Yahoo CEO Melissa Mayer said she wanted to “let Tumblr be Tumblr,” on an investors’ call Monday, according to the Huffington Post. That means, for one thing, that all those X-rated accounts on Tumblr would get to stay. (Currently, Tumblr asks those uploading porn content to tag it with “NSFW,” Not Safe For Work, and to not use its on-site video tool.)

What’s more, Tumblr founder David Karp wrote a note to soothe his legions of bloggers, some of whom are worried that the freewheeling site will change for the worst.

“Before touching on how awesome this is, let me try to allay any concerns: We’re not turning purple. Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing,” he wrote. He added that the main thing that the presence of Yahoo! could do for the Tumblr brand was to help it grow  bigger, faster. “Plus both our logos end with punctuation!” he noted.

And just in case anyone might question his enthusiasm, he signed off with a big F-word.

“Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business.”

Talk about non-corporate speak. No promise to increase market value, or operate in shareholders’ best interests. Just a plea to Tumblr’s hip crowd that they won’t tank the cool vibe of the site, or move in top management to wreck the placwe

There’s a good reason behind the promise to be hands off. As of this writing, Tumblr boasts 108 million blogs, and 51 billion posts. Yahoo, on the other hand, has run through five CEOs in just a few short years, and is considered by many in the industry to have lost its way. The new boss, Marissa Mayer, has vowed to change the culture.

This seems like a pretty good step.

And what about David Karp, the high school dropout who founded Tumblr at 19? He could be worth more than $200 million after the Yahoo deal, but put that staggering sum aside.

What Karp did–and what Yahoo has struggled to do–is create a community. Bloggers love not just the multimedia aspects but the freedom of Tumblr. That’s why, in another savvy decision by Mayer, he’ll continue to run it after the takeover.

To adapt to this new reality, Yahoo recently announced a partnership with Twitter to allow tweets to directly appear on Yahoo’s homepage. As Emil Protalinski from The Next Web explains:

“Yahoo says it plans to include “relevant and personalized tweets” alongside its stories. If the partnership bears fruit, however, it’s fair to say Yahoo will look to expand it to its mobile apps as well as overseas.

Yahoo’s justification for the inclusion of tweets is fairly straightforward. The company sees the social network as a source for news, and since its homepage is still largely centered around delivering just that to its users, adding Twitter support is just one of many steps in its attempt to become relevant again.

Updates direct from politicians, celebrities, media outlets, and other publishers have become an important source of real-time news and information,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said in a statement. “140 characters can connect athletes with their fans, capture live chatter from the red carpet, and inspire global debate.”

Yahoo’s move reinforces the major role that Twitter is playing in the news business. As news websites revamp their homepages to resemble Twitter and breaking news increasingly is first reported via social media rather more traditional formats, Twitter has become the cutting edge of journalism. Yahoo’s content deal with Twitter shows that the tech company is ahead of the curve–or, at least, trying to get there.

Filmmaker Neal Edelstein has made a horror film called Haunting Melissa that has been released as an app for the iPad 2. As Lucas Shaw describes it for The Wrap, it brings the concept into the 21st century:

“Horror films are all about surrendering control, as the viewer yields to the filmmaker for every twist, turn and fright.

Haunting Melissa takes that concept one step further. Viewers can download the app for free from the app store, and the first chapter is free. To continue on, they will have to pay, but they will no idea when the next chapter is coming.

Edelstein — who refused to reveal any plot points — has set a schedule for each new episode to arrive minutes, hours or days after the viewer finishes the previous episode. “Everyone’s experience is going to be different unless they all watch it on day one,” he said.”

If this project is successful, it could lead to an intriguing new outlet for the movie industry. Haunting Melissa was a relatively low-budget project filmed for less than $1 million with a cast of unknown Canadian actors, but it could open the doors for bigger movies to follow the same path.

The iPad may not replace traditional movie theaters–they still don’t dispense popcorn–but it could prove yet another competitor for the distribution of feature films.

