Instagram Top 9: It’s that time of year to look back at your top performing Instagram posts and relive your year through a “Top 9” grid of the best photos. To get yours head over to TopNine.co, enter your email address, and tag your post #TopNine. What a year!

Elf on the Shelf Burnout: Thanks to Pinterest parenting, the bar for Elf on a Shelf pranks and stage design has reached a feverish peak in social media this year (even when you accidentally leave him in the oven). The pressure to delight not only your kiddos but also your social followers is prompting some to look for an alternate tradition — rooted in the new social behavior of opting out. It’s called Santa’s Lazy Gnome, and for $34 your family can get a plush little old man and book explaining that the gnome doesn’t need to be moved because he can see children from anywhere. No social sharing required! Priceless!

Glitch Chic on Insta: You may have noticed weird lines or glitchy photos on your friends’ feeds this week. Instagram confirmed it knows about the issues and is looking to rectify it. And because it’s the internet, some people are loving the glitched-out look. And also because it’s the internet, if you want to purposely glitch your photos check out the Glitche app.

Anatomy of an AI System: Wrapping your head around all of the systems a piece of new technology requires can be difficult – especially to see the full picture of what goes into making it and how it affects our life from sourcing materials to lifestyle benefits to global impact. To tell the story of Amazon Echo, two professors set out to map the human labor, data and planetary resources behind the A.I. assistant, and the resulting artwork, essay and microsite is a deep analysis of the beauty and drawbacks of the hottest holiday gift. You’ll never look at an Echo the same way again.

Spotify Wrapped: An analysis of 12-months of streaming can say a lot about a person, and Spotify is again helping you crunch your streaming data to see how your stacked up this year, including total minutes streamed, top artists and songs, top genres and even custom playlists based on your listening habits. See your analysis at SpotifyWrapped.com and share your results with #2018Wrapped.

Here’s what else is worth a skim this week…

• This week Apple unveiled its list of the most downloaded iPhone apps of 2018. Topping the list is YouTube, followed by Instagram, Snapchat, Messenger and Facebook, with Bitmjoi falling to sixth place (it was #1 in 2017!).

• Forbes has a story about Ryan of Ryan Toysreview, and how he became this year’s highest-paid YouTube star, earning $22 million in the 12 months playing with toys on YouTube.

• Facebook is testing a shopping mode for live streams in Thailand, where customers see a screenshot button that lets them take photos of items they want to buy, message the merchant directly and send payment requests through Messenger.

• If your city has Bird scooters, you’ve definitely seen damaged scooters on the sidewalk. If you’ve ever wondered who repairs them, their called “Bird Mechanics” and this is a detailed piece on what they do and how to become one.

• Lastly, it’s not the holidays unless you dress your venus flytrap as Santa. LOL.

“Stories” Now on Every Major Social Media Platform: It’s appears 2019 will be the year of the “Story,” with LinkedIn and YouTube both now adding the content format to their primary platforms — joining Snap, Insta and Facebook as a way to share chronological, vertical, short-form content that disappears.

Local News on Facebook: This week Facebooked launched “Today In,” a local news aggregator feature, in 400 small to medium-sized US cities. The feature includes previews that link out to news sites about top headlines, current discussions, school announcements and more. If you live in one of these cities, you can find this new section in the Facebook app by tapping the menu (☰) and then tapping on “Today In.”

Instagram Combating Fake Follows and Engagement: This week Instagram announced it will use machine learning to identify fake followers, likes and comments from users using bots and apps to falsely increase their accounts and posts. If you see an profile’s follower accounts drop en masse, it’s not because that profile offended people, but most likely because the followers were fake.

Bye Bye YouTube Annotations: You know those annoying translucent pop-up boxes that interrupt video viewing on YouTube? As of January, they will disappear for good across the platform. Thankfully brands and user can still use Cards and End Screens to direct viewers to additional information. Use of annotations had decreased by 70 percent, which is likely because they ever worked well on mobile (and because they were annoying!).

Other stories worth skimming this week…

• This week, for the first time since the song was released in 1994, “All I want for Christmas Is You” by Mariah Carey reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, fueled in part by 210 million streams on Spotify.

