The company called the deal an “acqui-hire,” to bring on four engineers and one designer.

Maybe was founded in 2012 by Omar Hamoui, who also founded AdMob, acquired by Google in 2010.

Maybe called itself “a service to organize all of your decisions and get help in making them.” Users could consult their friends or all Maybe users for help making decisions.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The new navigation bar includes sections for the user’s Profile, Network, job postings (Jobs), content streams (Interests) and a search bar.

“When approaching this re-design, we analyzed years of navigation data to determine which links were adding the most value for you, and which could be removed to create a more focused and streamlined experience,” the company said.

The bar disappears when the user scrolls down the page.

The feature will roll out to all English-speaking users over the next month, according to LinkedIn.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Shutterstock.com / stockshoppe

Twitter today launched a feature that will allow users to opt into two-factor account authentication on the service.

Users who turn on the feature will receive an access code on their smartphone by SMS text message each time they attempt to log in to Twitter. They will be required to enter that code each time they seek to access their accounts.

The company was pressured earlier this month to support more-secure login features, after several high-profile media accounts, including one belonging to the Associated Press, were hacked.

But security on the site has been a problem for Twitter since it first became popular, according to Sophos Security researcher Chester Wisniewski.

The SMS text approach to account security has a couple of limitations, Wisniewski said. First, some carriers don’t deliver SMS texts generated in this way. And, second, it’s not a practical solution for high-profile users like those whose accounts were recently hacked. Enterprise and celebrity accounts usually have multiple users, only one of whom has the phone whose number is linked to the account.

“To do this properly, Twitter needs to go in the direction of Google+ and Facebook. They allow for “company” accounts and then assign regular users to be administrators. No shared passwords, and everyone can use two-factor,” said Wisniewski.

Twitter indicated that it will likely roll out other means of beefing up account security.

“Much of the server-side engineering work required to ship this feature has cleared the way for us to deliver more account security enhancements in the future,” the company said.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

While Facebook claims the highest percentage of social revenue overall (38.76 percent), a referral from Google+ is worth an average of $10.78, compared to a Facebook referral at $2.35 and a Twitter referral at $1.62. Email shares were the most valuable at $17.93. Google+ users are most likely to share electronics, the researchers found.

The average order values, however, were highest on Tumblr, where popular categories include apparel and health. This infographic compares sharing statistics for Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Polyvore, and other popular platforms as well.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The update allows users to photograph paper documents and convert them into searchable PDF files, using optical character recognition.

“No more frantic scrambling through drawers looking for a receipt or digging through your pockets to find that business card — just scan, upload and search in Drive,” Google wrote in a blog post announcing the update.

The update also displays files with visual icons and allows users to download files from the cloud to their Android devices.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The police subsequently launched an investigation and direct-messaged the driver, Emma Way, 21, asking her to come forward.

The cyclist, a 29-year-old chef, came forward to say that he had originally had no intention of reporting the incident, which occurred during a cycling race, fearing that his girlfriend would ask him not to ride in future races.

He said the driver had swerved to miss another cyclist, then hit him off his bike and into a hedge along the side of the road. When he emerged, she was nowhere to be found.

“She hit me really hard. I am lucky to be alive … I have a sore elbow, a bruised knee, nettle stings from riding through the hedge, but nothing serious,” he told the Mail.

Way also seems to have a habit of tweeting about her driving frustrations, once tweeting a photo an allegedly slow smart-car driver in front of her and on another occasion tweeting a photo of her speedometer reading 95 miles per hour.

Way’s Twitter account has since been deleted, but the Twitter commentary about her actions continues. Some users are referring to the incident as a “twit-and-run.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

A promoted tweet that employs the Lead Generation Card includes a button inviting users to sign up for an email list. When users click the button, their Twitter handle and associated email address are sent securely to the tweet’s sponsor.

“Marketers regularly talk to us about their goals, and for many it boils down to one major theme: generating leads, and ultimately driving purchases,” wrote Mitali Pattnaik, a product manager for revenue.