These days, that decision is usually announced by making it “Facebook official,” by simply changing the relationship status, or changing the last name along with it. Using these data points, and women’s birth dates, Facebook analyzed what percentage of women from different age groups are taking their husbands’ last names, hyphenating their names or keeping their maiden names. The results were announced on the Facebook Data Science page this week.

Taking a quick look at the results, it looks like, for younger women, hyphenated last names are going out of vogue. Women in their 20s and 30s were equally likely (about 65 percent) to change their names (and Facebook identities, naturally). But among women who didn’t just take their husband’s name, women in their 20s keep their maiden names at a higher percentage (25 percent) than women in their 30s. Women in their 30s changed their name or hyphenated their names at about an equal rate. Only 10 percent of women in their 20s decided to hyphenate.

As you might expect, older generations of female Facebook users were more likely to take a husband’s last name.

The Women Taking Names in Marriage study is just one of many intriguing projects that the folks at Facebook Data Science have put out. The others are worth a look too. This year, thus far, they’ve examined the geography of NFL fandom, they’ve analyzed which March Madness teams had a home court advantage and looked at support for gay marriage across the country.

Taking your husband’s name is a very personal decision–and thanks to Facebook, one that can be measured against age, and country. Now, if it could only predict divorce rates.

Ad Week’s Mike Shields has the story that Tumblr has been having negotiations about being acquired by Yahoo.

As Shields reports, a deal could make sense for both companies:

“Yahoo is in serious talks with Tumblr to acquire the social blogging site, according to multiple sources familiar with the talks. The deal is not done, but could reach as high as $1 billion, Adweek has learned. Allthingsd.com was first to report on the talks between the two companies.

Such an acquisition could be just what CEO Mayer has been looking for to turn around Yahoo’s momentum; Tumblr has the potential to excite the engineering/Silicon Valley community (even though it’s based in New York) while recapturing the imagination of advertisers, who have grown to view Yahoo as big but stale.

While its revenue is modest, Tumblr has positioned itself as one of the few players in the digital ad world that is well suited for brand advertising. And Tumblr is also the domain of the young, cool and creative crowd—not currently a Yahoo sweet spot.

From Tumblr’s point of view, the deal also would seem to make a lot of sense. The company has been looking to make a big exit to justify its huge valuation; the company had been rumored to be struggling to raise more funding until recently. “They are looking for a liquidity event,” said one source. And Yahoo big ad sales force could help Tumblr ramp up its nascent revenue, while exposing the social networking/blogging behemoth to a wealth of new customers.”

While the talks are still in an early stage, they do reveal the growing nature of consolidating on the Internet and in social media. The ecosystem post-Lehman Brothers increasingly consists of companies like Tumblr that spring up and then let themselves be bought out by more established giants like Google (which took over YouTube) or Facebook (which acquired Instagram).

Mark Zuckerberg may have scorned the idea of selling Facebook, believing that a billion dollars is cooler than a million dollars, but that was ten years ago. In this economy and with a more mature business landscape for social media, entrepreneurs have to take what they can get.

In a fascinating study of both Facebook and freedom, Amnesty International New Zealand launched “Trial by Facebook,” which examines your profile, scours your timeline and “interrogates” yourfriends to find out what you’d be punished for posting, all around the world. The app came out several months ago, but it’s been making waves online this week.

Using my own Facebook page as a guinea pig, I found myself convicted 161 times, in 73 countries, for 13 crimes. Literally dodging a bullet, the
contents of my profiles weren’t tawdry enough to get me beheaded or shot dead, but I would be killed by extremists 22 times, sexually assaulted 16 times, imprisoned 58 times and beaten 73 times–and that’s just the beginning of the terror.

The application connects certain Facebook posts with real-life laws and punishments. A trip to Townhouse Tavern in D.C.’s Dupont Circle neighborhood somehow leads to me–as a woman–being beaten in Nigeria. Attending the Ball on the Mall and socializing with an unrelated male gets me tortured in Saudi Arabia, says the app.

But Trial By Facebook isn’t perfect and some of my posts were definitely misconstrued. A trip to Union Market in Washington was
translated into my being a union member, which means I’d be “killed by extremists” in Guatemala.  Liking the band Casino Bulldogs got me in trouble for gambling in Indonesia, with a punishment of lashing.

