August, the month when people begin to wave goodbye to summer, may be devoid of major holidays, but there are still some noteworthy dates on the calendar for agencies, brands, creators, and social media professionals.
National Women’s Equality Day falls late in the month, but there are also days to honor friends (International Friendship Day), family (National Sons and Daughters Day), furry friends and family (World Cat Day and National Dog Day), and even the hashtag (International Hashtag Day).
Social Media Holidays to Mark on Your Calendar
- Aug. 2: International Friendship Day
- Aug. 7: International Beer Day
- Aug. 8: World Cat Day
- Aug. 9: National Book Lovers Day
- Aug. 11: National Sons and Daughters Day
- Aug. 13: International Left-Handers Day
- Aug. 14: National Financial Awareness Day
- Aug. 19: World Humanitarian Day
- Aug. 19: World Photography Day
- Aug. 23: International Hashtag Day
- Aug. 26: National Women’s Equality Day
- Aug. 26: National Dog Day
Social Media Platform Updates
TikTok
SwishTok
TikTok reached a new global, multiyear content partnership with the National Basketball Association and Women’s National Basketball Association.
The agreement encompasses creator access to league events, highlights and live game discovery through the recently introduced TikTok GamePlan initiative, and advertising opportunities via TikTok Pulse Premiere.
@nba 🏆 Knicks mount the largest comeback in NBA Finals History with a 29-POINT COMEBACK making it a fantastic finish to remember! 📖 🔥 🏆 #NBAFinals #NBA #Basketball #Knicks #NewYorkKnicks ♬ original sound – NBA
As part of TikTok GamePlan, an anchor link on NBA and WNBA content steers fans to dedicated in-application hubs with official accounts, schedules, and television schedules.
Manning the Shop
Under a new pilot program that will kick off in August, sellers on TikTok Shop can pay the platform a fee to oversee creative; run automated ads and test creative via TikTok’s GMV Max took; optimize product listings; hire creators; and create content, including artificial-intelligence-generated videos.
Sellers will still need to list their products on TikTok Shop and provide creators with free samples.
Participating sellers pay a flat fee of $10,000, as well as commission of 10% to 20% per sale, depending on product category.
Other TikTok News
- A new viewing record for TikTok Live by an artist was set July 2, when more than 2.16 million unique viewers watched iHeartRadio and TikTok Live Premiere with Madonna. The event also tallied over 5.75 million likes and 139,000 comments.
- The platform offered in-app experiences marking the debuts of Music, Fashion, Film from Charli xcx, Oh yeah? from Steve Lacy, and Tyla’s A*POP.
- Finally, the ban on federal employees using TikTok on their government devices has been lifted.
AI Effects for Stories
Parent company Meta introduced more than 30 new effects for Instagram Stories in the U.S., powered by Meta Superintelligence Labs’ Muse Image AI image-generation model.
The new effects enable creators to tweak the lighting, composition, and subject of photos and videos, with Instagram explaining in a blog post, “You can subtly enhance the lighting in your photos with an effect like Night Flash or Disposable, try on new looks with Puffer or Paper Doll, or turn your Instagram profile into a personalized keychain with IG Charms.”
Typing in a prompt at the bottom of the composer also enables people to create their own effects, and the redesigned composer lets creators scroll through a carousel of thumbnails to preview how the effects enhance their content.
Finally, Instagram also introduced a feature enabling users to @ mention public accounts they wanted to reference, but this feature was removed following negative feedback.
Other Instagram News
- New features were added for live chats on stand-alone app Threads, including support for translations, the ability for all Community Champions to start live chats, the option of inviting up to three co-hosts, and letting hosts delete messages for everyone.
- Additions to Instagram’s Edits app include the ability to import fonts, the option of generating lyrics from selected music and styling them as captions, and a way to search video effects by keywords such as blur and fade.
- Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta, and Meta Glasses are now offering new interactive and multicamera formats for Instagram Stories, along with new editing tools.
