We Are Social Asia Tuesday TuneUp #129

News
Sofia Maddalena

People in China send about 1 SMS a day, thanks to WeChat
With the rise of popular messaging app WeChat in China, people are now only sending out about 1 SMS a day. New figures released by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology show that people in China send an average of 39.8 text messages per month – or about 1.3 a day. This is despite a total of 1.26 billion registered phone subscribers. 

WeChat users in China can now transfer money to each other
In a minor iOS update, WeChat added the ability for users to transfer money to each other. This feature is limited to users in China who have tied a bank card to the app. The money transfer option is a small step in WeChat’s aims to become a mobile wallet service. It already encompasses online payments, ecommerce, an online personal finance fund, and online taxi ordering. Micro-blogging site Sina Weibo is also set to roll out user-to-user money transfers next week.

LinkedIn adds Traditional Chinese language support
Extending greater focus on its China market, LinkedIn has added Traditional Chinese to the list of languages supported on its service. The China-specific site, Lingying.com, had previously only supported Simplified Chinese. The addition of Traditional Chinese (which is used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau) would help it gain traction among business professionals in the mainland.

Line and its family of apps have hit 1 billion downloads
As Line celebrates its third anniversary, it revealed that its ecosystem of 63 apps has seen a cumulative total of 1 billion downloads to date. 13 of the 63 apps (other than Line itself) have passed the 10 million download mark, with Line Camera surpassing 90 million downloads. Line’s family of apps seek to become much more than just a messaging service, meetings “needs for communication, digital content, game, tools, media and more.”

Facebook launches Slingshot
Facebook has launched Slingshot, its Snapchat rival, for iPhone and Android. They even did it on purpose this time. The app allows users to share photos and videos, to which they can add text. But there’s a twist – you can only see what you’ve been sent if you share something in return.

Facebook tests auto play video for brand pages
You may have noticed auto play video ads in your Facebook News Feed, coming from brands such as Macy’s and Chevrolet. Facebook is now testing an expansion of the feature, such that videos posted to brand pages will ‘auto play’ in the same way. The videos would not be restricted to the same 15-second time limit as the current ads.

Twitter increases ROI for TV ads
A recent study has concluded that TV campaigns supported by Twitter are more effective than TV alone. The most significant figure was that Twitter-supported campaigns produce a 50% higher ROI than TV-only campaigns. The study also noted that when using Twitter, brand awareness was 6.9% higher and that households showed a 4% increase in sales compared with TV alone.

GIFs come to Twitter
Twitter now supports GIFs uploaded natively through a variety of devices, on Twitter.com, iPhone/iPad and Android. They won’t start automatically, but, as you can see below, all that’s required is a quick click of a button. Naturally, brands are getting involved already. Here are a few examples:

Yahoo to run Tumblr ads on related sites Yahoo is going to start running Tumblr’s Sponsored Post ads on its affiliated sites, including Yahoo News and Yahoo Beauty. Brands already involved include Lexus, Tide, Lipton and the Hunger Games.

LinkedIn launches Job Search
LinkedIn has released a standalone app for iPhone and iPad, called ‘LinkedIn Job Search’. What it does should be clear from the title, but there is another feature that makes it distinctly different from LinkedIn: everything is completely private. It’s US-only for now, but more markets are in the offing. Product manager, Daniel Ayele, said of the launch:

It can be hard to search for a job while you’re at your desk, not to mention the potentially awkward conversation with your current boss. Our goal is to help make this process easier for you and to help you be discreet. Everything you do within the app will be completely private and not shared with your network.

Snapchat tests public sharing, adds new filters
Snapchat has announced a couple of changes in the last week. First of all, it’s testing a Group Sharing feature, dubbed ‘Our Story’. The feature will pull together all the snaps from a particular location, such as a concert, and share them publicly as one large, user-generated Story.

Secondly, the app has added custom filters for brands, in an attempt to entice more of them to use it. Here you can see Vice’s ‘Yes We Cannes’ template.

Snapchat-Vice-Logo

Yelp adds direct messaging feature Yelp users can now contact businesses directly with questions and feedback. When they do so, the business will receive an email like the below. To respond, it simply needs to reply to the email. Yelp will also give an indication of how long it takes companies to respond, unless they choose to opt out. yelp

The World Cup on social The USA seems to have taken to the World Cup, even if USMNT is no way to refer to a football team. The soccer love is showing on social, with tweets from big names, including LeBron James, Jimmy Fallon and some bloke called Barack.

The US team’s first game, a victory over Ghana, saw a high of 173,738 tweets. Delta Airlines wanted to get involved, but produced the World Cup’s first ‘Twitter fail’ by illustrating Ghana using a giraffe, an animal that isn’t native to the country. The brand ended up issuing an apology.

Other brands managed to avoid such problems when commenting on the USA vs. Portugal game yesterday. Portugal equalised in the dying seconds to leave the US needing a result against Germany – here are some of the tweets in response to the event.

Tide creates Game of Thrones infographic SPOILER ALERT! If you haven’t finished Game of Thrones, it might be best to give this story a miss. Tide has created an infographic showing all of the deaths in the most recent season, receiving over 1,000 RTs and favourites.

New emoji are coming
Big news for everyone who finds it too difficult to express their thoughts and feelings using words. There are 250 new emoji coming, which should keep conversations interesting for at least 250 seconds. Easily our favourite is the ‘middle finger’ image, which can come in very useful on a Monday.