Twitter announced a new video advertising program today called Twitter Amplify that is designed to synchronize promotions on TV with promotions via tweets.

The new TV ad-targeting product seems kind of creepy, since it's attempting to figure out who's watching particular TV shows in real time so advertisers can reach those Twitter users in both places--on TV and whatever screen they're using to tweet.

But the new TV-Twitter synch-up an interesting twist on cross-media advertising, for sure.

More about how Twitter Amplify works.

The teenage love affair with Facebook may be over -- or maybe it was all a myth to begin with, judging by new research from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.

Getty Images/Ian McKinnell

A report released this week titled "Teens, Social Media, and Privacy" suggests that teenagers tolerate Facebook as an annoying social necessity. Pew's research team found that while an overwhelming majority (77 percent) of American teens still use Facebook, they see it as a hassle because it has so many adults, so much trivial information and a surplus of "drama."

The report is full of other interesting factoids about teenage social media habits. Their use of Twitter, for example, is up sharply from the last survey, and teenagers seem very comfortable adjusting their privacy settings nowadays.

View a summary of the Pew report on teenagers and social networking.

Yahoo made it official today: It is buying micro-blogging service Tumblr for an eye-opening price of $1.1 billion. (What is Tumblr?) Some Tumblr users already are threatening to leave, and opinions among business analysts and media commentators are divided as to whether it's worth the big sticker price:

• John Saroff writes for Fortune that it's a $1.1 billion mistake.
• Sam Gustin, writing for Time, notes that Yahoo doesn't have a great track record with its previous acquisitions.
• Nick Bilton and Nicole Perlroth write for The New York Times Bits that Tumblr users are already griping and complaining in their blogs, and one even set up a guide to leaving Tumblr.
• Lauren Indvik writes for Mashable that Yahoo may bring more ads to Tumblr, increasing its money-making potential.
• Dan Gillmor wonders in the Guardian whether WordPress could be the next Tumblr, noting that WordPress offers great value because it's open-source and not proprietary like Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram and similar commercial networks.

Related Reading: How to Use Tumblr

Google made a splash in social medialand last week with a string of announcements at its annual I/O developer conference. A few highlights:

Hangouts messaging screen

1) Google Hangouts -- Google announced plans to merge its disparate messaging and chat services into a single new one called Google Hangouts. The new messenger works across multiple mobile platforms, not just Google's own Android operating system. It is designed to replace several of the company's existing communication services, including Google Talk, GChat and Google+ Messenger. To start, Hangouts is available for Apple's iOS devices as well as Google's Android, the Chrome Web browser and Gmail. More about Google Hangouts.

2) Google+ Redesign -- The Internet search giant redesigned and added more than 40 features to Google+, its social networking service. Enhancements include automatic generation of hashtags (based on the content of a post) and automatic improvements to photos, including enhanced lighting, colors and the ability to group related images together. Dubbed "auto-awesome," the photo-enhancing tool also can combine images to automatically generate animated GIFs. How nifty is that?

3) Google Music All Access -- Grabbing the spotlight was a premium streaming music subscription service that debuted at the conference called Google Play Music All Access. It costs $9.99 a month and provides personalized streaming radio that includes millions of songs, curated playlists, unlimited listening and better music browsing tools than those available from Google's existing free music service.