Ditching the suit for a swimsuit. (Photo: Flickr.com/gpaumier)

Hawaii Zuck-O Look who ditched the hoodie (but kept the Adidas sandals). Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was recently spotted indulging in a little Hawaiin R&R with wifey Priscilla Chan. US Weekly reports the pair “looked excited to be spending quality time together,” which makes sense since it's pretty easy to be happy when you’ve escaped the maw of Silicon Valley. The Zucks also “chowed down” on something called “beachside burgers” at a “picnic table.” Stars: they're just like us (but rich).

Instaparty Former Tumblr engineer and prolific blogginghead Marco Arment officially sold his company, read-it-later app Instapaper, to NYC-based Betaworks yesterday. Though he will stay on indefinitely as an advisor, Mr. Arment appeared to be celebrating the occasion by tweeting uncharacteristically adorable things about his followers:

https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/327636666787454976

Of course, this aroused the wry suspicion of Mr. Arment's followers:

https://twitter.com/meaghano/status/327637122309828608

Mr. Arment, as it turns out, appeared to be rightfully celebrating his Betaworks deal with a delicious cold beverage. "I can’t feel my face much anymore," he admitted. "I’ve had one beer. Granted, it’s about 20% ABV. It’s a hell of a beer." Lightweight!

So maj It's become somewhat of a celebrity rite of passage to participate in the ever-meta act of snapping a photo of yourself with Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom, then plastering it onto--that's right--your Instagram profile. Stylist, fashion designer and Bravolebrity Rachel Zoe is the latest victim of this trend, snapping the below photo of her and Mr. Systrom. Sorry, Rach, but Kev is much better at smizing.

(Photo: Instagram)

Cult of Steve Erin Caton, a former project manager at Apple, took to Medium today to lament the growing number of douchey startup CEOs, who--in their attempt to emulate Steve Jobs--end up growing ever-douchier and unwilling to listen to peer feedback. To illustrate her story, she shares two anecdotes of her experience with Mr. Jobs: one, in which he cut in front of her in line at the Apple cafeteria (rude!), and another in which he blamed the Mobile Me team for a shoddy launch.

She writes:

Once it was up, we (at least a hundred of us) got called into a meeting with Steve Jobs. We all walked over to the building like we were headed to the guillotine. He stood in front of us and yelled at us, told us that we should be mad at each other, said we could have done a staggered launch and complained that we didn’t even try to do all the things that we (those on the ground floor of production that actuallymake the fucking products of the world) had been begging to do. It was the world’s best de-motivational speech.

We look forward to Ashton Kutcher's dramatic reading of this Medium post.

Must love Martha Poor Martha Stewart. You could give her a bag of cotton balls, used gum and a Razr phone and she’d craft the most beautiful centerpiece perfect for any Bat Mitzvah. But the one thing she can’t master is the art of filling out her Match.com profile, because it’s too damn hard. “It was, like, impossible,” the 71-year-old told Today bully Matt Lauer. You don’t have to use your words on Tinder, Martha.

https://twitter.com/todayshow/status/327751873564114944

Wows all the way down Storied VC Marc Andreessen took a break from annotating hip hop lyrics this week to gush about the potential transformative nature of Google Glass at the she++ Conference, when he jokingly claimed to already be beta testing Google Contact Lenses. Mr. Andreessen also took time to preach on the life-changing wonders of Google Glass, with a twinge of Valley girl thrown in. “You put it on and you’re like ‘Oh my God, I have the entire internet in my vision. Where have you been all my life?’” Andreessen said.

Andreessen and his firm are known for showing Glass some lovin', having already invested heavily in startups focused on building apps for Google Glass. But Mr. Andreessen is probably so gung-ho about Glass because he's hoping they'll help him finally solve the mystery of Silicon Valley Cougar Night at the Rosewood Hotel.

Get Dorsey Man of few emotions Jack Dorsey showed a flicker of excitement this week. No, he didn’t discover a new train yard to stare at--rather, he’s mildly excited about the new Daft Punk album. He attached a picture of the Get Lucky song art to prove to us that he knows how to take a screenshot or something. Maybe this was all ploy to subtweet us for not giving a shit about Twitter #Music.

https://twitter.com/jack/status/327796327931076609

REMAIN CALM.

