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Facebook’s paid-advertising options have become more effective recently and that companies should view Facebook as a tool to “help them grow their businesses, not a niche social solution to getting more reach or to make a post go viral.”

But, he says, organic reach is only one of several reasons companies benefit from having a presence on Facebook. Last month, there were more than one billion visits to Facebook pages directly. “Having a presence where you can be discovered still has a ton of value,” he says. “We don’t want them to spend any dollar with us unless it’s doing something spectacular to help them grow their business.”

Businesses used to own their consumer relationships through email or other in-house marketing channels, or to buy them from newspapers, television and other traditional media outlets through ads. “But Yelp and now Facebook are trying to peddle a third model, he says: “renting—in which a business can build a community but never own an audience on a platform.”

Some small-business owners say they have begun to accept Facebook as “a pay-to-play marketing channel” for businesses.

stats like follower counts

shows subscribers more unusual information such as how often they thank and congratulate people, how frequently they swear, whose voices they tend to amplify and which posts get the biggest reaction and from whom.

Every morning the service delivers an email packed with information

The goal is to make you act like less of a jerk online

The big goal is to create mindfulness and awareness, and also behavioural change

here’s a knee-jerk thoughtlessness and lack of empathy that you have because you’re online, because you’re not looking at people’s faces

helped me pull back from social networks

ThinkUp charges $5 a month for each social network you connect to it

growth has been slower than the company had hoped for

difficult to explain to people why they might need ThinkUp

most of the third-party tools that give feedback about your presence online services like HootSuite are aimed at companies and professional social media managers running online campaigns

Promoted Pin today is being reviewed by a member of the team to ensure that it meets community guidelines and that the quality is high.

Pinterest is working with just a handful of small businesses for the launch of its self-serve offering. That includes companies like custom prints business Artifact Uprising, home cooks content and commerce destination Food52, and clothing brand Vineyard Vines. But the company expects to gradually make the self-serve offering more widely available to small and medium-sized businesses that want to test out the ads platform.

it’s raised a big new $200 million round of funding valuing it at $5 billion. That round was led by SV Angel, and included participation from a number of existing investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Fidelity, A16Z, FirstMark Capital, and Valiant Capital Partners.

Facebook ads have huge potential return on investment

shows an increase of $5,500 in net sales and a 1100% ROI when the company used Facebook’s in-store offer ad

Now, girls use Instagram biographies – a few lines at the top of their page — to trumpet their inner circle. It’s a thrill to be featured on the banner that any visitor to the page will see — but not unusual to get deleted after a fight or bad day, in plain, humiliating sight of all your friends.

(In a survey that would surely surprise some parents, 92% of teen girls said they would give up all of their social media friends if it meant keeping their best friend.)

These are cryptic messages adults miss but which girls hear loud and clear. A girl may post an image of a party a friend wasn’t invited to, an intimate sleepover or night out at a concert. She never even has to mention the absent girl’s name. She knows the other girl saw it. That’s the beauty of Instagram: it’s the homework you know girls always do.

irls will barter “likes” in exchange for other things peers desperately want: a “TBH” (or “to be honest”).

On Instagram, girls can project a persona they may not have time, or permission, to show off in the classroom: popular, social, sexy.

Big money is changing hands, much of it to teenagers, which has made this a topic the media has loved to cover.

"The way that I started was creating a parody account of a fictional character, which is probably more common than you think."

Nikolai is in favor of working directly with companies to build awareness instead of driving traffic to websites and getting paid off AdSense, which he calls unsustainable.

Fans respond to originality, live-tweeting events, and piggybacking on trending topics

YouTube, Twitter, Vine, Instagram, Pinterest—these are the platforms where you find young buyers waiting to be influenced.

Since Facebook makes users pay to reach target audiences, it’s the only major social network not in the mix.

Google+ is reportedly at work on AdHeat, a patented system connecting brands with influencers.

"Influencers" get paid per tweet or post, or work under contract on campaigns. Some get connected with companies covering multiple platforms, like theAudience, or specialty spots like Big Frame, CollectiveDigital, or Jukin Media, which focus on video creators. Then there’s twtMob for Twitter, theAmplify for Instagram, or HelloSociety for Pinterest. A startup called Niche gives you a customized group of social media "celebrities" who will organically tweet, post, and talk about your products. This isn't canned material made by some agency coming out these kids' mouths. It's them.

Twitter has started to quietly reveal engagement numbers for major users, a real metric influencers can use to prove ROI.

