Banyan Branch

Here’s your weekly roundup of major news points from the social sphere:

• Twitter surpassed 500 million users this week. How big is the social network this year? MediaBistro has a sweet infographic to explain Twitter in 2012.

• Two ex-Google employees join Twitter‘s global revenue team.

• Facebook could roll out a premium ad service early next week. Looking forward to it!

• Google+ adds Circles to Google Voice.

• Spotify adds new features including gapless playback and crossfade.

• Check out the latest YouTube Creator Playbook update below:

• President Obama rolls out the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.

• [Can't] Pin It: Pinterest protects publishers from allowing their content to be pinned.

• Google+ adds a very FourSquare-esque check-in leaderboard.

• LinkedIn acquires Rapportive.

• Facebook makes it easier to discover native apps in iOS.

• The NBA All-Star Game gets social!

• Check out Visible‘s series on social data integration. Great information.

• We analyzed the Twitter buzz on a possible Seattle sports arena for NBA and NHL.

• Watching the Oscars this weekend? Check out our infographic on the Facebook and Twitter buzz over at Forbes, MediaBistro and Reuters.

• Looking to ramp up your social media strategy this year? Check out our list of suggestions for balancing your social media diet, and Soshable’s reading list.

• Need to refresh your Twitter background? We’ve updated our handy guide to creating backgrounds for Twitter.com to reflect the new profile layout!

• We took a look at LinkedIn for brands in our latest “What’s the Hype?” post. Get your company page up to speed with these latest features.

Have a great weekend!