• Vox details the growing number of people calling on others to cancel their Amazon Prime subscriptions.

• We are loving the new “Like and Subscribe” series from Funny or Die. It features Skyy Goldwynne (Dillon Francis), as a Hollywood manager who locks four of his influencer clients in a house with a camera crew. Put this on your watchlist for the weekend.

• Christopher Wyle, the whistleblower who flagged that Cambridge Analytica had harvested 87 million profiles using an app that Facebook had authorized, wrote a lengthy blog post about what life has been like since being banned not only from Facebook but also from all the other companies that Facebook owns.

“If Russia had dropped propaganda leaflets by airplane over FL or MI that would universally be condemned as a hostile act. We’d shoot down the plane. But this is exactly what is happening online”

• You can challenge your officemates to a holiday-themed Jenga game with R.L. Stine’s infamous Goosebumps villain thanks to this new Augmented Reality (AR) game, “Slappy’s Haunted Christmas” (download here: iOS, Android).

Instagram Goes All-In on Shoppable Posts: Just in time for holiday shopping, Instagram added three shopping features to help users complete a purchase in-app – including shoppable videos and a shop tab on business pages. These new features help position Instagram more directly against more shoppable-driven platforms like Pinterest and Wish.

Learn With Facebook: This week Facebook launched Learn With Facebook, a career development site that “focuses on both the hard and soft skills people need to advance in today’s digital workforce.” Facebook is also updating its Mentorship tool, which helps connect people in groups who are looking for a mentor in their community.

Snap Introduces Bitmoji Merch: This week Snap made a number of announcements, including “friendship profiles” to capture all the shared media you’ve exchanged with friends and groups in a single place, a Bitmoji cartoon that appears in your Discover feed, and selling Bitmoji merchandise. Bitmoji Merch will take avatars from you and your friends and put them on stuff like shirts, mugs, shower curtains, and phone cases. Finally!

Instagram Insights! This week Facebook began rolling out analytics for Instagram accounts and expanded FB Page analytics. Instagram Insights will feature deeper levels of engagement metrics, including retention rates and lifetime value of users who interact with your Instagram content. Plus, the ability to create segments around engaged audiences and see the overlap among users who have downloaded a brand’s app, visited its website or engaged with its Facebook Page. Facebook says both of these betas will be rolling out over the next several months – you’ll get a notification in your dashboard along with an email when the new data becomes available.

Other stories worth skimming this week…

• Facebook quietly released a new app called Lasso for creating and watching short-form videos, similar to TikTok and Vine.

• Linked re-created its Company Pages experience from scratch, and it feels a lot like Facebook Pages.
• This new Facebook patent would use your family photos to target ads.
• This Reply-All podcast on the history of Gritty, FBI investigations and Hipster Coffee Shops from a random tweet is so deep and niche and funny we literally LOL’d three times.
• We’re testing out this new app called Endel that uses any inputs you give it (location, heart rate, etc) to create different algorithm-driven music depending on your mood, vitals, etc. It’s like Spotify’s Mood but run by your body! Get it here on iOS.

The Sneaky Voicemail: Have you noticed the trend of friends leaving you voice texts (aka voice notes or voice messages) instead of text or voicemail? You aren’t alone. The idea of a short voice message sent via text is gaining traction across the globe, and not everyone is excited about needing to spend time actually LISTENING to each other — while others are excited about the convenience and reclamation of nuance that just isn’t possible with traditional texting. Are you a voice text offender? Try to keep it between 10-15 seconds, don’t waste time with pleasantries (hi/bye), and don’t expect an immediate reply. Or you know, just send a text.

Most Loved Brands on Social Pop-Up Stores: This week Facebook announced social media pop-up shops opening in 9 Macy’s stores (New York City, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle) for the holiday season. The stores will feature 100 brands known as “most-loved brands” on Instagram and Facebook, including Love Your Melon, Two Blind Brothers, Bespoke Post and Charleston Gourmet Burger Company. We also think they’ll be selling Portal, which is Facebook’s answer to Amazon’s Echo Show. Happy shopping!

