“We believe Club Penguin is a safe start to social,” said Chris Heatherly, Disney Interactive’s VP and GM, who replaced Club Penguin founder Lane Merrifield last October.

Heatherly and other Club Penguin employees described the site as a social destination, similar in some ways to Facebook, which officially does not allow users under the age of 13 (not that that has ever stopped anyone).

Facebook’s 13-plus rule derives from laws like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which outlawed the online collection of personal information about the under-13 set. So, for Club Penguin’s primary audience of 8- to 12-year-olds, moderators manually screen out usernames that contain players’ real names and ask for parents’ email addresses — not players’ — during registration.

The company announced an upgrade to its “Safe Chat” technology, which screens out words, phrases and slang, not to mention players’ “dictionary dancing” attempts to circumvent the filter by combining words that sound like banned words. For example, to prevent bullies from saying “you’re gay,” the company also blocks out phrases like “you’re grey.”

But the effectiveness of auto-moderation based on whitelisted and blacklisted words is limited, company reps said. Social tech director Marc Silbey gave the example of the word “beach,” which some players have tried to use in lieu of the banned word “bitch.” Trying to censor phrases that sound like “you are a beach,” Sibley said, can also ensnare harmless sentences like “you want to come to the beach?”

The new upgrade, officially called “dynamic validation,” feeds the entirety of what kids type into a real-time search engine that tries to divine meaning and appropriateness. Silbey said about 80 percent of what Club Penguin players type is ultimately ruled “safe,” and that the new technology can automatically validate 90 percent of that without the need for a human moderator’s judgment.

Humans are still a necessary part of the puzzle, however, and CP has more than 200 moderators stationed worldwide round the clock, Heatherly said.

Since the game launched in 2005, more than 200 million penguins have been created, though that number includes inactive accounts of players who have “aged out.” Some players, however, come back to the game even when they’re well beyond the normal age demographic because they want to participate in Club Penguin’s annual charity events or special “parties,” which can have themes based around holidays like Halloween or in-game story events.

Club Penguin makes its money via paid subscriptions and merchandise based on the characters: The titular multicolored Penguins; their enemy, Herbert, the polar bear; and their fuzzy pets, called Puffles. Subscriptions give players the ability to dress up their penguins, buy furniture for their homes and adopt pets using virtual currency that is earned from minigames.

In addition to the blend of human and automated chat moderators, Club Penguin’s safety team outlined its response plan for times when players say or do things that suggest they have more serious problems than potty mouths. For instance, when the words “I want to kill myself” popped up in a moderator’s auto-”blocked” chat list, the moderator traced the player’s IP address and contacted the local police, who tracked down and helped the troubled child.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe this company was doing the right thing,” online safety head Gerard Poitras said.

Poitras echoed Heatherly’s sentiment that Club Penguin can prepare children for the rest of the Internet: “Kids need to utilize this as a set of training wheels,” he said.

“We’ll never be done [with safety],” Poitras added. “We’ll have to change with the environment. As society changes, we change with it.”

But even those who don’t get Facebook Home can use one of its key features — Chat Heads.

Facebook is making Chat Heads available as part of an update to its Messenger app for Android — something it hadn’t touted when it announced Home last week.

The Chat Heads feature creates a persistent messaging experience that allows chatting with friends from within any other application. It is one of the main features of Facebook Home, which also offers a “Cover Feed” that replaces the home screen and lock screen of an Android phone with a scrolling array of pictures and status updates.

Facebook Home can be downloaded for a handful of phones including the Galaxy S III, HTC One, HTC One X and HTC One X+ and is available on a new mid-range phone from AT&T — the HTC First.

The Messenger app update is available to a broader range of Android users, appearing to require only that phones be running version 2.2 of the operating system or later.

Update: Facebook says the new Messenger app requires Android 2.2 (Froyo) but that the Chat Heads feature needs at least Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) along with “a sufficiently large screen.”

It’s a big buy for LinkedIn, costing a cool $90 million, according to the company.

The app, which collects news articles from a range of topics chosen by users and presents them in a clean, stylish format, rose to the top of Apple’s App Store ranks just a few years ago, quickly becoming a favorite among the many newsreaders currently available. Pulse currently claims more than 30 million users globally who read more than ten million stories daily using the app.

But more than that, it’s yet another move by LinkedIn to expand beyond being just a static resume service for recruiters and professionals. Spearheaded by executive editor (and former Fortune and Wired journalist) Dan Roth, LinkedIn has made major strides in pushing original and partner content through the site, aiming to keep users returning and engaged on a regular basis.

