Instagram plans to release a video product this Thursday at a press event at Facebook’s headquarters, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter, marking the first time the robust, 100-million user network will stray from being strictly a photo-sharing app and dive head first into the world of moving pictures.

The new video product is something that the service said it was planning do to for two years now, and there have been numerous rumors about it in recent weeks. As was first reported by TechCrunch, it’s actually going to happen this week. Sources said that Thursday’s event will solely be focused on Instagram’s new video product and there will be no other Facebook product reveals.

While details of the product have been kept under wraps, sources said Facebook is seeking to differentiate itself from Vine, the popular instant video app from Twitter, which is now available on both Apple iPhone and Google Android. It recently announced that Vine has 13 million users.

The worry, said sources, is that this late-to-the-video-app-party offering will be seen as a copy of that, much as Facebook’s Poke service received as a copycat to the explosively growing SnapChat.

In a sense, video on Instagran is not a complete surprise. After the rise of products like Viddy and Socialcam last summer, many have expected some sort of mobile video offering from either Facebook or Instagram.

As it happened, that so-called “Instagram of video” turned out to be neither Viddy nor Socialcam, but rather Vine, the standalone app offering from Twitter.

Twitter has become one of Facebook’s largest competitors — and coincidentally enough, the company that ultimately lost out on acquiring Instagram to Facebook in a whirlwind, billion-dollar acquisition deal.

So, not so coincidentally, Vine just did a “Thank you to our community” post on its company blog, with the promise of more features to come soon (see Vine video below).

With its success, Twitter has loudly trumpeted the fact that Vine has hovered at or the No. 1 most downloaded free app in the App Store for weeks, a position only solidified by the recent release of Vine for Android.

Obviously, Facebook — and therefore Instagram — care about video. But the question now is, can Instagram pull off a video product without screwing up its user experience and turning off users?

Part of the appeal of Instagram as stands today is in its simplicity. Scrolling down the ever-flowing cascade of photos in your stream and the movement is seamless, easy to ingest. It elegance and ease-of-use is one of the key reasons why Instagram has seen such a rapid growth curve over its short lifespan.

The introduction of video directly into the stream could break up that simple flow, potentially putting off many who have come to love the ease of moving quickly through the feed. Think of the time it takes to look at a photo and that low threshold for attention is exactly what makes them so easy (and addictive) to consume.

It’s simply not the same with video, which takes more time to load and view. So it will be interesting to see how Instagram — still led by co-founder Kevin Systrom — handles the integration.

To that point comes the issue of how long the videos themselves will be. Ex-Reuters employee Matthew Keys reported that videos would range between five and ten seconds — somewhere in-between Vine’s six-second sweet spot and Viddy’s longer 30-second times. Again, it’s TBD on whether or not users will have the patience for it.

Facebook has gone after competitors in the past with varying degrees of success. Poke has been a spectacular flop. Same with the Quora-like Facebook Questions, and the very Foursquare-ish Facebook Places.

In other words, just because Facebook is aping your product, doesn’t mean you’re gonna get crushed.

Is it fair to call video on Instagram a Vine clone? Maybe, maybe not. The new product isn’t here yet, so we don’t know exactly how it will work.

But let’s be clear: Facebook wants to own mobile video just as badly as anyone else.

Until we know more, please enjoy Vine’s claymation-style thanks video:

There’s no excuse, really, considering that practically every major Internet company offers some form of calendar with built-in integration to notify you of your friends’ birthdays. (It’s Facebook’s forte.)

E-retailer giant Amazon knows that people like me exist, and wants to make the best of my terrible memory. That’s at least part of the idea behind Amazon Birthday Gift, the company’s Facebook-integrated social gifting product rolling out Tuesday.

The concept is simple: Send a friend whose birthday is coming up one of Amazon’s Birthday Gift cards — a virtual gift-card credit to spend on Amazon.com — which won’t show up for your friend until their actual birthday. Other folks (including the forgetful ones like me) come along, and can contribute their own money toward adding to our friend’s birthday gift amount, thus increasing the size of the pot for your buddy’s special day.

I’ll give Amazon this — it’s lightweight, and certainly clever. Tap into Facebook’s existing social graph birthday calendar, and Amazon becomes constantly available as a gifting option, a way to divert dollars over to its massive online retail platform.

But Amazon’s Birthday Gift product is far from alone on Facebook. There’s Wrapp, to begin with, the social gifting application that lets you and many other contributors give gift cards to friends, working in much the same way as Amazon’s new product.

That’s not to mention Gifts, Facebook’s homegrown social gifting product, birthed out of the company’s acquisition of startup Karma last year. With Facebook Gifts, you’re readily prompted to buy stuff for friends via Facebook itself, choosing from a growing list of physical, virtual and digital gifts.

So, yes, Amazon is vying for gifting attention on Facebook.

But despite being on Facebook’s turf, Amazon is strong here. The commerce giant’s gift cards offer recipients credit toward hundreds of thousands of items on Amazon.com — a veritable playground of stuff — which means that the birthday boy or girl isn’t limited to just what Facebook Gifts or Wrapp’s gift cards offer. In Facebook’s case, the gift selection is still relatively small, and Wrapp is still working hard to grow its partnership roster. That’s a strong pitch for gift-givers to use Amazon’s service instead.

