We all forget to periodically check in and keep up-to-date on important news in our industry. But don’t worry! That’s what updates from Carousel30, a Capitol Communicator sponsor, are here for. Keep reading to find out what you may have missed during the past few weeks.

What’s New with Google?

Per usual, there’s a lot going on with Google. One of Google’s most recent search features makes following the presidential election a little easier by allowing users to search trending topics about each candidate, which provides the ability to track their funding from SuperPACs. Similarly, Google has kept local businesses in mind for search by offering Local Business Cards, which you’ve probably already seen, but similar to the cards, Google Post will let celebrities, brands and popular authority figures post directly to Google’s front page in a streamlined twitter-like fashion. Lastly for search updates, though you may not miss it, Google is removing PageRank from their toolbar, which was once used to judge a website’s ranking in popularity. Soon you’ll find a scrollable carousel of PLAs (product listing ads) with product rankings and qualifiers like “best” included while searching for products.

As for analytics and data, in addition to the widely-used Adobe Marketing Cloud, Google’s announced Analytics 360 Suite will provide enterprise-level marketers another set of tools to unify large amounts of data. Google has also introduced an API that will give marketers insight on the the reason for their Quality Score on AdWords. Google has rolled out a lot of features for marketers, large and small, but only time will tell which features are useful and which are not.

Another New Algorithm?

Instagram announced that a new algorithm would be added to user feeds, which will reorder users’ pictures and videos according to the moments that matter. They’re a tad bit late to the algorithm party, where Facebook and, more recently Twitter have already made such algorithm updates. According to co-founder, Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s users see just 30% of posts on their feeds. However, the new algorithm could propose a few problems, like users receiving an increased amount of promoted paid advertisements and posts they don’t want. For advertisers, organic reach will become far more difficult, but promoted paid advertisements may be a valuable trade off. Many users are already outraged, but we’ll just have to wait and see the effect it has.

What’s New in Tech?

Google has given android users an opportunity to test games for as long as ten minutes in an ad. To compete with Google AMP and Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News has granted access to smaller publishers and bloggers. In the hopes of making up for a loss in revenue over the past year, Tumblr removed a rule requiring advertisers to have a blog to advertise. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg recently wrote a post with a link to even more profile picture frames (with sports teams, causes and events) and shared the story of Pakistani and Indian cricket fans showing support for each other using the hashtag #ProfilesForPeace. Furthermore, Facebook’s Developer Conference (called F8), may have its biggest year yet if they finally announce the “Messenger Bot Store.” This would mark the beginning of a huge shift for the future as it would mean that Facebook would begin replacing apps with “bots.” It seems that Facebook is truly innovating for the future, and creating unity among countries as well.