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Tinder tested group video chat ahead of Match’s move into social discovery with Hyperconnect deal
As dating app Tinder and its parent company Match explore the future of personal connection through apps, it’s interesting to see what sort of ideas it tested but later discarded. One such experiment was something called “Tinder Mixer,” which had briefly offered Tinder users a way to join group video chats, and “play games” with others nearby.
The feature was tested for a short period of time last year in New Zealand, we understand, but will not be launching.
The Tinder Mixer experience was uncovered by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, who found references the product in the Tinder Android app’s code. He had not yet publicized the finding, as we worked to learn more about the origins of the product.
Image Credits: Alessandro Paluzzi (opens in a new window)
The resources he found in the dating app had given the appearance of a product in the midst of development, Paluzzi noted, but as it turns out it was one that had already been tested and quickly shut down as Tinder continued its other, ongoing experiments in the dating market.
According to Tinder, the Tinder Mixer test has no impact on its product roadmap this year, and the Tinder Mixer experience described here will likely never come into existence.
That said, what made the product particularly intriguing was that it saw Tinder venturing, however briefly and experimentally, into more of a social discovery space, compared with the usual Tinder experience. Typically, Tinder users swipe on daters’ profiles, match, chat and sometimes even video call each other on a one-on-one basis. But live video chatting with a group is not something Tinder today offers.
Image Credits: Alessandro Paluzzi (opens in a new window)
That said, the idea of going live on video is not new to Match.
This is an area where the company has experimented before, including with its apps Plenty of Fish, which offers a one-to-many video broadcasting feature, and Ablo, which offers one-on-one video chats with people around the world. These experiments constitute what the company considers “dating-adjacent” experiences. In other words, you could meet someone through these video interactions, but that’s not necessarily their main goal.
Image Credits: Alessandro Paluzzi (opens in a new window)
These video experiences have continued even as Match announced its $1.73 billion acquisition of Seoul-based Hyperconnect — its biggest acquisition ever, and one that puts the company more on the path towards a future that involves the “social discovery” and live streaming market.
The company believes social discovery an area with vast potential, and a market it estimates that could be twice the size of dating, in fact.
Match Group CEO Shar Dubey spoke to this point recently at the JP Morgan Technology, Media and Communications Conference, noting that on some of its bigger platforms, Match has seen that a number of its users were looking for more of “a shared experience and a sense of community among other like-minded single people on the platform,” she said.
She noted that technology has reached a point where people could now interact with others through richer experiences than the traditional dating flow of swipe-match-chat allowed for, including few-to-few, many-to-many, and one-to-many type of experiences.
Hyperconnect brings to Match much of the technology that would allow the company to expand in these areas.
Today, it offers two apps, Azar and Hakuna Live, which let users to connect with one another online. The former, launched in 2014, is focused on one-on-one live video and voice chats while the latter, launched in 2019 is in the online broadcast space. Not coincidentally, these apps mirror the live stream experiences that Match has been running on Plenty of Fish and Ablo.
Because these live streaming services are often more heavily adopted by younger demographics, it makes sense that Match may have wanted to also test out such a live stream experience on Tinder, which also skews younger, even if the test ultimately only served as a way to collect data as opposed to informing a specific future product’s development.
With the Hyperconnect deal soon to be finalized, the incoming apps will initially give Match an expanded footprint in the live streaming and social discovery market in Asia — 75% of Hyperconnect’s usage and revenue comes from markets in Asia. Match then plans to leverage its international experience and knowledge to accelerate their growth in other markets where they haven’t yet broken through.
But another major reason for the acquisition is that Match sees the potential in deploying Hyperconnect’s technology across its existing portfolio of dating apps to not only create richer experiences but also to cater to users in markets where the “Western” way of online dating hasn’t yet been fully embraced, but social discovery has.
“We think there is real synergy of bringing some of these experiences that are popular in social discovery platforms onto our dating platforms, as well as sort of enhance the social discovery platforms and help people get to their dating intent, should they choose to,” Dubey explained, at the JP Morgan conference.
What any of that may mean for Tinder, more specifically, is not yet known.
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Facebook opens its Messenger API for Instagram to all
F8 Refresh, Facebook’s annual developer conference with a new twist — it’s more pared down than in years past, and virtual — is going to be kicking off later today, and ahead of that Facebook is unveiling some news: all businesses can now use the Messenger API to interact with users on Instagram. The feature is opening first to all developers globally, with a phased approach for businesses:
Phase 1 will see Instagram accounts with follower counts of over 10,000 and under 100,000 connect to the API. It plans to expand that to accounts with followers numbering between 1,000 and 100,000 in July (phase 2), with remaining accounts coming online by Q3.