- Users can now change in-app audio on existing posts or carousels without losing the content’s likes, comments, or shares.
- Parental supervision tools are rolling out for Threads.
- Instagram released two handy guides: creating your first video edit in five minutes, and a comprehensive guide to Stories.
- Finally, Meta AI will alert parents if their teen discusses suicide or self-harm while using the AI assistant.
YouTube
Thumbnails for Shorts
YouTube Partner Program creators now have the option of uploading custom thumbnails for the platform’s short-form video format, Shorts.
Three suggested thumbnail frames are also available for Shorts, after previously being offered for long-form videos.
Finally, creators working on long-form videos can generate thumbnails through AI creative partner Ask Studio.
Measuring Impact
The company released its 2025 U.S. YouTube Impact Report, crafted with internal data and research from Oxford Economics. Highlights include:
- YouTube’s creative ecosystem contributed more than $60 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product and supported the equivalent of over 540,000 full-time jobs.
- All 50 states have at least 10 channels with 1million monthly views or more.
- 76% of small and midsized businesses with YouTube channels said the platform played a role in helping them expand their customer base.
- 77% of creators with media and entertainment careers started out on YouTube.
- 87% of viewers watched music videos, music festivals, or awards ceremonies on the platform in the past year.
- 67% of viewers (72% for Generation Z) discuss YouTube videos with friends or family members on a monthly basis.
- 94% of teachers who use YouTube incorporate its content into their lessons or assignments, with 81% saying students would not otherwise have access to that content.
- 78% of parents who use YouTube or YouTube Kids at home said it provides quality content for their kids’ education and entertainment.
Meta
Muse News
Muse Image, the first image generation model from Meta Superintelligence Labs, is now available in the Meta AI assistant.
People using Meta AI or WhatsApp Chat With Meta AI can use simple conversational language to describe their desired image, with Meta explaining in a blog post, “Ask it to mock up an image of you in front of a historical landmark, cleanly erase a photobomber from the background of a shot, or write a custom prompt to build a functional QR code.”
Muse Image can also clearly render text inside visuals.
The tool contains a panel of presets with suggested prompts to help creators get started.
Users can share a photo of their room and have Meta AI redesign it with actual products culled from the web or e-commerce destination Facebook Marketplace.
Other Meta News
- Agency holding group Dentsu will integrate Creator Marketplace and Partnership Ads into its operating system via an application-programming interface, combining its data with Meta’s platforms.
- The company unveiled Meta Holiday Insights Center for small and midsized businesses.
- New model Muse Spark 1.1 enables Meta AI to perform functions such as making plans, connecting to email and calendar apps, and creating slides.
- Messaging app WhatsApp introduced several new features: Calling directly from WhatsApp Web; the ability to move group calls between devices without hanging up; a waiting room for group calls; instant HD-quality video; noise suppression; the ability to create an account on an iPad without linking it to a phone; a revamped experience for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto; opening PDFs without downloading them and making “lightweight edits” directly in the chat; and sharing songs from Apple Music or Spotify to WhatsApp Status.
New AI Tools
Pinterest introduced two AI-powered tools for businesses on its platform: Business Assistant and a new Model Context Protocol server.
Business Assistant combines information it has learned about a brand with guidance specific to Pinterest’s platform, including its Taste Graph, products, policies, and trends.
And the new open-source MCP server enables approved partners to connect their own large language model agents and copilots directly to Pinterest data and workflows. Initial alpha partners include Dentsu, Innovid by Mediaocent, Omnicom’s Jump450, Pacvue, and PMG.
Other Pinterest News
- The company shared five best practices for shopping performance on its platform.
Are You Verified?
Facebook introduced Facebook Verified, a process that enables users to submit a short video selfie, which the platform checks against their profile picture before issuing a badge that appears on surfaces including Marketplace, Dating, and groups, as well as their profile.