When Instagram released its new terms of service back in December, users flipped their shit so hard that many of them swore they were giving up the service entirely. But anyone actually live up those promises? The New York Post said so. Based on stats from AppData, which only counts accounts linked to Facebook, the paper reported that daily active users had dropped from 16.4 million to 12.4 million as of December 29.

But those numbers got so much coverage that Instagram, which rarely pulls up the curtain, felt compelled to counter claims it’s hemorrhaging users. AllThingsD reports the company has added a number to the list of stats on its press page: 90 million monthly active users. Boo-yah?

The company also told the site that in fact users had jumped 10 percent from December to January and, for good measure, here's Kevin Systrom in full CEO salesman mode:

“Instagram continues to see very strong growth around the world,” Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom told AllThingsD. “With many of the product and internationalization improvements we’ve made, we’ve been excited to see these efforts resonate with users globally.”

Omitted but implicit: "All is well! ALL IS WELL." Don't worry, everyone still wants to share selfies and brunch pics and vacation snaps, so keep posting away--you won't end up that last loser posting away on a deserted social network.

again: How much is a user who only visits a service once a month really worth? Maybe AppData’s conclusion was B.S., but as ATD points outs out, it's hard to evaluate the health of the service without some daily stats.

Concerns about the social media equivalent of a bank run might be well-founded. Has there ever been a group of humans as ready to flee en masse like a flock of startled starlings as social network users? One day you're inspiring universally relatable slang like "Myspace angles," the next you're a synonym for Internet ghost town.

Brb, Snapchatting some bird pics.

"My bad." (LeWeb.)

All hell broke loose earlier this week when Instagram, which was acquired by Facebook earlier this year for $1 billion, said it would affect policy changes next month that many interpreted to mean the company could license users photos to advertisers without permission or compensation.

When Instagram users took to social media to complain about the change, and share strategies for tearing down existing accounts and selecting alternative services, Mr. Systrom authored a post on the Instragram blog to let users know the company wasn't deaf to their concerns.

When that note failed to allay concerns, the company reverted to its old terms of service. What's more, Mr. Systrom promises that he won't put us through anything like this ever again:

Going forward, rather than obtain permission from you to introduce possible advertising products we have not yet developed, we are going to take the time to complete our plans, and then come back to our users and explain how we would like for our advertising business to work.

Which is great, for now. If only we could have a week of our life back.

SO unfair to poor Beast, who is just doing his doggie best to herd that animal.

Mark Zuckerberg's adorable moppet of a puppy is all grown up and herding sheep these days, it seems. But even his charming resemblance to a dirty mop can't keep him safe from the Instagram backlash.

Three days ago, Facebook founder posted an Instagram image of his canine companion chasing a barnyard animal. The first comments were limited to Beast's cuteness. But when TOSgate erupted, the photo of the magnificently filthy monster was flooded with comments from infuriated Instagram users, venting their rage at the man they consider directly responsible for Instagram's new terms of service.

What is Kevin Systrom, chopped liver?

Lots of users went with straightforward whines like "Ig is ruined" and "Fuck you for ruining instagram" and our personal favorite: "Fuck you Mark Zuckerberg just fuck you thats why."

But others really went out of their way to emote all over Zuck's snapshot. Wrote @kankawaii:

This is pathetic. You can't own someone else's art. I didn't sign my rights over. Ever since you bought instagram it's gone down hill FAST.

Here's a real gem of hyperbole from @christi_anne: "Fuck you, you're going to ruin the internet age you bastard."

Others, like @lisab82, opted for outright histrionics:

The photos posted in my feed are more than quick snapshots from my iPhone. They're my life. Each represents a special memory or a personal emotion. Sharing these pieces of myself is my choice, and following others is my privilege.

It breaks my heart to scroll through my feed and learn of every artist and friend leaving @instagram. Please reconsider exploiting those to whom you have meant so much.

But there's one comment in particular, from an @elliaisaacs, that exposes every enraged response as a bunch of sound and fury, signifying nada: "Just read you might be pushing video ads to fb as well I swear to god if that happens I'm fucking going back to myspace."