The feature was first announced as a closed beta in October with select businesses — 30 developers and 700 brands in all. Now, any brand or organization using Instagram to interact with customers can use it.
The key point with this tool is that this integration represents a significant step forward in how companies can leverage the wider Facebook platform.
In the past, a brand that wanted to interact with customers either needed to do so directly through Instagram, or via Facebook’s unified business inbox, which are limited how they can be used, especially by companies that might be handling large volumes of traffic, or keen to be able to link up those customer interactions with wider customer service databases.
The Messenger API, by contrast, can be integrated into any third-party application that a company or brand might be using to manage communication, whether it’s a social media management platform like Hootsuite or Sprinklr, or a CRM application that can bring in other kinds of customer data, for example warranty information or loyalty card numbers.
Facebook noted that one of the key takeaways from the closed beta was that brands and companies wanted better ways of managing communications from one place; and another was that many of them are making more investments in software to better manage their communications and workflows. So extending the Messenger API to Instagram was a feature that was long needed in that regard.
The move to expand the Messenger API to Instagram makes sense in a couple of different ways. For starters, Facebook has been turning up the volume for some time on how it leverages Instagram’s commercial potential, starting with advertising but expanding into areas like conversation between brands or businesses and users, and most recently, enhanced shopping features. Facebook also notes that 90% of Instagram users today follow at least one business, so creating a better route for managing those conversations is a logical move.
At the same time, Facebook has been working on ways of better linking up its various apps and platforms — which include Facebook itself, Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus, not just for users to interact across them but to help businesses leverage them in a more unified social strategy. Rolling out the Messenger API — created originally to help brands interact with bots and manage conversations on Messenger — to include support for Instagram fits into both of those bigger strategies.
And for those wondering why it’s being announced ahead of F8 Refresh? Perhaps it’s a hint of what is the social network’s bigger priorities for this year’s event: partnerships to enable more business to take place on the social networking giant’s platforms.
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Facebook and Instagram will now allow users to hide ‘Like’ counts on posts
Facebook this week will begin to publicly roll out the option to hide Likes on posts across both Facebook and Instagram, following earlier tests beginning in 2019. The project, which puts the decision about Likes in the hands of the company’s global user base, had been in development for years, but was deprioritized due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the response work required on Facebook’s part, the company says.
Originally, the idea to hide Like counts on Facebook’s social networks was focused on depressurizing the experience for users. Often, users faced anxiety and embarrassment around their posts if they didn’t receive enough Likes to be considered “popular.” This problem was particularly difficult for younger users who highly value what peers think of them — so much so that they would take down posts that didn’t receive enough Likes.
Like-chasing on Instagram, especially, also helped create an environment where people posted to gain clout and notoriety, which can be a less authentic experience. On Facebook, gaining Likes or other forms of engagement could also be associated with posting polarizing content that required a reaction.
As a result of this pressure to perform, some users grew hungry for a “Like-free” safer space, where they could engage with friends or the wider public without trying to earn these popularity points. That, in turn, gave rise to a new crop of social networking and photo-sharing apps such as Minutiae, Vero, Dayflash, Oggl and, now, newcomers like Dispo and newly viral Poparazzi.
Though Facebook and Instagram could have chosen to remove Likes entirely and take its social networks in a new direction, the company soon found that the metric was too deeply integrated into the product experience to be fully removed. One key issue was how the influencer community today trades on Likes as a form of currency that allows them to exchange their online popularity for brand deals and job opportunities. Removing Likes, then, is not necessarily an option for these users.
Instagram realized that if it made a decision for its users, it would anger one side or the other — even if the move in either direction didn’t really impact other core metrics, like app usage.
Image Credits: Instagram
“How many likes [users] got, or other people got — it turned out that it didn’t actually change nearly as much about the experience, in terms of how people felt or how much they use the experience, as we thought it would. But it did end up being pretty polarizing,” admitted Instagram head, Adam Mosseri. “Some people really liked it and some people really didn’t.”
“For those who liked it, it was mostly what we had hoped — which is that it depressurized the experience. And, for those who didn’t, they used Likes to get a sense for what was trending or was relevant on Instagram and on Facebook. And they were just super annoyed that we took it away,” he added. This latter group sometimes included smaller creators still working on establishing a presence across social media, though larger influencers were sometimes in favor of Like removals. (Mosseri name-checked Katy Perry as being pro Like removals, in fact.)
