Taylor Swift's 1989

Taylor Swift released a new album today called 1989. I'm sure most of you already knew that since it was nearly impossible to escape it on social media (not that I wanted to...). #Buy1989oniTunes, #TS1989, and several individual song titles from the album quickly became worldwide trending topics on Twitter after the album's release. Swift's 1989 is expected to sell over 900,000 copies in its first week, and could potentially break 1 million. That's pretty insane. To put this into perspective, only one album has sold over a million copies total this year, and that was the Frozen soundtrack. So, Taylor Swift could potentially have the second largest selling album in 2014, after just one week of it being released. Considering her last two albums Speak Now and Red both sold over a million copies in their first week, I have a feeling 1989 will do the same. If it does, Taylor will be the first act to have three million-selling weeks. Very impressive if you ask me. T-Swift's still got it.

SnapChat: Ouija Advertisement

This week, SnapChat released its first advertisement on their app and freaked a lot of people out. It was inevitable that this would have to happen eventually. SnapChat has to make money somehow and advertisements is one of the easiest ways to do that, but I'm not sure if an ad for a scary movie called Ouija was the best first impression. The ad appeared in the recent updates of everyone's SnapChat and you could choose whether or not you wanted to watch it, so it wasn't too invasive to me. On Friday the company wrote in a blog post, "We want to see if we can deliver an experience that's fun and informative, the way ads used to be, before they got creepy and targeted."

What do you think? Do you mind having ads on your SnapChat?

Venmo: The New Way to Pay

"Just Venmo me." These are my new three favorite words. What's Venmo you may ask? Venmo is an app you can download onto your smartphone that allows you to pay anyone instantly. You securely link up your bank account, and voila! You can pay your friend back for buying your dinner last night when you said you "forgot your wallet." It's incredibly easy, and I love it. No more writing checks to pay your roommate for utilities, or giving the waiter four different cards to split the bill at dinner. Venmo fixes those annoying little problems.

But how is Venmo setting itself apart from being just a service that helps you pay someone? The people at Venmo are making the app SOCIAL. When you pay someone, you get to write a memo for what you paid them for. There's a timeline on the app with a feed filled with what your friends are paying your other friends for (transaction amount not included). You can comment on these or even like them. You could say your paying your roommate for your portion of the water bill, or you could also say that you're paying her for Nickelback tickets (which is hilarious to me...).

I find myself scrolling through my Venmo newsfeed almost every day even if I'm not using it to pay anyone because people are funny. Not only is it a really great, easy to use, safe and secure service, but it's also slowly becoming a hilarious social network in the meantime. Kudos to Venmo!