The week in social: YouTube Subscriptions, Tinder Ads, and Lobster

YouTube testing subscriptions

Imagine a YouTube with no ads. Imagine there were no more poorly targeted pre-rolls, no mid-scene pop-ups blocking the picture, and never again would you feel the anguish unique to waiting for the “Skip” button to appear. YouTube may debut a subscription program that allows you to leave all of these things behind

Tinder tries Ads: you know, just to see what it’s like

Last week, Tinder unveiled its first venture into the ad space by serving a video for Budweiser’s #upforwhatever campaign. The video/ad is fed into the regular content as a user is swiping through, and there are more advanced interaction options built into the advertisement page. Of course, Tinder will be reporting back to the brand on numbers for left/right-swipes

Snapchat provides ephemeral geofenced filters at Coachella

Coachella Festival-goers using Snapchat were treated to a set of custom filters paired with specific time periods. Users could share messages that showed not just that they were at the well attended music extravaganza, but that they saw specific artists while they were playing. It’s an interesting study in enabling users to create and share exclusive content that has a meaningful connection to their passion points

Brands on Periscope

New streaming platforms were all the rage in March, and it’s not surprising that innovative brands arrived soon after. GE, Mountain Dew and Spotify were quick to take their audiences behind the scenes with Periscope, offering their audience raw, unique access to the likes of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and Irish indie band The Villagers

Facebook releases Messenger stand-alone site

Facebook launched a new site that will play host exclusively to it’s Messenger features. While you can still use the regular Facebook page for messaging, the new site promises to provide communications with a minimalist design, and without the distractions of the regular Facebook feed

Facebook focus on SMBs

Small to Mid-sized businesses have a new set of publishing tools available, courtesy of Facebook’s Creative Shop. New brands coming to the platform will have access to pre-packaged campaign ideas, creative tips for producing written/photo/video assets for a business page. and a gallery of case studies to stoke out inspiration for using Facebook to promote business

Imgur adds embed code

The colossal public image host has added new options that enables you to copy a line of HTML for use in embedding on outside sites. By adding this simple feature, Imgur gains ground on the ability to quickly and easily serve images with proper attribution, as well as track more info about image usage, shares and views

Retweets get more character(s)

If retweeting content without comment has never been your cup of tea, Twitter has a launched the solution for you. Using the Retweet button on Twitter.com now allows 116 characters to be attached to the original content without the need for any additional editing. That said, brevity likely remains the soul of wit

Search updates on Twitter

Some users will begin seeing a revamped version of Twitter’s search page. The added features will enable sorting search results by the popularity of the content, or by the chronology of the resulting posts, and a new “People” option will allow combined searches for keywords with specific user accounts. Twitter has not confirmed if these new features will be released to a broader audience in the future

Influencer Marketing

The Shelf released a new infographic this week highlighting the importance of influencer marketing. Blogs are the third-most consulted resource (behind Retail and Brand sites) listed in the customer decision-making journey. Further, sharing content through influencers showed a 3-10 times higher conversion rate than sharing over brand channels

Lobster – the Google of UGC

Lobster aims to stand at the crossroad of user generated content, multi-platform search, and digital rights management. The service will provide brands and publishers a single place to search platforms like Instagram and Flickr, with plans to loop Twittern, Vine, Facebook and Vimeo in the future. Once the content has been selected, Lobster will take on the task of contacting the content owner to secure the proper permission and compensation.