The “explore” tab lets you surface content via Editor’s Picks, “Popular Now,” and now trending hashtags.

The “Popular Now” section also features hashtags, but they are picked using a different metric. The new trending hashtags show those that are the fastest-rising, but not necessarily those containing the most posts.

“We launched Vine with an Explore section to make it easier for you to find great content, like popular posts and hashtags, from accounts you may not follow. Since launch, there have been a ton of awesome, creative posts that don’t always make it to the popular sections. In many cases, these posts include a hashtag that the community is using,” says Vine.

Hopefully, this will help Vine users get into the action.

Last week, Vine finally made videos embeddable via web and mobile. You can can embed your own Vines anywhere on the web, as well as other users’ Vines – as long as they’ve already shared them on Twitter first.

Here’s my attempt to make a long story short:

Back in October of 2012, a hashtag emerged on Twitter that many users found exceedingly offensive. The hashtag, #unbonjuif, roughly translates to “a good jew.” Some Twitter users jumped on the hashtag, posting photos of dust-filled dustpans and other anti-Semitic jokes alongside the hashtag.

A handful of French anti-racism groups called out Twitter, asking that the site remove all of the offending tweets. Eventually, as the pressure mounted, Twitter complied.

But some of the groups, including the French Jewish Students Union (UEJF), decided to push Twitter a bit further. They demanded that Twitter give up the names of all of the users associated with the #unbonjuif tweets, so that they could be prosecuted under local anti-hate speech laws. Twitter wasn’t too keen on this idea, and that led the UEJF to file a summons against the company back in November.

In January, a French court ruled that Twitter must provide the identities of the requested users, to comply with French law. Twitter said that they would review the decision.

And that brings us up to date. The UEJF has officially taken action against Twitter, suing them for roughly $50 million for failing to carry through with the court’s order. Twitter apparently had two weeks to hand over the names, and that time has come and gone.

“Twitter is playing the indifference card and does not respect the ruling,” said UEJF President Jonathan Hayoun. “They have resolved to protect the anonymity of the authors of these tweets and have made themselves accomplices to racists and anti-Semites.”

Twitter reserves the right to give up any information it holds on users if requested by law enforcement or by a court order. They say so in their terms of service – this is not part of the debate. In the past, however, Twitter has gone to bat to protect user privacy when they sense some government overreach. In September of 2012, Twitter gave in to the Manhattan D.A.’s office and gave up the deleted, inaccessible tweets of an Occupy Wall Street protester – but only after they fought it tooth and nail.

You may remember that they also blocked a neo-Nazi account in Germany last year, utilizing their self-appointed authority to censor content locally if they saw fit. Blocking or removing content is one thing, but disclosing the identities of users in order to aid in regional hate-speech laws is a different ballgame.

[UEJF via JTA]

Yep, Flickr for iOS now has hashtag support. You can addd hashtags to any photo’s title of description, and like hashtag functionality in any other app, clicking on the tag will open up a search of other photos on the service with the same hashtag.

Version 2.11.820 also allows iOS users to participate in Flickr’s weekly photo challenge, #FlickrFriday.

You still won’t find any “hashtags” on Flickr on the web – it’s still just “tags.” And any current web tags don’t translate to clickable hashtags on the iOS app. It look like for now, this shift toward hashtags is a mobile-only venture for Flickr.

In other hashtag news, anyone popular social service may be adding them in the near future. Recent reports said that Facebook is working on incorporating the hashtag.

You can grab the new Flickr for iOS today.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the answer is yes – but not in the imminent future.

They quote people familiar with the matter who say that Facebook is “working on incorporating the hashtag,” but it’s unclear exactly how long the company has had these plans or how close they are to fully realizing the concept.

As you’re probably aware, Facebook lets users tag people using the @ symbol but does not support links when users use the #.

Besides the obvious plus of being able to organize and subsequently search and browse topics, hashtags would give Facebook another structure to build ads around. Plus, anyone looking to do any viral marketing on Facebook would welcome the chance to steer conversation using hashtags. It’s sure worked for Twitter.

Oh yeah, and your idiot cousin wouldn’t look so idiotic anymore when she uses hashtags on Facebook.

Here’s how the hashtag-buying works, after you sync your Amex card to Twitter of course.

Cardmembers tweet special product #hashtags for the product they want to purchase with their synced Card. Cardmembers then check their Twitter mentions in the @ Connect tab for a response from @AmexSync containing a confirmation #hashtag. Tweet the confirmation #hashtag within 15 minutes of the response from @AmexSync to confirm the purchase.

And the product(s) should arrive on your doorstep via 2-day shipping.

The hashtag-buying will officially kick off Wednesday at noon ET with these specific products:

$25 American Express Gift Card: $15.00; Amazon Kindle Fire HD: $149.99 plus tax; Sony Action Cam & Waterproof Headband Mount: $179.99 plus tax; Urban Zen Bracelet Designed by Donna Karan: $80.00 plus tax; Xbox 360 4GB console with a 3-month Xbox LIVE Subscription and 2 game tokens: $179.99 plus tax; Xbox Controller: $29.99 plus tax.

“Based on the initial success of Amex Sync for offers, we know there is significant power in combining our assets with Twitter’s platform to bring value to Cardmembers and merchants,” said Leslie Berland, Senior Vice President, Digital Partnerships and Development at American Express. “Now, we’re leveraging our unique technology and closed-loop network to introduce a seamless solution that redefines what’s possible in the world of social commerce.”

