We Are Social Asia Tuesday Tuneup #153

News
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YouTube offers offline playback for India, Indonesia and Philippines 
The latest update from YouTube’s Android app allows users in India, Indonesia and Philippines to watch videos offline. The update aims to provide a buffer-free video experience for those without high-speed mobile data access. YouTube videos can be saved to users’ devices and played from an offline mode of the app without an internet connection for up to 48 hours.

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Viber launched Viber games
Chat app Viber has rolled out Viber games, which allow users to play games into the app using their Viber ID. The launch lineup includes games similar to ‘Candy Crush Saga’ as well as a bubble shooter game. It seems Viber is trying to replicate the success of its counterparts, Line and WeChat, who have been successful in generating huge revenue from in-app games. It will be interesting to see how Viber’s new strategy will impact the landscape of chat apps.

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Facebook installs CTA page buttons
Facebook has added several call-to-action buttons for page owners: book now, contact us, use app, play game, shop now, sign up and watch video. Dollar Shave Club, which has been using the functionality in beta, has said that it saw a 2.5x higher conversion rate in a three-week test, and that’s in a cutthroat market. You know, because they make razors.

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Facebook updates publishing and insights tools
Facebook has added a set of new publishing tools and insights. The first is ‘interest targeting’, which allows pages to target content to subsets of fans who also ‘like’ other pages. Secondly, ‘post end date’ allows page owners to set a point when time-sensitive posts will disappear and, finally, there’s ‘smart publishing’, which means that popular links to your website will automatically show up in your fans’ News Feeds. For insights, the network has added URL-level reporting that shows when pages/influencers share a post and fixed a bug that was undercounting iOS traffic. Phew. That’s a lot of updates.

Facebook updates search tools
Facebook has made a couple of announcements about search. First of all, it’s updated Graph Search to make it easier to find specific posts; users can search, for example, the name of a friend and ‘wedding’ to see photos from the event.

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Secondly, the network announced that it’s dropped Bing as its primary search partner, ahead of plans for a rumoured new search tool. Facebook is currently not showing web results at all, using its search tool to focus on locating content from within the network.

Zuckerberg appears in live Q&A
Mark Zuckerberg hosted a live Q&A last week, in which he answered questions about his plans for Facebook. The CEO discussed his reasons for opposing a ‘dislike’ button, plans to explore ways to express diverse emotions and the value of connecting with people on social media, amongst other things. If you want to find out his views on privacy, use of real names and pizza toppings, you can read the full transcript here.

Instagram and Twitter discuss the future
Instagram announced last week that it has overtaken Twitter in terms of users – 300 million to its rival’s 284 million. It has also mentioned plans to bring in verified accounts and purge fakes, in line with an interview given by CEO Kevin Systrom in Adweek, where he discussed the platform’s future. Particularly notable were his ideas to bring Instagram to ‘everyone with a phone’ and explore ‘new areas of communication’, like Hyperlapse. Twitter’s response? Well, co-founder Ev Williams ‘doesn’t give a shit’about who has more users. So there you go. He’d prefer we look at Twitter as its own product and discuss its impact on the world, arguing that Twitter is what they wanted it to be when they set out.

Twitter upgrades Tailored Audiences
Twitter launched its Tailored Audiences product back in 2013. Don’t worry, we’re not just reporting that now. The platform has just updated the feature to include data from mobile apps, meaning that advertisers can target ads within Twitter based on data from other mobile apps. Smashing.

LinkedIn redesigns homepage
LinkedIn has changed its homepage layout, placing analytics and News Feed at the front and centre. Don’t worry if you haven’t got it yet, it’s being rolled out globally as we speak. Or rather, as I type and you read. Hi.

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Ronald McDonald goes skydiving
Big news, clown haters! Someone just got Ronald McDonald to jump out of a plane. Don’t worry, human lovers! It’s all part of a marketing stunt for McDonald’s, which posted the video on its Instagram page.

Lowe’s plays around with native tools
Lowe’s is experimenting with native tools on Vine and Instagram to spice up its inspirational videos. It’s used Vine’s ‘tap to pause’ to fit step-by-step videos into six seconds, and taken to Hyperlapse to post start-to-finish ideas videos on Instagram.

evian and We Are Social create outfit grids
evian and We Are Social have worked together to promote the design of the new ‘Kenzo’ bottle, by posting ‘outfit grids’ across social media. You can see one of the rather satisfying tessellations below.

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Auto Trader makes cars out of Lego
Would you like your car to be made of Lego? Sorry, a model of your car. If so, get over toFacebook, Instagram or Twitter and post a picture using #DrivenByMe to enter the latest Auto Trader competition.

Twitter goes loopy for breakfast cereal
French Toast Crunch has returned! I’d actually never heard of it, because my parents wouldn’t let me have sugary cereal as a child, but then this isn’t all about me so maybe it’s time to move on. Twitter users had been campaigning for yonks, and have since taken to the network to say thanks… and ask for some other comebacks.