“We believe LinkedIn can be the definitive professional publishing platform — where all professionals come to consume content and where publishers come to share their content,” LinkedIn SVP of product and user experience Deep Nishar said in a company blog post. “Pulse is a perfect complement to this vision.”

In that vein, the company launched its “Influencer” program late last year, essentially asking big names in business, entertainment and politics to write original think pieces that users can read on the site. And, in Twitter-esque fashion, users are able to “follow” those influencers across the site, so that only the content users want will appear inside their respective feeds. (Not surprisingly, the move came only months after Twitter cut off LinkedIn tweet syndication, which provided LinkedIn with most of the content flowing through the system up until that point.)

And of course, let’s not forget LinkedIn Today, the company’s news aggregation service which also brings users tons of fresh stories on the regular.

Engagement, after all, is pretty much LinkedIn’s key theme for 2013. As the site undergoes multiple design revamps across user pages and the company’s massively profitable recruiting products, LinkedIn is trying to escape its image as a one-off, sparingly used online resume service. It wants to be the home page for professionals, including the place where those pros go to catch up on the biz news they care about.

So a service like Pulse, which lets a company know exactly what sort of stuff its users want to read and care about, is likely pretty valuable to what LinkedIn is trying to do.

Yes, engagement is good for the overall health of the site, and for keeping recruiters abreast of the latest movements and activity for the 200 million people who use LinkedIn. But it has another side effect: The more page views and user activity coming in, the more potential to bolster LinkedIn’s ad business, one of the company’s three revenue streams.

LinkedIn wasn’t the only one who saw Pulse’s value. As we reported previously, sources said Pulse was in discussions with Yahoo, Microsoft, Gannett and even Amazon at points.

Ultimately, LinkedIn emerged the victor. Now we get to wait and see just exactly how the company wants to make Pulse work for it.

The social gaming company announced the appointment of John Doerr — longtime, well-respected Silicon Valley venture capitalist and general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers — to Zynga’s board of directors.

“John has been a supporter of Zynga since our early days, and truly understands our core values and mission,” said Mark Pincus, CEO and founder of Zynga, in a statement. “John has worked with some of the most well-known companies in the world at every stage imaginable and his experience helping teams innovate at scale will be a tremendous asset for our leadership team.”

Indeed he has. Doerr is acclaimed as a Valley VC with a solid track record of spotting great companies early on, including Google, Amazon, Netscape and Intuit (though to be sure, in recent years Kleiner and Doerr have come under scrutiny for being late or missing the boat on investing in the next wave of Web giants). Doerr continues to hold board seats at a number of companies, again including Google, as well as Coursera and social magazine startup Flipboard.

Zynga has had a rough year (to put it mildly). After a long string of high-level departures — including execs like former CFO Dave Wehner and former COO John Schappert — it endured a tanking share price and an overall waning sense of Wall Street confidence.

Zynga has rallied in recent months, however, aiming to turn the company around with a number of long-term bets. Zynga just recently launched its first foray into real-money gaming this week in the U.K., with plans to eventually bring the online gambling games to the U.S. and on Facebook and mobile devices. And Zynga has made it abundantly clear that while the majority of its revenue still comes from Facebook-based games, Zynga wants to transition off of reliance upon Facebook’s platform, building a fuller network of social-game-playing customers across its own Zynga network. That includes, of course, a large push into mobile — just like the rest of the industry is doing.

So Doerr’s addition is likely another step in this direction, welcoming aboard a tech industry mainstay with years of experience to offer.

“What’s exciting is this is still day zero — just the beginning — of social gaming’s potential,” Doerr said in a release. “I’m excited about working with Mark and the Zynga team in its next chapters of growth.”

Doerr joins Zynga’s eight other board members, including fellow Kleiner partner Bing Gordon, Jeffrey Katzenberg, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Stanley J. Meresman, Sunil Paul, Ellen F. Siminoff, Owen Van Natta and Zynga CEO Mark Pincus.

Chris Ovitz, co-founder and head of business development at Viddy, has taken a reduced, part-time role at the startup, with plans to eventually leave the company altogether, according to sources familiar with the matter.

While Ovitz did not respond to a request for comment, Viddy confirmed Ovitz’s role change to AllThingsD. “Chris is a tremendous partner and asset to Viddy, and he will shift into a part-time role as our team is focused on building the best social video experience,” said JJ Aguhob, Viddy co-founder and president, in a statement. “Chris’ skills are invaluable to our marketing and strategic partnerships initiatives and we’re glad he’ll continue to play that role.”