Sure you are, pal. Sure you are.

Like a spy drone, Kevin Systrom is listening. (Photo: Scaleogy)

Instagram's updated terms of service unleashed a maelstrom of confusion from users who believed that the new terms would allow Instagram to sell their photos without compensation. Celebrities even began quitting over it! Unwilling to lose their influential users, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom took to the company blog today to clarify just what exactly the new TOS says.

However, his calming words didn't come with a new Terms of Service, so it’s difficult to tell what exactly that means for users. With that in mind, let’s parse what we do know:

Instagram is not planning to sell your photos. "It is not our intention to sell your photos," reads the post. Instead, Instagram clarifies that they'd like to provide innovative advertising that adds to the Instagram experience. The company gives the example of a business paying for a promoted account, and being able to showcase which of your friends follows that account, similar to Twitter's "Who to Follow" feature. Of course, “It is not our intention to sell your photos” is more about what Instagram hopes will happen. Roads to monetization are often paved with good intentions.

Your photos will not be appearing in an advertisement any time soon. "The language we proposed also raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement," reads the post. "We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we’re going to remove the language that raised the question." Instead, the company says it wants to avoid serving ugly ol' banner ads. However, it does not say specifically which clauses it will be removing from the TOS to clarify this advertising confusion.

You still own your photos. "Instagram users own their content and Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos," the post says outright. Mr. Systrom also gave nod to the professional photographers, like suidical Clayton Cubitt and Mark Zuckerberg's wedding photographer, who worried about ownership of their images. "We respect that there are creative artists and hobbyists alike that pour their heart into creating beautiful photos, and we respect that your photos are your photos. Period," he writes.

In addition to providing some clarification, Mr. Systrom tried to reframe the backlash as a “We TOTALLY meant for this to happen!” moment, writing that the reason the company decided to release the changes 30 days from now and not immediately is so that they could process user feedback and concerns. Sure thing, Kev.

Despite this clarification, some selfie queen power users still seem to be confused.

(Wikipedia.)

The National Rifle Association unpublished its Facebook page in the aftermath of the tragic shootings in Newtown, Conn. [TechCrunch]

Did Instragram CEO Kevin Systrom perjure himself when he testified under oath that his company hadn't received any other acquisition offers at the time it sold to Facebook for $1 billion? Had there not been a verbal agreement on a deal with Twitter weeks earlier? [NYT]

Apps like Timehop, Rewind.me, excavate social media history, further diminish the need to remember anything. [NYT]

Or you can just download your old tweets directly from the source. [The Next Web]

Everybody's favorite futurist is going to work on "machine learning and language processing" at Google. [Ray Kurzweil]

Kev has new friends now. (Photo: Instagram/AdrianGrenier)

Are your tweeted-out Instagram pictures of Christmas lights looking a little busted? Sorry to rain on your lifecasting parade, but that's not some temporary glitch. AllThingsD reports that Instagram has disabled the "cards" that make your snapshots show up all pretty in your Twitter feed, so they're likely to show up cropped or otherwise effed.

Hey, now that the photo sharing company has snazzy online profiles, what do they even need with Twitter?

AllThingsD translates the maneuvering for everyone watching at home:

In effect, it’s Instagram giving Twitter the middle finger, a clear sign of the photo-sharing service making plain that it no longer wants Twitter to ride on the successful coattails of the millions of photos Instagram hosts on its service every single day.

This is a pretty sad state of affairs, considering how cozy the companies once were. And as ATD notes, it also explains the flurry of Twitter pics--with fancy new filters!--recently tweeted out by Twitter founder and bereft former Instagram investor Jack Dorsey. (One Betabeat reporter, who has Mr. Dorsey's tweets forwarded via SMS, was wondering about that.) Go ahead, twist the knife, DJ Systromatic!

“We want to direct users to where the content lives originally,” Instagram chief Kevin Systrom said at the LeWeb conference on Wednesday in Paris. “Where do you go to interact with [an Instagram] image? We want that to be instagram.com because that’s a better user experience.”

