson (at right in photo), on its panel discussion of the product. And Google managed to persuade Elle magazine to be among the first class of apps to launch on Glass. But with only about 5 percent of conference attendees were female (based on an informal escalator survey undertaken by this reporter), Google has more work to do before it sells female consumers on its latest device.

Is it comfortable?
Google’s promotional videos for Glass make it appear that when text appears in the interface, it simply overlays the rest of what the user is seeing. But a test drive reveals that the interface is, at present, a smallish prism-based projection just above the user’s right eye. Looking up at the display is fairly uncomfortable, and this reporter found himself squinting to take in the information on the projection. While Glass owners at the conference said that they liked wearing the device, less intrepid technology users will calculate the inconvenience/reward tradeoff differently. In short, if it’s not really easy and comfortable to use, average users won’t.

Will privacy woes kill it?
While Google was showing off the new interface at I/O, the Congressional Privacy Caucus sent CEO Larry Page a letter posing a series of questions about how Glass will affect the privacy of its users and those around them.

If the history of Google’s legal battles related to privacy is any guide, Google will ultimately face only minor limitations on its practices. But ongoing questions about privacy issues won’t help Glass sell. And businesses (health clubs and airplanes, for example) and government buildings may opt to post “No Glass” signs, according to analyst Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group. That move would whittle away both at the ease of using Glass and at the perceived value of the product.

Can the battery make it through the day?
As designer Olsson acknowledged at I/O, battery life has not been improving at the same rate as processors have shrunk. Currently, the Glass battery lasts about 5 hours, the company has said — not the 10 or 12 hours that would mean users could leave their smartphones at home. That may not matter much to tech geeks who travel with a bagful of devices, but it will matter for average users.

Are there health concerns?
The health effects of cellphone use remains an open question, but Glass will open it still further by dramatically increasing the amount of time the user is exposed to electromagnetic radiation sourced next to the head. Glass also raises a new question: How will the prism-based interface affect users’ eyes? No one appears to have studied this issues, as yet.

Google says it is paying attention to the potential health impacts.

“We’ve studied design comfort and safety very closely, and we haven’t found cause for concern. It’s something we’ll continue to watch carefully. We have also been working with ophthalmologists throughout our development process,” a Google spokesman said.

Who will make a killer app?
Even if Glass is safe and convenient and sexy, it will still have to offer an experience that the user can’t get on a smartphone to compel consumers to buy it. Glass comes loaded with just a very limited set of functions that include Google Now, Google Search, directions, calling and texting. A number of companies launched apps for Glass last week, but they are merely pared down versions of smartphone apps.

The Glass designers at I/O told SocialTimes that they had had a steady stream of app ideas floated, so chances are, someone will come out with an app with broad appeal, but it’s not a given.

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People who watch entire seasons of television in one sitting are willing to share where they are in a series, but are careful of revealing spoilers, according to an analysis by social media research firm Fizziology.

These binge viewers, as they’re called, showed very different behaviors for “House of Cards” than they are showing now for the upcoming season of “Arrested Development”:  two Netflix original series that viewers can watch at their own pace.

Fizziology president and co-creator Ben Carlson recalled that during the plot-driven “House of Cards,” where “no one knew where anyone else was,” viewers were more likely to “report how far along they were in the series, versus how they felt about it,” he said. And many talked about binge-watching multiple episodes.

Comedies like “Arrested Development” may or many not have enough of an overarching plot to suck viewers into watching one  episode after the next — that remains to be seen — but Carlson notes that the series will kick off with something that “House of Cards” didn’t already have: “a rich ran base from when they were on the air,” he said.

Netflix decided to revive the cancelled series after it gained momentum through its streaming service and DVD rentals. As a result, the volume of social media posts about the upcoming fourth season of “Arrested Development” was seven times higher than that of the all-new “House of Cards,” Fizziology found.

