It was a busy week on social media: Facebook announced its continuing dominance and a new mobile app, Tumblr incorporated comedy into its terms of service, Twitter got IBM off its back, and President Obama used the most disliked social media platform to popularize his State of the Union agenda. Let's dive into Social Media Saturday!

President Obama: Hanging Out on Google+

President Obama, hot off his State of the Union address, joined Google+ users around the country on Friday to answer questions from everyday Americans, in what the White House is calling the President's "Virtual road trip." He answered questions on immigration reform, the minimum wage, and one question from a tattooed fellow, "Rob in Portland," who simply asked, "How are you?"


Common human decency aside, the Google+ hangout was hosted on the internet, which of course means a tidal wave of bile and hatred started hitting the Hangout's comments section. Google shut the comments section down -- which, for obvious reasons, was actually never supposed to be enabled -- causing some confusion over whether the White House ordered it. Google told Buzzfeed that it was a gaff on their part, and that the company closed down the comments section after noticing it was inadvertently flipped on.

Facebook

Facebook released its quarterly earnings report, beating analysts estimates and shooting up its stock even further. The strength of Facebook's earnings resulted from more user engagement across the board, as well as Instagram's growth, Facebook's new video ads, and a continuing flow of mobile advertising revenue -- which now makes up over half the company's revenue, according to the Washington Post.

Facebook also continued its push into mobile by announcing a new app this week: Facebook Paper. The Flipboard-looking app will isolate Facebook's News Feed in a beautiful, easy to read, full screen news experience. It's coming out for iOS next week, and hopefully Android soon after.

Tumblr

Tumblr doesn't get a lot of attention in the social media world, so it obviously looks for any chance to grab headlines when it can. This week, Tumblr refreshed its terms of service to ban impersonation, encourage attribution, discourage porn, and make it clear that people under 13 years old are not allowed.

But that's not what's interesting about the new ToS and community guidelines. Tumblr's team wrote the new rules like a Gawker blogger -- it's full of snark, profanity, pop-culture references, and flippant jokes.

Seriously.

Here's an example from Tumblr's community guidelines on explicit posts:

"Gore, Mutilation, Bestiality, or Necrophilia. Don't post gore just to be shocking. Don't showcase the mutilation or torture of human beings, animals, or their remains. Dick."

And this:

"Uploading Sexually Explicit Video. You can embed anything in a Tumblr post as long as it's lawful and follows our other guidelines, but please don't use Tumblr's Upload Video feature to upload sexually explicit video. We're not in the business of hosting adult-oriented videos (and it's fucking expensive)."

Twitter and Vine

Twitter agreed to buy more than 900 patents from International Business Machines (IBM) to defend itself against intellectual property lawsuits. The terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but Twitter is using the deal -- which also includes a cross-license agreement for patents with IBM -- to get the company off its back. Earlier in 2013, IBM said it had claims against Twitter on at least three U.S. patents, according to the Wall Street Journal. Bolstering Twitter's weak patent portfolio will also protect it against future infringement cases.

At the same time Twitter bought its way out of trouble, Vine had its one year birthday. Plenty of one year Vine retrospectives went around the internet, and co-founder Colin Kroll told TechCrunch that year two will be all about discovery. "This year, we're really focused on making it easier to discover those videos and find new accounts," he said.

Social Media Super Bowl

Obviously the Super Bowl didn't happen this week, but Sunday's big game is expected to be one of the biggest days for all major social media platforms -- as well as for marketers. That's because, according to social media researcher CrowdTap (via Mashable), the majority of Super Bowl viewers plan to watch the game with a second screen -- meaning a social media-enabled smartphone or tablet.

Super Bowl commercials are expected to be one of the most talked about aspects of the "game" on social media, with 61 percent of viewers in CrowdTap's survey saying they will comment and share ads on social media. Facebook is expected to grab the lion's share of social media action, at more than 55 percent, while Twitter comes up second with about 25 percent using that platform.

Marketers must be happy, because the vast majority, 73 percent, of viewers said they would be talking about "brands" on social media after the Super Bowl, with only 27 percent saying they'd be interested in talking about, you know... the game.