Just imagine Beyoncé on Snapchat.

What would her favorite filter be? Does she use the bee filter with a crown sticker? (She should.) 

It all seems impossible, but it actually might not be.

Tina Knowles Lawson, Beyoncé's mother, might have let slip that Queen Bey is a fan of Snapchat.

Lawson shared a video on her Instagram that shows Bey face swapping with her as she sings part of "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash.

"My baby Beyonce sent me this," she captioned the short video. "It's really cool! I have to learn to do this, her face and my face together. Her voice coming out of my mouth. Or maybe it's her mouth! Hell I don't know."

She added, "Really weird. No Snapchat!! Seriously!!"

As in, that's a weird feature you have there, Snapchat? Probably, and that's amazing.

But if not, she could be using another face swap app, like Face Swap Live or MSQRD. 

Watch Bey's face swap below:

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Snapchat is buying search startup Vurb in a stock and cash deal totaling around $200 million, as first reported by The Information. About half of that money will go to investors, while the rest will go as retention payouts to current employees — an unusually high proportion.

Business Insider has independently confirmed the sale and price with a person familiar with the situation, and apparently it's a done deal. 

Vurb bills itself as an "experience" search engine that helps people "easily find, save, and do the best things by connecting community recommendations, rich content, and useful services."

The 5-year-old startup is backed by Redpoint Ventures, Tencent, Marc Benioff, and Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, among others.

A Snapchat spokeswoman declined to comment on talks with Vurb when reached by Business Insider. Redpoint Ventures also declined to comment.

Snapchat's acquisition will be a 75% stock and 25% cash deal, notes The Information. The report says that Bobby Lo, Vurb's CEO and founder, is also getting a multiyear retention package of "around $75 million" as part of the deal.

Vurb's mobile app integrates with services like Yelp for restaurant information and Fandango for movie tickets. The app also has a social aspect that shows Foursquare-like tips and recommendations. Users can also message friends directly in the app with rich media "cards" that show information like restaurant details.

A person familiar with the deal speculated that Snapchat is mainly interested in Vurb's team, which is highly regarded, rather than its product, which hasn't really taken off. Hence, the high percentage of the sale devoted to retaining Vurb employees.

Vurb would be the second high-profile buy that Snapchat has made this year following its acquisition of Bitmoji for over $100 million last month.

SEE ALSO: Snapchat is looking at a way to recognize objects in your snaps and serve you related ads

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When Instagram launched its Snapchat-clone Stories, which lets users share videos and photos that disappear after 24 hours, some commentators suggested the feature could stunt Snapchat's growth.

Early anecdotal evidence showed several "Snapchat Stars" were quick to embrace Instagram Stories, thanks to its already-huge audience of more than 500 million users and because it's far easier to discover content and users on Instagram than it is on Snapchat.

And for brands, Instagram houses a more sophisticated advertising and analytics platform than Snapchat currently offers.

Stories is a hugely-popular part of the Snapchat app, with more than a third of its daily users using the feature to broadcast what they getting up to. Snapchat claims its users watch 10 billion videos per day, which is largely thanks Stories. Hence why some people are viewing Instagram Stories as an existential threat to Snapchat.

Business Insider asked SensorTower, a mobile app store marketing intelligence company, to run the data to see whether there had been an impact on Snapchat usage since the launch of Instagram Stories on August 2.

Short answer: no. (In the US on iOS at least.)

As the graph shows, Snapchat users still spend more minutes each day on the app than people spend on Instagram and that trend doesn't appear to have been directly impacted after the Stories launch.

Sensor Tower uses anonymized mobile data from its mobile panel, which represents "millions of users" in more than 30 countries.

Snapchat and Instagram were not immediately available for comment.

Same feature, different apps, different audiences

It has only been two weeks since the launch of Instagram Stories, so the data is hardly conclusive. But perhaps it shows that Instagram and Snapchat — while now offering an almost-identical Stories product — still cater for different audiences and different needs.