Here’s a breakdown of the organic conversations, rather than sponsored content, about “Arrested Development”:

Twitter Volume (Past Week): 43,338

Overall Sentiment
Positive: 47%
Neutral: 53%
(There was almost no negative conversation at this point in time).

Gender Breakdown (Of Positive Conversation)
Male: 59%
Female: 41%

Age Breakdown (Of Positive Conversation)
14-18: 5%
19-24: 40%
25-29: 27%
30-34: 22%

The analysts noted that more than half (51%) of the mentions were about the recently released trailer, and most of the viewers were self-identified fans of the show. They added, “There is almost no organic conversation about the banana stands popping up across the world for promotion/marketing or from people who became recently aware/new fans of the show.”

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Etsy, one of the first websites to include ‘Pin It’ buttons on all of its photos, joins the first cohort of mobile apps to get the buttons.

The pilot also includes the craft apps ModCloth, SnapGuide and Brit + Co. and the informational photosharing app Fotopedia. Mobile commerce apps Zulily and The North Face, travel app Jetsetter and the TED talks mobile app have also launched Pinterest integration.

Until its most recent spate of small launches, Pinterest has been relatively quiet. Today’s app integrations show that the company is content to continue to appeal largely to “light” crafty and commercial use cases. But as it embeds its product in more popular services, it gains staying power.

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Pinterest is making its collection of images more informative with a new format for a select group of pins that show products, movies, and recipes, the company announced today.

Instead of just showing a small, formless caption beneath the pin, the new format will include an extra compartment for details like ingredients and cook times on Recipe pins, prices and store locations for Product pins, and ratings and cast members for Movie pins.

An icon beneath the picture will let users know when there’s more information. The details will appear when users click on the pin to enlarge it.

For now, only a select group of 45 businesses and bloggers will be able to create pins using the new format. Among the first to test it out are Sony, Target, eBay, Etsy, ModCloth, Anthropologie, Whole Foods, Martha Stewart, Leite’s Culinaria, Netflix, and Rotten Tomatoes.

While the list of partners hints at a premium service that Pinterest may be able to offer brands, the company says that no one is currently paying for it.

Users will find new pins from these merchants — and refreshed versions of their older ones — in their feeds starting today.

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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said that she expects that Tumblr will give Yahoo’s traffic a 20-percent bump and could also expand Yahoo!’s audience by 50 percent to more than a billion visitors per month. The six-year-old blogging site is especially popular with a younger demographic – ”the youngest of any site of scale,” said Mayer in a press call.

More than half the users are accessing the site through mobile devices and spending 7 sessions on mobile per day.  Mayer says that the site is “ahead of Yahoo on mobile” and is calling the site “a game-changer.”

Yahoo will boost Tumblr’s monetization efforts by bringing its native advertising formats including Yahoo’s stream ads to Tumblr.  Mayer described a “light ad load” that “follows the form and function of the dashboards,” as well as partnerships with certain bloggers to provide ads on their websites with their permission.

The startup’s current advertising business brought in $13 million last year, but continues to grow. Tumblr reported $13 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2013 and expects to bring in $100 million by the end of the year.

With new advertising options and revenue expectations come concerns that these efforts might diminish the experience for users. Both companies have promised “not to screw it up.”

Yahoo has also assured Tumblr’s users that the company will continue to operate independently with David Karp as the CEO. All of Tumblr’s 175 employees will remain on board, and Yahoo will be looking to bring additional salespeople and engineers to Tumblr as well.

Mayer wrote on the company’s new Tumblr blog:

In terms of working together, Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love.  In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences.  The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience.

“We won’t let you down,” Tumblr’s David Karp wrote on the company blog, after assuring users that the companies ”share a vision for Tumblr’s business that doesn’t compromise the community and product we love.” He signed the letter with a confident, “Fuck yeah.”