We're pretty sure that if you suggest to Mr. Dorsey that your user experience is somehow better than his, he literally hulks out.

This past Saturday, Kevin Systrom spun a set at Rain nightclub at the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas, which was covered by TMZ. Before you insert an eyeroll emoji, please refer to this curtain-opener in Vegas Seven recounting Mr. Systrom's teenage years selling vinyl records to Paul Oakenfold and Paul van Dyk.

AllThingsD's Mike Isaac insists, "I spoke to a few people who are attending and they tell me that not only is it a fun Vegas road trip, but that Systrom is a legitimately talented DJ," expressing some remorse about not attending.

He would have run into plenty of fellow journalists, including TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis and reporter Josh Constine, who covers Instagram owner Facebook for the site and recently helped squash rumors of a privacy leak. ABC News' Maya Baratz and the Wall Street Journal's Evelyn Rusli, who just ended an impressive run at Dealbook, also showed up. As did CNET columnist Ben Parr, fresh off starring in a Silicon Valley "Gangnam Style" parody video. See now, the rooftop pool at the Palms' Hugh Hefner Sky Villa, where guests congregated, would have been perfect for emulating Psy's satire of excess.

In case this inspires a bout of FOMO, Loïc Le Meur, founder and CEO of Le Web, posted an ear-bleeding video of the smoke machine-fueled festivities on his Path account. Seems like the kind of night that looks better on Instagram than it did in person.

According to AllThingsD, Mr. Systrom "sent out Facebook invitations to a few hundred techies in the Bay Area, and at least 100 of them have RSVP’d an emphatic 'yes' to join him in Vegas." Among the emphatic? "Entourage" star turned Churchkey Can founder  and Disrupt presenter Adrian Grenier, "which answers the question, 'What's that guy been up to?' quipped TMZ. Once TMZ starts reading TechCrunch, then we can call the celebrification of startups complete.

Ms. Kunst

Minority Report is a guest column by Sarah Kunst, who does business development and product at fashion app Kaleidoscope. She’s a black, non-engineer female in tech, but plans to IPO anyway.

Few founder origin stories capture the nerd mind like "Hacker as dropout." From Bill Gates at Microsoft to Box's Adam Levie, and of course a little-known CEO named Zuck, the allure of leaving the dorm room behind to rake in billions seems irresistible.

Recently, this middle finger to the establishment of higher education has been codified by billionaire rabble rouser Peter Thiel. This past Sunday, for the second time in three months, the New York Times found cause for a close examination of the virtues of Mr. Thiel's 20 under 20 Fellowship as a way for exceptional teenagers to pass college and collect $100,000 to spend on changing the world. Granted, participants aren't your typical undeclared freshmen at State College U. Rather, they've already exhibited Mensa-level intelligence, with a work ethic to match.

What doesn't coordinate quite as well? Their social lives. A recent night saw several Thiel fellows--all under legal drinking age--at a San Francisco house party described by one attendee as "tech hippies doing drugs and sitting in a cuddle pile."

It was an unsettling sight for guests surprised by the Summer of Love manifesting itself in 2012, but for the babes in the Redwoods it seemed disturbing on another level. A Thiel fellow who dropped out of an Ivy League college at age 17 spent most of her brief time at the party hugging her purse and asking for clarification about what, exactly, a whippet was.

Perhaps most telling, even those who've won the GED lottery don't believe it's a one-size-fits-all solution. In a recent interview, Mr. Levie, the Box CEO who dropped out of USC, told Business Insider, "Unfortunately this is going to produce a lot of people that are college drop outs that don't actually have the idea that's taking off that they can go spend time on. It's not the right sequence." Leaving school to become a billionaire seems logical, ending up sans degree or hockey stick company while former classmates field offers from hot tech, banking and graduate programs sounds less practical.

Tipping our hat to Malcolm Gladwell, we can acknowledge that most truly great engineers were coding long before their first CS course in college. But many other skills integral to growing a company are learned in and out of the classroom in ways the "real world" can't always match. Morgan Missen, who attended my alma mater Michigan State University (as did Texts From Last Night founder Lauren Leto), credits her illustrious recruiting career, which has included stints at Google, Twitter and Foursquare, to her collegiate role as recruitment chair of the Sigma Kappa sorority. "It was highly strategic and strictly choreographed. I realized then how the people you pick affect the success of every organization," Ms. Missen told an interview earlier this year.

