Less than two weeks after its launch, Instagram’s Stories feature is getting high marks from media brands. “A flurry of media companies including CNN, Food Network, People, Comedy Central, Cosmopolitan and Tastemade have taken to regularly producing Stories, and some say they are seeing solid early viewership numbers,” The Wall Street Journal reports. 

The New York Times has agreed to buy Fake Love -- an experiential design studio with a focus on virtual reality and augmented reality. “Fake Love will help expand T Brand Studio, the Times’ internal marketing arm,” Adweek reports. “The agency, which has offices in New York and Dubai, has already worked on experiential and creative projects with the Times, along with VR and AR projects and other live experiences for notable brands.”

Why has Twitter so far failed to remedy its rampant troll problem? Well, “According to 10 high-level former employees, the social network’s long history with abuse has been fraught with inaction and organizational disarray,” Buzzfeed reports. More broadly, Twitter has “been ill-equipped to handle harassment since its beginnings.”

NextVR -- a startup that broadcasts events live in virtual reality -- just raised $80 million in Series B funding to expand its platform. Investors include China Assets Holdings, Citic Guoan Information Industry Co., CMC Holdings Ltd. of Hong Kong, Founder H Fund Co., NetEase,SoftBank, Spectrum 28 Capital and VMS Investment Group, The Wall Street Journal reports.

While social media are a pervasive global force, it’s unclear how they’ll be used at the Rio Games. Which narratives will be told, by whom, and what impact will they have? If we think about sporting events as spaces for media consumption and evolution, then the battles for Olympic “success” take place as much through various storytelling platforms as they do in the stadium. But what does success for such an event look like?

This week, some of the platform's biggest stars—Josh Peck, Shaun McBride and the Eh Bee Family—posted copy that is marked with hashtags such as #paid, #ad and #sponsored to indicate that their posts are paid for by brands. The need for endorsement clarifications on Snapchat speaks to how advertisers are making bigger investments in the platform.

LinkedIn will being adding short videos to users’ feed, most of which will come from their favorite influencers. “The company has tapped some 500 popular figures on the site -- mostly CEOs and thought leader types -- to record 30-second clips of themselves answering questions posed by other users,” The Next Web reports. “It seems like a smart move by LinkedIn to get more people to rely on their feeds for news and user-submitted content.”

Facebook this week showed off Area 404 -- a building that houses the social giant’s hardware, from solar drones to VR headsets. “With so much hardware on its 10-year roadmap, and quarter after quarter of profits stacking up, it made sense to build a dedicated laboratory within its Menlo Park headquarters,” TechCrunch writes.

Less than six months since her arrival, Natalie Kerris is abandoning her post as Twitter’s VP of communications. “One of Jack Dorsey’s focal points since he took on the role of permanent CEO in October of last year has been getting Twitter to be better at telling its own story,” Buzzfeed writes. “Yet that’s been something that the company has struggled with under Kerris.”