Twitter has already tested the card in a private beta “with a handful of brands,” Pattnaik said. Today the product became available to all of Twitter’s managed marketing clients. It will eventually become available to self-service marketing clients as well, according to the company.

According to Twitter, participants in the closed beta indicated that the Lead Generation Card helped resulted in cheaper lead generation than other marketing products they used.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Pandora listeners typically amble through a stream of songs that are served up by an algorithm instead of a human DJ — a system that works well for Pandora’s 200 million registered users around the world.

Now Pandora has extended the discovery process to Facebook through an integration with the social network’s Open Graph, which connects people by their interests.

Although Facebook has worked with Pandora in the past, and other services like Rdio and Spotify are already plugged into Facebook’s Open Graph, Pandora has been waiting for the social network to roll out its new Timeline design to launch its own Open Graph integration, explained Justin Osofsky, director of platform partnerships and operations at Facebook.

Music is now displayed in the part of Facebook’s Timeline that also shows movies, books, TV shows, and other things that people like on Facebook, often through third-party apps. “The Timeline is a rich way for you to express who you are,” Osofsky said, and “Music is part of who you are as a person.”

Listeners can share what they like on Facebook by hitting the “publish” buttons that appear on Pandora’s website and its apps for iPhone and Android. Facebook users will notice the activity in their News Feeds and will also see their friends’ favorite songs, artists, and radio stations in the Music section on their Timelines, which they can bookmark in the “listen later” tab or click on to hear a sample.

As more people share their interests, Facebook will be able to populate more recommendations in the Music section that are based on music that other friends have liked. While Facebook’s search bar, Graph Search, is still in its early stages, users can select “music my friends like” to discover new songs there as well.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sophie helps a guest check her bags.

I spent the summer of 2008 living in a youth hostel in the middle of Times Square, where an old classmate I had reconnected with on MySpace had filled his two-bedroom apartment with bunk beds. I shared a basement with a rotating cast of 14 tourists and two kittens while he slept in a loft space above the living room and his roommate took the other bedroom. The idea was ahead of its time — Airbnb, a site for listing short-term rentals of rooms or entire homes, emerged just a couple months later.

In exchange for free room and board for the summer, I would help my host check the guests in, hand them their keys, and answer the questions they had about the city, although I had just arrived myself and didn’t know much more about it than than they did.

For instance, I didn’t know at the time that we needed a certificate of occupancy to be doing what we were doing, or that we didn’t already have one. All I knew was that our hostel was one of the few places that a traveler on a budget could find a room in New York City for less than a hundred dollars a night.

Most of our guests were polite and cheerful, coming home with shopping bags full of jewelry and computers to drop off in their rooms (the exchange rates in Europe were favorable that summer) while they poured over museum pamphlets and made a quick pot of tea. There might have been loud parties from time to time, but the party people typically stayed out until four a.m. when the bars closed and came back to the hostel only to sleep it off.

If anyone was rowdy, it was the cats. Megan regularly locked herself in the closet by accident and Sophie, who was always looking for good head to sleep on, kept me awake at night more than once.

The Lobby

What we were doing was not exactly a secret — the owner used an online hostel booking service and a basic website to advertise the space — but I suspect the neighbors hadn’t been consulted about all of the people who would soon be sharing their stoop.

With the buzzer constantly ringing in the confused strangers who would show up on the doorstep with their suitcases in hand, it was hard to hide our temporary residents for long.

Our neighbors started having meetings about the “illegal hostel” on the first floor, which we found out about through the many hand-made signs that lined the hallways and doors in our building.

Ultimately, we were evacuated from the space because of the toxic mold that had grown in the basement thanks to the hot tub that the previous tenants had installed. (So maybe the hostel wasn’t as wholesome as I’m making it sound, but I’m at work right now, so we can talk about that another time.)

I was tired of living in Times Square at that point, and had decided move across the East River to Brooklyn, where I would always have a moat between me, the blinking signs, and all of the screaming Justin Bieber fans outside MTV’s studios.