Now the question is, Amazon or no, do people actually feel comfortable sending birthday gifts via a Facebook page?

Perhaps — if it’ll help them remember to send it in the first place.

According to numerous sources close to the company, Yahoo is offering to pay $30 million to $40 million for the maker of address book apps and plugins.

That’s below the more than $40 million raised by the San Francisco-based startup from a variety of venture capitalists, including First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures and Khosla Ventures. Launched in 2008, Xobni — which is “inbox” spelled backwards — received its initial round of funding in 2006 from Y Combinator.

Sources inside Yahoo said that, as envisioned at the current acquisition offer, Xobni common shareholders might not get any of their investment back over preferred ones, which might hold up or even scotch any deal. Yahoo could certainly offer more, although sources said that seemed unlikely.

As with most of these purchases, any deal might also simply fall apart. But other sources noted that the company has been shopped to several different companies and that Yahoo has offered the best price and is the most natural home for it, given its strong email offerings.

Sources said the deal was of particular interest of Yahoo co-founder David Filo, who still plays a key tech role at Yahoo and has worked previously with Xobni’s CEO Jeff Bonforte. Before he headed Xobni, Bonforte was VP of social search and the real-time communications for Yahoo.

Bonforte would certainly be a nice re-hire for the Silicon Valley Internet giant, which is in need of leadership in the key communications area.

AllThingsD.com had previously reported on Yahoo’s interest in Xobni. It has been mulling the company — as well as a spate of others all over the tech landscape — for a while.

As Liz Gannes noted, Xobni “could be a fit for Yahoo’s mail and productivity tools, as it neatly creates automated profiles for each email contact with correspondence history and social network data.” Its products have expanded from just an Microsoft Outlook plugin to supporting Google’s Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Apple’s iCloud, and it also offers Smartr Contacts apps for Android and iPhone.

If the deal is complete, it continues Yahoo’s buying binge under CEO Marissa Mayer, who appears to be using M&A as a talent recruitment tool — essentially, if you can’t hire them, buy their company.

Among her recent purchases are a spate of mobile app companies, for which she has only spent $16 million in total, with the exception of Summly for a lot more. And, of course, she also bought Tumblr for cool $1.1 billion.

Although not the inventor of the tool, Twitter has dominated conversations centered around the hashtag (#) for quite some time. As we saw last week, however, Facebook wants in on the action, introducing hashtags to its users, so that they can follow individual topics throughout the network.

Why ape some of your stiffest competition, ultimately validating their little language of pound symbols?

Here’s why: It’s all about the second-screen audience.

Data from Nielsen’s latest research shows that nearly half of smartphone owners and tablet owners (46 percent and 43 percent, respectively) said they use their devices as second screens while watching TV every day. And nearly half of that activity on tablets is directly related to the shows they’re watching (one-third for smartphone users).

Think on this: It’s been Twitter’s major pitch to advertisers to tack little hashtag addendums and catchphrases onto the end of their commercials. From there, a viewer can do a quick search for the hashtag to track conversation about the ad and connect with other folks. Same with TV marketers: Identify a hashtag with your show and viewers can talk about the action in real time.

That demographic is ripe with potential for seeding ads. Twitter, for instance, lets advertisers stick promoted tweets for their products in with those specific hashtag searches. So, if you’re a viewer watching an NFL game on the couch and search the hashtag #MondayNightFootball, for instance, that’s prime real estate for companies such as Frito-Lay or Budweiser to slot a promoted tweet right in there.

And that’s a lot of potential ad dollars being lost by Facebook over to Twitter. Facebook even said that on any given night during prime-time television hours, there are between 88 million and 100 million people active on Facebook. Give those folks a way to use hashtags and follow content more easily on the social network, and you’re giving Facebook’s ad guys an easier way to sell against said hashtags.

Granted, Facebook’s hashtags are a) only rolled out to a small percentage of users for the time being and b) not on mobile yet, only the Web. But this is merely a temporary stopgap.

Facebook’s larger problem is whether or not viewers will associate hashtags with Facebook, just as they already do with Twitter. It seems like it’s working on Instagram, so perhaps that will translate to Facebook’s mobile apps.

And perhaps even more problematic: Part of why it’s so tough for Twitter to court and retain mainstream, average non-techie users is because of the opacity that the language of hashtags and @symbols creates. If you’re someone in, say, the Tide detergent demographic, you may not be as able to figure out just what a hashtag actually is. Try selling that to an advertiser.

Personally, I anticipate Facebook’s adoption will only make the language more accessible to the mainstream; stick the hashtag in everyone’s faces, and you’ll be forced to learn what it means. That, paired with the fact that it’s floating over to other platforms like Vine, Path and most recently Google+, and I’d guess it reaches a tipping point.

The heat is on to see where the ad dollars go from here.

Well, Jay-Z is way too smart for that!

The brand-endorser/value-adder/Beyonce’s husband/musician has a big deal with Samsung to give away free copies of his new album to people who download an app to their Galaxy devices.

So it would totally be embarrassing if he tweeted about that from an iPhone, right?

No problem! As Amanda Lucci notes, sometime between April 3 and today, Mr. Z, or whoever social-messages on his behalf, switched his Twitter account over from iPhone to Android. Disaster averted!

