HBO Posts Girls Premiere on YouTube

In a move that seems fairly out of character, HBO is putting the first two episodes of Girls' third season—which just aired last night—on the HBO YouTube page, where anyone can watch them for free as of 10am today. Why? The show's audience is very active online, and "for us, this is an increasingly challenging demographic to reach with traditional means," HBO's VP of social media and marketing tells Mashable.

The network is reaching out in other ways, too: It has Snapchat and Tumblr accounts for Girls and an Instagram video series featuring Lena Dunham sharing her character Hannah Horvath's opinions. On Twitter, cast and crew members will be live-tweeting the show starting with episode three, and on Facebook, emojis are used to recap what each character has gone through. (More HBO stories.)