There is never a shortage of social media news. Here's an overview of some of the latest developments. Snapchat was the first app to really get behind vertical video ads. Now they're making it easier for brands to produce them. With Instant Create tools, your company can set your objective, enter your website, and select the audience you're looking to target. And you can either upload digital assets or the app will pull images right from your website. Instant Create will also offer templates that make it easier for smaller companies to develop and optimize their ads. Snapchat's parent, Snap Inc., also announced the launch of its latest augmented reality glasses, Spectacles 3. Spectacles 3 have a camera for each eye, which lets the app show and record some pretty cool AR features. But the higher price tag that's aimed at early adopters, means they may not be ready for primetime just yet. When a brand takes a tumble, that's usually a bad thing. But not necessarily in this case. Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, recently purchased Tumblr. And while Automattic didn't announce any plans, they did indicate they had no intention to change Tumblr's culture and community. Will this be an opportunity for Tumblr to reinvent itself? This is one story we'll want to watch. Twitter rolled out its new web redesign, featuring user information including an Explore tab, Messages, and Lists on the left, News and Promoted Trends on the right, and the News Feed in the center. It's a cleaner and easier-to-navigate interface that has more than a few resemblances to the mobile app. And Facebook finally launched the Clear History tool it promised in 2018. But now it's called Off-Facebook History and instead of letting users delete their personal browsing data, they can now see a list of the third-party sites that share data with Facebook and unplug those from their Facebook account. Users can also opt out of future Off-Facebook tracking. The data will still be there, it'll just be anonymized. This will likely impact some advertiser retargeting campaigns. And in the better late than never category, Facebook introduced a new dating app, which lets users integrate photos from their Instagram feed, find potential matches who are going to the same event, tell friends where they'll be, and ultimately give the platform even more data on how users connect