Jay-Z has switched from iPhone to Android since his last tweet, HOW CONVENIENT pic.twitter.com/93ddm7Vos0

– Amanda (@alucci) June 17, 2013

Bonus Jay-Z handset info: As our intrepid Mike “Tats-a-plenty” Isaac notes, Mr. Z, or whoever social-messages for him, wasn’t that attached to iOS, anyway. A little more than a year ago, he (or whoever) was still using a BlackBerry to tweet.

Luckily, because Mr. Z (or whoever) is an infrequent Twitter user, we can see exactly when he switched over: September 2012.

OED chief editor John Simpson announced the addition of the word — both as a noun and as a verb — in his June update.

Obviously the word “tweet” was in the dictionary before, dating back to at least 1851 as an imitative word for bird calls. But the definition has now been expanded to include its use to include: “To make a posting on the social networking service Twitter. Also: to use Twitter regularly or habitually.” It also includes its use as a noun for the messages.

One weird thing about this: The OED had already added “retweet” as far back as 2011, alongside such gems as “mankini,” “jeggings” and “sexting.” No explanation from Simpson why “retweet” got in first.

The addition, Simpson said, violates at least one rule for inclusion in the OED, specifically the one that says that a “new word needs to be current for 10 years before consideration for inclusion. But it seems to be catching on,” he wrote.

Whatever the reason, “tweet” was just one of a batch of tech-related words and phrases added to the OED in the last year. Among the others is “big data,” the fashionable phrase and subject of glossy photo books that evokes the act of analyzing large data sets for otherwise undetectable patterns.

Other tech-related words added this year are “crowdsourcing,” “mouseover,” “e-reader” and “re-direct.”

That’s the word from White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough who appeared on the CBS Sunday morning talk show “Meet the Press.”

Asked directly by host Bob Scheiffer if Obama feels the privacy of Americans has been violated, McDonough said, “He does not.”

Additionally, he said, Obama took a skeptical look at existing surveillance programs when he first took office in 2009 and made substantive changes to them. The White House, he said, took pains to get Congress involved in authorizing the programs. Every member of Congress, McDonough said, has been briefed on the programs, and they were approved after a vigorous debate.

If the president is going to make a stronger case about the operation, privacy protections and other aspects of Prism and other surveillance programs, it would be a logical follow-on to a deal struck between the government, Facebook and Microsoft late Friday, allowing those companies to disclose how many national security requests they’ve received.

Here’s a preview of at least some of that defense. The Associated Press is reporting this morning that terrorist plots in the U.S. and at least 20 other countries were broken up using data collected from the programs. The story cites unnamed intelligence officials who go on to say that fewer than 300 phone numbers were checked against a database of millions of phone records gathered by the NSA.

The disclosures were made to members of Congress on Saturday. Intelligence officials say they’d like to declassify more details about the plots themselves so that Americans can have a sense about the benefits of the surveillance programs, but they haven’t gotten that far yet. Problem is that doing so might reveal still-secret counter-terrorism tactics.

Facebook disclosed Friday that it had received requests for information on as many as 19,000 accounts during the last half of 2012. Microsoft made similar disclosures the next day. Google and Twitter are still arguing with the government over the terms of the disclosure they’d like to make.

You can see McDonough’s comments in the video below.

Numbers covering the final six months of 2012, shared in a company blog post, are slightly higher than Facebook’s.

As with Facebook’s disclosure on Friday night, Microsoft’s new figures include the number of requests made by law enforcement and national security agencies under the auspices of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The disclosures were worked out as the result of a deal between the companies and government agencies because under current U.S. law, such disclosures are illegal.

Microsoft said it received between 6,000 and 7,000 requests for information from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies in the United States. The affected number of accounts was between 31,000 and 32,000.

Before adding six months’ worth of FISA requests to the overall statistical bucket, Microsoft had previously disclosed in its 2012 Law Enforcement Requests Report that it had received 11,073 requests for information affecting 24,565 accounts from government entities in the U.S. during all 12 months of 2012.

These requests covered the following services: Hotmail ad Outlook.com, SkyDrive, Xbox LIVE, Microsoft Account, Messenger and Office 365. Skype was reported separately in part because, before Microsoft bought it in 2011, it was tracking this data differently.

Assuming a consistent run rate, the difference between FISA-inclusive and the non-FISA numbers would suggest a difference of no more than about 3,000 overall requests per year.

But when taking into account the average number of accounts affected per request, the picture changes. In its FISA-inclusive figures for the second half of the year, Microsoft averaged between four and five accounts affected per request. That’s about double the average of 2.2 accounts per request in the earlier data that didn’t include FISA requests. (Facebook, in its FISA-inclusive disclosure, averaged about 2 accounts per request.)

What this suggests is that requests made to Microsoft by government agencies under FISA tend to cover multiple accounts more often than in non-FISA cases. Why the higher average? It’s unclear.

But here’s another bit of data that may tell part of the story. Remember that Microsoft’s non-FISA disclosures counted Skype, Microsoft’s audio and video calling service, separately. The 2012 report shows that U.S. agencies made 1,154 requests affecting 4,814 for an average of 3.62 accounts per request. This is just a guess from the math, but it may explain — at least in part — why the FISA-inclusive average of affected accounts is higher than the non-FISA one: Maybe it contained more Skype requests.

