📷 Image Credit: AZFamily.com 👆 TL;DR With most in-person events being canceled, there is a need to get creative to keep young people engaged and entertained. YouTube is attempting to recreate the enchantment of outdoor summertime camp right in your own backyard. It is understandably challenging for parents to be working from home and also parenting from home full-time over the summer. Because parents are pulling double duty, there has been a spike in online searches for virtual summer camps as parents, grandparents, and guardians attempt to keep the fun of summer camp at home. Luckily there are several great options to consider on Youtube that can help keep kids at every age learning and entertained. For kids who like adventure, explore.org is a great option to bring the outside in. This is meant for kids over the age of 13, where they have the ability to learn science fieldwork and watch unedited footage of animals in their wild habitat. For those younger, they also have special comprehensive sections for children who fall under the age of 13. There are also many other options for kids' interests ranging from the arts to sports and for STEM lovers. You can find these camps at learnathome.withyoutube.com. Youtube is a far cry from the real deal, but it's better than nothing and allows kids to continue to partake in activities that create the feeling of summertime fun online. Sources:AZFamily.com Written by: Sofia Christensen, Intern Edited by: Lisa Knight, COO & Mentor

📷 Image Credit: AdWeek 👆By: Brandy Shaul TL;DR Instagram's newest feature allows users to Pin comments on their photos. It is easy to use and could be a beneficial way for brands to up their community-building game by featuring select fans! Instagram recently added a new feature that allows users to pin comments to the top of their posts. This feature allows up to three comments to be pinned at the top of the comments on each post. Pinning comments can allow users to promote engaging comments that fit the post best at same time sorting out comments that might be less relevant to the user's message. In order to pin a comment, simply swipe to the left of the comment. Once you've swiped left, there will be a few options; you can reply, report, and delete a comment indicated by the icons. Once swiped, users will see a thumbtack icon in addition to the other options, just press the icon, and voila, the comment is pinned to the top. It is a simple process that can lead to a lot of great brand development and discussion by controlling the comments others first see and indicating what a user finds relevant to their post. Sources:AdWeek Written by: Sofia Christensen, Intern Edited by: Lisa Knight, COO & Mentor

📷 Image Credit: Digital Information World 👆By: Arooj Ahmed TL;DR The next big Instagram feature might be providing users with a list of accounts they might want to block. It is common for social networks to recommend whom we might want to connect with, this even happens here on Linkedin, but Instagram is going in a direction we haven't seen before. It has been reported that Instagram is working on a way to provide users with a list of people they may not want to follow. This list won't be randomized, though; it is likely it will use information from its parent company Facebook to determine whom a user has blocked on other social media platforms, including Facebook, Messenger, and maybe even WhatsApp. This feature seems to be in early development as it was discovered by reverse engineering on the platform, so if this feature truly will become available on Instagram, it is not known when it will be publicized and ready for use on the app, but look out for this as it could be an insight into the next big change on Instagram. Sources:Digital Information World Written by: Sofia Christensen, Intern Edited by: Lisa Knight, COO & Mentor

📷 Image Credit: Julia Alexander 👆By: The Verge TL;DR Lollapalooza is taking a huge step by offering a FREE four-day online concert. Events with thousands of attendees, like concerts, won't really be possible this year. Many concerts have been canceled or postponed...HOWEVER...not Lollapalooza. This year's festival will be on YouTube, streaming from July 30th to August 2nd at 6 pm ET, and the best part is that it's FREE! The four-day special will include over 150 performances, some new this year and some favorites from past years. Drum roll, please! New-to-scene artists like H.E.R. Louis the Child and Kaskade are on the playlist. The performances from past years feature fan favorites that include Lorde, Paul McCartney, Chance the Rapper, and Tyler the Creator, and the list goes on. A sign of the times, Lollapalooza isn't the only festival to move online. YouTube was used to show Tomorrowland, the EDM festival, virtually this year, as well many other artists have turned to different online platforms like Instagram and Minecraft to interact with fans digitally. While it won't be quite the same as attending the performances in-person, this is a cool way for festival lovers to listen to their favorite music from home, even if it's just in the background while you make dinner. Sources:The Verge Written by: Sofia Christensen, Intern Edited by: Lisa Knight, COO & Mentor

📷 Image Credit: TheVerge.com 👆By: Julia Alexander TL;DR YouTube has created a new metric for communicating creators' profits known as RPM. RPM should make it easier for Creators to measure their success and learn how to optimize their channel performance. Youtube creators can earn money on the platform through a number of ways, including advertisements, subscriptions, donations, live-streaming features, and Youtube Premium. All of these features have made earning money on Youtube quite confusing, but with the new monetization metric known as RPM, this confusion is made simple. RPM stands for Revenue Per Mille, which is a take on the previously known CPM, Cost Per Mille (sometimes referred to as Cost Per Thousand). While the names are similar, they are quite different metrics, and RPM will be much more useful to creators trying to grow their platform by giving them the ability to identify monthly income verticals. With this new system, Creators will be able to understand the breakdown of views and how the numbers change as content changes making it easier to identify what is working and what isn't working. Sources:TheVerge.com Written by: Sofia Christensen, Intern Edited by: Lisa Knight, COO & Mentor