Along with co-founders Aguhob and Brett O’Brien, Ovitz played a key role in the formation of the mobile video startup, which lets users share short video clips with others, using their smartphones. Viddy rose to prominence over the summer of 2012, when mobile social video apps like Socialcam and Klip gained traction and a wide user base on the back of the Facebook platform.

But as users began to feel spammed by mobile video app activity, Facebook quickly curtailed the apps’ growth by making changes in the News Feed. As a result, Viddy, Socialcam and others saw massive drops in user activity, and have languished ever since.

In the time since, Viddy has faced its own series of internal challenges, giving former CEO Brett O’Brien the boot and eventually cutting its staff by more than a third.

The loss of Ovitz, however, will cut especially deep. One source claimed Ovitz was the “key” member of Viddy, in particular his “relationships with content creators to investors” doing a large part to drive the ailing company.

The remainder of Ovitz’s tenure as a part-time adviser and consultant is indefinite, and it isn’t clear what his next move will be.

I’m talking about Swoon, a new, real-world, Android-based discovery app, created by the social company Tagged, which launched on Friday morning. The concept is about as simple as it gets: Connect your Facebook profile to the app, and you’re up and running with a Swoon profile filled out from that data. From there, you’re presented with cards of different people using the service, complete with big, bold pictures and their profile details below.

Like them? Hit the check mark to say you’re interested in meeting them. Not your cup of tea? Tap the “X” box to move on to the next person. If the other person wants to meet you too, Swoon will connect you two. If not, nothing happens. Easy as that.

If it sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Right now, another slickly designed social discovery app called Tinder is basically doing the exact same thing. And Let’s Date, the app released last month from Los Angeles-based incubator Science, is also offering a similar service, though with the express intent of setting people up on dates. (Tinder and Swoon only profess to help you find “interesting new people.”)

But it goes back much further than that. Remember “Hot or Not”? Launched in 2000, it was the original social network, where users were presented with a picture and a single choice — is this person hot, or not? (Even Mark Zuckerberg was influenced by it, creating a similar version of the site using photos from schoolmates back in his Harvard days.)

Because of its simple nature, the website’s growth curve exploded. It was easy: All you had to do was make a choice, and move on to the next person.

That’s exactly why the Swoons, Tinders and Let’s Dates of the world are so potentially addicting. Perhaps you’ll actually meet someone new, or perhaps you’ll just have fun looking at all the pretty (and not so pretty) people, checking off which ones you like and flicking away the others. The point is that it’s fast as hell, a single-serving app that carries out its purpose.

That’s unlike, say, one beefy app that can do a bunch of different things. “We’re transforming from being used to single, multi-use-case apps into multiple, single-use apps,” Greg Tseng, CEO of Tagged, said in an interview. “Just take a look at the simplicity of Instagram.”

Tseng’s comparison is interesting. Facebook has launched multiple stand-alone apps over the past year — Poke, Camera, Messenger and the acquired Instagram — some of which offer features that are already inside the main Facebook app. And now Twitter has Vine, a standalone video app, and also plans to soon launch a music-centric app as well.

My theory here: All of these services — Facebook, Twitter and Tagged — have smaller, satellite apps surrounding their main services. If they can bring in new users via these single-use-case apps and get them to start using the main service, then that’s a net win for everyone.

Tagged is going after the Android market first, launching in the Google Play store beginning immediately. More Tagged users are on Android over iOS at a ratio of 2 to 1, and apps like Tinder and Let’s Date are iOS only right now. But expect another release for iOS in the future.

The interactive portion of the SXSW festival — known as “South By” to hip conference goers — kicks off Friday in Austin, Texas.

And speaking of panels, members of AllThingsD will be moderating a few key ones throughout the fest that you won’t want to miss. (We promise not to call you out if we see you hungover and sleeping in the back row. Just come.)

First off, nobody knows more about blogging than the boss, Kara Swisher, who has literally made liveblogging Yahoo’s earnings calls an award-winning venture. So on Saturday, March 9, at 12:30 pm local time, she’ll be interviewing Mr. WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, about the current state of blogging. More details here.

Later that afternoon, AllThingsD’s other boss, Walt Mossberg, will interview former vice president and New York Times bestselling author Al Gore about his new book, “The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change” — described as “a frank and clear-eyed assessment of the emerging forces that are reshaping our world.” That panel takes place at 3:30 pm local time.