Also, this may be precisely the kind of analysis that makes the government so ticklish about releasing any of these numbers in the first place.

But Google, in a statement released on Friday evening in response, isn’t satisfied with Facebook’s deal with the Feds.

“We have always believed that it’s important to differentiate between different types of government requests,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “We already publish criminal requests separately from National Security Letters. Lumping the two categories together would be a step back for users. Our request to the government is clear: to be able to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately.”

Facebook’s data disclosure deal with the federal government comes on the heels of a knock-down, drag-out battle behind the scenes with lawmakers in Washington over the past week. Consumers were on high alert after reports from the Guardian and the Washington Post suggested that major tech companies in the Valley were sharing private customer data with the government via a National Security Agency program, codenamed PRISM.

Companies across the Valley lobbied hard, both in public and private, to be able to disclose to consumers the number of requests for information they received from the government, and how many of those requests they’ve complied with. Google was the most outspoken of the bunch, with other companies like Facebook and Yahoo following suit.

What Google seems to be arguing here, however, is that Facebook’s deal isn’t a win for consumers who want more transparency. As Facebook’s deal stands, tech companies are allowed to release information requests in aggregate and within specific ranges — meaning you can’t drill down on which agencies are making the requests. In other words, with the numbers Facebook is providing, you’re seeing requests from state, local and federal agencies, and there’s no way to differentiate the quantity from each.

Microsoft followed Facebook’s lead on Friday evening, releasing its own aggregate numbers for information requests for the six month period ending December 31, 2012. It too, however, agreed with the overall sentiment desiring greater transparency.

“With more time, we hope [the U.S. Government] will take further steps,” Microsoft VP and deputy general counsel John Frank wrote in a company blog post. “Transparency alone may not be enough to restore public confidence, but it’s a great place to start.”

Update 9:20 pm PT: Twitter legal director Ben Lee issued a statement via tweet on Friday evening, largely echoing Google’s sentiment:

“We agree with @Google: It’s important to be able to publish numbers of national security requests — including FISA disclosures — separately.”

One source said Facebook continues to fight for greater transparency. Google will do the same; however, it has not come to an agreement with the federal government in its own separate discussions.

The disclosures follow negotiations that Facebook and other tech companies have held with federal agencies over their desire to include requests approved under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Those requests are approved by a secret court and even discussing the fact that the requests have ever been made has been prohibited by law.

In the post, Facebook general counsel Ted Ullyot said that the company had received a total of between 9,000 and 10,000 requests from government agencies, meaning that about two accounts were involved for each request received. And that’s out of about 1.1 billion total Facebook accounts or about 0.0009 percent of total accounts. It’s unclear exactly how many times Facebook cooperated, and how many times and on what grounds it may have refused. The disclosure covers the six months ending December 31 of last year.

As yet the government has allowed Facebook to disclose only aggregate numbers, so it’s impossible to know how many of these were FISA-related requests. Ullyot writes that the requests ran a wide gamut from a “local sheriff trying to find a missing child” to police departments investigating routine cases like assaults to national security officials investigating terrorist threats.

As a result, tech companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo and others will also be able to disclose numbers of government requests, sources said.

Update 8:22 pm PT: Just a few hours later, Microsoft has also released aggregate numbers of data requests for the six months ending December 31, 2012.

The development comes on the heels of a massive week of privacy and security scandals surrounding former NSA employee Edward Snowden, who has released documents suggesting that the Silicon Valley giants had given the Federal Government access to their large treasure troves of data via a formerly classified NSA program called PRISM.

The levels of access and cooperation between tech giants and the government have been in dispute since the news first broke last week. But companies like Facebook and Google were somewhat hamstrung to defend themselves by existing legislation, which bars companies from even discussing whether or not they have been served with FISA requests in the first place.

“Requests from law enforcement entities investigating national security-related cases are by their nature classified and highly sensitive, and the law traditionally has placed significant constraints on the ability of companies like Facebook to even confirm or acknowledge receipt of these requests — let alone provide details of our responses,” Facebook general counsel Ted Ullyot said in a statement released on Facebook’s site.

As my colleague Kara Swisher reported earlier in the day, Facebook has been in serious talks with the Feds to allow such disclosures, so as to better defend themselves against accusations leveled earlier this week. While Facebook and Google have been in separate discussions with government officials all week, a source familiar with the matter said, Facebook released the information less than one minute after receiving final government approval to do so.

“We’re pleased that as a result of our discussions, we can now include in a transparency report all U.S. national security-related requests (including FISA as well as National Security Letters) — which until now no company has been permitted to do,” Ullyot said.

It’s worth noting that Google has not yet reached an agreement, sources said, but continues to push toward one.

For now, Facebook as well as other digital companies will be able to release their national security information request numbers in aggregate, giving at least some indication as to the size and the scope of governmental requests.

Update 9:02 pm PT: In response to Facebook’s disclosure on Friday evening, a Google spokesperson released a statement to AllThingsD, contending that Facebook’s deal isn’t a net positive: “We have always believed that it’s important to differentiate between different types of government requests. We already publish criminal requests separately from National Security Letters. Lumping the two categories together would be a step back for users. Our request to the government is clear: to be able to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately.” (More on Google’s response in my separate story, here.)