Nick Cicero, founder and CEO of creator-network company Delmondo, which offers brands Snapchat analytics, told Business Insider: "I'd say that that overall, the Instagram experiments have resulted in great completion rates and comparable view counts to Snapchat, and for some of our creators who were already large on Instagram, they're definitely seeing more story views in the millions."

"That being said," he added. "There's a certain type of audience on Snapchat and I don't think that it's going to slow down at all. Most of the customers we work with said they don't plan to stop creating on Snapchat any time soon."

In other words, Snapchat's audience skews younger than Instagram. Snapchat claims to reach 41% of all 18 to 34-year-olds on any given day in the US, citing Nielsen data. A recent survey from Piper Jaffray showed Snapchat is the most popular app amongst teens in the country. Last year's survey showed 33% of US teens polled considered Instagram their most important social network, but by this spring that number had dropped to 27%.

Snapchat, meanwhile, rose from 19% to 28%, overtaking Instagram.

Hannah Beesley, social director at Iris Worldwide — an advertising agency that works with brands including Samsung, Jeep, and Reebok — thinks Stories shows how Instagram is shaking off its image as the "shiny" network, with its curated feed of polished and often unrealistic-images, which could become a concern for Snapchat, which was often seen as the more fun app.

She told Business Insider: "Stories will definitely eat some of Snapchat’s lunch amongst their older demographics who didn’t take to Snapchat quite so naturally, but liked its informal nature. They are making bold moves to secure their dominance over the 24-45 age range of their heartland. Snapchat will retain its younger audience but for how long? If I can go to Instagram for both shiny and informal experiences, Snapchat needs to offer something different to fight the dominance of the Facebook-backed Instagram reach."

Reach versus retention

One metric to consider to determine whether Instagram really is eating Snapchat's lunch is engagement. We spoke to several sources who work with brands and influencers who said that early tests showed that reach — the total audience that viewed a photo or video — is often higher on Instagram Stories, but retention rates — how long users spent watching the videos and photos — were higher on Snapchat.

One digital head at a global fashion retailer, who asked not to be named, told Business Insider: "Whilst reach is important, when it comes to video storytelling, factors such as retention rate need to be considered. Looking at this metric, [we have] seen a significantly higher view-through rate from Snapchat over Instagram giving us insight into each platform’s typical user behavior and attention span."

However, those findings were inconclusive, as there are some occasions where the exact opposite was true and there has yet to be a big enough sample to pull any clear generalities from these types of anecdotes.

What we can conclude, two weeks after launch, is that Snapchat hasn't felt any immediate pain from Instagram Stories ... yet.

SEE ALSO: Advertisers love Snapchat's priciest ad format — and that ought to worry its social media rivals

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Snapchat is dropping a cool $200 million on buying Vurb — a search and recommendation app.

The news was broken by tech industry site The Information, and independently confirmed by Business Insider.

Vurb basically helps you plan your social life: Giving recommendations on what you can do in your local area, offering ways to talk to your friends, and letting you search for activities and services. 

But what is Vurb, which is available on both iOS and Android, actually like to use?

Read on, we've got you covered:

It's often described as a search engine.

Vurb is sometimes described as a "search engine" in a similar vein to Google — and on booting up the app for the first time and making an account, you're greeted with a great big search bar.

It also comes full of recommendations.

Below the search bar sits a whole load of recommendations for activities in the area, from events to cafés, from new movies to the TV that's airing tonight.

And you can customise what sort of recommendations you see by changing your preferences.

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Luxury designer brand Michael Kors was able to leverage Snapchat's filters feature to drive up sales of its Kendall II sunglasses on National Sunglasses Day in June, reports Luxury Daily.

The filter was only available on June 27, and it featured a pair of Michael Kors sunglasses that could be superimposed on a user's face, letting the shopper virtually try the glasses on. The campaign on Snapchat was very well received by users and stands out as an important example of how to leverage social media to grow e-commerce sales.

