This week in social media, Pinterest emerged as a serious competitor in the social media industry. Meanwhile, Foursquare rolled out its new Swarm app, Yahoo bought a Snapchat clone called Blink, Snapchat itself was named one of the worst companies for data privacy, Twitter almost got banned in Russia, and Facebook tested a new location-based notification system that's a bit like Foursquare with a little Google Now thrown in. It's time for Social Media Saturday!

Watch Out Facebook, Twitter: Here Comes Pinterest

Pinterest made big news this week when it announced a new funding round that garnered the company about $200 million more for its war chest, in a deal that valued the company at $5 billion.

This, in itself, is not unusual. According to ReadWrite, which broke the story, Pinterest has previously raised hundreds of millions with the same group of venture capital and angel investors -- for a total now reaching of $764 million. But the direction and acceleration of the company, both in valuation and social media influence, is what's getting attention. The last time Pinterest raised money was in October 2013, and at that time the company was valued at about $3.8 billion. And both of these valuations have occurred before Pinterest began accepting paid advertisements, which it started rolling out this week in the form of "Promoted Pins."

Meanwhile, while Pinterest has climbed to 24 percent of global social media sharing on the internet (28 percent in North America), a recent study by RJMetrics showed that Pinterest has a commanding grasp of women: 92 percent of pins were made by women, accounting for 94 percent of Pinterest's total network activity.

The only star the company got was for publishing law enforcement guidelines so users can see. EFF's poor rating comes a week after Snapchat reached an agreement with the FTC for deceiving customers about how fully "destructed" the "self-destruct" messages on the service actually get (hint: they don't).

Facebook Tests Auto-Info Cards

Facebook began testing a new feature in its iOS app this week that will pop up relevant information related to location check-ins or status updates that mention specific people, events or media, according to The Verge.

So if you check in at a location, the yet unnamed feature will pop up a card that shows you which of your friends were recently there. If you mention you're watching "Louis," the system might show which friends mentioned that particular TV show, or bring up posted photos or videos it thinks are relevant. It's like a mix between Foursquare and Google Now -- signaling that Facebook is also interested in delivering automatic contextual information to its users.

"These cards can help you discover information about where you are or what to do next, or inspire conversation with your friends around you," a Facebook spokesperson said to The Verge. That, of course, centers around the goal of getting more engagement from current users, which is always a goal of social media networks.

Was Twitter Almost Banned In Russia?

Twitter might have a huge drop in engagement in Russia if one official has his way. According to Reuters, the deputy director of Russia's communications watchdog agency Maksim Ksenzov said that Russia blocking the U.S.-based Twitter had become "unavoidable."

Ironically, he posted his comments on his Facebook page.

The comment comes at a time of fears that the Russian government is cracking down on undesirable media sources in the midst of the trouble in Ukraine, which has its origins, in part, with Twitter. Protestors who ousted Ukraine's former president Viktor Yanukovich used Twitter, among other tools, to organize.

Twitter hasn't had a great time with the leaders of the eastern half of Europe recently, as some Turkish officials recently tried to ban Twitter before it was overturned by a Turkish court.

In the case of Russia, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev criticized Facebook-fan Ksenzov, seemingly ending the threat to Twitter with one incredibly snarky sentence: "Individual officials, responsible for the development of the industry should sometimes use their brains and not give interviews announcing the closure of social networking sites," he wrote.

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