Facebook will continue to fight for more comprehensive data disclosure numbers, sources said.

According to Facebook’s disclosure, agencies ranging from the city and state to the federal and international levels have made somewhere in the range of 9,000 to 10,000 information requests of the social giant, which concerned the profiles of between 18,000 and 19,000 Facebook user accounts.

What remains unclear is how many of these requests Facebook has complied with (The Wall Street Journal reports 79 percent), as well as the amount of information given in each case. And still, it’s unclear how many of these requests were from the NSA — a major point of interest considering the news of the past week.

“We hope this helps put into perspective the numbers involved, and lays to rest some of the hyperbolic and false assertions in some recent press accounts about the frequency and scope of the data requests that we receive,” Ullyot said.

That’s part of why Twitter is stepping up its efforts to become less opaque to the millions of first-timers to the service, releasing a series of instructional consumer videos and projects over the past week in the form of cool data visualizations and cutesy Fathers Day shorts.

Take the tool launched on Thursday morning, for instance. Twitter hooked up with data visualization company Vizify to create a fun product called #FollowMe: Sync your Twitter account with Vizify’s service, and the company produces a short remixed video of the way you tweet, including your most tweeted words, times of day you’re the most active and other data points, all set to a music track.

It’s not exactly useful per se, but it’s a clever way to show off stats to folks who may not really get why Twitter matters, or why they should use it.

Which is a far greater number of people than, say, on Facebook, which hosts more than a billion users. Facebook is straightforward, even if waning in its coolness. Twitter, with its confusing language of hashtags and @symbols, isn’t as easy to just jump into.

It’s likely that recent efforts to step up the mainstream consumer pitch and explain just what Twitter is stems from recent changes in management; namely, Twitter VP of communications Gabriel Stricker adding marketing oversight to his list of duties. He has employed the aid of a number of Twitter designers to helm the effort.

Heck, Stricker even made an appearance in Twitter’s recent spoofy video celebrating Feathers Day Fathers Day, which is really a short crash course in how to actually use Twitter, all in the guise of a joke video. (Stricker is the deadpan dude toward the end.)

How ironic that Twitter — a communications service now so well known it has made its way into the Oxford English Dictionary — has such a problem with being understood.

Perhaps Facebook’s recent adoption (ahem, rip-off) of Twitter’s hashtags will help the confusing language break through to the mainstream.

My guess: More marketing videos, better Twitter blog posts (on its newly redesigned blog) and clearer explanations of the service.

After AllThingsD.com reported earlier today that Facebook had been in advanced discussions with the federal government to allow it to disclose requests under national security laws, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), to the public, sources said that Google has appeared to be following its lead and is similarly engaged in talks to do the same.

This parallel effort would allow the Internet giants, as well as other digital companies, to disclose aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, as well as their scope.

This controversial issue has occupied Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. over the last week, after a series of news reports about the level of U.S. government scrutiny of telephonic and online communications of all kinds.

While sources noted that the discussions might not result in any action, it appears as if they are in advanced stages and could result in more robust disclosures being allowed if agreements can be made.

Pressure to take action has escalated ever since myriad allegations that top Silicon Valley Internet giants had given authorities unprecedented access to their huge stores of information via a National Security Agency program called PRISM. The companies, also including Microsoft and Yahoo, have denied that kind of “direct” access, but cannot escape the spotlight placed on how much information they are all compelled by the government to hand over legally.

That’s why all of them — facing consumer backlash and a big hit to their reputations — have called on the government to allow them to lift restrictions on reporting national security requests for information.

Google has been most vocal in calling for changes, while also taking to government officials behind the scenes, as Facebook had already been doing. The two companies, though, are not working together, and are having these discussions separately.

How much leverage the pair have together or apart is unclear. Collectively, they could threaten to sue the government to allow the disclosures, or be more publicly pugnacious about cooperation, as Twitter has done.

Instead, they are employing both public statements and private outreach to the Justice Department, the NSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The goal is to be able to release more accurate information, typically via a “transparency report,” which discloses legal queries received.

But strict non-disclosure rules for the most important ones, from FISA, prevent the companies from telling users what is being given to the government.

Earlier this week, Google’s top lawyer David Drummond published an open letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI director Robert Mueller Tuesday asking to be able to publish information on such requests.

Drummond noted that the government should be able to “publish in our Transparency Report aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures — in terms of both the number we receive and their scope.”

He added: “Google’s numbers would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made. Google has nothing to hide.”

Maybe we will see soon enough, sources tell me, including the possibility that the numbers could be available within a few days.

Much like Nextdoor’s existing deals with San Jose, Dallas and San Diego, the New York City government will be able to use Nextdoor to post pertinent civic information to specific neighborhoods across all five boroughs. So, activity such as utility information (say, a burst water main in a neighborhood), police department alerts or fire department stats can all be more finely targeted to the pertinent areas affected.

It’s an easy and natural move for a mayor like Michael R. Bloomberg, whose administration has already made advances with other social mediums like Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter to post civic news in outreach efforts.

“We have great admiration for Mayor Bloomberg as an entrepreneur,” Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia told AllThingsD. “He understands the tech revolution, has a data-driven approach to solutions, and is very understanding about how Silicon Valley works.”

