We’ve all encountered it. Instagram is running slow, again, and we find ourselves watching the loading circle spin around and around. Instagram knows that speed kills in the app world so they have outlined a plan to address load time and speed improvements on their image sharing social media app. Glenn Conner of Instagram’s engineering team writes, “In recent years, instagram.com has seen a lot of changes - we’ve launched stories, filters, creation tools, notifications, and direct messaging as well as myriad other features and enhancements. However, as the product grew, one unfortunate side effect was that our web performance began to suffer.” 

Dozens of accounts with over 30 million followers combined were recently removed by Instagram without warning. The removal was permanent with no possibility of reinstatement. According to a Facebook and Instagram spokesperson, the accounts were disabled following multiple violations of platform policies. This comes only weeks after Instagram updated their Account Removal Policies and based upon the timing, one can assume page shut-downs are due to the policy updates. We might be disappointed in the lack of memes we can now consume, but technically Instagram can do what they want with their own platform. 

Currently businesses have to utilize different products to track user interactions across multiple platforms – Google Analytics for Firebase and regular Google Analytics. To make this tracking process simpler, Google is introducing a new property type in the regular Google Analytics platform. The property type, called “App + Web”, allows businesses to combine web and app traffic into one place for reporting purposes. This type of reporting will allow us to see if users started their buying process on the app and then made their final purchase on a website. This tracking will be available with no additional coding required. 

Pinterest's revenue jumped 62% year-over-year in Q2 results released Thursday. Pinterest attributed the swift growth to the internationalization of the platform’s advertising, the simplification process of its ad systems for small businesses and the improved ability to measure the effectiveness of ad spending and campaign performance. The healthy mix of improved advertising updates and greater shoppable functionalities continues to give the digital marketing world hope that the platform’s growth will keep trending upward. 

In the past, Reddit has been considered the “wild west” of the internet. Steve Huffman, the company’s CEO, even went as far as to describe it as a “dystopian Craigslit” – a term he coined to explain why the site underwent a complete rebuild last year. Strange nicknames and reputations aside, the platform offers niche - and we mean NICHE - market advertising opportunities. Heather Cooan, the CEO of HDC Digital, has been running advertising campaigns on the platform for years but has beefed it up even more recently. She says, “I tend to get a lot of clients that are in the industrial and technical verticals and I have found that Reddit is a place where their target audience – engineers and IT professionals – hang out.” These folks typically don’t respond well to advertising so she uses super technical or sarcastic, yet informative messaging.

Product Specialist; Chattanooga, TN

Chicken Mom & Crime Show Enthusiast 

Product Specialist; Chattanooga, TN