Ultimately, the company decided to split the difference. Instead of making a hard choice about the future of its online communities, it’s rolling out the “no Likes” option as a user-controlled setting on both platforms.
On Instagram, both content consumers and content producers can turn on or off Like and View counts on posts — which means you can choose to not see these metrics when scrolling your own Feed and you can choose whether to allow Likes to be viewed by others when you’re posting. These are configured as two different settings, which provides for more flexibility and control.
Image Credits: Instagram
On Facebook, meanwhile, users access the new setting from the “Settings & Privacy” area under News Feed Settings (or News Feed Preferences on desktop). From here, you’ll find an option to “Hide number of reactions” to turn this setting off for both your own posts and for posts from others in News Feed, groups and Pages.
The feature will be made available to both public and private profiles, Facebook tells us, and will include posts you’ve published previously.
Image Credits: Facebook
Instagram last month restarted its tests on this feature in order to work out any final bugs before making the new settings live for global users, and said a Facebook test would come soon. But it’s now forging ahead with making the feature available publicly. When asked why such a short test, Instagram told TechCrunch it had been testing various iterations on this experience since 2019, so it felt it had enough data to proceed with a global launch.
Mosseri also pushed back at the idea that a decision on Likes would have majorly impacted the network. While removal of Likes on Instagram had some impact on user behavior, he said, it was not enough to be concerning. In some groups, users posted more — signaling that they felt less pressure to perform, perhaps. But others engaged less, Mosseri said.
Image Credits: Facebook
“Often people say, ‘oh, this has a bunch of Likes. I’m gonna go check it out,’ ” the exec explained. “Then they read the comments, or go deeper, or swipe to the carousel. There’s been some small effects — some positive, some negative — but they’ve all been small,” he noted. Instagram also believes users may toggle on and off the feature at various times, based on how they’re feeling.
In addition, Mosseri pointed out, “there’s no rigorous research that suggests Likes are bad for people’s well-being” — a statement that pushes back over the growing concerns that a gamified social media space is bad for users’ mental health. Instead, he argued that Instagram is still a small part of people’s day, so how Likes function doesn’t affect people’s overall well-being.
“As big as we are, we have to be careful not to overestimate our influence,” Mosseri said.
He also dismissed some of the current research pointing to negative impacts of social media use as being overly reliant on methodologies that ask users to self-report their use, rather than measure it directly.
In other words, this is not a company that feels motivated to remove Likes entirely due to the negative mental health outcomes attributed to its popularity metrics.
It’s worth mentioning that another factor that could have come into play here is Instagram’s plan to make a version of its app available to children under the age of 13, as competitor TikTok did following its FTC settlement. In that case, hiding Likes by default — or perhaps adding a parental control option — would necessitate such a setting. Instagram tells TechCrunch that, while it’s too soon to know what it would do with a kids app, it will “definitely explore” a no Likes by default option.
Facebook and Instagram both told TechCrunch the feature will roll out starting on Wednesday but will reach global users over time. On Instagram, that may take a matter of days.
Facebook, meanwhile, says a small percentage of users will have the feature Wednesday — notified through an alert on News Feed — but it will reach Facebook’s global audience “over the next few weeks.”
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Getty Images leads $16M investment in Promo.com, a social video template tool
The social video tool Promo.com just raised $16 million in a Series B round led by Getty Images, the company synonymous with stock imagery.
Brands, creators or whoever else might need some quick and dirty video content can search Promo.com for what they need, just like they would use a stock photography service. Getty offers its own library of stock videos as well, but Promo.com provides both the video clips and the tools for non-editors to craft a basic edit with a little bit of customization.
Brands can select an existing professional video clip from a library, plug in their own message and add a logo or custom audio. All that’s left is downloading the customized video and whisking it off to their social channels.
Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank, one of the largest banks in Israel, also participated in the Series B round through debt financing. Promo.com’s existing “strategic partnership” with Getty Images will deepen as part of the deal, giving the former company access to the latter’s expansive existing pool of video clips.
Image Credits: Screenshot/Promo.com
Of course, Promo.com isn’t the only show in town. Video creation platform Biteable raised $7 million of its own in December, and similarly allows companies to make bright, bite-sized video content for social. The super streamlined graphic design platform Canva also supports video editing with its own library of stock images. Vimeo offers its own video template service too, known as Vimeo Create, which grew out of the company’s acquisition of the AI-powered video editor Magisto.