The new partnership also dovetails with Bloomberg’s introduction of a sweeping plan to safeguard New York City from future dangers of climate change and disasters like Hurricane Sandy, as he laid out a $19.5-billion plan to protect the city’s coasts, overhaul zoning regulations and change standards for telecommunications and other fuel-related provisioning.

“As bad as Sandy was, future storms could be even worse,” Bloomberg told reporters at a press conference earlier this week. “In fact, because of rising temperatures and sea levels, even a storm that’s not as large as Sandy could, down the road, be even more destructive.”

So, something like Nextdoor, which purports to bring communities even closer together within the atomic units of neighborhoods, is a top-down way of distributing information to the masses.

More so now, considering the recent launch of Nextdoor’s mobile application, which allows members to send updates to their neighborhoods from anywhere they wish (instead of just from the mobile Web or desktop browser, as it was before). That seems to be going well, too; according to the most recent stats from Nextdoor, 22 percent of content across all of Nextdoor has increased since the iPhone app’s launch.

Nextdoor, which is based in San Francisco, plans to hire an NYC-based team to manage the partnership with the city.

According to sources close to the situation, Facebook is in serious discussions with the federal government to allow it to disclose requests under national security laws, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), to the public.

Under this approach, Facebook would presumably be able to disclose aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, as well as their scope. It would also apply to all other Internet companies, said sources.

As with all such dicey talks on an explosively controversial issue, the discussions might not result in any action. In addition — as per usual — the devil will be in the details here, as well as the cooperation of other big Internet companies.

It is notable that Google is not part of these discussions, said sources, but non-cooperation among Internet companies is typical in Silicon Valley.

But it’s clear something’s got to give. Earlier this week, after a myriad of allegations that top Silicon Valley Internet giants had given authorities unprecedented access to their huge stores of information via a National Security Agency program called PRISM (which was denied by all of them), Facebook, Google and Microsoft execs all called on the government to allow them to lift restrictions on reporting national security requests for information.

While the companies have had difficulties been clarifying how they do respond to legally valid government requests for information, partially due to restrictions on disclosure, much damage has been done to their images and reputation due to the focus on the practices.

Google has been most vocal in calling for changes, but sources said Facebook decided to push harder behind the scenes to get the government to make changes in how it can report this information.

How much leverage Facebook has is unclear. It could threaten to sue the government to allow the disclosures, or be more publicly pugnacious about cooperation, as Twitter has done. But, it appears to be opting to get the government to change via these talks with the Justice Department, the NSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Unlike Google, Facebook does not publish a so-called “transparency report,” which has information about legal queries received, because of the strict non-disclosure rules for the most important ones. Sources said Facebook execs think that such reports without national security request info is not helpful to consumers, as it leaves out critical information.

“In the past, we have questioned the value of releasing a transparency report that, because of exactly these types of government restrictions on disclosure, is necessarily incomplete, and therefore potentially misleading to users,” said Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s general counsel in a statement earlier this week. “We would welcome the opportunity to provide a transparency report that allows us to share with those who use Facebook around the world a complete picture of the government requests we receive, and how we respond.

He added: “We urge the United States government to help make that possible by allowing companies to include information about the size and scope of national security requests we receive, and look forward to publishing a report that includes that information.”

That was underscored by Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in a post last week.

“We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe,” he wrote. “It’s the only way to protect everyone’s civil liberties and create the safe and free society we all want over the long term.”

One of Yahoo’s senior international execs and longtime entrepreneur Ahmed Nassef is leaving the company to create a new startup called Telfez, which will be a social television effort aimed at emerging markets.

Nassef, who was until now the head of Yahoo’s efforts in the Middle East and Africa, is co-founding the new company with Tamer Rashad, a top Merrill Lynch in the same region. Telfez will be based in Palo Alto, Calif.

“Today the Middle East and Africa region represents an inflection point for television viewership, skyrocketing growth in the penetration of smartphones and connected devices, and heavy social engagement,” said Nassef in a press release. “Increasingly, the millions of TV viewers in places from Capetown and Casablanca to Dubai and Istanbul are watching TV while holding a mobile phone or tablet and connecting with friends on their favorite social platforms.

Nassef has been at the Silicon Valley Internet giant for four years, in which he has doubled its audience and improved revenue growth. He came to Yahoo after the company acquired Maktoob.com, an Arabic language site, in 2009.

Google finalized its acquisition of Waze earlier this week in a $1 billion-plus cash deal. It ended months of speculation on which big Silicon Valley player would snap up the innovative social mapping startup.

But the outcome of the mega deal begs a question about Waze’s other most ardent suitor: Did Facebook brilliantly avoid future headaches by not overpaying for a pricey app, or did the social giant just make a huge mistake by letting an important mapping asset fall into a major competitor’s hands?

Or, as many sources close to the situation assert, perhaps it was never meant to be at all.

Up until the talks fell apart weeks ago, a Facebook-Waze pairing made a good deal of sense. For one, it fit Facebook’s overall philosophy: Like the social networking giant, Waze is “social from the ground up,” and traffic data on Waze is only as strong as the community that feeds it.

Ostensibly, then, the DNA of the services could have been a match.

