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.
Facebook has rolled out more new features for its dynamic ads, with the goal of making these ads more appealing to businesses with brick-and-mortar stores. Facebook’s dynamic ads feature products based on user activity and interests, and will now incorporate data based on a user's location. Maz Sharafi, a director of monetization product marketing at Facebook, said this would be useful for big companies who want to drive shoppers into local stores. Businesses such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Macy’s and Target have already hopped on board, with more sure to follow.
How do you escape ordinary hotel room design? According to Marriott, you turn it upside down—literally. The hotel chain just revealed the inverted #MGravityRoom, a very clever way to showcase its new room décor. For those of us not in NYC, Marriott has created a number of #MGravityRoom videos and social posts. “This was a really fun, creative way for us to be able to showcase our new design, where we’re literally taking the guest room and flipping it on its head,” said Matthew Carroll, Marriott’s VP of global brand management. Who’s ready to flip?
This week, Twitter announced new and simpler rules for character count. The dreaded 140-character restriction is not quite so dreaded anymore. Character count will only include links and text – not images, videos, GIFS, polls and quote tweets! Also, @mentions will not count toward the 140-character limit and you can tag up to 50 people per tweet. This is major. “Thanks, Twitter!” - social media managers worldwide. Now, about that “edit” function…
Travelers, your lives are about to get easier, thanks to Google. The tech giant just launched a new travel app, Google Trips, which seems to be a winning combination of Tripit, Yelp and TripAdvisor. The app helps users explore activities, find places to eat and get answers to various travel-based inquires. The best part? You don’t have to worry about your data limit or Wi-Fi, Google Trips works just fine offline.