the week in social: Instagram Stories, Snapchat changes, and celeb celebrations

Celebs take to social to celebrate the 4^th of July

With everyone holidayin’ and hot doggin,’ it was a pretty slow week in social, but the 4^th was a big day on social, with celebrities taking to Twitter to spread love/political messages and celebrate America/their pets/plans to flee to Canada. Variety collected a list of their favorites from across the spectrum. Enjoy…?

Read more at Variety.

Adidas taps into the little guys to create a community

Sure Adidas might be one of the most popular sporting brands in the world with big name football endorsers under its belt, but it also knows the important of micro-influencers. It all started with their Glitch app – a place where fans can test and buy new soccer cleats. Thirty players from football academies across London were chosen to design, name, and promote the app, which became an invite-only community where the creators spread access themselves. Since soccer fans and players know their own kind, this small, soccer-loving app became a community and a success.

Read more at DigiDay.

Share IQ helps brands track their product images across the web

To all those business owners who run into their product images in different corners of social media, all by themselves with no context to keep them warm, ShareIQ is here to help. This new analytics offering is focused on helping brands understand how their images got to where they are, and how they’re contributing to the company’s bottom line by being there. Apart from covering analytics, it’s also offering a tool that could lead people viewing the image to the product page through adjacent advertising.

Read more at TechCrunch.

Instagram makes Stories even Snapchattier

Instagram last week announced some changes to their Stories offering, and we’ve definitely seen them somewhere before. Users are now able to reply to contacts’ Stories with a photo or video, using all the face filters, stickers and effects available in Stories. Replies also include a sticker of the story that can be moved around and resized. Just like disappearing photos and videos in Direct messaging, contacts will be able to see when their replies have been screenshotted or replayed.

Read more at Instagram.

Snapchat is breaking its own rules to stay one step ahead

In an effort to keep outrunning the competition, Snapchat has added three new features, one of which makes its longstanding ‘no links’ rule history. The linking feature is called Paperclip, and it lets you attach a website to a snap that friends can swipe up to open in the app’s internal browser. Another feature is called Backdrops, and it lets users cut out an object from a snap and replace it with a color or pattern. And the third, called Voice Filters, lets users remix the sound of voices in their snaps.

Read more at TechCrunch.