But, after a series of talks, according to sources, both companies ended up walking away from the possibility of a deal thanks to a variety of issues, including a growing wariness between the pair and an essential lack of chemistry and trust.

But one thing that was reported early on (and repeated incorrectly on AllThingsD) that seemed to indicate that fissure was wrong: The assertion that Facebook wouldn’t accept Waze’s insistence that the majority of its team remain based in Israel, where the company was founded, preferring that it be located at its Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters.

While this has been Facebook’s style with many company acquisitions, sources on both sides said this was untrue and that the social networking giant was willing to give Waze a lot of independence, including keeping its staffers in Israel.

Sources said that the idea that Facebook would try to move one of that tech-savvy country’s most prominent players out was not in keeping with the interests of the U.S. giant to have a good reputation among entrepreneurs there.

“There was always recognition in both companies that Waze was a company in both Israel and Silicon Valley and that they would be allowed to operate with a large amount of independence,” said one source.

More importantly, from the start, neither company jibed with the other. One source said after Facebook did its “due diligence” on Waze, the social giant became less enamored with acquiring it, a feeling that was further reinforced by the sudden entrance of Google interest in the middle of a no-shop period.

While Google had previously been in talks with Waze, sources said the idea of getting into an auction and price war was anathema to Facebook.

It also helped drop the level of trust between the two sides. These kinds of “social” issues are often key to creating an atmosphere of comfort, and many deals founder when they take too long and the companies devolve into disagreements over seemingly minor issues.

That’s a stark contrast to Facebook’s whirlwind $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, which practically occurred over the course of a bromance-tastic weekend at Mark Zuckerberg’s house with Instagram founder and CEO Kevin Systrom.

In that case, the pair already knew each other and had a long-developing personal and professional relationship over a series of dinners and other events in closely knit Silicon Valley.

That was a different situation with Waze and its outspoken and aggressive CEO Noam Bardin, who has struck a more swaggering posture throughout many months of negotiations with much bigger companies.

“There was an idea that he might not be the best team player,” said one person close to the situation. “While the interest was definitely there, given all the growing tensions, there was not enough to keep it going.”

An investor in Waze agreed: “Facebook could have done this if they really wanted to do it, despite the issues, which means they decided they really did not want it at all costs.”

Speaking of costs, there’s the money issue, too. While the billion in cash Waze sold for may not be much to a company like Google — which has plenty in the bank — that’s 10 percent of Facebook’s cash on hand.

Indeed, Facebook was willing and able to shell out that same amount on Instagram, but the photo-sharing service’s user growth numbers were on a far more drastic curve than Waze; just two-and-a-half years after launch, Instagram boasts more than 100 million active users, and shows little signs of slowing. Waze, on the other hand, hosts around half that number of registered (though not necessarily active) users, despite being around since 2010. Fifty million is no doubt still impressive, though not as compelling.

Also an issue, Facebook’s tense relationship with investors. If Waze turned out to be a dud, Facebook would hardly hear the end of it from the many disgruntled shareholders whose confidence has already been shaken since the company’s botched IPO. It’s possible that by letting Waze go, Facebook saved itself a potential headache if the app went south.

“I think the question of whether it was really worth it and what is being bought got a lot louder and louder,” said another person with knowledge of the situation. “The addition of Google to the equation just sent it over the top.”

But there’s a flip side to all of this: Facebook could have also let slip a major chance to move toward truly owning its mobile experience.

Consider Facebook’s lofty ambitions here. The company is hard at work trying to make Facebook Home — the Facebook-ified version of the Google Android mobile operating system — the go-to choice for consumers. And, as we’ve seen with Android, Apple’s iOS and even Nokia’s devices, if you want to be a major player in mobile, you’ve got to own the maps.

Google now owns two mapping apps, solidifying with Waze a more potent stranglehold on mapping in general. Facebook still has zero. And without any mapping service to speak of, any Facebook mobile play remains forced into defaulting to Google’s services. Apple knew this, yet endured massive public backlash to move its mobile platform off of reliance on Google Maps and transition iOS users over to its own proprietary maps app.

Of course, it’ll be some time before we know if Facebook ended up making a good call. Waze could flounder, Facebook may come out looking smart, and Google could chalk it up to the cost of doing business by keeping potential threats out of competitors’ hands. Or Waze could flourish under Google, and Facebook may end up looking the fool for missing out on its second Instagram.

We’ll see — but not for a little while down the road.

Well, that’s over.

Facebook is killing off its “sponsored results” ad unit, just a year after launching it (and less than a year after its formal launch). This is part of the Great Facebook Ad Slimdown of 2013 that the company announced last week, where it will be killing off some of its 27 different ad units.

(Update: A Facebook rep clarified that after sponsored results go away, the company will still be selling search ads. If you type a query into the company’s search box, then click on the “Web search” option, you’ll see a page that includes sponsored links from Microsoft’s Bing engine. And it may add additional search ads down the line.)

Facebook said it has yet to figure out how many of those ad units it is actually going to execute, so apparently it will be making a series of announcements in the coming weeks. Stay tuned! (This has a very “Hunger Games” feel to it, right?)

Recall that lots of smart people said that Facebook search ads would be a natural winner, and that chatter got even louder once Facebook announced its “Graph Search” upgrade. But apparently they underwhelmed.