Early risers, reporters who snoop and sources who snitch should add Peter Kafka’s panel to the calendar: At 9:30 am Saturday, he’ll be joined by panelists Ed Lee of Bloomberg News, Greg Galant of MuckRack and Joe Ciarallo of Salesforce.com (formerly of Buddy Media) to discuss the shifting dynamics between reporter and source in the age of social media. Here are the details on Peter’s panel.

And on Monday, March 11, I’ll be moderating a panel on artificial intelligence — think robots, “smart” calendars and natural-language search apps — with Dror Oren, executive director at SRI International; Raj Singh, founder of Tempo AI; and Nadav Gur, co-founder and CEO of Desti. That panel takes place at 3:30 pm.

And, of course, if you see us elsewhere — at the Mailbox/Dropbox/Highlight cocktail hour Sunday, at the Path/Spotify/A-Grade party that same night, at the Funny or Die + Team Coco’s Comedy Climax Party on Monday, or just hanging around the GroupMe Grill — come say hello.

(Feature art courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.)

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Pinterest, the popular social scrapbooking site, has completed a massive $200 million funding, which values the company at $2.5 billion, according to sources close to the situation.

There have been reports that the funding was coming, but now it is done, in a round led by Valiant Capital Management. Existing investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital also participated.

Update: Pinterest confirmed the funding and released this statement from CEO Ben Silbermann: “Our focus is on helping millions of people discover things they love and get inspiration to go do those things in their life. This investment gives us more resources to help realize that vision.”

Pinterest’s last round was in May of 2012, when it raised $100 million from Japanese e-commerce firm Rakuten.

It’s likely that the San Francisco-based Pinterest will use the money for further product development, as well as to accelerate international expansion, to further expand the scope of its impact and reach.

While it sounds too simple to be so valuable, consumers have flocked to the free site on which they “pin” photos of their interests and share them widely. Usage has exploded and has also become an increasingly key driver of traffic across the Web.

It now has close to 50 million unique monthly users worldwide and has quintupled its employees to 100 in the last year.

Such growth has become invaluable to many doing business across the Web.

As an article in The Wall Street Journal, which had also flagged funding efforts, recently noted:

Businesses said they also have gravitated to Pinterest because “pinned” content has a different life cycle than what is posted on Facebook and Twitter. Brian Madden. executive director of social media for Hearst Corp.’s Hearst Digital Media, said content that Hearst puts onto Pinterest can resurface months later when people continue to discover it. In contrast, posts on Facebook and Twitter tweets produce “a lot of initial interaction” before fading.

“The longevity of content [on Pinterest] is very valuable to us,” said Mr. Madden. He adds that in December, Hearst got more online traffic through Pinterest than Facebook and Twitter combined. Overall, 3% to 5% of traffic to Hearst’s various brands was through Pinterest that month, with about 1.5% from Facebook and 1.5% from Twitter, Hearst said.

I have a call into Pinterest and await confirmation about the funding.

While not all of the details are known yet, over the past week there have been advance reports and much speculation about what the “PlayStation 4” will include.

Here are three things to look for at tonight’s event, which kicks off at 6 pm ET:

The new PlayStation is expected to stream games over the Web. Remember Sony’s acquisition of Gaikai Inc. last year? That $380 million spend wasn’t for nothing. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Sony is indeed expected to offer cloud-based gaming components with the new console (in addition to playing good old-fashioned optical discs). There’s a chance that Sony will make older games available only through streaming if the discs aren’t forward compatible with the new console. But there could be new streaming content in there, as well.

This is notable mostly because it underscores the shift toward casual, Web- and mobile-based games that has been impacting the hard-core gaming industry. But cloud-based gaming can be technically difficult, as the story points out, so it will be interesting to see how Sony manages this.

Mobile, mobile, mobile. Even videogame consoles aren’t immune to the mobile craze. There are a couple of ways Sony could go here — and maybe it will do both — when it comes to mobile: More integration between the console and the PlayStation Vita, Sony’s not-exactly-best-selling handheld device, or with complimentary mobile apps that work with games on the PS4 console and network. This would allow for enhanced play both in the living room and, potentially, on the go, too, where consumers generally fire up their casual (free!) games.