Partisan Meme Wars Come to LinkedIn: We try not to get too political in the Social Pulse, but this week we noticed the alarming trend of hyper-partisan political content, false memes, and troll battles coming to LinkedIn. As social networks like Facebook and Twitter’s start to crackdown on hate speech and fake news, those communities (and bots!) have found a voice and platform on LinkedIn. Although LinkedIn executives say their users want to see business and not political content, the cat is out of the bag and we expect they will be soon implementing many of the content review protocols we’re seeing rolling out on Facebook and Twitter.

Amazon Mails a Printed Catalog to Millions: Sometimes the best way to capture attention in an always-on, algorithmic world is through legacy strategies — like direct mailing a dead-tree catalog to customers for the holidays. And if you’re Amazon, you fill it with QR codes for easy shopping and dynamic pricing. This move from the retailer powerhouse will give millions of kids the opportunity to “circle” toys they want for the holidays – filling the Toys R Us-sized hole in homes nationwide.

Other stories worth skimming this week:

• China’s state-run press agency has created an ‘AI anchor’ to read the news, and he’s better than most of our local TV personalities.
• Pinterest launched a redesigned Following Tab that resembles Instagram.
• A new Stanford study found that young people at every stage from middle school to college were consistently unable to differentiate news from advertising, or false information from the truth, a state of affairs the researchers described as “bleak.” 
• You can impress your friends this weekend by debating if Virtual Reality is an empathy or sympathy engine thanks to this piece in Aeon.
• And this 70-year-old grandpa uses 11 phones to play Pokémon Go with a homemade holster rig that we’re kind of jealous of, to be honest.

Latest Tweets First Button in Testing: It was a busy week with news of Twitter launching a bot-reporting feature and rumors of CEO Jack Dorsey was looking to kill the “like” button (which probably won’t happen). But what is happening is Twitter is testing a chronological button that allows you to easily toggle between “best tweets first” and “latest tweets first” feeds. Our experience is best tweets improves quality and discovery, but we like the option to choose.

Facebook Groups as Therapy: In the current era of Facebook encouraging more friend and group content on their platform, it’s no surprise Facebook Groups are emerging as a gathering place for strangers sharing their deepest secrets and offering advice and counsel to each other. The Atlantic published an in-depth piece on the emotional-support group dynamics across topics like diabetes, addiction, egg donation, parenting children who might grow up to be psychopaths, and even rare diseases that affect only a few dozen patients in the whole world. It’s a long read, but a good one.

Level Up is Twitch for Facebook: As Facebook continues to look for ways to compete with video game streaming platform Twitch, this week they expanded their Level Up Program to game streamers worldwide (21 countries!). The Level Up Program helps streamers build a community on Facebook. Streamers that are eligible can earn some extra cash through Facebook Stars — similar to Twitch Bits.

Insta Stories Updates this Week: This week Instagram announced they are testing a new ad type called “Promote” for Stories, which is similar to when they opened up Facebook boosted posts to all companies. And you can now you share IGTV videos to your Instagram Story. And you can now share songs you Shazam directly to Instagram Stories.

The Next Great Novel – Available via Messenger Bot: James Patterson is partnering with Facebook to bring a “digital novel experience” for The Chef, Patterson’s upcoming novel, which will be published in print in February 2019. Patterson told Adweek, “Ten years ago, if you told me I’d see one of my novels come to life through scrolling chat bubbles, video and audio content, I would have laughed.” You can access the bot by searching for “The Chef by James Patterson” in Messenger’s search bar and tapping on the icon. Check it out!

Pssst… What’s Your Password? This is your reminder to update your passwords regularly. Use a password manager to make them strong. And utilize two-factor authentication whenever possible. And if Jimmy Kimmel asks you for your password – don’t give it to him.

Meme-Inspired Costumes Will Slay Again This Year: Don’t have a costume picked out to impress your coworkers at your office party next week? Don’t want to be one of 10 shredded Banksy costumes at the bar this weekend? Has your mom not crotched you an epic Slimer costume? Check out these meme-inspired costumes, including Backpack Kid, Walmart Yodel Boy, Salt Bae and 4 different Kermit options. Hey, at least they aren’t bad rip-offs.

