#TheStream – Issue 20

Hello there and welcome to issue 20 of #TheStream! Let’s look back at some of the key points from last weeks news in tech, marketing and social.

Vimeo Launches Creator Services – Tip Jar and Pay to View

In an effort to help video creators make more money Vimeo have launched two new features in the form of ‘Tip Jar’ and ‘Pay to View’. Both work exactly as they sound with viewers now given the opportunity to tip a video maker or the video maker can choose to put their video behind a pay wall. Time will tell if these initiatives work out, Vimeo have also promised that more creator services will be coming soon.

Introducing Vimeo Tip Jar and more Creator Services from Vimeo Staff on Vimeo.

Source: Vimeo

Facebook Offers – Now a paid for service

Facebook have announced that their test period for Facebook Offers is now drawing to a close. Pages with more than 400 Likes should now see Offers as an option in the Status Update bar and after running one free Offer they will have to pay a small premium to reach a certain number of people in Facebook with their offer. Working similarly to Promoted Posts this will likely become a popular function for brand pages looking to generate interest in a certain product or who have physical retail locations.

Source: Mashable

Facebook begins Beta testing ads on mobile in third party apps

After hearing many analysts speak about the possibility of a Facebook ad network that could begin to rival Google, it now appears that Facebook are indeed trialling a form of banner ads on mobile apps. The goal is of course to use Facebook data to be able to better target more relevant ads tailored for individual users. This could well be the first step for Facebook to become a global advertising power house… next up search?

Source: TechCrunch

New…New…New…Twitter – The flock roll out updated apps and new look profiles

Twitter have launched another new version of the Profile page, and it’s pretty great. Users/brands now have the option to choose a header image to go at the top of their profile and images have been highlighted further. The ultimate goal here is to make profiles more appealing to visit rather than users just sticking to their news feeds. Whether this will work is yet to be seen.

Further on from this they released updates for the mobile apps with mixed results. The iPhone and Android apps have been further refined however the iPad application does seem to have taken to steps backwards which is a shame.

For some ideas on how best to use this new real estate on Twitter profiles, check out this article on Mashable.

Source: Twitter

Something called iOS 6 came out and there is a problem with maps…?

Lots of people seemed to be talking about this…no idea why… do you?

In all seriousness there is no need for us to retread this well trodden ground, but for your amusement here are some of the best Apple Maps fails.

Source: The internet

Lolcat

Winter is coming…