If homeowners now are making serious cash off rentals on Airbnb, I would be very surprised. I soon learned that the fees we collected from tourists barely covered the rent. I eventually quit my job altogether because my paychecks were bouncing.

Now that I’ve lived in this expensive city long enough to realize just how spectacular that apartment was (aside from the mold), I can understand why my former classmate wanted to rent it out rather than move to less convenient parts of the outer boroughs to make ends meet like the rest of us.

Especially when the stock market crashed that fall and I was left jobless in a new city where I knew virtually no one other than the tourists I met that summer who had already gone back home.

Years later, when my apartment building lost heat and electricity for three straight weeks after Hurricane Sandy, I would appreciate that business model — and Airbnb –even more.

It was through Airbnb’s online booking service that my husband and I found a free studio apartment in Chelsea for a full week so we could shower, sleep, and get back to work. Our host, an IT professional who needed a cat sitter while he went on a sailing trip, had told his landlord he would be having Airbnb guests and joined us for dinner and a beer before he went on his way.

There was nothing scammy about it — just a New Yorker making his city more livable for himself and his cat, and helping a couple of Sandy victims along the way.

In fact, New York City’s willingness to use Airbnb to house its displaced residents in privacy and comfort while we went about our daily lives showed that city officials do understand what people really need in an emergency.

So it’s mind-boggling that laws in New York and other cities are still making it difficult for people to rent out their apartments on Airbnb and similar sites. Yesterday, CNET reported that New York City resident Nigel Warren will pay a $2,400 fine for violating a law that prevents property owners from renting their homes for periods of less than 30 days. Warren was a renter, not an owner, and his landlord had received the initial warning from officials.

No one wants 14 tourists moving in next door to them, and this law does seem to be aimed at people who turn their entire apartment buildings into hotels, but the law ignores an important aspect of living in a big city.

Home ownership is out of reach for many people, even in a household like mine, with two incomes and no children. Why shouldn’t renters be able to open our doors to visitors and, with clear guidelines on how we can do this legally, stretch our budgets a little further?

For every overachiever trying to cram half of Europe into his apartment, there will be countless others who are just trying to have a nice vacation and pay their rent. And these people can all be online,with photos and full descriptions of their apartments, for law enforcement to see.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Timberland, Kenneth Cole, Exhale Spa and several others began using the platform in New York and Boston stores.

“We think Swirl creates a really exciting way to enhance the shopping experiences of our customers, on their terms. It also gives us valuable, real-time insights so we can hone in on – and better serve – our customers’ needs,” said Jim Davey, Vice President of Global Brand Marketing at Timberland.

Geolocation has been a much coveted tool for marketers since it first became widely used in smartphones. But marketers have struggled to make full use of its commercial potential, due in part to the need for either free-standing apps or for the tools on a major platform to serve up their ads.

Swirl represents a novel solution: A free-standing app downloaded by the consumer that allows multiple retailers to deliver content. Swirl, available for iOS only, also gives sellers the option of appending its functionality to their own apps.

The location capability stems from Bluetooth sensors that Swirl provides. Retailers place the battery-powered, connection-free sensors around their stores. The sensors detect when a Swirl user is within range and trigger delivery of content that can be customized for that user based on his or her previous interactions with the app.

Of course, another problem with location-based advertising is privacy.

According to a survey conducted for Swirl, four in five female shoppers said they would be willing to share their location information in exchange for an offer, and three in five would be thrilled to do so. The survey didn’t provide results for male shoppers.