Ghost Choir, the song: Artist Louie Zong is most well-known for his work on Cartoon Network’s “We Bare Bears,” but he’s also a musician and animator who makes short-form content that’s incredibly interesting and shareable. His latest is called “Ghost Choir” and it’s already surpassed a million views on Twitter. It features a simple keyboard melody sung by a ghost sextet. It’s charming, catchy and worth watching a couple times before 10/31.

Haunted Instagram Museums Are a Thing: Given the recent trend of pop-up experiences designed for social sharing, like The The Museum of Pizza that opened this week, of course there are some cropping up designed for Halloween. At Nightmare Machine in Brooklyn, visitors can pose for a picture where it looks like they’re being sliced up by a maniacal butcher, pose for a picture in a creepy laundromat, pose for a picture in “hell” (a red ball pit) and more. Vox has a great overview of other spooky-themed popup experiences here.

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Alexa, play “Heads Will Roll” by the @yeahyeahyeahs

A post shared by Nightmare Machine (@inthedreammachine) on Oct 15, 2018 at 7:49am PDT

Best Dog Costume Ever: ABC has a great list of Halloween costumes for man’s best friend, including Waldo, Storm Trooper and UPS Man. But if you haven’t seen this dog in an elephant costume acting like a wind-up toy, we think you’ve been too busy this week.

Halloween Maternity Shoot with Twist Ending: We’ve all clicked through family photo albums on Facebook, with their perfect smiles and outfits and backgrounds. But this Canadian couple has upped the bar on their staged maternity photos  – including an alien-like Xenomorph bursting out of the womb and the new dad chasing down his “newborn child” with blood everywhere. Here’s the full Facebook album – just keep clicking next to see the madness unfold!

Twitter Adds Transparency Tools: In the era of fake news, bots and manipulated social trends, Twitter is under pressure to add tools to their social network that help average people discern what’s authentic and what’s manufactured. This week Twitter has rolled out a change to Moments that would provide contextual information within its curated stories, called “Annotations.” They also announced they will hide reported tweets behind an informational notice and make it more transparent to users whether a deleted tweet was deleted by the user or because Twitter took an action.

Humans Can’t Stop Rear-Ending Self-Driving Cars: Autonomous car manufacturers boast of their safety standards and conservative approach to the road – aimed at reducing the nearly 40,000 fatalities that hit US roads every year. But as we live in the paradox between all-human-drivers and all-robot-drivers we’re entering a long phase where we share the road together, and the headaches are piling up. Specifically, two-thirds of all autonomous vehicle accidents are human drivers rear-ending them. The reason? Humans expect other humans to bend or break traffic laws, and the robots just don’t act that way. For now, Wired says we should give self-driving cars a lot of stopping distance, don’t expect them to accelerate through yellow lights, and hope the time comes soon when they can drive us to work while we nap.

College Students Relying on Snapchat for News? A new study from the Knight Foundation turned up a surprising finding — that among college students, Snapchat is the second most popular social media source for news behind Facebook. Of those surveyed, 89% said they got at least some of their news from social media over the previous week, with Facebook the most popular outlet (71%) and Snapchat second (55%). In contrast, the Pew Research Center has found around 5% of US adults get their news from Snapchat — a number that has remained consistent over the last two years.

Wile E. Coyote is So Hot RN: We’re seeing Looney Tunes’ underdog villain Wile E. Coyote everywhere right now — as the centerpiece of Raf Simons’s latest collection for Calvin Klein (this $1,400 leather tote!!), The Hundreds’ ACME collection, and soon to be in his own animated movie with “Lego Batman” director Chris McKay on board to produce. Could this be the era where the Coyote captures the Road Runner? Doubtful. Related: Here’s our favorite Wile. E. Coyote meme.

Product Wars: A Short Film: In this new short film from Stephan Zlotescu, genetically engineered mascots become the latest craze in this all too possible future. The film takes us into an alternate history where mascots and marketing characters are genetically manufactured to actually exist. This is the most exciting, depressing, and provocative 8.5 minutes you’ll spend this weekend. Or your money back! Watch it here.