“Looking for that epic shot from last winter’s ski trip?  Or the I-could-die-laughing photo of your roommate’s cat dancing?”

No? Too bad, Bing is going to help you do it anyway with their brand, spanking, new Facebook Friends’ Photo Feature. (Say that three times fast!)

The widget, which resides on Bing’s website, gives you a Pinterest view of all the photos recently uploaded by your friends on Facebook. Here’s my current snapshot:

Note my love of food, movies, and apps!  The dropdown (where it says Recent Photos) can be changed to view only Fan Page photos or only Friends’ Photos. The Friends option took forever to load, not sure why. If you click through on the name of the uploader, you get a page with all of their photo albums, and yes, you’re still on Bing. As a matter of fact, nothing I clicked led me to Facebook. I did find a small option to do so at the bottom of an enlarged photo, but clearly they’re not about sending you somewhere else to play.

Facebook has gone from social media monster to social media punching bag (at least on the business side) all in the matter of a few short months. This whole public thing isn’t as easy as it looks is it, Mark?

Well, to possibly add insult to injury, eMarketer has released that it is revising its estimates for Facebook’s revenue in 2012 by 15%. In an article they state

In February, eMarketer predicted ad revenues at Facebook would reach $5 billion this year, but underperformance throughout the first half of 2012, along with questions about the effectiveness of some of the site’s ad products, have led to a downward revision of close to $1 billion.

There’s been an onslaught of articles lately proclaiming why you should or should not specifically hire a 23-year old to manage your social media presence. I’ve tried to avoid commenting, but after a recent Inc.com article about why you should never dream of hiring a younger person to manage your social media accounts, my hand is forced. There is a perfect age for your social media manager. Ready for it?

It’s whatever the birthdate of the person you hire to manage your social media accounts is.

The reality is this whole argument is a non-argument and shameless age baiting on both sides. There’s a reason a resume isn’t a photocopy of a birth certificate. What ultimately determines someone’s ability to manage your social media presence is their ability to manage your social media presence. If the hiring manager is making that decision based on age, your company has bigger problems. This is the specific reason that interviews and resumes exist, people.

Twitter continues to try to make money from its grand social media experiment. That’s not really news is it?

What is news is how they keep trying to do this. Whether it’s becoming more insular in their approach to how and where you get your tweets or clamping down on the developer community, the social media big boy is changing a lot these days.

The latest update to Twitter’s advertising model is called Interest Targeting. TheTwitter Advertising blog explains it like so.

….we’re taking an important next step by allowing you to target your Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts campaigns to a set of interests that you explicitly choose. By targeting people’s topical interests, you will be able to connect with a greater number of users and deliver tailored messages to people who are more likely to engage with your Tweets. When people discover offers and messages about the things they care about on Twitter, it’s good for both marketers and users.

Twitter is still marching along on their aggressive campaign to take back control of their data stream. This week, they’ve removed the source notation that used to appear along with the date of a Tweet. This change appears to only be in effect when you view your stream online but it’s hard to say for sure.

Compare these two images of the same Tweet:

This is E! Online posting via HootSuite. The screencap comes from a Twitter piggy-back website that provides feeds of celebrity Tweets. The Tweet was posted today and clearly shows the HootSuite designation.

Here’s the same Tweet as viewed through the official Twitter web interface.