July 2021: What’s New in Digital?

Originally published July 21, 2021.

Shorts. Shelf. Explore. Clubhouse.

Sounds like a game of taboo? Scrabble? Nope. I’ve been keeping my eye on a few things this month in the world of social media. Here are my 3 top updates from this summer:

YouTube Shorts

YouTube Shorts was introduced, along with its TikTok-like functionality and creativity appeal. For users, they will see a new Shorts row in their main feed of the YouTube app. For content creators, this is a good opportunity to hack the algorithm while gaining access to a multi-segment camera and the ability to string together multiple video clips with music and other text/overlay tools.

Instagram Insights Expansion

Users can now gain a wider analytical capacity with the expansion of Instagram Insights moving to 60 days of data. This also means Facebook advertisers will soon have more data in the Creator Studio as well. The bottomline: more data = better performance.

Clubhouse Moves Beyond Beta

Clubhouse's exclusive, invite-only approach played a significant role in boosting its early hype. That reached a new level earlier this year when Elon Musk joined a Clubhouse chat, which ended up breaking the app for a time due to the flood of people trying to tune in. Earlier apps to the world of social media have introduced their own versions of audio offerings, keeping the space competitive and keeping all of us wondering: where will Clubhouse end up?

I’m curious to see where Clubhouse will end up over the next year or two, and am confident YouTube will remain a leader in the social media space. The biggest trend that is hard not to notice: marketers and advertisers are looking for more data and social media platforms are delivering!