Each year, Mary Meeker, partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, releases a report, described by Tech Crunch as "essentially the state of the union for the technology industry".

The widely anticipated Trends report compiles the most informative research on what’s getting funded, how Internet adoption is progressing, which interfaces are resonating, and what will be big next.

Here are a few initial takeaways:

• Global smartphone sales and and Internet penetration growth is slowing. 
• Voice is beginning to replace typing in online queries. 
• There’s still more time spent on mobile than ad spend, indicating forthcoming windfalls for mobile ad platforms.
• Google and Facebook control 85% of online ad growth
• Internet ad spend will surpass TV spend within six months
• Email spam with malicious attachments is exploding as cloud usage increases, so be careful what you click.
• Wearables are gaining adoption with about 25 percent of Americans owning one, up 12 percent from 2016.

• Watch Mary Meeker give her 2017 internet trends report
• Mary Meeker’s 2017 internet trends report: All the slides, plus analysis
• Mary Meeker Is Bold On Digital Health

Snapchat has introduced a redesigned web tool to make it easier for users to create on-demand geofilters from scratch.

Snapchat On-Demand Geofilters lets you design custom filters people can use on their snaps based on a custom location you define (most cities have geofilters, and Snapchat also creates seasonal geofilters for cultural events). For any photos or videos taken on Snapchat at your event’s location, users can layer your filter over the image.

Users of the messaging application have been able to create on-demand geofilters since last February, via image editors such as Photoshop and Illustrator. Snapchat eased the process last August with its introduction of customizable templates and several other features.

The revamped web tool contains preset categories including birthdays, weddings, business, celebrations and graduation—and users can access templates and modify their text, colours and graphics, including Bitmoji.

Pricing varies depending on the length of time that the geofilters will be available, as well as the size of the geofence (minimum of 20,000 square feet).

You might also like to read Why You Should Use Snapchat for Your Event — And How to Do It

Instagram is rolling out two new features to show you what’s happening around you and find stories related to your interests.

Location stories on Explore are currently available on the latest version of the Instagram app for iOS and Android. You’ll see a new story ring at the top of Explore filled with stories happening near you. These stories come from people who have used location stickers on their stories. You can also search for any location around the world, and you’ll see a story ring for that place at the top of the location page.

The new hashtag stories will be rolling out over the coming weeks on Explore to help you find stories related to your interests. When you search for a hashtag, you may see a story ring at the top of the page filled with stories using that hashtag.

Related Reading

• 3 Simple, But Powerful, Ways to Use Instagram Hashtags for Social Marketing Campaigns
• 13 Hidden Hacks to Make Your Instagram Stories Stand Out
• 7 Ways to Boost Your Engagement on Instagram

This week’s cool tool recommendation is Bit.ly, a tool which creates shortened links to track the performance of your content once you promote it. If you create a custom short link for each content promotion campaign, you can track what works well and what doesn’t.

Also check out Snip.ly  a url shortner tool which allows you to enhance every link you share (whether your own content or someone else’s) with a call to action. When people click on the Sniply-generated link, they can view the article you shared and see a CTA.
 

Both these tools are extremely useful to track how your content is performing and if you aren’t already using them, I highly recommend you start today.

1. Twitter Experiments With New Promotional Features for Sponsored Live Video
2. Instagram for Business Announces Four New Objectives for Stories Ads
3. Pinterest Adds New Functionality to Lens Beta and Search
4. Facebook Expands Click to Messenger Ads to Instagram
5. Google Introduces Google Attribution for Ads and Analytics
6. YouTube Introduces New Activity Tab for iOS App