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Beacons raises $6 million for its link-in-bio homepage builder that lets creators monetize
Mobile landing page builder Beacons has raised a $6 million seed round to expand its vision for empowering creators to make money beyond the cramped confines of their social media profiles. The company, co-founded by Neal Jean, Jesse Zhang, Greg Luppescu and David Zeng, provides anyone who uses social media a single, mobile-optimized link hub to display to their followers.
Like competitor Linktree, Beacons gives people a way to link out to other sites directly from their TikTok, Instagram or Twitter profile, including pointing followers toward potential income streams like donations and affiliate links. Other companies in the “link in bio” space include Shorby, Milkshake, Tap.bio, Link in Profile, bio.fm and Campsite.
Beacons launched in private beta in September 2020 after emerging out of Y Combinator’s Summer 2019 cohort. Andreessen Horowitz will lead the seed round and is joined by Atelier Ventures, The Chainsmokers’ Mantis Fund, Night Media Ventures and LOUDgg, the Brazilian esports group.
The $6 million seed round will build on $600,000 that Beacons raised in an angel round, allowing the team to hire more engineers and designers to grow its small four-person team of first-time founders.
“I think where we’re really different than Linktree is we let creators customize and personalize their pages all for free and we offer a lot more of those options on our free plan,” Beacons co-founder and CEO Neal Jean told TechCrunch.
“…Creators care a lot about how their website looks so that’s been a good way for us to give creators the features that they want and help us grow our share in the market too.”
To keep creators locked into their own platforms and forthcoming monetization schemes, social media companies don’t offer much support for embedded links, particularly on individual pieces of content. Many also restrict users to one URL in their profiles, putting pressure on creators to maximize the utility of a single link. Beacons reasonably argues that the restrictive design of most social platforms stunts the ability of creators to easily and flexibly make money from their content.
“In the beginning we’re basically building all these different kinds of features for creators to use but I think in the long run the way to make that more scalable is to turn into more of a platform or an ecosystem that lots of people can build on,” Jean said.
“Today, I think we’re probably more like a Wix or a Squarespace for content creators, but in the future I think we want to be a little bit more like Shopify for creators.”
Building on Beacons
Beacons lets users choose between free and premium tiers. At $10 per month, the “entrepreneur” tier offers a couple of killer features worth considering, including support for custom domains and additional “blocks” — the link, text and image slots that comprise a Beacons page.
Image Credits: Beacons
Beyond premium pricing, Beacons makes money by taking a cut of sales through its handful of monetization-focused blocks, like a shopping-enabled TikTok feed, a digital storefront for videos and e-books and a “requests” block that lets creators sell custom content directly to their followers. Beacons’ free plan charges a 9% fee on transactions, while the premium plan cuts that down to 5%.
Landing sites built through Beacons are deeply customizable, hearkening back to the Myspace era of media-rich, curated homepages. The company recently added what it calls the “community block,” a designated place where creators can highlight collaborators they might team up with often on a collab-obsessed platform like TikTok. The company currently counts Sia, Green Day and Russell Brand among its high-profile users.
Beacons also supports mobile marketing through email and SMS and analytics to help creators understand their audiences. The company says that its user base has grown by 70% every month since its October launch.
“Today’s content creators and consumers have more sophisticated expectations than existing social platforms allow,” Jean said in the funding announcement. “…With Beacons, creators can control their destiny by directing online traffic to a custom domain that looks awesome, is shareable and ultimately generates revenue.”
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Snap announces Story Studio, a new standalone app to edit stories
During Snap Partner Summit, Snap announced a brand new app focused on creators. Named Story Studio, this standalone iOS app gives you several editing tools so you can make your content look as professional as possible.
Story editing tools are still in Snapchat — nothing is changing on this front. But if you’ve been creating content for Spotlight, a TikTok-like feed, or if you’re a Snap star, you may need more powerful editing tools. Many creators choose to edit their stories on a computer.
But many creators also want to do everything on their phones. That’s why there are already a few powerful video editing tools out there. But Snap is making its own app so that it works better with Snapchat.
With Story Studio, you can see what’s trending on Snapchat already. It includes sounds, topics and lenses. This way, you can remix popular content and create your own take on the current meme.
Snap says that Story Studio lets you trim your shots with frame-precise editing. You can add captions, stickers and other visual elements. You can also take advantage of the company’s licensed music catalog.
