The short: Less than a week after his State of the Union address, which was the most interactive speech ever made by a US president with over 760,000 live tweets, Obama will meet the pressing questions of the nation in a Google+ Hangout. Users can submit either video or text questions to the White House YouTube Channel, and can also elect the ones that the Commander in Chief will answer during his interview on January 30th. Several users with top-voted questions will also be invited to participate in what can be thought as FDR’s famed fireside chat recast for the 21st century.

Why it matters: With all due respect to those lovable Muppets, this will be far and away the biggest endorsement of Google’s social network and its hangout functionality. And, following the President’s foray into Instagram earlier this month, this high-profile Hangout On Air is another example of his strategic, ongoing use of social media to converse with his audience with transparency (to the degree possible) and, more importantly, activate them by providing what they want--a voice that’s heard, a seat by the “fireside” rather than a one-way broadcast. This strategy, of course, translates to brands: whether you call them constituents or customers, when people feel like they are participating and actively shaping something, loyalty is forged.

The short: Google was greeted by a major public outcry when it recently announced a change in its privacy policy. The new “master policy,” which takes effect on March 1, will act as the main governing document for all Google products across the board, from search engine to social network to Android activity.

Why it matters: While many users are afraid of the policy’s implications, fearing the fact that the search giant will be amassing even more of their personal information, Google believes this change will only increase the efficiency and effectiveness of its products. By combining information gathered on users from all of its services, Google will also be able to help guide advertisers so that they can better direct their targeted ads through a more robust understanding of their users’ interests, habits and happenings.

The short: With the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight, the founder of failed startup Plancast offered many pearls of wisdom about how to create the best social products and how to create experiences that compel users to share. He explained how all people are wired to share snippets of themselves, both to cast their lives in a favorable light and to create opportunities to receive validation from peers.

Why it matters: As young a field as social media is, it has been around long enough that there is now a significant body of knowledge that explains how to masterfully think about the social experiences we are creating for our users and customers. With an understanding of why people share, the act of consistently making engaging content and shareable experiences can be transformed from a mystery to a science. And with recent studies demonstrating that social sharing drives more engagement than paid ad placement, brands have every reason to leverage earned media in their marketing and advertising campaigns.

The short: Pinterest, the visual bookmarking platform launched in 2008, has identified the eight brands that demonstrate the site’s best practices: Whole Foods, Martha Stewart, Better Homes and Gardens, Real Simple, West Elm, Bergdorf Goodman, Today and Travel Channel. The Pinterest boards of these brands mix the informational and aspirational by incorporating recipes, items and tips, as well as the behind-the-scenes tastes of their style-makers.

Why it matters: Pinterest is still in its invite-only phase, but Experian Hitwise pegged the site’s traffic in December at 11 million visits per week, almost 40 times the amount from six months before. Given the site’s growing popularity, especially among women ages 25 to 44, it’s no wonder that fashion, food and lifestyle brands have jumped on board. There’s still a wait-list for new brands to create accounts, but with numbers this promising, you can bet that every savvy brand with strong, sharable and visual content will have a Pinterest presence soon.

The short: Google rolled out its social, Google+ optimized search this week. The company’s three new features aim to produce results that better reflect a user’s relationships, interests and needs: Personal Results, which lets users find Google+ content; Profiles in Search, which provides users with the ability to instantly connect with people they want to follow; and People and Pages, which highlights notable people and pages surrounding a topic. “This isn’t the entire Internet, it’s your entire Internet,” said Google’s web search product management director, Jack Menzel, about the biggest change to the search engine in a decade.

Why it matters: Google’s decision to integrate Google+ into its most-used product has long been expected, and demonstrates how integral the social platform is to the company’s plan to deliver seamless, highly personalized user experiences. Similar to the social search options that Facebook added to Bing over a year ago, the new features will only increase in value and relevance as both brands and users create more content (and SEO data) on Google+. The release also hints at the possibility of highly targeted, data-driven ads as well as promoted Google+ accounts--challenging Facebook’s current dominance in social advertising.

The short: Following Twitter’s release of Sponsored Tweets, Facebook has created a new type of paid advertising: the Featured Story. Not to be confused with Facebook’s existing Sponsored Stories, which are displayed in the right margin of the screen and are often ignored, Featured Stories will be displayed in-line with other news stories in a user’s News Feed. Though this will certainly make ads more visible, it’s debatable whether users will get enraged about this encroachment of their social space, which prior to now, has been exclusively comprised of conversations with their friends.

Why it matters: The social ads space is getting increasingly competitive, and all of the largest players are making increasingly bold moves as they attempt to out perform one another. Clearly Facebook’s goal is to improve upon its below average advertising click-through-rate (about half the industry standard at 0.05%), but more so than ever, Facebook is risking the trust of its users. As suggested by HubSpot, your brand may want to wait until the dust has settled before buying any Featured Stories paid media.

The short: Lewis DVorkin, Chief Product Officer of Forbes Media, shares the story behind a recent viral success on the company's blog. He explains that Forbes' new content strategy - hiring more content creators, producing more text-heavy content, and cutting back on link-bait photo galleries - has paid off with lasting traffic growth and greater sharing all across the social web. And Forbes accomplished this without bowing to the page view. What’s the post that did so well? A text-only article about the fall of Best Buy spanning five pages that included the author's personal experiences at the store, market statistics, and a lot of competitive analysis all rolled into one.

Why it matters: People are reading again. More likely, they never stopped, but too many brands and media sites weren't giving them information good enough to consider or want to share. Content drives activity, but good content drives more activity. Photo galleries aren't useless, but they'll give you little else beyond a page view. The more consumers have to read, the more they're willing to share, comment, and connect with a brand. Consider the success of sites like Mashable, which posts nonstop, knowing that the information and easy-to-digest format of the posts make it perfect for sharing. Page views still have cachet, and photo galleries are a quick-and-dirty way to drive them, but authentic, informative copy is what will really impact social sharing and long-term traffic gains.