Michael Kors' Snapchat campaign generated a lot of interest among its target demographic — millennials and Generation Z shoppers. The Michael Kors Snapchat lens was viewed over 104 million times. This high visibility translated to an 18% increase in ad awareness and a 6% lift in purchase intent. Nearly three out of four people between the ages of 12 and 24 in the US are Snapchat users, according to Edison Research and Triton Digital.

Snapchat is also one of the most frequently used platforms by this demographic, just behind Facebook. So while there was no purchasing capability associated with Michael Kors' filter, it still placed the brand and its products in front of millions of eyes. In addition, using filters to promote products can help build up consumer confidence when it comes to making an actual purchase, as shoppers already have an idea of what the item will look like.

Snapchat's shoppable ads could help grow online sales, while also raising brand awareness. In May, Snapchat launched its first shoppable ads with Target and Lancome. The ads allow users to swipe up for more information, including a purchase page, about the product being advertised. No specific details have been released on the performance of these shoppable ads, but considering the popularity of Snapchat among retailers, we expect purchasing capabilities on the platform to expand in the year ahead.

In addition to promotional filters, retailers like Birchbox and Who What Wear use Snapchat's functions to engage with customers and receive feedback. As retailers continue to capitalize on Snapchat's existing tools to reach shoppers, we expect the company to meet their needs by including e-commerce functions like making purchases and contacting customer service.

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Simone Biles has won four gold medals and one bronze at her very first Olympic games. But all that hardware is nothing compared to the kiss she just received from Zac Efron. 

In a video posted to her Snapchat Tuesday afternoon, Efron is seen planting a quick kiss on Biles' cheek. Apparently he traveled to Rio just to see the gymnast and congratulate her in person. The kiss was also a surprise: Minutes after sharing the kiss on Snapchat, Biles reposted the video on her Twitter account, writing, "had to do a retake [because] I thought we were taking a picture, then he kissed me instead."

Biles' crush on the actor is well-known: The two have been flirting on Twitter almost incessantly. The gymnast recently told People that she thought Efron "very good looks" and that she "heard he's nice." She even has a leotard covered with pictures of Efron's face. 

Now, she's gotten up close and personal with the real thing. Here is the glorious moment that Efron's lips met Biles' cheek. 

And here's the full vid:

Biles even got a chance to kiss him back — though she's so short that Efron had to bend his knees and Biles had stand on tiptoe just to reach his cheek. She posted a Boomerang of the return kiss on Twitter with the caption "on cloud 9."

A gold medal and a Zac Efron kiss in one day? Simone Biles truly is an Olympic champion. 

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Snapchat, the popular ephemeral photo-sharing app, is acquiring search and recommendation app Vurb for roughly $110 million, according to The Information.

While specifics surrounding Snapchat’s intentions with the purchase are unknown, it's likely that Vurb will help bolster Snapchat’s messaging and search features, facilitating the use of image search to surface recommendations to users.

The Vurb app provides mobile users with a card-based contextual search engine that combines web search with tools from apps and services into a single experience. Search results are provided as “cards,” which include relevant information such as open times, locations, and products, which can then be shared with friends, cutting out multiple toggling between screens.

The acquisition of Vurb, as well as Snapchat’s emphasis on the camera section of its app, puts it in a strong position to expand into features like visual search.

• Discovery is already an important part of the Snapchat experience. Users are accessing Snapchat’s Discovery section increasingly to view content from brands and celebrities. By improving its ability to recommend brands and products to users, Snapchat could begin threatening other search engines' market share.
• Snapchat is not reliant on the phone’s native camera. While other social media apps are reliant on the native phone camera, Snapchat forces consumers to use the app’s camera. The introduction of Memories — the app’s smart camera roll — could begin drawing users away from their phone’s native photo folders, deepening users’ commitment to the app. 
• Snapchat has been aggressively hiring engineers that specialize in object recognition. And although other tech companies such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are all making headway in this regard, Snapchat’s primary use case as a photo-sharing app may enable it to control greater mindshare.  