A previous version of the Swirl app featured fashion sales and offers that the consumer simply sorted through. Those offers are still available in today’s update.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Microsoft’s New Xbox One Teams with Spielberg and NFL to Create Interactive Social TV (LostRemote)
Xbox revealed its next-generation console Tuesday, Xbox One, featuring live TV integration and two big announcements to blur the lines between television and social gaming. The big announcements were focused on redefining the act of watching TV from a passive to an active experience — mostly on the first screen. The New York Times To that end, Microsoft announced a plan to develop its own original live-action television series that will be accessible through the Xbox, in partnership with the director Steven Spielberg, based on its Halo video-game franchise. The company is also working with the National Football League to develop an app for Xbox that lets players interact with their fantasy football teams while watching a live sportscast of a game. Reuters The new device interacts with a television, responds to voice and gesture commands, includes group video calling on Skype, 15 exclusive game titles and original programming content. Wired Wired editor Peter Rubin spent multiple days at Microsoft’s Redmond campus learning all about Xbox One in advance of the announcement, and most of what the Microsoft execs wanted to talk about was entertainment as a whole, not just games. So in the grand scheme of things, Microsoft isn’t any more interested in hardcore gamers than it is any other potential consumer. The Huffington Post The ESPN app was also revealed, which will allow users to watch live sports on their TV while browsing things like a players fantasy stats or other scores around the world on the same screen. The Xbox One will be “available around the world later this year,” though they did not give any information on pricing.

How Reddit Stepped Up to Help Oklahoma Tornado Victims (The Daily Dot)
Reddit is coming to the aid of those who have felt the effects of the devastating tornadoes in Oklahoma. Since the deadly storms wreaked havoc on the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, r/Oklahoma, the state’s subreddit, has been exploding with news. While many submissions include photos and videos of the natural disaster, many others include something more: help. USA Today With more Facebook groups popping up every hour, Emily Garman, 34, of Oklahoma City, created OKCLostPets.com hoping to consolidate the emotional search process for missing animals. “So far there have been 220 posts on the site,” she said. “Two or three are coming in a minute.” WDAM People affected by the massive tornado still do not know where their loved ones are, but many of them are using social media to find out. On Twitter, the hashtag #OKMissing is being used to communicate information about missing people, while #OpOK is being used to tell people about where to find shelter and how to volunteer assistance, as well as other information people want to communicate.

Twitter Secures Patent on Pull Down to Refresh Interaction, Promises Not to Use It (SocialTimes)
Twitter has earned a patent for the interactive feature by which users pull down to refresh content, which is widely used in mobile apps. The company said it would manage the patent using an Innovator’s Patent Agreement, essentially only exercising the patent if it is first sued by a company that allegedly infringes on it.

Flickr Users: We Hate the New Site (CNET)
Many Flickr users seem none too happy about the new layout, at least according to a heavy dose of comments posted on the site’s help forum. Several users chiming in on the forum say the photos are now too big and “in your face.” Others say the large layout makes it difficult to interact with their fellow Flickr users.

Crowdbabble Launches Facebook Real-Time Monitor (AllFacebook)
Facebook’s built-in page insights are helpful, but not if you’re looking for minute-to-minute changes. Crowdbabble recently launched a real-time Facebook analytics monitor, so brands can see how their pages (and those of their competitors) are doing instantly.

Pandora Starts Playing Music from Unreleased Albums (VentureBeat)
Streaming music service Pandora has launched a new radio station that features songs from albums that aren’t available for sale yet. The station, called Pandora Premieres, features a slew of unreleased music, interviews and other extra content from both established and emerging artists about a week before you can buy them via retail stores.

@HonestToddler Voices the Inner Thoughts of a Mischievous Child (AllTwitter)
@HonestToddler, a Twitter account-turned-book, illustrates the detailed daily inner thoughts of a toddler, and the results are pretty hilarious. Montreal-area mom Bunmi Laditan started @HonestToddler in May 2012 when her youngest child turned two, and now she’s landed a book deal.

It’s Time to Change Mashable’s Twitter Profile Picture (Mashable)
As Mashable grows and evolves — we introduced a new site design a few months ago — it’s time to change our social media look. All of us at Mashable are excited to introduce a new look for our social feeds, including Twitter. I personally think it’s an upgrade!

Nutella Exemplifies How Not to Use Social Media (SocialTimes)
Facing an online revolt, Ferrero, the company that makes Nutella, rescinded a cease-and-desist letter it had sent to the organizer of World Nutella Day, an online event to celebrate the delicious chocolate-hazelnut spread. But even in its Facebook post apologizing for the fiasco, Ferrero still showed a lack of social grace.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“I’m relieved to say there’s been a positive resolution to the situation. Ferrero employees reached out to me directly after I had posted my fan letter online and sent my formal reply to their C&D [cease-and-desist letter]. They were very gracious and supportive and we were able to have a productive discussion about World Nutella Day living on for the fans, which is the whole point,” said the event’s organizer Sara Rosso.