Visiting Google, Facebook, or even Conde Nast--the similarities between work campus and college campus can't be overlooked: Cafeteria as social minefield, new recruits wearing special clothing to signal their n00b status, recreational sports leagues and gossip running amok. Assuming these cultures are so prevalent because employees enjoy them, how do people whose last experience in a classroom involved a hall monitor create a corporate culture that approximates the light oversight and high expectations of a college campus?

UPenn has become a bastion for fraternity men turned successful startup founders. Bonobos got their start there out of Andy Dunn's trunk. Adam Rich and Ben Lerer's bromance started on campus and turned into Thrillist. Cy Massoumi went there before a banking career that lead to Zocdoc. Indeed, investor about town David Tisch is one of the many former UPenn frat boys redefining Silicon Alley.

Harvard Business School has a similar pedigree among ladies. Alexa Von Tobel from Learnvest, Amy Jain and Daniella Yacobovsky of Baublebar, Go Try It On's Marissa Evans and Birchbox's Katia Beauchamp all overlapped. Birchbox is even paying it forward with an informal co-working space for HBS students in their cavernous Murray Hill offices. The shared experiences and ups and downs of these confederacies give the alums shoulders to cry on and investor referrals that just don't come from coding alone in your parents' basement.

Skipping the formative years of college might give kids an accolade advantage, but at what cost to their social lives and networks? Are they really better off on their own with enough money to pay the bills for a couple years than they would be in R&D labs at schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT and University of Michigan? Those six schools, which boasted a combined endowment of $102 billion in 2011, supply brilliant minds with world class facilities and faculty, flexibility to pursue research and degrees of their choosing. As Harvard proved with Facebook, they also will do little to interfere with profits or process should a runaway success emerge out of the dining halls and dorm rooms. Additionally, students have an alumni network, clean and affordable housing, ready access to regular meals and a safe place to spend the years between having a curfew and polishing up your public speaking for an IPO road show.

Where would Instagram be without the contacts Kevin Systrom forged at the Stanford frat Sigma Nu, where he first met Mark Zuckerberg and Adam D'Angelo? Or even Facebook without the early adopters on college campuses who were ready to sign up and tell their friends as soon as the social network arrived. Without an early job serving as campus marketing manager for Apple and working for valley mainstays like Path's Dave Morin would my personal and professional interest in technology have blossomed? Outliers always have and will forge their own paths in education and life, but for many, the network effects of college are worth checking in to.

Annnd WHAT, mothafuckas? (Photo: About.me)

Let the games begin, my friends. Due to API restrictions, Twitter is no longer allowing Instagram app users to use the “Find Your Friends” feature to connect with their friends on Twitter. But Instagram doesn’t seem too bogged down by the news--possibly because it's busy celebrating reaching 80 million users today.

The “Find Your Friends” feature is still available on other apps, including The Fancy and Foursquare. However, The Fancy only boast around one million users and Foursquare around 10 million, a fraction of the milestone Instagram reached today.

Given Instagram’s ever-expanding user base, Twitter may be unable to withstand the data pull from the “Find Your Friends” feature. Or, as TechCrunch speculates, it could be a conniving attack on Facebook’s latest pet. With Zuck set to acquire Instagram for $1 billion, Twitter may be pulling a few tricks against its competitors. (Dick Costolo's probably cackling in his office right now.)

But this whole mafia-esque scenario does get a little incestuous – Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey (now CEO of Square) is also an investor in Instagram. Would he really be willing to kill his baby in the battle for social media dominance? Maybe so, if they can't keep his site running without any bugs.

Meanwhile, Instagram seems content to toast over reaching its 80 million users and four billion photos shared benchmark, just three months after releasing its Android application. And Kevin Systrom told VentureBeat that they have “some pretty fun things in the pipeline.”

Betabeat has reached out to Twitter and Instagram and will update you when we hear more about this thrilling social networking drama.