Cameras are intrinsically tied to the smartphone user experience. As the technology used to recognize objects advances, it makes sense that the camera-as-a-platform market will begin to gain traction. This will provide the easiest form of content and discovery for both consumers and brands. For this reason, there is a massive value potential for photo-focused apps, like Snapchat, to grab mindshare early on in this space.

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Snapchat is planning to significantly grow its ranks in New York City, the advertising and media capital of the world.

The Los Angeles-based startup has agreed to create 396 new jobs in the state of New York in exchange for tax breaks totaling up to $5 million from Empire State Development (ESD).

The incentive proposal from ESD (a state-owned organization) stipulates that Snapchat create the new jobs over the next five years and keep them through January 2027.

The deal was first reported by the New York Post and confirmed on Wednesday by Snapchat and ESD to Business Insider.

An ESD spokesperson told BI that Snapchat would be eligible to receive up to $5 million in tax refunds over the next decade under the Excelsior Jobs Program. Other tech and new media companies in New York have stuck similar deals, including BuzzFeed, Vice, and home security startup Canary.

Snapchat committing to hire nearly 400 more people in New York signals its longterm growth ambitions. The company recently expanded its multi-floor office space at its current headquarters in the former New York Times building near Times Square, according to employees who work there.

As of Wednesday, 161 people were listed as currently working at Snapchat in New York City on LinkedIn. A Snapchat spokesperson said the company currently employs more than 900 people globally but declined to confirm how many were based in New York City.

As a company that makes money from digital advertising, it makes sense for Snapchat to grow its New York presence. While most of the company's product designers and leadership work primarily out of its main headquarters in Los Angeles, the New York office is primarily staffed by people who work on ad deals, media partnerships, and original "Live Stories" content.

SEE ALSO: Snapchat is paying $200 million to buy a search engine that helps people find things to do

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Facebook just announced a strange new app called Lifestage, and it was built for teens by a 19-year-old.

The standalone product is meant for high schoolers to learn more about their classmates, and kids can use it to make videos showing their likes and dislikes. They can then watch the videos that their classmates made.

The app can't be used for messaging and you can't "like" a video, but Lifestage will tell teens how many times their profile has been viewed each day, though not who has viewed it.

Facebook is so serious about the high-school thing that it will unlock the app for any given school only once 20 self-identified students create profiles. There's no real verification system — most high schoolers don't have an email address specific to their school — but Facebook says that it will be easy to report users who seem like they're misrepresenting themselves and boot them off the app.

Facebook thinks that this app will appeal to teens partially because it was designed by a teen.

Lifestage is the vision of 19-year-old product-manager wunderkind Michael Sayman, according to TechCrunch.

"What if I figured out a way to take Facebook from 2004 and bring it to 2016?" he told TechCrunch's Josh Constine. "What if every field in your profile was a full video?"

The new app feels a lot like another wannabe Snapchat in its attempt to capture younger audiences and its focus on vertical video. Facebook just released a copycat of another Snapchat feature earlier this month when it launched "Instagram Stories."

Yet TechCrunch's Constine suggested that the app isn't meant to succeed on its own, but to teach Facebook more about how to integrate video into people's Facebook profiles.

For better or worse, the company envisions a day when most of your News Feed is video.

The app is available only on iOS for now.

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Snapchat geofilters let you put artwork, names, logos, and other designs over messages in the app. 

The catch is that geofilters only work in certain locations and, in some cases, are only visible for a specific duration of time.

Geofilters are commonly used for saying that you're in a specific city or neighborhood. Recently people have started making their own geofilters for more creative use cases, like proms and birthday parties.

Want to make your own geofilter, but not sure to start? How's what you need to know:

SEE ALSO: Snapchat is working on filters that can scan objects in photos and serve ads

There are 2 kinds of geofilters: free "community" geofilters and more customizable "on-demand" geofilters you have to pay for.

