Where digital meets travel + lifestyle … A collection of can’t-miss news from this week. Sign up to get the TURNER Weekly Download in your inbox every Friday.
Just like any app, Instagram is looking for more ways to bring in cash! This week, the photo-sharing platform announced it has been experimenting with video ads within Stories. In an interview, Instagram’s director of product marketing, Jim Squires, hinted there will still be a two or three week test period before making this feature fully available to advertisers. What will your first Instagram Story ad look like? Tweet your ideas to @turner.
Facebook is trying its best to decrease the spread of fake news on their platform. Next stop: Germany. Similar to the social media giant’s approach in the U.S., German Facebook users will be asked to flag untrue stories, which will then be forwarded to Correctiv, a third-party fact-checking organization. If the story is ruled to be unreliable, it will be de-prioritized in Facebook’s news feed. Users will still be able to share the post, but they will see a warning telling them it has been disputed. “At Wired Germany, we are very fond of the idea of adding transparency to Facebook postings,” agreed Domenika Ahlrichs, vice editor-in-chief of the Condé Nast title.
Twitter announced a few months ago that Vine – the platform’s semi-beloved short video-sharing service – would shift to Vine Camera, a different app that also lets users create 6.5-second looping videos that users can save or post to Twitter. This week, they announced that Vine.co will stop hosting new videos and serve as an archive for searching old video clips. Vine encouraged users to download their past Vines before the switch, as it was unclear how long the archive will be available. Bye bye, Vine! You will be missed.
According to the Wall Street Journal, luxury fashion brands are having a difficult time adjusting to all of the changes in the digital space. Instant gratification is the name of the game these days, and that can sometimes go against these brands’ desire to build exclusivity. The result of this friction was drastically lower sales numbers for the industry in 2016. But brands like Burberry, Tommy Hilfiger and Tom Ford have all tapped into new technologies and social media platforms, utilizing “see now, buy now” innovations that made new lines available for immediate purchase. Will it turn the tide? Results are mixed so far.