Briefly consider, as an example, the Wii U from Nintendo, which recently had to cut its sales forecast for the new console, and might not have aimed right when it made a proprietary tablet-like controller. But take away “proprietary” and “controller” and you’ve got a tablet — which has proved it has a place in gaming.

Here we are now, entertain us. Most people who watch Web videos and movies on their TV sets don’t have “smart” TVs. In fact, most aren’t even using Apple TV or Roku. They’re using videogame consoles. And in that arena Sony faces formidable competition in Microsoft’s Xbox console, which in the past claimed the Most-Popular, Non-PC Video-Streaming Gadget superlative.

But here’s an interesting tidbit, reported by my colleague Peter Kafka late last year: Sony’s PS3 is Netflix’s biggest platform for connected-TV viewing, due in part to the fact that Sony doesn’t slap an additional subscription fee on Netflix-watching on the console. There’s a good chance that Sony will tout additional home streaming options or features as a way to bolster its brand as a multimedia platform — if not tonight, then in the near future.

AllThingsD will be at the event, bringing you up-to-date coverage, so check back here later this evening.

In 2013, the company’s goal is to create services and features that aren’t even possible on a PC.

“So many things are unlocked on mobile,” said Dan Rose, Facebook VP of partnerships, speaking at our D: Dive Into Media conference. “You don’t bring your computer to a restaurant or a party.”

But it’s those places, Rose said, where people really want to share.

Connection with mobile devices opens up new possibilities, such as sharing a run while you are on it, and getting feedback from friends or finding nearby services. The company also has a huge opportunity in helping all those companies creating mobile apps to get their apps discovered.

Facebook, Rose said, sends 180 million clicks to the Apple App Store and Google Play marketplaces. That’s now becoming a serious business. “That number is only going to continue to grow,” Rose said.

The network’s mobile users are also more loyal, with 70 percent visiting the service daily, as opposed to less than half of desktop-only users.

In talking about how Facebook works with partners, Rose defended the company’s decreased reliance on Zynga, saying the two companies remain close partners, even if they are less dependent on one another than they once were.

“I don’t think we’ve walked away from Zynga at all,” Rose said.

While Zynga remains the largest developer using Facebook’s desktop platform, Rose noted that both companies are working to quickly boost their mobile business.

“They are looking to diversify into mobile,” Rose said. “We spent the last year really pivoting hard and becoming a mobile company. We still spend a lot of time with Zynga.”

During a wide-ranging interview at D: Dive Into Media, Rose talked about how Facebook views media, and how media should view Facebook.

“Facebook is primarily two core pillars — identity and sharing,” Rose said, adding that both pillars are part of Facebook’s media pitch.

“From an identity perspective, so much of who we are and how we identify ourselves comes from what we read and what we watch,” Rose continued. “So our identity platform can’t be complete without media being part of it. Similarly, the sharing piece can’t be complete without status updates about news stories, music friends are listening to, updates about movies people are seeing.”

The high-level principle driving this is the idea of finding the perfect balance between great user experience and delivering audience to platform partners.

“At its core, what we’re really striving to do is find the perfect equilibrium from a great user experience and a strong platform that developers and partners will continue to invest in,” Rose said. “… We need to keep the news feed interesting, and one of the ways we do that is through media.”

At the same time, however, Rose said Facebook must “honor” content, and presumably appetite for audience and buzz that’s ever-present behind it.

“We think it’s our job to honor content,” Rose said. “Media content deserves to be honored and respected in the news feed. For example, we recently increased the size of images from media partners. That’s more engaging for users, and for partners it’s great, because click-throughs and engagement increased.”

Media content also deserves to be consumed, says Rose. And here, too, Facebook plays a big role, and hopes to play an even bigger one in the future.

“How did you hear about ‘Downton Abbey’?” Rose asked. “I discovered it on Facebook. I kept seeing it pop up in my news feed. The simple fact is most of us find the TV shows we enjoy by listening to suggestions from our friends. That’s the primary discovery mechanism for content right now. Imagine a future, though, in which you turn on the TV and see a feed of all the shows your friends watch. We think that’s a very compelling idea. Content discovery always has been and always will be social.”

Additional Notes From the Session

• On mobile: “So many things are unlocked on mobile. You don’t bring your computer to a restaurant or a party.”
• On Zynga: “I don’t think we walked away from Zynga at all. They built a large and successful business on our platform. … We still spend a lot of time with Zynga.”
• On Instagram: In the past, Facebook acquired small companies for talent, with Instagram being the first company it bought for the product. However, Rose said that more deals for product and technologies are likely.