Evan Williams wrote a really good piece on Medium this week about the value of Twitter versus the value of Instagram, and in a wider sense, the difficulty or even impossibility of measuring the value of these sites, or comparing one to another.

It was bad enough that companies like Facebook and Google relentlessly mine your information and sell it to advertisers. But now third-party startups are getting into the mix. Thanks to unprecedented access to photos uploaded to apps like Instagram, these third-parties are scanning and storing people's photos on behalf of major advertisers.

Walmart, a ruthless retailer known for abusing employees and pulverizing local businesses, just installed Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom onto its board of directors. And why the hell not? Walmart is desperate for some Silicon Valley magic to rub off on its burdened brand.

Soylent, the semen-esque food substitute financed by venture capitalists, is nothing if not resilient. It can keep you sated for hours with a full, gaseous feeling. It can even withstand reports of rats in its kitchen and still show up in The New Yorker. But slurping the fun out of life's most basic pleasure requires some social media marketing.

Instagram is experimenting with using Facebook Places for location rather than Foursquare. This is bad for Foursquare's chance to make money by being the "location layer" for the internet, although Pinterest, Vine, and Flickr use Foursquare for free. It's bad for Instagram users because Facebook Places blows.

For more than five months, between August 22, 2013 and February 4, 2014, your private Instagram photos were vulnerable to hackers, according to the security researcher who let Facebook know.

Last July describing the cultural impact of Black Twitter, Buzzfeed's Shani O. Hilton wrote, "It's diffuse, powerful, and all around you." That's the kind of active, influential user base that startups dream of. But we've barely heard a peep about it from Twitter. Now that it needs ad revenue, that's changing.

Tech investors said Viddy, an Instagram clone with video, was worth $370 million. The tech press parroted the "Instagram for video" line until their lips chapped, assuming it was true—since when is app hype wrong? Turns out it was! The startup just sold itself for an itty bitty percentage of that figure, because no one used it.

Rich Kids of Instagram is being turned into a novel. Coming to an Urban Outfitters discount table near you next summer.

Mark Zuckerberg is a success story, having gone from Hollywood sociopath and interview nightmare to mere super-dork. He's awkward, but much of the alienating superweirdness has been coached away. But Instagram honcho Kevin Systrom is still one bizarre, robotic dude.

That Darth Vader selfie is just the beginning of a partnership between Facebook and Disney "to promote Instagram without the disliked sponsored ads." Trust no one.

Randi Zuckerberg's holiday over-shares haven't always ended up in her favor. But it's still awfully presumptuous to demand that everybody else "Stop Sharing on Thanksgiving." Like so much of her near constant social media activity, this humble suggestion ends up being a plug for her book:

It looks like gossip is traveling at Hyperloop speed over Snapchat's hubris in turning down $3 billion in cash from Facebook. Om Malik just tweeted the latest: After Facebook, "Google offered $4B but @evanspiegel said no! Nice way to drive up valuation." Valleywag heard the same.

Mobli, a shameless Instagram ripoff, was just supposed to be another hobby for bored famous people. With inexplicable investors like Serena Williams, Tobey Maguire, Lance Armstrong, and Leo DiCaprio, the app was one more harmless vanity project among many. But then the second richest man in the world came along.

Sure, Lululemon has been making video ads on Instagram since day one, but you'll only see those if you choose to follow Lululemon—and why would you do that? Now the choice is going away: Instagram is officially putting ads in your face whether you like it or not:

I don't have any problem with Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt's online ogling if his wife doesn't have a problem with it. Do you. But someone must've taken issue, because his Instagram account, bikini babe follower list and all, is deleted. Sort of.

If there's one thing you should know about Google's Director of Open Marriage Engineering, Eric Schmidt, it's that he loves to fuck. He's also following a select, interesting assortment of people on Instagram, and by interesting I mean a lot of models and women in swimwear.

Matt Sanchez works as a personal trainer at San Francisco's World Gym. Matt Sanchez also got kicked off Instagram. Luckily, Matt Sanchez trains Kevin Rose—Digg founder and paper millions poster boy—and it was easy to call in a favor to have the whole thing wiped away.

What's your poison, Valleywag asked a Silicon Valley startup founder last night, Instagram's new Cinema feature or Vine? "Instagram for sure," he shot back. "Easier network effect. Faster gratification. Polished product and more expressive. Twitter has always had this problem with every product."

The ascendance of video over photo won't mean fewer gratuitous selfies. Now, they just come with a soundtrack. In the case of TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis: some heart-breaking Daft Punk.