Community geofilters can be submitted by anyone and are meant to showcase neighborhoods and cities. They can't feature any logos or trademarks and are usually visible in the app for a long period of time.

"Artists and designers are encouraged to create and submit a free Community Geofilter for their city, university, a local landmark, or another public location," Snapchat says on its website. "No brand logos allowed."

You have to follow Snapchat's design rules to have a geofilter approved.

Facebook has a new app that's for teens only.

The app, which is called Lifestage, was quietly released last Friday afternoon in the App Store. It was designed by 19-year-old Facebook employee Michael Sayman and looks eerily similar to Snapchat at first glance.

Both Snapchat and Lifestage open to a camera and encourage you to take goofy videos, but the main difference with Lifestage is that it's centered entirely around high schools. You have to join a school to see videos from classmates, and there's no way to directly message someone.

Lifestage is designed for young people to "show others who they are and to find out more about the people in their school community as well as meet new people," according to Sayman, who joined Facebook immediately after graduating high school two years ago.

Even though I'm not technically young enough to use Lifestage (the app blocks you from joining a school if say you're older than 21), I decided to give it a try by pretending to be younger.

SEE ALSO: Facebook wants people to share selfies like they do on Snapchat

19-year-old Facebook product manager Michael Sayman created Lifestage as a way to explore how Generation Z wants to communicate through social media.

Facebook declined to make Sayman available for an interview with Business Insider, but the young employee did explain why Lifestage was created in a post on his personal Facebook page last week.

"Lifestage looks back at the days of Facebook from 2004 and explores what can be done if we went back and turned the crank all the way forward to 2016 with video-first," he wrote.

"Back in 2004, Facebook was all about 'who I am,'" according to Sayman. "Today as Facebook has grown into so much more, we see the opportunity to explore that concept of 'who I am' once again, but for Generation Z in 2016."

Lifestage is strictly intended for high schoolers. You have to enter your age when you first login, and if you're under 21 years old you won't be able to add a school you belong to.

Apple is reportedly building iPhone and iPad apps that will feature video editing and sharing, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman.

Gurman says the app will let people record short videos on their iPhone and then apply filters and doodles on top of them — similar to Snapchat and Instagram.

In fact, one early version of the app sees users recording square videos, which is similar to how Instagram users take photos.

Videos recorded and edited through Apple's new app could then be uploaded to social networks like Facebook and Twitter, Bloomberg reports.

Apple is reportedly aiming the app at younger users who regularly use apps like Snapchat or Instagram but may not see the appeal of Apple's social-networking features like iMessage.

Bloomberg reports that the app is being built with a target release date of 2017, but that could change. That means the video-editing app won't be in the coming iOS 10 software release.

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It may have its clones, but Snapchat remains invincible. Over the course of the next two years the visual messaging app will witness the kind of unabated growth that other social networks would kill for.

A new report by eMarketer predicts that Snapchat will continue to see double-digit growth this year, and the next, totaling a 27.2 percent increase in 2016 followed by 13.6 percent in 2017. That will boost the app’s 150 million user base to 217 million by the end of 2017.

Millennials (those currently aged 16-35) will continue to make up the largest share of Snapchat’s user base, but that particular demographic will shrink to 56 percent of the app’s audience from its current status of 70 percent. This statistic falls in line with the recent analysis that more older users are flocking to the app. In July, ratings company ComScore claimed that over-35-year-olds were adopting Snapchat — this segment currently makes up 14 percent of the app’s audience in the United States.

Staying with the U.S., eMarketer adds that the app will reach 58.6 million monthly active users in the United States in 2016 (that’s over a third of its global user base).

However, the growth rate will start to decrease after this period. “In 2018 and beyond, when the Snapchat audience is expected to be substantially larger than it is today, year-over-year increases will be in the single-digit range,” states eMarketer.