Users 18 and older in good standing with the social network’s community standards—particularly those covering fraud, scams, and deceptive practices—are eligible to apply.
However, Facebook Verified is not available for pages or ProMode accounts.
Sell, Sell, Sell!
Seller, a new app for e-commerce destination Facebook Marketplace, provides dedicated tools for sellers such as AI-powered listings creation, a unified inbox, inventory management, and performance insights.
The app syncs with Marketplace and users’ existing listings, messages, and selling history, and anything created on Seller automatically appears on Marketplace.
The company added that Facebook Marketplace just turned 10 years old.
Snapchat
Boosting Business Manager
Snapchat detailed several updates to its Business Manager aimed at reducing the friction for agencies using it to manage campaigns for their clients.
Agency Permissions enables brands to assign org- and account-level access to agency partners without surrendering full organizational control, and the platform also introduced Cross-Organization Audience Sharing.
Account Migration and Account Sharing are being tested with the goal of a broader rollout later this year.
The company also said it is launching updated Agency Partner Badges and a unified Partner Badge, and the Indy Agency Partner Program is being extended to France and the U.K., with more markets to follow.
Finally, Snapchat will introduce a Creator Agency Partner Program later this year, and nine pilot partners in the U.S., including Open Influence, are already on board. The others are Beeline, Influencer, Influential, Later, Onefluent, #paid, Whaler, and Wpromote.
Other Snapchat News
- Snapchat and Dick’s Sporting Goods combined the platform’s ad exposure and the retailer’s sales data in LiveRamp’s secure data clear room, enabling advertisers to see how their campaigns on Snapchat drive online and in-store sales at Dick’s.
- People using Snap Map can now share music they are listening to, starting with Spotify.
- Finally, Snapchat is testing a new feature for Snap Map that enables users to see when creators they follow have visited or recommended places.
Get Creative
LinkedIn introduced several creative tools for small and growing businesses seeking to run business-to-business campaigns on its platform:
- Brand Kit lets brands define their colors, fonts, logo, tone of voices, and key messaging.
- Draft With AI generates ad copy based on a URL for the product or service being advertised, campaign goals, and other context provided by the advertiser, such as past high-performing creatives.
- Ads Personalization lets brands tailor messaging using professional attributes like job title, company, and industry.
- Experiment and Scale enables advertisers to generate multiple versions of an existing ad in order to test different messaging angles.
- Finally, Flexible Ad Creation lets brands provide images, videos, and copy for their campaign, which the professional network mixes and matches to generate more options, automatically shifting ad delivery to the best performing creative.
Other LinkedIn News
- Collaborative Posts are now available to members and company pages, enabling joint posting with up to five other members or through pages.
Combating AI Slop
Reddit is using AI to detect AI.
The platform said it is sharpening its detection of manipulated and spammy content through signals such as “coordinated patterns of fake behavior and artificial hype,” adding that it is currently blocking 23 million spam views per day before they ever reach a human user and catching roughly 25,000 spammy posts and comments per day.
Reddit also expanded its automated systems to support enforcement against hate and violence in text content, starting with English, with more languages to roll out soon.
X
Go Live
X rolled out a beta version of Live Studio, which gives creators on its platform a single space to create, manage, and grow livestreams.
Live Studio includes a redesigned portal for creation and scheduling of streams, a dedicated control room for real-time management, live chat controls, analytics (real-time and post-stream), the ability to update the stream title while it is live, and alerting creators when their download is completed.
Other X News
- X said the newest version of its Grok AI model can detect duplicated content at three times the rats of the previous version.
- New features for X’s Video Editor on iOS include recording in segments, green screening (any photo, video, or post), and adding captions.
- Premium Business subscribers now have access to Mentions Boost, enabling them to instantly promote authentic customer reviews and real-time conversations, as well as adding custom call-to-action buttons and destination URLs.
- iOS users can now add thumbnails to their videos.
- The X Android app was completely rebuilt.
- Finally, XChat for Android is live.
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