And because it’s supposed to be a serious app for serious stories, you can save a project and edit it later.
When you’re done, you can share your video with Snapchat — you can use it to post a story or a Spotlight video. But Story Studio is also going to work with other platforms. You can save it to your camera roll or export your video to other apps on your phone.
Story Studio is launching later this year. It’s going to be available on iOS exclusively for now.
Image Credits: Snap
Send a gift to your favorite creator
While Snapchat started as an app to chat with your friends, it’s clear that the company now wants to attract a generation of creators with the right tools and monetization options. Creators have become a competitive space for social apps, such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube with YouTube Shorts and Snapchat.
Snap’s own take on short viral videos have been working relatively well so far. Spotlight reaches 125 million monthly active users on Snapchat. The number of users watching at least 10 minutes of Spotlight per day has grown by 70% between January and March.
In addition to Story Studio, Snap is launching a web platform for Spotlight. This way, people can watch Spotlight content without launching Snapchat even when they’re browsing the web on their desktop computer. It could be a way to attract new Snapchat users as well.
But creators in particular are going to like this website as you can upload videos to Spotlight from Chrome or Safari.
When it comes to monetization, Snap is distributing $1 million every day to Snapchat users who create the top Snaps for Spotlight — 5,400 creators have earned $130 million since November 2020. The company will stop giving away $1 million per day on June 1st. Snap only says it plans to give millions every month.
But creators will be able to start accepting gifts directly on Snapchat. When Snapchat users reply to a story, they can buy Snap Tokens and send them as a gift — a virtual item with real-life value. The company hasn’t detailed how it plans to split revenue between Snap and creators. Gifting will roll out on Android and iOS later this year.
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Facebook debuts ‘Live Shopping Fridays’ featuring beauty, fashion and skincare brands
Facebook wants to whet consumers’ appetite for live streamed shopping with this week’s launch of “Live Shopping Fridays” event series, which will see larger brands live streaming beauty, skincare, and fashion content on a weekly basis. The event begins Friday, May 22nd and runs through mid-July, with streams from brands like Abercrombie and Fitch, Bobbi Brown, Clinique, Sephora, Dermalogica, Alleyoop, and Zox.
The events are meant to encourage larger brands to try out live shopping as a medium, as well as generally raise awareness about live shopping on Facebook among consumers.
The brands will use their live shopping events in a number of ways. They may give a behind-the-scenes look at their business or they may partner with creators to showcase their products in “how-to” style videos, for example.
During the live streams, viewers can comment and ask questions which brands can read and respond to. Shoppers can also tap on the products displayed in the stream to learn more without having to leave the video. If they want to buy, they can add them to the cart and check out at any time — during or even after the event has wrapped. The brands receive the customer’s shipping information, and if the consumer opts in, they can gain access to other details as well, like email and phone number.
Live stream video shopping became publicly available on Facebook last summer, following a series of smaller trials and beta tests, where the format initially found traction with smaller to medium-sized businesses and digital-first brands, Facebook says.
The Covid pandemic also pushed adoption of the format, in some cases, as creative business owners turned to live shopping to reach their customers when lockdowns closed non-essential businesses.
Image Credits: Facebook
More recently, larger brands like Petco and Bobbi Brown have run live shopping events — the former as part of a charity effort, and the latter with a live stream featuring tips from makeup artist Michele Shakeshaft. (Pictured)
“The way that we’re thinking about this is that e-commerce has made buying incredibly convenient. So when you have a need, you pull out your phone, purchase, and your order is on its way,” explains Yulie Kwon Kim, who leads product for Facebook App Commerce.
“But buying is not shopping. And so, a lot of what people do is window shop to see what’s new, for entertainment. You discover something cool that you didn’t know about. When you’re shopping, people often want to hear from a live person, get suggestions, and see the product and context,” she says. “And increasingly, people are discovering and deciding what to buy through social media,” Yulie adds.
She also notes that almost three-quarters of consumers globally are getting shopping ideas through Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, and almost two-thirds agree that social media has now become as important as other information sources when making purchase decisions.
Facebook says the live events will be presented to consumers in a number of ways during the summer. If you follow a brand, you’ll be notified of their participation. You’ll also see News Feed announcements where you’ll be notified when events are starting (see above). And the Facebook Shop tab will offer a schedule of upcoming live shopping streams taking place across the platform.
Facebook, of course, is not the only one to realize the potential in live shopping.