Amex has partnerships with Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook and other networks that leverage synced accounts, but until now these have only been used to unlock discounts or purchase credits. This is the first time that social media users will be able to initiate an actual purchase with something as simple as tweeting out a hashtag.

Peter Kafka at All Things D reports that the asking price for a Promoted Trend has been raised, and now sits at $200,000 per trend. The previous price for an all-day Promoted Trend was $150,000, and the change occurred back in January.

When Twitter first launched Promoted Trends back in 2010, they were only $80,000.

Promoted Trends are one of Twitter’s major ad offerings, working alongside Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts. Promoted Trends always take the top spot on the trends list and are seen on the web, mobile, and all Twitter apps. Clicking on a Promoted Trend prompts a search (it’s usually a hashtag), in which tweets about the trend are surfaced organically.

Of course, Promoted Trends can generate tons of publicity for your business, site, or brand. But since the trends generate content organically, without any tweaking for the trend-buyer, things don’t always go as planned.

Still, Twitter has been able to generate plenty of revenue through the Promoted Trends product, and this significant increase in the asking price suggests that Twitter is confident that brands will continue to pay a premium to direct the conversation on the site.

There is usually only one Promoted Trend per day, and it runs all day. Twitter doesn’t always run a Promoted Trend, but they do on a large majority of days. If they were to run a promoted trend at this price point every day for the next year, it would generate $73 millon in revenues.

That title belongs to Jesus – at least that’s what a recent tweet suggests.

“There is only one savior, and it is not me. #Jesus,” tweeted Rubio early Thursday morning.

There is only one savior, and it is not me. #Jesus

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 7, 2013

Rubio is undoubtedly responding to a new TIME magazine cover story that labels the junior Senator “The Republican Savior.”

The tweet is a bit vague, however. Either Rubio is simply speaking out against the use of the word “savior” in a non-biblical fashion, or he’s implying that Jesus is the savior of the Republican party.

Damn those hashtags. They can be a bit opaque in their meaning.

TIME has responded to Rubio:

@marcorubio Point taken, but we just said you’re the ‘Republican savior.’

— TIME.com (@TIME) February 7, 2013

Yesterday afternoon, Vine began to block certain porn-related tag searches. Trying to search for #porn? Sorry, you’re out of luck. What about more specific tags like #dick, #ass, or #boobs? Yep, out of luck.

But there were still a few workarounds. Mainly, some porn-related tags still existed – #NSFW and #pornvine, for instance.

Now it appears that Vine has really cleaned house and purged most of the porn from the app. #NSFW is no longer accessible, and #pornvine is no more. Any tag search of any common sexual terms yields no tag results containing porn. It looks like Vine has made it much, much harder to find porn on the app.

We also noticed that Vine has removed the ability to view “all videos” from the Explore tab. Now, you can only choose between SFW tags, “Editor’s Picks,” and “Popular Now.”

It’s important to note that Vine hasn’t amended their Terms of Service or anything. Technically, nudity and sexual content is still allowed on the service. But the restrictions on tag searches make it nearly impossible to find porn on the app. The old trick of spring-boarding from one NSFW tag search to another by clicking tags is no longer an option. I was able to upload a video with the #porn and #nsfw tags, but when I attempted to click them to find other content with those tags Vine told me they couldn’t load the posts.

It looks like Vine and porn have ended their short relationship. At least their truly visible relationship.

But that doesn’t mean that users can’t still upload explicit videos and share them to Twitter. But they’re going to be incredibly hard to find on the actual Vine app, unless someone is specifically looking for them by username. I was able to find porn by searching for specific user names, but that’s about it. No porn in the Editor’s picks, no porn in the “popular now” section.

What Vine has done is make it pretty hard to just stumble upon porn when using the app.

No longer can you search for the tags #porn, #boobs, #dick, #sex and many other NSFW tags.

Oddly enough, you can still search for the #NSFW tag.

Also available are more specific tags that contain plenty of nudity such as #pornvine, #dicks, and more. It appears that Vine is just beginning the process of censoring these types of tags. Before it’s said and done, it’s unlikely that any of these kinds of porn-related tags will remain. And Vine will probably censor any new porn tags as soon as they pop up.

What users can do, however, is tag their Vine videos with these tags. Users can still access the tag pages by clicking on the tags under videos they do find. So there’s a workaround – for now. Still, many popular NSFW tags no longer appear when users try to explore them.

It appears that there had already been a small change in Apple’s promotion of Vine inside the App Store which was conspicuously timed with this porn controversy.

For more on the Vine-porn controversy, check out our in-depth writeup.

That’s why they’ve just introduced hashtags on their discover page.

“Over time, we’ve noticed certain themes and trends running through the projects on Kickstarter — some for a week, some for years. Tags give us a new way to share these patterns with everyone.

Tags aren’t tethered to a specific category. Instead they reflect a common philosophy (#Civic), shared subject matter (#Science), themes (#Zombies), accolades (#Sundance), and a bunch of other stuff too. We’ll be adding and rotating tags constantly as new trends pop up throughout the site. These will be listed in the sidebar of the Discover page,” says Kickstarter.

So these tags are different, and in a way much more specific than categories like “music” “film” or “games.”

You can check out the trending #tags on the Kickstarter Discover page. People looking to browse projects can now do so by location, category, tag, and other groupings like “recently launched” and “most funded.”

Kickstarter says that you can help make the #tags better. If you see a type of project that’s trending or want your project that you just launched to be tagged, just send them a tweet.