But even in its Facebook post apologizing for the fiasco, Ferrero still showed a lack of social grace.

“The case arose from a routine brand defense procedure that was activated as a result of some misuse of the Nutella brand on the fan page,” the post said.

The case is what Brian Solis, author of What’s the Future of Business, would call a classic example of a company not keeping up with the changes social media have brought to marketing. Brands need to create a unified experience around their brand that applies regardless of how consumers first learn about it, the book argues. Many might learn about Nutella through World Nutella Day, and Nutella surely doesn’t want to be a brand with phrases like “cease-and-desist order” and “routine brand defense procedure” associated with it.

Social media users stepped in to educate Ferrero on marketing in the social age after Rosso said on her blog that she may have to cancel World Nutella Day in 2014.

“Unbelievable – who made the idiotic decision to send a cease and desist letter to Sara Rosso, who did a better job of promoting your product than your company does??,” Kim Trujillo posted on Nutella’s Facebook page, which boasts 17 million fans.

“I always bought an extra jar to celebrate Nutella Day. After hearing about cease & desist letter sent to your ‘superfan’ Sara Rosso, I plan to stop buying. Should have given her a nice promotion, like Free Nutella for Year, not nasty lawyer letter. Don’t you want to support efforts to get customers to buy your product?” asked Karen Genberg Larosa.

The company appears to have sort of gotten it.

“Ferrero considers itself fortunate to have such devoted and loyal fans of its Nutella spread, like Sara Rosso,” it said in its Facebook post.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Read an excerpt from our 2008 “So What Do You Do?” interview with Karp below:

Describe the ideal situation for Tumblr, five years out: What will be its key features and how many users will you have registered? How many will be on staff?

In five years, I have absolutely no clue. Hopefully we’ll have moved into the position of refining a core product. We’ll be refining whatever that product is and have shifted our focus on entirely new functionally and uses that we’ll be investing on top of. We’d love to shoot to become one of the top five Web sites. It’s a great goal to shoot for. We want it to be a business and product that people care about and which does something special for them.How many people on staff: that’s an interesting question. I really don’t know. If this thing grows like we want it to, we’d hope to be bigger than the four-man team we are now. It’s nice to think that this never gets to be a team of 100, but I don’t like the idea of being the next huge tech corporation where it’s all about where our talent is coming from and what schools we’re scouting.

That is the direction a lot of companies go and where they stay. Google is so scattered and they’re not focused. I think this is a rule for all large companies: You get to a point where you’re not nimble and you’re not focused. The people on the top are thinking about very different things, and people on the bottom and middle aren’t in the right place in the company to get anything done or to keep a team or a project focused. I can’t imagine being in that environment, where you just don’t know anyone you’re working with.

Do you aim to sell Tumblr?

I don’t think we aim to sell anything. I’m much more enchanted with the notion of something that’s employing me in 15 years rather than something that we flip in a year. And again, that’s something that we don’t think about. And that’s certainly not our goal.

Karp was right about staying employed: Mayer is keeping him on as CEO of Tumblr even after the deal goes through. Read the rest of his interview with writer Sammy Davis on Mediabistro.com.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

To use the patent as the basis for suing another company first, Twitter would have to get permission from the former employee who created the patented technology, Loren Brichter, who’s latest project is the popular game WordPress.

If the model works as Twitter says it will, it may influence the tech industry as a whole.

The new type of patent, released in draft form last spring, seeks to reduce the use of patent claims to stifle challenges from competitors. Groups called patent assertion entities also gain title to the patents for products created by others and use them to try to wring money from well established companies.

Twitter encouraged other companies to exert patent rights in a similar way. Today, Lift, StackExchange, TellApart and Jack Dorsey’s latest venture, Jelly, said they would adopt the model.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.