Startups like NTWRK, Popshop Live, Talkshoplive, Dote, Bambuser, and others brought the live shopping model already popular in China to the U.S. and other markets, many months before the pandemic. TikTok has been testing live shopping, including with Walmart in the U.S., as well.
Amazon, meanwhile, live streams to its website, and YouTube announced earlier this year its beta tests of an integrated e-commerce experience.
As for Facebook, a live shopping platform could ultimately serve as a significant revenue stream, thanks to selling fees applied at checkout. While Facebook did waive those selling fees through June 2021 — a decision it claims was to help support small businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic — that move also conveniently helps Facebook stake its place in the live stream shopping market land grab now underway. Facebook also needs to diversify its revenue, given that Apple’s privacy push around third-party tracking will hurt Facebook’s ad business.
Facebook’s Live Shopping Fridays series will roll out across both mobile and desktop in the U.S. this week, and will also pop on Facebook’s Shop Tab for easy access.
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Pinterest introduces Idea Pins, a video-first feature aimed at creators
Pinterest is expanding further into the creator community with today’s launch of a video-first feature called “Idea Pins,” aimed at creators who want to tell their stories using video, music, creative editing tools and more. The feature feels a lot like Pinterest’s own take on TikTok, mixed with Stories, as the new Pins allow creators to record and edit creative videos with up to 20 pages of content, using tools like voiceover recording, background music, transitions and other interactive elements.
The company says Idea Pins evolved out of its tests with Story Pins, launched into beta in September 2020, after various stages of development beginning the year prior. At the time, Pinterest explained that Story Pins were different from the Stories you’d find on other social networks, like Snapchat or Instagram, because they focused on what people were doing — like trying new ideas or new products, not giving you snapshots of a creator’s personal life.
Another notable differentiator was that Story Pins weren’t ephemeral. That is, they didn’t disappear after a certain amount of time, but rather could be surfaced through search and other discovery mechanisms.
Over the past eight months since their debut, Pinterest has worked with Story Pin creators on the experience. That’s led to the new concept of the Idea Pin — essentially a rebranded Story Pin, which now offers a broader suite of editing tools than what was previously available.
Video is a key element in Idea Pins, as the Pins target the increased consumer demand for short-form video content of a creative nature — like what’s being delivered through TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and elsewhere. The videos in the Pins can be up to 60 seconds on iOS, Android and web for each page, with up to 20 total pages per Pin.
Image Credits: Pinterest
Creators can edit their videos by adding their own voiceover or using a “ghost mode” transition tool to better showcase their before-and-afters by overlaying one part of a video on another. And they can save drafts of their work in progress.
But Idea Pins still include a number of features common to Stories, like adding stickers or tagging other creators with an @username, for instance. Pinterest says it will start with over 100 stickers featuring hand-drawn illustrations focused on top categories and behaviors it expects to see, like food-themed illustrations, stickers for before-and-afters, seasonal moments, and more.
Pinterest is also working with the royalty-free music database Epidemic Sound to offer a catalog of free tracks for use in Idea Pins.
And because many creators will use Idea Pins to inspire people to try a recipe or project of some sort, they can include “detail pages” where viewers can find the ingredient list or instructions, which is handy.
Image Credits: Pinterest
Pins are shared to Pinterest, where the company says they help the creator build an audience by being distributed in several places across its platform, including in some markets, by locating Pins for creators you follow right at the top of the home page.
Creators can also apply topic tags when publishing to ensure they’re surfaced when people are seeking that sort of content. Each Idea Pin can have up to 10 topic tags, which help to distribute the content in a targeted way to users via the home feed and search, the company says.
While Pins can help creators build an audience on Pinterest, they can use Idea Pins to grow their audience on other platforms, too. The company says it will offer export options that let people share their Pins across the web and social media. To do so, they download their Pin as a video, which includes a Pinterest watermark and profile name — a trick learned from TikTok. This can then be reshared elsewhere.
Image Credits: Pinterest
Pinterest users, meanwhile, can save Idea Pins like any other Pin on the platform.
“We believe the best inspiration comes from people who are fueled by their passions and want to bring positivity and creativity into the world,” said Pinterest co-founder and Chief Design and Creative Officer Evan Sharp, in a statement about the launch. “On Pinterest, anyone can inspire. From creators to hobbyists to publishers, Pinterest is a place where anyone can publish great ideas and discover inspiring content. We have creators with extraordinary ideas on Pinterest, and with Idea Pins, creators are empowered to share their passions and inspire their audiences,” he added.
