On Black Friday, Snapchat introduced Promoted Stories, a new advertising format that allows marketers to get their messages to more users. The company’s existing Story feature is a stitched-together collection of photos and videos that disappears 24 hours after it is shared. Any Snapchat user (including a business or brand) can create a Story, but it will only be visible to that user’s followers. Promoted Stories, however, which will appear on the Stories page in the Snapchat app, will be pushed out around the country. Continue reading Snapchat Intros Wide-Reach Promoted Stories for Advertisers

Snap is already sold out on its first run of Spectacles, the $130 Snapchat sunglasses with a built-in camera for shooting video. The sunglasses were for sale in a pop-up vending machine, dubbed Snapbot, at the company’s Venice Beach headquarters, and now some of them are already for sale on eBay priced at $600 to $1,000. Snap is deliberately rolling out Spectacles in a playful fashion, with vending machines festooned with balloons and designed to look like a Cyclops cartoon character. Continue reading Snapchat Offers its Spectacles via Snapbot Vending Machines

To compete with live social platforms including Snapchat and Twitter, Facebook is testing a new feature that allows users to access public content and friends’ posts from live events. To start, the social network is offering live streams from the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago to users anywhere in the United States. The feature will be available through “Place Tips,” a recent feature for accessing friends’ posts and info based on location. With the music festival, Facebook will make that information available remotely. Continue reading Facebook Tests Live Event Stream with Lollapalooza Festival