As always, this is yet another good reminder that Facebook’s ad strategy is under construction, so it’s likely to continue experimenting with stuff, and tossing out the ones that don’t work. If advertisers are cool with that experimentation, then no worries. But if they lose patience with it …

Here’s Facebook’s official explanation of the axing:

“In keeping with the goal of streamlining our ad products, starting in July advertisers will no longer be able to buy sponsored results. We’ve seen that most marketers were buying sponsored results to advertise their apps and games, and we already offer mobile app install ads and Page post link ads on desktop to achieve these same goals.”

And here’s what a Sponsored Result ad looked like in search results (it’s the one for Marvel):

Do you still want your MTV? And, if so, do you want it on your iPhone or iPad?

Then here you go. This is the second “TV Everywhere” app from corporate owner Viacom, following on the heels of a Nickelodeon app it launched this spring.

Like the Nick app, the free MTV app will let some pay TV subscribers watch some of the channel’s shows for free. And, like the Nick app, there are extra goodies, too.

In MTV’s case, there is a set of “second screen” features, like Twitter filters, that you’re supposed to use while watching MTV broadcasts on your TV. And a bunch of non-TV content, produced by something MTV is calling its “connected content lab.”

On deck: Versions that will work on Android, and later Xbox 360, as well as more apps for other MTV/Viacom channels, like VH1 and CMT.

The most important thing to note is that this is another small step from promise to reality in the evolution of “TV Everywhere.” The promise, recall, is that people who pay for cable TV (or satellite TV, or telco TV) should be able to watch TV shows on any device they want, whenever they want.

We’re still a long way from that because of a mix of contractual, business and tech issues. And even moves like this are only partial steps. MTV/Viacom says that about 50 million pay TV customers will have access to the programming on its apps. But subscribers to at least three different major pay services — Comcast, Dish and Charter — won’t be able to watch the shows (for now).

And even if you have a pay channel that does have a deal with Viacom, you won’t be able to see everything the channel has put out. Remember that it has different “windows” of content with other distributors — like Amazon — which means that different outlets will have different catalogs at different times.

Meanwhile! The extra video goodies that MTV has added in here are kinda fun. MTV is branding a group of them as “MTV Other,” which in my mind reads as “You think ‘Vice’ is cool? Well look at this raunchy stuff we would totally put on TV if the TV guys weren’t such squares.”

Here’s a sample, which you won’t want to look at if you don’t like swearing, or unpleasant use cases for hot dogs. (On the other hand, if you’re a fan of Minnesota’s own Har Mar Superstar, you should definitely watch.)

As a result, I often click on mobile ads, regardless of whether I’m interested in what’s being pitched, just to see what awaits on the other end of the finger-tap.

So, a few days ago, I did just that, after seeing a link in a Promoted Tweet from Best Buy on my Twitter iPhone app advertising a two-day Father’s Day sale. There I was greeted by the image to the right.

And while I could make out prices and images of computers and TVs without zooming in or squinting, that was about it. And once you ask me to zoom in — tap — I’ve clicked on the “X” and I’m gone.

And then, yesterday morning, another Best Buy Promoted Tweet arrived in my stream on my Twitter iPhone app, advertising the Nintendo DSi. Of course, I clicked.

This time the result was much worse: A broken page, telling me “there was an error when processing your request.”

I closed out and clicked again. Same result.

I’m not just picking on Best Buy — these types of experiences are par for the course in mobile advertising that could lead to buying online. And, as we all know by now, mobile phones are still challenging devices to advertise on, especially with all the different devices and screen sizes.

Despite the challenges, advertising on mobile devices is expected to rise 76 percent from $4.36 billion in 2012 to $7.65 billion this year, according to research firm eMarketer.

But if you are going to spend the money to advertise in mobile — especially on a popular platform such as Twitter — it’s probably a good idea to make sure the experience for the consumer will be a decent one.

It’s also not a good look for Twitter, which is effectively sending its users off to unreadable pages. Once that happens a few times to the same Twitter user perhaps they think twice before clicking on a Promoted Tweet again.

Still, Twitter doesn’t seem to feel this is its responsibility. “Brands control the content that they put into a Tweet, regardless of its promoted or organic,” a spokesman wrote in an email. “We don’t screen what the final experience looks like on specific landing page[s], etc.”

A Best Buy spokeswoman acknowledged that the company has work to do in digital.

“As we have shared previously — most recently during our Q1 earnings, we are focused on accelerating our online growth and are taking a number of steps including consistent browsing across devices to improve the online experience for our customers,” she wrote to me in an email.

“We’ve talked publicly about our dot.com platform being woefully underfunded,” she added. “The new Executive Team has recognized this and is making the additional investments to get the site improved for our customers across all platforms.”

As for the broken link, “a brief outage this morning on our Web site” was the cause, she explained.

It’s no secret that more and more people are making purchases from their mobile phones. EMarketer estimates that mobile commerce sales will increase 56.5 percent this year to $38.84 billion, from $24.81 billion in 2012. But those mobile shoppers choose the brands that make it easy.

In the end, I did indeed end up buying my dad a Father’s Day gift from my iPhone — a label maker, just like he asked. But it happened on Amazon.com’s mobile website — and while I was standing in a Staples analog store.