We Are Social Asia Tuesday Tuneup #147

News
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WhatsApp remains top messaging app in India
For the first time, a billion people in India are going online using their smartphones. Messaging apps like Hike and WeChat have started advertising early to gain the attention of this growing smartphone crowd in India. Hike announced that it reached 35 million registered users in August, at the same time that it received its largest round of funding. Despite the competition, WhatsApp takes the lead in India, with 70 million active users, a 20 million increase in just 6 months.

Path’s potential comeback starts in Indonesia
Despite what seemed to be a crisis for Path last fall, Path is set to make a comeback by growing its social network in Indonesia, a market that make up a fifth of its global user base. With a new office in Indonesia and over US$ 77 million in fundings, Path’s continued success in the market will prove beneficial not just for the company, but for Indonesia as well.

Brands get spooky on social for Halloween
On Friday, everyone wanted a piece of the Halloween fun, and, as always, brands were no exception. Here’s our favourite from Lenovo *wink*.

A video posted by Lenovo (@lenovo) on

A mixed financial week for Facebook
Imagine you’re a Facebook investor, and you hear that you’re about to be taken on a roller coaster. Great news, right? WRONG. This roller coaster means share price fluctuation throughout the week. First of all, the network announced impressive Q3 figures and share price hit an $81.16 high. MAUs have risen to 1.35 billion from 1.317 billion in Q2, while mobile MAUs have jumped from 1.07bn to 1.124bn in the same period. Facebook MAUs Facebook monthly MAUs Total revenue increased by over 50% for the sixth consecutive quarter, rising by 59% to $3.2bn. Facebook revenue Meanwhile, also for the sixth consecutive quarter, ad revenue increased by over 60%; this time, Facebook posted figures of $2.96bn, a 64% increase from Q2. Mobile accounted for 62% of ad revenue. Facebook ad revenue Investors saw the figures and everybody was happy. Hooray! Sadly, Facebook then announced that costs have risen dramatically in 2014, and revenue is expected to slow in Q4. Share prices dropped as a result, slumping by almost 10% before settling around the $73 mark. All in all, we’ll give the week a score of 6/10. The first video ads hit Instagram Who’s in the house? Instagram video ads are in the house! Well, on the network. Anyway, Instagram has launched its premium, 15-second autoplay spots with a selection of partners, including Banana Republic, Disney, CW Flash and Call of Duty. Twitter’s revenue increases, even as user growth slows If you liked the story about Facebook’s share prices, you’ll LOVE this. Twitter’s had a mixed week, too: its revenue continues to show strong growth, despite disappointing user figures. Q3 total revenue increased 114% year-on-year to $361m, of which ad revenue accounted for $320m (85% from mobile). In the same time, though, the platform added just 13 million monthly active users, compared with 16 million in Q2. Screen Shot 2014-11-03 at 17.30.50 Investors weren’t impressed and the share price dropped by 10%, making Twitter’s week slightly worse than Facebook’s. 5/10. Tumblr to roll out autoplay videos It’s been a big old week for fans of autoplay video adverts. Hot on Instagram’s heels, Tumblr has announced that it will launch a similar service, starting tomorrow. It’s limited to a set of partners at the moment (isn’t it always?) but will be open to everyone by mid-November. So far, the lucky punters include Lexus, Universal Pictures, JC Penney and Hulu. LinkedIn posts strong Q3 figures We hope you’re enjoying these Q3 reports. LinkedIn is up next, and it’s been a good three months. Total revenue is at $568m, of which ad revenue accounts for $109m – a 45% year-on-year increase. Sponsored updates have been the biggest success story – they make up 31% of ad revenue, and have been described by CEO Jeff Weiner as the “fastest growing business in LinkedIn’s history”. We’re giving LinkedIn an 8/10, making it the proud recipient of the prestigious ‘We Are Social Q3 figures of the week award’. Disqus to begin advertising Disqus, which operates the comment sections on 3m websites, has started targeting adverts within its service. It’s mining data about what people post and where to target the ads, which will look like normal comments apart from the word ‘sponsored’. Taco Bell is @totallynothere Social media’s no stranger to the odd meltdown. Taco Bell went someway down that path last week, deleting all previous social content to create a ‘blackout’ and promote its new app.

A risky strategy, but it seems to have paid off in the short term. After 24 hours, 75% of Taco Bell restaurants had processed at least one mobile order. We’ll see if that continues in the longer term, and keep an eye out for any return to social media. Epix launches on Vine TV network Epix is celebrating its fifth birthday (happy birthday). Don’t hold out for any cake, though, the party plan is to launch on a new channel: Vine. The network has partnered with 10 influencers to create Vines around different films. Each makes sense on its own and they join together to create a larger story, which will be shared on YouTube, TV and, most excitingly, THIS MASHUP. Epix Vine campaign from Digiday on Vimeo. We Are Social and HP Sauce celebrate Movember Look around you. See those terrible, wispy things nestling on the upper lips of your friends/colleagues/loved ones? Yes, it can only be Movember. HP Sauce is a major partner of the charity and has teamed up with We Are Social to launch a campaign. Fans are asked to enter weekly photo challenges on Facebook for the chance to win sketches or Mo fund top ups – one overall winner will be selected as the face of next year’s HP Sauce bottle. Samaritans Radar searches Twitter for suicide triggers Samaritans has created an app to help Twitter users find out if anyone they know is posting potentially worrying tweets. The service, named Radar, automatically picks up certain phrases, including ‘depressed’ and ‘tired of being alone’. The charity plans to keep updating its algorithm as time goes on, with the hope of avoiding false positives. At the moment, it’s not the best at noticing when someone might be joking.   Chevrolet shows how to deal with Twitter mocking While trying to present a Chevrolet-sponsored baseball trophy, the company’s representative had something of an awkward moment. With lines like “It offers class-winning and -leading, um, you know, technology and stuff”, it was only a matter of time before he became the talk of Twitter. (He’s known as #ChevyGuy, if you must know.) That could have been pretty awkward for the automotive brand, but Chevy showed that it knows how social works. It embraced the awkward.