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The company was quickly targeted by incoming CEO Marissa Mayer as a larger acquisition target, according to AllThingsD reports. The Sunnyvale, California-based media company sees Tumblr as a way to play to its strengths while also appealing to the younger audiences Tumblr attracts.

Tumblr founder David Karp will reportedly stay on at Yahoo with say-so over the fast-growing blogging platform.

Neither Yahoo nor Tumblr would confirm the deal, but a Yahoo press event is set for tomorrow afternoon in New York City, where Tumblr has its offices.

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The overhauled user experience eliminates the white space on the Maps page, putting more information onto the maps themselves. It brings in ratings and reviews and makes Google Earth available in the browser. It also displays thumbnails of user photos of common landmarks beneath the map, when available.

Google draws the local ratings and social context for Maps from Google+.

When Bernhard Seefeld demonstrated the new maps during the conference keynote presentation, he didn’t mention Google+, but the so-called “social spine” of Google’s services powers many of its new features.

“They were definitely adding social context in quite a few places, but they weren’t making a big deal about it, which means it’s becoming a lot more pervasive inside of Google, that Google’s taking advantage of social despite the fact that their Google+ audience is small,” said Brian Blau, director of research at Gartner.

Yatin Chawathe, the engineering director for Google Maps, agreed.

“It’s definitely one of the key fruitions of that vision” of Google+ as a social spine, he said. “When you think of maps and how you experience the world, so much of that is social, so having that be kind of a core part of the new experience was really critical to us.”

The new interface, which isn’t yet live on the Web, allows users to set home and work locations. Searches of other locations automatically display travel times from the user’s set locations. And clicking on a particular location subtly highlights the names of streets commonly used to get there.

Whenever the user is logged in, businesses s/he has rated in Google+ Local automatically display on the map interface. And any search – say, “sushi” — can be limited, using an option in the search bar, to locations rated by people in user’s Google+ circles.

A snippet from those social contacts’ reviews appears on the map near the venues. Clicking on the information brings it up on the side of the screen, beneath the search bar, rather than in a window that blocks part of the map as in the previous interface.

Maps also pulls user photos of major landmarks in from publicly shared photos on Google+, Picassa and Panoramio.com, Chawathe said.

“There’s some location information that you have to upload, but it can be very coarse. You could say, ‘Here are my photos of Rome’ and our algorithms can go in and say this photo looks very much like the interior of St Peter’s,” he said.

The same impressive photographic algorithms senior vice president Vic Gundotra described as working within Google+ sort through the photos to find the best ones to display with Maps, Chawathe said.

The overhauled interface provides ideal real estate for advertising, though Google staff wouldn’t discuss the company’s future advertising plans. They did confirm that Google pays for satellite data to provide one of the “wow” touches of the new Maps — real-time cloud imagery in the zoomed-out Earth view — making it likely the company will seek advertising revenue to offset the cost.

Google may also be leveraging the social geography of Maps to drive traffic to Google+, by prompting users of the Web and Android App interfaces to review businesses. Google Maps appear on over a million websites and are visited by a billion users every month, the company says — far more than use Google+.

“Social’s really getting pushed down and out. Now Google doesn’t have to build infrastructure, they can do these massive integrations, connecting all their services,” said Gartner’s Blau.

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Certain brands are now sharing discounts and deals with the people in their circles on Google+, Google announced today.  The deals can be redeemed online with a code or in-store using the Google Offers mobile app.

The first companies to test out the offer feature are +ZAGAT , +Hello Kitty , +Art.com ,+NOOK , and +Adafruit Industries, all of which have posted percentage discounts and free-gift-with-purchase deals on their pages.

Here’s a quick run-down of what happens when you click on a deal:

Clicking on the offer will automatically send an email to your associated Gmail account, although this address will not be shared with the merchant.

In-store deals will require you to download the Google Offers app for Android and iOS, which can be found on Google Play or on the iTunes store. You can redeem the coupons with your phone rather than printing them out.

Here, the company makes use of its maps feature by showing related store locations along with the details and the terms of the sale.

Redeeming an offer online does not necessarily require you to download the app. We were able to copy the redemption code, go straight to the website by clicking “shop now,” and then paste the code into a discount box during the check-out process. Payment methods vary depending on the merchant.

Google prominently features its buttons for sharing the deals you find with your contacts on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, or email.

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She modeled a slightly more advanced prototype for the audience.

Olsson said after walking initially into a room full of “people wearing these crazy things on their faces,” she defined her task in terms of three goals: lightness, simplicity and scalability.

“We removed everything that wasn’t absolutely necessary,” she said. Educated in Sweden, Olsson acknowledges Scandinavian minimalism as a design influence.

Weight is a crucial factor for the wearable computer, because if it wasn’t light people wouldn’t wear it for more than 10 minutes at a time, she said. It was also important to have the weight balanced symmetrically. The result is a product that weighs less on the user’s nose than many sunglasses do, Olsson said.

Olsson said the next step in designing glass is scalability, or making the product customizable enough that many people will want to wear it. The computer components can be detached from the standard frame she said. She showed it mounted on a pair of prescription glasses.

The tech geeks in the audience were surprisingly interested in the color of the glass.

Although she initially started with charcoal, Olsson said it became evident that color was more important than one might expect when users were asked to wear the device all day every day. She said the team was very diverse and they had noted that brown-skinned users tended to look better in the charcoal frames. The red-haired Olsson sported red Glasses, while two of the white male developers wore blue and white, and the South Asian engineering lead “rocked the charcoal,” as she put it.

One developer suggested green as the next color to be introduced. But as the components grow smaller, Olsson said, it’s unclear whether Glass will continue to make itself known through color or if the devices will become even more minimalistic, becoming an unnoticeable part of sunglasses and prescription eyewear, for example.

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The bipartisan committee, led by Joe Barton (R-Tex.), presented Google with a series of questions related to how the privacy of non-users will be protected with Glass. Glass has the potential, though it’s not currently active, to take photographs when the user winks, for example. As image recognition technology becomes more sophisticated, those captured in images may be linked to online profiles or other sources of information about them.

Yesterday, in its roll-out of automatic image-enhancing technology, Google said that it could tell which photos in an uploaded set included family members, suggesting that it can identify people who appear in a photograph.

Glass doesn’t include any new features per se, but because its users wear the eyeglass-shaped interface constantly, those around them may not know when and how it is being used.

“From beginning, social implications and social etiquette has been at the top of our mind in how we design and develop the product, not only for people wearing Glass but also for the people around them,” said Steve Lee, the product director, in response to a question.

Lee said facial recognition “is not something that’s in the product today. Me being a product person, I’m not scared of it, but I want to make sure there’s a clear user benefit.”

The full letter from Congress is below.

Congress Inquires About Google Glass

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Now if you see something on Pinterest that you know that one of your friends will like, you can tap the “send” button to share it.

You can send the pins to other Pinterest users, Facebook friends, or email contacts with a personal note. They’ll be able to see them in their Pinterest notifications or in their email inboxes, the company said. If they reply or like the pins, you’ll get a notification as well.

Previously, you could only send a pin to someone via email. The new feature works for both mobile and desktop versions of Pinterest and will gradually roll out to all users starting today.

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Google has just announced at the I/O conference in San Francisco that the futuristic eyewear will come with applications for Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Evernote as well as publications like CNN and Elle.

UPDATE: Conference attendee David Ambrose got to try out the Tumblr app yesterday. He told us the app was “simple” with “limited functionality,” but he liked Google Glass overall once he got used to wearing the device.

The first social network to appear on Glass was Path; the first news organization was The New York Times. The company is fittingly referring to the apps as “Glassware.”

Twitter has announced the feature on its blog. Already on the microblogging site, Glass testers are tweeting photos that are automatically marked with the hashtag, #throughglass.

Elle is promising a curated selection of photos, videos, and read-aloud excerpts from the ELLEDispatch blog, as well as fashion LookBooks and horoscopes that readers can organize into reading lists and wish lists. Readers will also be able to share the articles and photos with their contacts using the glasses, the company said.

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David Glazer

In a fireside chat held by Google+ engineers, users expressed real dissatisfaction with the way the platform forces users to juggle multiple accounts but praised Hangouts.

The problem indicates a major glitch in how Google forces users to link a single Google+ account to a single login, usually from email. As the popularity of Gmail has grown, especially for work accounts, the requirement forces users to have multiple profiles on Google+.

The staffers, speaking at the company’s developer conference, I/O, acknowledged that the experience using Google+ with multiple accounts was “not good.” On average, the staff said, they had 2.2 accounts apiece.

“I’m a startup addict so I have multiple accounts. I get people following me in Google+ where I don’t post. My issue is that I can’t consolidate these accounts or send a message that says, hey I’m not active on this account,” said one commenter.

The multiple accounts made his search results less than clear, rather than more clear, the user said. The search giant aggressively promotes improved search results as a reason for brands and authors to use Google+.

Yet, Google had no real solution. David Glazer, Google+’s engineering director, suggested that the startup addict put text in his profile photos to tell users to find him on other Google+ profiles. That approach would not be reflected in search results.

Another commenter complained that he had difficulty adding people to his circles in his Google+ accounts. If he is logged in using one Google ID and comes across a user he’d like to add to his circles in a Google+ account linked to another ID, he had found no good way to do it. Even copying and pasting the user profile’s URL, he was re-directed to his own Google+ homepage.

Glazer asked the room how many users had been burned by this issue in the last week, and most of the room indicated they had.

But users offered glowing reviews of Hangouts. Several said Hangouts had transformed the way they did business.

The staff indicated that they, too, relied on the service, which Google yesterday broke out from Google+ as a free-standing app. Google hosts 20,000 hangouts a day for its own purposes, Glazer said.

While Hangouts currently works within Google+ and as a free-standing app, Google will slowly stop maintaining it as a feature within the Google+ mobile apps.

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The channel is one example of what paid channels can offer viewers that a free channel can’t, as these movies will run in their entirety with no commercials and the channel itself contains a good browsing tool with reviews, descriptions, and suggestions of movies to watch, some of which can be purchased separately for download.

Just as Netflix invents highly specific categories like “dark mind game thrillers” and “scary suspenseful supernatural movies,” SCREAMPIX will curate subgenres of horror films like “Students Making Bad Decisions,” “Zombiepalooza,” “Tiny Little Killers,” “This Doesn’t Smell Very Good,” and “Women on a Rampage.”

In addition to curating the best videos, head of programming Ray Cannella will interview horror directors and creators and take viewers behind the scenes of their favorite movies. Canella joins the channel from SyFy and Chiller Channel’s original programming team.

“I make no excuse for my love of horror movies,”  said Cannella in a statement. “I can’t wait to share my passion about the qualities, history and relevance of the movies. But even more, I’m LITERALLY DYING to interact with horror fans around the world!”

Fans will also be able to curate the videos with user-suggested “shelves.”

“We are grateful to YouTube for the opportunity to provide SCREAMPIX with a platform that extends to a billion unique users per month,” said co-founder Kearie Peak, whose past credits include Electric Entertainment and Solar Pictures, where she was co-CEO and head of production.

The basic package is $2.99 per month, with a current base of 100 movies and new ones added every week. Peak added, “We are in the earliest stages of our launch and we look forward to executing our ambitious growth plans.”

UPDATE:  Added Screampix co-founder Daniel March, “We intend to feature horror films from nearly every time period and in every genre.  What we ultimately want to do is provide our subscribers with the movies they want to see. So if ‘70s supernatural horror films are what you want to see, just let us know!”

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