Instagram’s sagging engagement, LinkedIn’s new marketing tools, and Google’s revamped news section

Good morning, PR pros:

Twitter experienced a global outage Thursday, its second this month. (On July 3, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp also reported outages.) Many social media users panicked—did you?—but Twitter was back after roughly an hour. How should a mega-platform respond to a mega-lapse in service?

For its part, Twitter announced its return with a succinct, cheeky tweet:

https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1149407582488059909

Here are today’s top stories:

A recent report by InfluencerDB reveals that average Instagram engagement (measured by an account’s “like follower ratio”) is declining, with engagement for those in the travel industry dropping 3.5% from last year. Sponsored posts’ engagement has dropped 2.4% and non-sponsored posts has seen upward of 4.5% less engagement. (Note: InfluencerDB no longer offers this kind of data and is now a contact and campaign management tool.)