That said, it’s still striking to recognize how many around the world don’t share the liberties we have here in America–and the often severe punishments doled out to those who are doing what we might consider mundane activities, like going out with friends. As long as the bigger issues don’t get trivialized because of the app’s shareable online format, it’s definitely worth a look and some deep thought.

“Google Plus has some of the most robust posting & sharing capabilities of any social network. From rich snippets to photo editing to individual circles, there are so many features that can make your post stand out from the pack. Here are some highlights from a cheat sheet that I built to get the most out of Google Plus posts.”

And once you figure out all of those features, Google Plus can even be your photo editor:

“If the photos don’t look quite right,” Yahoo News reports, “Google is promising to enhance them, taking over a job that typically requires people to buy and master special photo editing software such as Adobe System Inc.’s Photoshop, Apple’s iPhoto or Google’s Picasa. Computer-controlled editing tools will automatically remove red eyes, soften skin tones, sharpen colors and adjust contrast. Google offers something similar through an “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Picasa.”

The Saudis may be on to something. They’re calling anyone who tweets “Fools” and “Clowns.” They lose me when they condemn users to eternal damnation:

“The head of Saudi Arabia’s religious police has warned citizens against using Twitter, which is rising in popularity among Saudis,” the BBC reports. “Sheikh Abdul Latif Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh said anyone using social media sites — and especially Twitter — ‘has lost this world and his afterlife.’”

As Mashable noted this week, the job-networking site has altered the language of its user agreement to expressly prohibit people from promoting escort services or prostitution on its pages.

The new clause, which advises that users “don’t undertake the following,” is pretty unambiguous. It says people shouldn’t “upload, post, email, InMail, transit or otherwise make availability or initiate any content that: Even if it is legal where you are located, create profiles or provide content that promotes escort services or prostitution.”

The new wording isn’t exactly a change in policy, but may be necessary for PR reasons as LinkedIn expands its brand around the world.

As Seth Fiegerman reports:”A LinkedIn rep confirmed to Mashable that the wording is new, but noted that the social network has always prohibited users from ‘unlawful’ activities.

“The reason for the new wording, according to the rep, is that there are some countries in which LinkedIn operates, where prostitution is actually legal.” That means you, Nevada.

The owners of Amy’s Baking Co. suffered what can only be described as an online meltdown after being pummeled on social media sites. And we’re normally sympathetic to anyone who gets beaten up by the mob.

But Amy and Samy Bouglazo poured kerosene on the digital fire.

The backstory: The owners of the Arizona shop were featured on Gordon Ramsey’s “Kitchen Nightmares,” but were booted for being too difficult to work with.

So as the carping grew, they fought back on their Facebook page: “We will not bend to the will of these haters and sinners.”

That was mild compared to what followed. BuzzFeed has helpfully compiled the escalating Facebook fracas:
“I AM NOT STUPID ALL OF YOU ARE. YOU JUST DO NOT KNOW GOOD FOOD.”

Uh-oh. Hitting the all-caps key is the equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded bakery.

“WE DO NOT NEED THIS YOU STUPID PEOPLE…THE YELPERS, AND NOW THE REDDITS, NEED TO BACK OFF. YOURE NOT RIGHT JUST BECAUSE OF SOME TV SHOW.”

Grammar was thrown overboard in favor of physical threats.

“To all of the Yelpers and Reddits: bring it on. you are just pussies. come to Arizona. you are weaker than my wife, and weaker than me. come to my business. say it to my face. man to man. my wife is a jewel in the desert. you are just trash.”

Okay, we’re sure that felt good. But denouncing your critics is probably not the best business strategy. Nor is threatening to punch out your critics.

Amy’s posted a ‘we have been hacked’ message, but it’s fallen on deaf ears. Google Trends put them in the top five for the day.

Amy’s Baking Co. is now famous, but not for the food. Screaming at your detractors is icing on the cake for those of us who love a good scrap. But who wants to place an order with these cursing cookie-makers?