The new Idea Pin format is rolling out today to all creators (users with a business account) in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Image Credits: Pinterest
Pinterest says, during tests, it found that Idea Pins were more engaging than standard Pins, with 9x the average comment rate. The number of Idea Pins (previously known as Story Pins) has also grown by 4x since January, as more creators adopted the format.
To help creators track how well Pins are performing, Pinterest is expanding its Analytics feature to include a new followers and profile-visits-driven metric to show creators how their Idea Pins have driven deeper engagement with their account.
The company says the next step is to make Idea Pins more shoppable, which it’s doing now with tests of product tagging underway.
Pinterest has been increasing its investment in the creator community in recent months, with the launch of its first-ever Creator Fund last month, and this month’s test of livestreamed events with 21 creators. It’s also now testing creator and brand collaborations with a select number of creators, including Domonique Panton, Peter Som and GrossyPelosi, it says.
Image Credits: Pinterest
While Idea Pins seem like a natural pivot from Pinterest’s founding as an inspiration and idea board, it will face serious competition when it comes to wooing the professional creator community to its platform. Other Big Tech companies are outspending Pinterest, whose new Creator Fund of $500,000 falls short of the $1 million per day Snap paid creators or the $100 million fund for YouTube Shorts creators, TikTok’s $200 million fund or the deals Instagram has been making to lure Reels creators. These platforms, as well as a host of startups, are also giving creators a way to directly monetize their efforts through features like tips, donations, subscriptions and more.
What Pinterest may have in its favor, though, is its reach. The company claims 475 million users, which makes it a destination some creators may not want to overlook in their bid for growth, and later, e-commerce.
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TikTok launches a Green Screen Duet feature, tests dedicated ‘Topics’ feeds
As competition with tech giants heats up, TikTok is rolling out a series of new features to help keep its short-form video app ahead of rivals. The company today announced the launch of a new Green Screen Duet feature, which combines two of TikTok’s most popular editing tools to allow creators to use another video from TikTok as the background in their new video. It also confirmed the test of a new way to discover videos. Called “Topics,” these are dedicated interest-based feeds featuring the top, trending videos in a given category.
Green Screen Duet joins an existing set of Duet tools that let creators lay out two videos side-by-side. Today, Duet layouts include “Left & Right,” “React” and “Top & Bottom.” Creators currently use Duets to sing, dance, joke or act alongside another user’s video, react to a video’s content or even just watch a video from another, sometimes smaller, creator to raise awareness or call attention to its content.
Editing tools like Duet and Stitch are key to what makes TikTok not just a passive video viewing app but, rather, a new type of video-first social network. It’s also proven so popular, it has since been adopted by Facebook’s TikTok clone, Instagram Reels, where it’s known as Remix. Snapchat has been developing a Remix feature of its own, too.
Image Credits: TikTok
TikTok’s new Green Screen Duet will now appear as another option alongside the existing layouts, offering users a way to more easily use another video in the background as they record their own video overlaid on top.
This sort of video experience is something TikTok creators already do in a variety of ways. For example, they may capture images or screen recordings, then use other editing tools to create a green screen effect like this. Or they may react to a video using a Stitch instead, as that can be easier. A built-in Green Screen Duet feature simply offers another way to record new videos that include existing videos.
When the feature is used, the Duetted video plays in the background over the new video being recorded. TikTok believes the launch will inspire new formats for creativity and expression, as a result.
TikTok has been busy upgrading its interface to improve recording and discovering new video content in its app in recent weeks, as Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat have tried to reproduce TikTok’s feature set in their own apps. For instance, TikTok just launched interactive music features last month in an effort to get ahead.
In another leap, TikTok is also now testing a new Discover page in the app, where instead of only featuring the current trends, as before, it now organizes videos into categories.
Image Credits: TikTok
These categories represent the many areas of interest on TikTok, like gaming, beauty, dance, TV & movies, sports, family, learning and much more. When you tap into any given category, you’re taken to a feed that includes the community’s top, trending content. The feeds will be affected by factors like relevance, timeliness and interest, and can help users find new content and creators outside of what their personalized For You page shows.
TikTok confirmed the test has been rolling out in the U.S. over the past few weeks.
The company also is currently testing e-commerce shopping features, where some brands like Hype and Walmart have been given a new “Shopping” tab on their TikTok profile where users can shop items, add to cart and then check out without leaving the app. (Walmart enabled its tab during its livestream event in December, and it’s been there ever since.)
