Fortnite is a lot of things: a game, a social network, a sport, an ever-evolving piece of fiction. Up until now, all of these aspects of Fornite had remained largely separate. The World Cup showed what could happen if you brought all of those elements together.

A new class of female entrepreneurs is challenging preconceptions about the beauty industry and its ability to secure sizable investment and, subsequently, astronomical valuations. Several beauty companies have used social media to break into the list of “unicorns,” a Silicon Valley term used to describe start-ups valued at $1 billion or more.

Chase says that ads created by machine learning performed better than ads written by humans, with a higher percent of consumers clicking on them—more than twice as many in some cases. The difference can be as simple as what word choice resonates with consumers.

It appears we're now in the era of face filter malfunctions. The popular Chinese vlogger known as "Your Highness Qiao Biluo" was revealed to be decades older than the online persona she projected to her thousands of fans.

Since 2012, an Illinois-based artist named Ben Grosser has been exploring how social media numbers, including likes on a post or the number of friends or followers you have, mold our online behavior in ways deeper and more insidious than we realize. Now big tech firms are beginning to incorporate his call for “demetrication.”

Instagram and YouTube influencers have found a new lucrative subject in buying, rebuilding and renovating old houses for audiences near the millions. The brand sponsorships and free home products are already flooding in, from paid promotion for paint brands to pricey gifted furniture. Ironically most of their Millennial viewers are struggling to even put down a deposit on a property. 

Texting, posting, and emailing have become key parts of how we communicate in our lives and relationships, so much so that it’s fundamentally changing language and communication. According to linguist Gretchen McCulloch, the author of Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language and co-host of the podcast Lingthusiasm, it’s making us better writers, speakers, and communicators.

Using algorithm categorization, music we collectively listen to can be used by Spotify to predict downturns in the economy. Economists, banks and governments are started to pay attention.