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says the move by Instagram is part of an ongoing initiative to add more e-commerce features to the platform, as well as more ways to display and interact with products

"Mobile commerce is definitely a space we are looking at closely.

Instagram has become increasingly more interested in advertising and has deployed a variety of new products and ad formats for advertisers.

When we launched ads two years ago, ads were available in just eight countries. In September, we opened for business in around 200 countries

Facebook’s global sales team was beginning to push Instagram’s advertising to small businesses, providing them with the ability to target marketing at particular users

that international expansion was a priority, with 75 per cent of its more than 400m users based outside the US

By the time many college freshmen arrive on campus this fall, they’ll have already met their roommate, their core friends, and many of their classmates on Instagram. They’re connecting through class accounts, Instagram pages set up by one or several incoming members of a college’s freshman class to help everyone meet before the school year officially starts.

Many class accounts spawned Instagram group chats in which students not only find roommates, but also figure out plans for orientation, discuss rush, and debate whether or not there are good parties for freshmen.

Yet all the teenagers I spoke to said that they couldn’t imagine a Facebook version of class pages. In fact, several said they’d signed up for Facebook only in the past couple of months, so they could join the official Facebook group that their college’s admissions department created.

Undisclosed ads on Instagram are no longer just limited to posts by celebs

General users may be able to make the distinction when they see a Kardashian, for example, posing with a brand of tea they’ve never heard of. But the problem now facing the FTC and Instagram is that these types of posts are no longer limited to celebs and influencers. In fact, marketers are now targeting regular users, or what they term “microinfluencers” by offering them free products in exchange for social media posts.

The letter highlights two websiteS in particular, operated by Influenster and Bzzagent, that encourage users to share posts in which they’re seen using a free product. In exchange, the so-called “microinfluencer” receives even more freebies from brands including Maybelline, BITE beauty, Kleenex, and International Delight. Anyone with a social media account can join the websites and receive free products.

Gimenez’s take is “shoppable Instagram:” an app that uses image recognition and a large collection of retailers — 400-500 merchants selling over two million items from upwards of 15,000 brands — to create a more engaging and ultimately more fruitful social commerce experience.

Social commerce, the idea of buying products listed on social media sites, is huge in Asia.

“When you see anything online or on Instagram, the frustration is that you can’t shop even when people are using it as merchants,

The in-app checkout allows consumers to tap a shoppable product tag in a post, select product details like sizing and coloring prior to clicking a "Checkout on Instagram" button, and enter their payment and shipping information to complete the purchase, all without leaving the app.

By allowing consumers to check out right on Instagram, brands and retailers may be able to inspire more impulse purchases because consumers won't have to go through a laborious checkout process where they might get frustrated or just change their mind about the product.

Skillaz

HR departments post a vacancy on the platform with questions, and job seekers respond in video format. The service creates a video interview, which the employee can watch at any time and either refuse the candidate or mark the interview as "liked."

it provides services not only for employers but also for job seekers

“will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure.

There are all these different kinds of utilities for basically all the different things that you would want to do with everyone you know. And we basically built this whole platform around the town square

If you want to message someone on Instagram, you have to use Direct, if you want to message someone on WhatsApp you have to use WhatsApp. But I think people tend to have one of the messaging apps that they prefer the most. So giving people the choice to say, “Hey, I want to use WhatsApp because I prefer that as my service where I can not only message people on WhatsApp but I can message people on Facebook or Instagram as well and have those services connect …” I think that that will unlock a lot more convenient and seamless experiences. So connecting the services in that way I think will be valuable.

These T-Shirts Have Customizable Digital Animations When on Camera

The animated t-shirts work by first having the user choose a graphically themed shirt to start the process. Through the 'Drawsta' app, the user can then see which animated designs come with the shirt of their choice and take videos of the animation. The videos can be used on any and all platforms that are compatible with videos -- they can be texted, put on Instagram, tweeted, vlogged and messaged. Each week a new design option appears on the app for the animated shirts -- making them fun and creative. These animated t-shirt apps are a playful way to reinterpret the t-shirt and its uses by combining GIF-like technology with this classically casual clothing.

Meditation, Ms. Guler said, is an antisocial way of interacting with the world. She views astrology as a form of collective wellness, with Co-Star helping people relate to each other based on star signs. Another big difference between astrology and meditation’s practitioners: Astrologers are not allergic to making money.

Co-Star promotes its use of artificial intelligence and data from NASA to track movements of the stars.

the selfie-loving nanoinfluencer generation is eager to hear that they’re unique and special, no matter how woo-woo it seems

“We plan to build this [platform] the way we’ve developed WhatsApp: focus on the most fundamental and private use case—messaging

WeChat Pay and Tenpay (Tencent’s business-oriented payment platform) accounted for 38.8% of the total amount spent via mobile payments in China during Q3 2018

games were the most popular category of miniprograms, used by 42% of WeChat miniprogram users in China