Instagram now allows for 30-second ads on its platform

Instagram is giving brands more room to work with by allowing them to have ads that last up to 30 seconds long. Companies will also be able to use the new landscape format for their photo and video ads. Ads are already available in over 30 new countries, including India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, and South Korea. It’ll be launching in more markets around the world on September 30^th.

The social network also promises to offer brands optimization tools to help them reach users both on Instagram and Facebook. They’re also introducing a new premium product called Marquee. Instagram describes it as a way to help “drive mass awareness and expanded reach in a short time-frame—perfect for events like movie premieres and new product launches.”

Source: Instagram | Via: The Next Web

Facebook gives you more control over your News Feed

Facebook’s latest update is giving you more control over who and what you see on your News Feed. The social network is expanding the customization features to let you select who you’d want to see first on your News Feed. It’ll let you reconnect with people you’ve unfollow, although we’re not sure why you’d want to do that. And you can discover new pages to follow, too. You can find this settings under the “More” option near the settings menu. The update is available for both iOS and Android.

Source: Droid Life | Download: Google Play Store (Free) + Apple App Store (Free)

Nova Launcher to help normalize icon sizes

Google’s given its third-party developers free rein to create unusually-shaped icons for their apps. If you’re OC, seeing your app drawer and home screen with differently-shaped icons might be a bit annoying. Nova Launcher is looking to fix that with an “icon normalization” feature it has in private alpha at the moment.

How Nova Launcher will be able to do this is by following Google’s Material Design guidelines for squares, circles, and rectangles. They then scale the icons to match these dimensions. The algorithm can even take into account the unusual protrusions of icons to align them based on their underlying shape. Even the non-standard shapes will scale correctly. They’re scaling it to make the icons consistent visually. Beta should be coming out soon for those who want to try it out.

Source: Android Police | Download: Google Play Store (Free)

Periscope introduces landscape mode

Periscope is making it easier for you to watch landscape broadcasts with its latest update. You can continue watching clips in portrait but you have the option to tilt your device and get a full screen video. Periscope first launched with portrait orientation only but they’re changing that for users who feel they can capture things better in landscape.

Aside from that, Periscope also introduces new features such as Share Context, letting you see who shared a broadcast on your feed. It also has better iOS accessibility support and Mutual Follow, which makes it easier for you to start private broadcasts on Android. It’ll let you choose from mutual followers (those you follow that also follow you) who you want to see the broadcast or select all your mutual followers to see it. Mutual Follow will come to iOS soon.

Source: Periscope | Download: Apple App Store (Free) + Google Play Store (Free)