August’s passing saw some really cool innovations and developments in the digital world. So we thought we’d take a look at some of them and list our 12 favourites.

1. Public Sharing For Facebook Stories

Facebook Stories saw its global launch in March 2017 but you could only share stories with all your friends or a select group of them. No more! Now, if you allow public followers, everyone and anyone can watch. Snapchat watch out!

2. Web Links on Facebook Mobile to Rank Based on Loading Speed

Facebook announced that they’re in the process of updating the newsfeed to show more stories that will load quickly on mobile and fewer stories that are likely to take longer to load. This means people can spend more time reading and less time loading. Slow pages, Facebook is coming for you!

3. Interactive Greetings for Facebook Comments & Posts

There’s a new interactive feature on Facebook that highlights certain comments or posts, for example ‘congratulations’ or ‘congrats’ and generates an animation for these, in this case confetti and a balloon drop when clicked, while Xs and Os generate red hearts. Although some users have reported not having access to the feature, those that do report that it works on the newsfeed, groups, and pages.

4. Instagram Stories Beats Snapchat In Usage Terms

Instagram Stories now has more than 250 million daily users, way more than Snachat’s reported 166 million daily users. Instagram says that Instagram Stories have helped increase the amount of time people spend on Instagram.

5. Sponsored GIFs On Giphy

In an interesting development for marketers, Giphy has started testing sponsored GIFs within messages. So when users search for GIFs they may be shown a sponsored GIF within the messaging tab and sponsored content is likely to function similarly to Snapchat’s sponsored face filters.

6. Mobile Video Ads on Pinterest

Pinterest started testing promoted video, looking to follow companies like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Snapchat into the realm of video marketing. What started as promoted video has now progressed to the autoplay format which was brought into mainstream use by Facebook, placing video ads within search results and news feeds.

7. Share YouTube Videos By Direct Message With Anyone

The days of copy-pasting YouTube links to share with friends are officially gone. Now you can send the links directly from YouTube in real time. All your ‘shares’ can be accessed in a new tab called ‘Shared’ on YouTube mobile. You’ll need to invite your friends from your contacts by sms or an invitation link through social networks.

8. Go Live On Instagram

The live update feature on Instagram has got an update with this new element. Now Go Live on Instagram with your friends from anywhere all at once. Social media influencers that connect directly with their followers will have the most to gain from this new feature.

9. Crowd Surf Story From Snapchat

Snapchat has come up with a really cool new way to see live events. Take a musical performance for example, the Crowd Surf tool will analyse snaps submitted to Our Story by multiple people capturing the same performance and then merge these together to provide a multi-perspective look at the live event. The tool is powered by AI and machine learning technology.

10. Conversations On Instagram Have Been Streamlined with Threaded Comments

Conversations and posts on Instagram will soon be easier than ever to track and respond to as comments will be organized in threads in the updates that Instagram will rollout worldwide for both Android and iOS.

11. Create Videos on the LinkedIn App

LinkedIn has started rolling out a video creation tool within the mobile app. While currently available only to frequent contributors the feature will soon be available to all users.

12. WhatsApp Introduces Colourful Text Status Updates, Similar to Facebook

You can now write your WhatsApp status updates on a colourful image background. You can also choose fonts, backgrounds and add links to your status updates.

And those are the 12 things we thought were the most significant things that happened in the digital world in August 2017, some exciting and ground-breaking, others just exciting.

What do you think? Tell us in the comments.