It all amounts to great news for Snapchat, which must’ve been slightly worried when its larger rivals (here’s looking at you, Facebook and Instagram) began muscling into its territory by plagiarizing its features.

In order to continue to monetize, Snapchat still needs to work on its image among older users, who view it as a “difficult” app. Its biggest obstacle to long-term growth will be opening up its app to make it easier for users to learn its camera functions, and follow others. This could be the key to unlocking growth — and more advertising dollars — for the foreseeable future.

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In a curious move, Apple appears to be exploring a move into social networking.

According to a new report by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is developing a Snapchat-like app that lets you share video clips with friends. Like with Snapchat, you can edit your videos with filters, drawings, and stickers. 

If the project gets approved, the app could launch as early as 2017, the report says.

It's a strange move for Apple, which has been averse to creating social networking apps in the past, especially after failures like iTunes Ping and the Connect feature in Apple Music.

And just last week, Apple's senior vice president Eddy Cue told Fast Company that Apple isn't trying to make Apple versions of every popular app, using social networking as an example:

"I mean, we don’t do every app,"he said in the Fast Company interview. "We’re not trying to create a Facebook app. We think they do a great job."

Instead, Cue said, Apple focuses on making apps that are core to the iPhone experience, like maps, mail, and calendar.

The move makes even less sense when you take into account the fact Apple already has a massive, successful social network: iMessage.

iMessage is built into hundreds of millions of Apple devices already, from iPhones to iPads to Macs, and is about to get a major overhaul with loads of new social networking features in the upcoming iOS 10 and macOS Sierra software that'll launch later this month.

In fact, iMessage is already one of the most valuable assets keeping people locked into Apple's ecosystem. It's arguably more important to the stickiness of iOS than any other app that comes included with the iPhone. If it were somehow spun out as its own company, iMessage would be worth millions (billions?) just for its daily active users. 

So, if Apple does end up releasing a Snapchat-like video app, it'll be interesting to see if it's a standalone app or built into iMessage or Apple Photos, which are already popular and built into the iPhone.

Apple doesn't need to build a new social networking app. It already has a massively successful one with iMessage that it can experiment with instead.

SEE ALSO: The Galaxy Note 7 review

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Snapchat is planning to introduce behavioral targeting for advertisers, the company's director of revenue operations Clement Xue revealed in an eMarketer report published earlier this week.

Xue said the company was working towards rolling out behavioral targeting capabilities in the third quarter of 2016, according to the "Snapchat Advertising" report.

Snapchat declined to comment.

Business Insider understands that Snapchat will, at this stage, only be using behavioral data from users' activity in the app.

What that means is if users were heavy consumers of basketball content, for example — perhaps following an NBA Snapchat account or consuming lots of content on the ESPN Discover channel — advertisers could target them around categories such as "sports" or "basketball."

The fine line between "targeted" and "creepy"

Snapchat won't, at this stage at least, be using data from web browsing behavior that takes place outside of the app in order to serve targeted ads.

There is a possibility that could come later. Last month Snapchat introduced its first "log in with Snapchat" button inside the Bitmoji Keyboard app the company quietly acquired earlier this year. The button lets people sign in with their existing Snapchat credentials, rather than having to create a separate Bitmoji account.

Snapchat's button looks similar to the now-ubiquitous "log in with Facebook" or "log in with Google" buttons you see elsewhere on the web. They act as universal login systems for users and also allow these platforms to track your browsing behavior in order to serve you targeted ads and measure ad performance. For instance, Facebook can tell if you looked at a product on an ecommerce site and can use that information to serve you an ad for that product when you go on to browse your news feed later.

Snapchat also rolled out its first advertising API (application programming interface) in July, which allows advertisers to buy, optimize, and analyze their Snapchat ad campaigns through third-party companies.

EMarketer spoke to a number of Snapchat's partners who suggested the company might be looking to launch more sophisticated targeting options soon, via the API — not least as several of the firms specialize in cross-channel and cross-device audience matching and targeting.

