This week in social media, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg started a weekly tradition of public Facebook Q&A sessions by answering users' questions about the new required Facebook Messenger app, among many others. Meanwhile, Twitter keeps imploding under the weight of Wall Street expectations, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation rated messaging apps on security. The results were not pretty.

It's time for Social Media Saturday!

Facebook:

Zuck Talks to His Flock

Facebook CEO and 30-year-old billionaire tech titan Mark Zuckerberg kicked off a new tradition of weekly public Q&A sessions about Facebook on Thursday by talking to a group of users invited to Facebook headquarters for the occasion. (Zuckerberg won't be personally doing this every Thursday, but various figureheads from Facebook will.) People also submitted questions online.

Speaking impressively fluent English the whole time (a joke, because remember?), Zuckerberg responded to one topic that has probably been on mobile users' minds for a while: Why the whole separate-app-for-messaging thing?

Zuckerberg answered pretty frankly though without going into much detail. Basically, he said that splitting that functionality of the Facebook app into a separate app was determined to make messaging faster and better.

Still, he did acknowledge that the move didn't make users very happy.

"Asking everyone in our community to install another app is a big ask," Zuckerberg said (via PC World). "We really believe this is a better experience."

Zuckerberg also answered questions on pressing subjects like why he's always wearing hoodies. The answer to that, by the way, is that he doesn't like to spend time thinking about what he's wearing on any particular day. Makes sense; he's got other things to think about, like how he's gradually taking over the world.

New Control Over Your News Feed

One thing he might have had on his mind is an important update to the News Feed controls. Zuckerberg touched on the update during the Q&A, and Facebook officially announced the changes on Friday.

The long and short of it is that you can now unfollow any friend, Page or Group you don't want to see in your News Feed -- all in one place on the Facebook app. Besides changing the News Feed settings, users will also be prompted with the option to see less content from the sources of posts you decide to hide, right when you decide to hide it. For people tired of having News Feed decide what they see, a little more control just came into your life.

Twitter:

It's Hard to Look Away From a Slow-Motion Trainwreck

This week marks a year since Twitter went public on the New York Stock Exchange. This week marks a year since Twitter began alienating veteran users and imploding as a company.

Pick whichever lede you like better. Both are true.

It's hard to recall how optimistic Twitter was a year ago. It was going to rival and surpass Facebook by not becoming the next Facebook. It was going to dominate mobile, growing by leaps and bounds. It was going to do that while staying true to its core user base.

Pick whichever goal you remember best. Because none of that happened.

Instead, Twitter lost high-ranking members of the company -- either through disappointment in results, its own concerted efforts, or simple attrition, in a company so embattled by a market skeptical of the lofty expectations it set for itself.

Also, Twitter has angered its hardcore user base, by aping so many aspects of Facebook in a desperate attempt to become more user-friendly for the wave of new accounts that never really materialized. Or at least not enough to satisfy critics and investors.

So what did Twitter's embattled CEO Dick Costolo get for the company's first IPO anniversary? An extremely detailed, lengthy, take-no-prisoners savaging on the technology pages of The Wall Street Journal, that's what. Ouch! Better luck in your next year.

EFF: Your Favorite Messaging Apps Are Leaky

The Electronic Frontier Foundation published a report looking at the security standards of some of the top messaging apps in the market this week.

The "scorecard" report on messengers' data security is important for two big reasons.

Right now, many messaging apps are vying for control of a huge potential market of people who might soon replace texting -- and possibly even calling plans -- with a cheaper, Internet-connected messaging app. That future is coming, evidenced by the fact that wireless companies are increasingly offering data-only plans and dispensing with the whole minutes-per-month thing. But so far, no single app has become dominant, so it's a free for all.

And apparently, a lot of messaging apps just aren't focused on security, despite the increasing likelihood of massive hack attacks and the known fact of widespread surveillance.

For the EFF's scorecard, testers looked at seven major criteria from encryption standards to user identity verification to independent review and audit procedures: the nuts and bolts of how you design a system that keeps user information safe from outsiders and from breaches of your company's own systems.

Some very popular messaging apps failed on at least the majority of criteria, including AIM (passed 1 out of 7), BBM (1/7), Facebook Chat (2/7), Google Hangouts with "off the record" enabled (2/7), Skype (2/7), Snapchat (2/7) and WhatsApp (2/7).

The most popular app to get a passing grade? Apple's iMessage and Mac Messages, which passed five and six out of the seven criteria, respectively. Click here to check your favorite messaging apps on EFF's scorecard. Prediction: If it doesn't have the word "crypto" or "secure" in the name, you're probably screwed.