Image Credits: TikTok
The integration is less elegant than Instagram’s Shops, as there’s not a native, universal cart or integrated payment mechanism. Instead, users are visiting the retailer’s website directly.
The advances TikTok is making, however, has been paying off in terms of capturing a large Gen Z user base.
According to eMarketer, more Gen Z users in the U.S. now use TikTok than Instagram, or 37.3 million monthly active users compared with 33.3 million users, respectively. And by 2023, the firm predicts TikTok will surpass Snapchat in terms of total U.S. users, as well.
But TikTok’s global ambitions are impacted not only by its ban in India but also the possibility that creators will find more monetization opportunities on established platforms.
Yesterday, for example, YouTube announced a $100 million fund for top YouTube Shorts creators, and said it will soon be testing ads on Shorts. That could help creators generate revenue from short-form content, while also converting casual viewers to channel subscribers where there are even more opportunities to monetize. Snapchat and Instagram have also been wooing creators with cash, and ultimately, if creators find they can make more money elsewhere they could shift some of their attention away from TikTok, no matter how many creative new features it adds.
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YouTube announces a $100M fund to reward top YouTube Shorts creators over 2021-2022
YouTube is giving its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts, an injection of cash to help it better compete with rivals. The company today introduced the YouTube Shorts Fund, a $100 million fund that will pay YouTube Shorts creators for their most viewed and most engaging content over the course of 2021 and 2022. Creators can’t apply for the fund to help with content production, however. Instead, YouTube will reach out to creators each month whose videos exceeded certain milestones to reward them for their contributions.
The company expects to dole out money to “thousands” of creators every month, it says. And these creators don’t need to be in the YouTube Partner Program to qualify — anyone is eligible to receive rewards by creating original content for YouTube Shorts.
YouTube declined to share more specific details about the fund’s operations at this time, including how creators will be vetted or what specific thresholds for receiving payments YouTube has in mind. It also wouldn’t offer details as to whether YouTube creators could receive multiple payments in the same pay period if they had several videos that would qualify, or any other details.
And while the company stressed that only “original” content would gain rewards, it didn’t clarify how it will go about checking to ensure the content isn’t already uploaded on another platform, like Reels, Snapchat or TikTok.
Image Credits: YouTube
Instead, YouTube said that more details about the payments and qualifications would be available closer to the fund’s launch, which is expected sometime in the next few months. It pointed out also that it has paid out over $30 billion to creators, artists and media companies over the last three years, and it expects the new fund will help it to build a long-term monetization model for Shorts on YouTube going forward.
YouTube isn’t the only platform to take on the threat of TikTok by throwing cash at the problem.
Snapchat has been paying $1 million per day to creators for their top-performing videos on Spotlight, its own TikTok clone, minting several millionaires in the process. Facebook-owned Instagram, meanwhile, made lucrative offers to top TikTok stars to use its new service, Reels, The WSJ reported last year.
Despite the size of these efforts, TikTok’s own Creator Fund remains a competitive force. It announced its fund would grow to over $1 billion in the U.S. in the next three years and would be more than double that on a global basis. This March, it also added another requirement to receiving the fund’s payments, including having at least 100K authentic views in the last 30 days — a signal that it’s setting the bar even higher, given its current success.
Alongside the debut of YouTube’s Shorts Fund, the company also noted it’s expanding its Shorts player feature across more places on YouTube to help viewers discover this short-form video content, will begin testing ads for Shorts and will be rolling out the new “remix audio” feature to all Shorts creators.
Image Credits: YouTube
This somewhat controversial feature allows Shorts creators to sample sounds from other YouTube videos for use in their Shorts, instead of only using song clips or original audio. Some YouTube creators were surprised to find the feature was opt-out by default — meaning their content could be used on YouTube Shorts unless they took the time to turn this setting off or removed their video from YouTube.
Since its launch, YouTube has also rolled out other features to Shorts, including support for captions, the ability to record up to 60 seconds with the Shorts camera, the ability to add clips from your phone’s gallery to your recordings made with the Shorts camera and the ability use basic filters to color correct videos. YouTube says more effects will arrive in the future.
But even as YouTube tries to catch up with TikTok on feature sets, TikTok has been expanding its own effects lineup and becoming more YouTube-like by supporting longer videos. Some TikTok creators, for example, have recently been given the ability to record videos three minutes in length, instead of just 60 seconds.
YouTube says the new fund will roll out in the coming months and it will listen to the feedback from the creator community to develop a long-term program designed for YouTube Shorts.
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