But while the 16-year-old stars making big bucks are being celebrated, what’s not as well known is that some of this activity is not legal. That’s because in the U.S. the Federal Trade Commission mandates the disclosure of paid or sponsored content. Penalties are in the six figures, but many in the space say there’s still a Wild West mentality at work.

On YouTube, Vine, and Instagram, creators are the stars, but on Twitter, the trendsetters are largely parody accounts, which can leave the people running them feeling like the Cinderella of the ball.

In 2009 the FTC released guidelines concerning online endorsements.

There are more than 50 pages of regulations, but the main takeaway is this: If you’re paid to post online, you have to make it known, and when it comes to social that means including an "s/p" designation (sponsored post), or tags that say #sponsor or #ad.

Typically millennials in their teens and 20s, influencers drive engagement—creating tweets, videos, photos, memes that people respond to, share, comment on, or even steal. Originality, wit, and volume posting is key—and so is pulling at heart strings or tickling funny bones.

followers and reach are key, but the main criteria hinges on "capturing an emotion or quality in a platform that is meaningful," explains Oliver Luckett, the founder and CEO of the social media publisher theAudience

they don’t have to be traditional stars. The fact that they’re relatable, and look and live like their peers actually make them more convincing than Hollywoo

With mainstream magazines like Seventeen putting Instagram stars on their covers, commercials using user-generated videos, and brands like American Eagle turning Viners into models, are these the new secret celebs?

People feel closer to them because they show up in their feed—they hang on every word and thing they’re wearing

it’s a win for teens to work with big companies that line up with their personality, and a win for brands to reach new audiences. "This is the way it’s going."

Perlman says back then Disney laughed when they proposed using an online heavyweight as a marketing tool. But in 2010 they convinced Disney to use the electronic musician Pogo to create an official remix for Toy Story 3. They also managed to twist Disney’s arm and sell tickets for the film on Facebook. The video got almost 4 million views and the gambit was a huge success.

Taryn Southern has built a following of almost 350,000 subscribers on YouTube, parlaying that success into television appearances, a web series sponsored by Glamour magazine, and a deal with Hot Pockets. Southern, who appeared on American Idol when she was only 18, says she won’t work with brands she doesn’t actually have an affinity for.

"Your audience knows—it never works with a brand you’re not passionate about," she told me. "Where I’ve made mistakes is trying to be clear of an integration that doesn’t work for YouTube personalities. If people are being paid on social they have to be honest."

"Anyone with 250,000 to 300,000 followers is influential enough to work with,"

Content thievery remains rampant, as are selling accounts, and failing to disclose brand partnerships. Eventually the FTC will start cracking down. And what happens when influencers grow up? What will their role be then—will they lose their brand appeal or morph into a new commodity?

round is being led by Sam Altman, the CEO of Y Combinator, the startup incubator where co-founders Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman first launched Reddit in 2005 — and among the individual investors who are participating in the financing are two Y Combinator partners: founder Jessica Livingston and Gmail creator Paul Buchheit (Ohanian recently became a partner at Y Combinator).

individual investors in the round include early Facebook investor Peter Thiel, actor and singer Jared Leto, Eventbrite co-founders Kevin and Julia Hartz, Minted CEO Mariam Naficy and Reddit CEO Yishan Wong. Previous investors in an angel-only Series A last year included Ohanian, Reddit executive Ellen Pao, YouTube founder Jawed Karim, former Square COO Keith Rabois and Marc Andreessen.

gives Reddit more financial freedom than it has had in the past as a unit of Advance Publications, the parent company of the Conde Nast magazine family. Advance acquired the company in 2006 and spun it out three years ago as an independent entity, but retained control over its finances (and still owns more than half the shares, according to one report).

Reddit also convinced all of the investors in the financing to give 10 percent of their shares to users, “in recognition of the central role the community plays in reddit’s ongoing success.

crypto-currency that would be exchangeable for shares in the company

one of the most significant challenges for Reddit as it tries to justify the valuation it has been given is the tension between wanting to grow and reach a broader audience — and, most importantly, to reach advertisers who can help monetize the site — and the nature of the community itself.

One of the most powerful things about Reddit as a community is the freedom that it gives users, and especially the freedom to create forums on whatever topics someone happens to be interested in, including disturbing content like pictures of female corpses and links to bestiality.

Ohanian has talked in the past about the importance of Reddit’s commitment to free speech, even uncomfortable kinds of speech, and its commitment to anonymity

$500-million-plus valuation

need to attract advertisers and large media brands

desire to become more of a journalistic entity by giving users tools such as the live-reporting feature Reddit launched earlier this year