Johnny Horgan, vice president of global partnerships at marketing technology company Amobee, said in the report: “We are an API partner with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram, and we have direct integrations with 850 websites. We have access to a lot of data and are hoping to be able to leverage that to activate media through Snapchat. That’s something that will come down the line, and we’re excited about it.”

However, Snapchat's CEO Evan Spiegel has long advocated against "creepy" ads that track users as they traverse around the internet.

Snapchat's Privacy Center also states: "We want you to feel understood. We want to understand what’s relevant to you and your life, and we want to show you things that you’ll care about. At the same time, we don’t want to serve ads that are so custom-tailored that they feel invasive or uncomfortable."

So retargeting — the advertising industry word to describe the method used by Facebook above — seems highly unlikely for now. It looks as though any behavioral targeting will be limited to broad categories, rather than serving ads based on very specific interactions you have made inside the app.

Nevertheless, advertisers are likely to cheer the news. One of the biggest criticisms about Snapchat from the advertising community is that it doesn't offer the kind of sophisticated targeting and measurement options that they can get from the likes of Facebook or Google.

Snapchat — which only began selling ads in late 2014 — has made leaps of progress in this area, though, increasing its targeting options to six types and signing more than 10 ad measurement partnerships.

Jed Hallam, head of digital strategy at global media agency Mindshare, told Business Insider: "[Snapchat introducing behavioral targeting will] be great for advertisers. There are two developments that would significantly improve the advertiser experience in Snapchat: behavioral targeting and the ability to segment audiences by ID — email, mobile, etc. Snapchat has always remained very loyal to user needs, and so even if those two got introduced, I'd imagine it would be done in a very sensitive way and not in a particularly creepy way."

These are all the advertising targeting options Snapchat currently offers:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Device/operating system
• Mobile carrier
• Content affinity (placing ads in the Discover channel that are appropriate for the type of content they are sitting next to)

The eMarketer report also predicts Snapchat will increase its userbase to 217 million by the end of 2017, up from 150 million in 2016.

SEE ALSO: Snapchat is finally learning to love the 'creepy' advertising it once said it hated

NOW READ: Advertisers love Snapchat's priciest ad format — and that ought to worry its social media rivals

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YouTube is becoming an increasingly popular destination for watching live video content, according to a report in The Financial Times (FT) on Tuesday.

The Google-owned platform claims live video views jumped by 80% over the last year.

Neal Mohan, head of product at YouTube, told the FT the number of live video postings on YouTube grew by 30% over the same time period.

"When consumers think about video, whether that’s on-demand or live, they think of YouTube. Live is one part of the picture," said Mohan.

The most popular live YouTube video in the UK was the UEFA Champions League final, which the video company claims attracted 2.2 million viewers.

Other Silicon Valley firms like Facebook and Snapchat are also chasing the live broadcasting market as user appetite for watching live videos online increases.

Facebook has previously said that users watch live videos three times longer than non-live videos and the social network is paying media companies (including Business Insider) to broadcast live onto its platform.

Mohan told the FT YouTube can differentiate itself from other livestreaming platforms due to its "ability to monetise content by the weight of its advertising deals."

He stressed that content can still make money even when it's no longer live, adding that YouTube's "creators" are paid "hundreds of millions of dollars" annually, with payouts rising by 50% every year.

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You've been able to create your own Snapchat geofilter since February. But unless you're good at Photoshop, the process hasn't been simple — until now.

On Tuesday Snapchat announced customizable geofilter themes anyone can use to create filters for birthdays, weddings, and other special occasions.

The new themes are accessible through Snapchat's web tool for creating geofilters.

A Snapchat spokeswoman said that geofilters are viewed in the app more than one billion times per day day.

Here's how to use Snapchat's new geofilter themes: 

SEE ALSO: Snapchat's custom geofilters are changing how people celebrate major events

When you log into Snapchat's web tool for creating geofilters, you now have the option to create your own from scratch or use one of Snapchat's themes.

