Five Friday Facts #36

News
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China leads Asia Pacific in mobile social media usage
Research led by Google in conjunction with Ipos MediaCT and TNS Infratest reveals that China has the highest rates of mobile social connectivity in the Asia Pacific region. The study that took place in March 2012 reported that the highest usage of social media from smartphones in Asia Pacific region came from Australia, China and Japan. China outdid Australia and Japan with 66% of its smartphone users accessing social media using their mobile on a daily basis.

Though China’s smartphone penetration is not as high as some of the developed countries like the US, even a low penetration translates to millions of people. In 2011, 11.1% of the total population used smartphones which is a 148.3 million users as compared to 93.1 million in the US. Using these 2011 figures, the Chinese users accessing social media on their mobile translates to at least 97.9 million.

Coke, Unilever go mobile with Facebook in rural areas of Asia
Two of the world’s largest advertisers, Coca-Cola and Unilever, are aiming to reach mobile users in emerging markets to whom the Internet literally spells Facebook. There is immense growth in Facebook penetration in rural ares of Asia ever since Facebook rolled out an app for feature phones. Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s Vice President for Global Marketing Solutions reports that brand owners are keen to exploit Facebook’s reach in regions such as Africa, India and South East Asia. JPMorgan Chase predicts that Facebook revenues for mobile ads is expected to grow to $8.9 billion by 2014 from $3.7 billion in 2011, out of which $1.4 billion of the spending is projected to come from developing nations.  Mobile penetration in emerging markets is at 79% as compared to only 25% for computers. It is reported that Facebook log-ons from a handset is at some 83 million as of April this year. Hence, Unilever and Coca-Cola are employing mobile marketing tools to sponsor Facebook posts that will target where their next 100 million or even the next billion consumers are coming from.

Singapore Twitter scene goes viral with #singaporeshadesofgrey tweets
On Monday this week, well known Singapore blogger Mr.Brown responded to the recent hype on the British novel Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L James by posting tweets with the hashtag #singaporeshadesofgrey which went viral. Our team here decided to dig into some of the statistics on what the Twitter scene looked like in Singapore over the span of 10 hours when it flooded all our Twitter feeds. There were 8,216 tweets and 6,306 retweets, showcasing our very own version of Shades of Grey. This made a whopping 6.8 million impressions on the Internet flaunting our local sense of humour. Despite a short-lived viral stream, it was sure to chase away any Monday blues for Singaporeans.

Oracle buys social marketing platform Involver
Less than two months from acquiring the social management platform, VirtueOracle bought social marketing platform Involver this week for an undisclosed amount. Involver raised $11 million in capital and grew to become the leading provider of Social Markup Language which enables highly customised marketing applications for social media site and web campaigns. Oracle has said that it is looking into creating advanced cloud services for social platforms across marketing and sales services to build engaging applications and social experiences for web campaigns. Large technology providers are clearly looking to provide an all-in-one social marketing solutions. Earlier this year, Adobe bought Efficient Frontier for $400 million while Saleforce acquired Buddy Media for $745 million last month. It is anticipated that Microsoft, SAP and IBM are likely to be looking for social marketing platforms acquisitions too.

Social TV keeps viewers more engaged
Adage reported that viewers interacting with social media while watching their favourite shows are more engaged in the programs than those who watch alone without social media. Study from Time Warner Research Council revealed that even those viewers who watched shows on television with peers by their side, would have their laptops and mobile phone out where they are tweeting about the show or engaging with friends about it on Facebook. Viewer engagement levels while connected with a friend on social media were 1.3 times higher than those who watched without connecting on social media. Moreover, shows that sync conversations within the program showed 1.2 times more engaged views than shows with no social app embedded. Contrary to popular belief, having a second screen did not distract viewers but gave them more reason to stay on-channel whist engaging with their friends, especially social TV that allows for live social engagement as shown below: