By Erasmus William, Kelson Ong, and Rodrigo Bonilla

 

Airbnb adds new collaborative features for group trips

Airbnb is now preparing even more trip-planning features, allowing users to add co-travelers to their trips and make use of other collaboration features designed for group travel. Based on screenshots shared via Techcrunch, these new features enable a user to send invites to friends who are joining the trip, allowing them to save their ideas onto a master list which includes homes, experiences, restaurants, and sights that match their travel criteria. To aid in the decision-making process, users can also comment directly on different items added to the itinerary. Airbnb has yet to announce when these new features will be released, so stay tuned.



 

GIPHY launches its own stories with curated GIFs throughout the day

Shifting away from only being a GIF database, GIPHY has launched its own Stories column on its homepage, which will be curated by an editorial team. Stories will be told through GIFs and will be centered around the day’s trending subjects, with one story published every hour, spreading across categories such as Entertainment, Sports and Reactions. So far, some of the stories posted on GIPHY include a a collection called “The best GIFs for your summer out of office email” and “The best GIFs of that incredible JLo performance at the VMAs”.



 

Instagram tests “recommended posts”

Instagram announced this week that it would be testing “recommended posts” – content shown in-feed based on prior engagement and users followed. The recommended post section will appear at the end of “You’re All Caught Up,” giving users the option to continue scrolling to see the recommendations, or navigate back to the main feed of past posts. The recommended feed works in the same way as the regular feed, allowing users to like and comment on posts as well as follow accounts that have caught their attention.