Snapchat lets you pick from three theme collections: birthdays, celebrations, and weddings.

You can customize the colors and text in each theme.

Along with customizable geofilter templates, Snapchat released an update to its app on Tuesday.

There aren't any major new features to speak of in the update, but Snapchat users should take note of these four changes:

SEE ALSO: Snapchat is making it easier to create your own geofilters

1. You can change the style of text to italic, bold, and underlined.

When you're adding text over a snap, highlight the text like you would in any other app and you'll see the new formatting options.

2. Captions can be "pinned" to parts of a video like stickers and emojis.

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Tap and hold on an area of a video and the text will stick to it.

4. You can watch someone's story before you add them as a friend, but only if they have their account set to public.

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When you search for an account to add, you can see their current story only if they have who can "view my story" set to "everyone" in their settings.

Snapchat has unpublished its official Facebook Page. Snapchat declined to comment as to why the page is no longer available, but a person close to the company told VentureBeat that the main reason was simply due to the lack of use.

As Snapchat continues to grow and plow ahead, there is increasing scrutiny on competition from its larger social giant, Facebook, and the duo's relationship. But this quiet move is unlikely to change anything between the two — the reality is Snapchat didn’t use its Facebook page much.

Navigating to the facebook.com/snapchat URL will now give you a generic "Sorry, this content isn’t available right now" error message. Less than a week ago, the Page appeared to be alive and well.

Snapchat's app page had over 6.5 million Likes before it was pulled. But it wasn’t very frequently used: Posts were being published many months apart.

The last public post Snapchat made on its Facebook Page was in August 2013 (though we were told that November 2013 is actually closer to the correct date for the last post). Either way, there has been no activity for well over two years.

In fact, our contact familiar with the matter actually said the team forgot Snapchat had a Facebook Page. In the last few days, someone at the company happened to stumble across it, noted that it was very out of date, and decided it wasn't worth the hassle to keep it going.

For the record, Snapchat's Twitter profile, which has 1.58 million followers, is still alive and well. The latest tweets went out just a few hours ago.

SEE ALSO: 4 changes you probably missed in Snapchat's latest update

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One of the holy grails in Silicon Valley is finding or founding an app that breaks through the techie bubble and goes mainstream.

Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed Ventures, says he has a good system for finding those apps.

He should know — he was Snapchat's first investor.

In short: He looks for the apps that are trending among young women.

"What young women are doing today, I think, we are all going to end up doing in a few years' time," Liew told Business Insider.

He cites apps like Prisma and Musical.ly as examples of apps that have found a broad audience and have broken through to the mainstream.

Apps are moving away from being toys for the early adopter, and are starting to be more geared toward "middle America, from the beginning," Liew said. So he looks for founders who understand popular culture and can drive the conversation.

"Frankly, I think a lot of that is driven by the test of young women," he said. "Those are some of the areas that we will be paying particular focus on, and I expect that we will see a lot of apps that are targeted at young women in the process."

Liew actually heard of Snapchat using a similar process. The first time he encountered the disappearing-messages app, in 2012, he had seen it on one of his partners' teenage daughter's phone, Business Insider's Alyson Shontell reported.

When Lightspeed partner Barry Eggers' daughter told him that high school kids were using only three apps and Snapchat was one of them, Liew said he had to find the creators of the app.

The rest is history. Lightspeed contributed $485,000 in seed funding to Snapchat, and Liew is still asking young people what the next big consumer app will be. He'll participate in the Apple-funded reality show, "Planet of the Apps," which will be a "Shark Tank"-like contest for finding breakout apps.

"Consumer technology has really become part of popular culture," Liew said. "So what we've seen in our own portfolio is that the center of gravity for the consumer startup culture has really moved away from Silicon Valley and it's become much, much broader."

SEE ALSO: How Snapchat first investor found Snapchat before anyone else

SEE ALSO: Apple's 'Shark Tank' for apps just signed up a top-tier Silicon Valley VC

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