We Are Social Asia Tuesday Tune-Up #206

News
xinglong.tan
Is there truly no such thing as bad publicity for businesses?
Timely responses to customers’ feedback tend to be a hallmark for good community management, but serving it with a dose of passive-aggressiveness might not be the best idea. Two Singaporean eateries, Crab in da Bag and Lavastone Steakhouse, were recently caught in a PR storm due to their replies to poor reviews left by their customers.

A Crab in da Bag customer, Joan Soon left a poor review on the page:
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Which was followed up with this reply:

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To which the customer replied:
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However, Crab in da Bag seems adamant that they have done their best, much to the dismay of other customers :
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Similarly, Lavastone Steakhouse‘s responses to poor reviews left some of its customers amused and flabbergasted, with the owner going one step further to name and shame the reviewer: 
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So is there such a thing as bad publicity? We’ll leave you to decide on that 😉

New and improved Boomerang makes sharing a whole lot easier
With its newest update, Boomerang is now fully integrated with Facebook and Instagram, making sharing as easy as a simple tap. Besides that, other notable improvements include the removal of auto-save for videos and integrating the phones’ flash system into the app.
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Social marketing tops list of tech investment priorities for marketers
According to a survey by Gartner on the 2015 budgets and 2016 expectations of over 330 organizations, almost two-thirds said that social marketing and digital commerce were leading priorities. Furthermore, 61% of marketers named marketing analytics as a priority, to align with the growing expectation from consumers for heightened personalization when being marketed to.

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Facebook tests interest-specific news feeds on mobile
As part of Zuckerberg’s goal of making Facebook “the best personalised newspaper”, some people are now seeing their News Feed being separated into different categories, such as travel, style and headlines. Now if only you could create a sub section called “smug couples and their cats” which you could then delete forever, from Facebook… and the real world.

https://twitter.com/jasonwstein/status/681872601283719169/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Facebook begins rolling out support for Apple’s Live Photos
For those of you that don’t know what a Live Photo is, it’s basically a very short video, but don’t start calling these things ‘short videos’ – you’ll sounds like a mom. Only produced on iPhone 6s and 6s plus, Facebook has updated its app to support them and you’ll recognise them by the concentric circles in their right hand corner.

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Google plans to bring a new contender to the messaging apps market
According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is planning to take on Facebook Messenger with a new messaging service involving AI and chatbots. A name for the new service is currently unknown, so all guesses welcome. I’m going for: Gchat Messenger OR Googlebert Humperzing, one of those. Facebook is currently the number one messaging app in the U.S. followed by Google Hangouts.

Google brings its interactive, 360 “Spotlight Stories” to YouTube
Google’s first Spotlight Story is now available on YouTube. Called Special Delivery and created by the people behind Wallace and Gromit, users can explore the story from every angle and unlock other mini-stories with up to 60 moments where you can choose to follow the story in different ways. The format takes advantage of your smartphone’s sensors, like gyroscope and accelerometer, to create an immersive viewing experience and will surely one day be used for some truly mind-blowing porn.

Snapchat ramps up in-house Discover content again
After killing its own Discover channel a few months after starting it and laying off the team members behind it, Snapchat has brought out a new music-themed channel sponsored by Spotify. Each day saw a different musical genre being featured, for instance R&B one day, hip hop the next, then *shudders* EDM.

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National Peanut Board spaffs a year’s worth of tweets in one day 
This story is frankly, nuts (sorry). The National Peanut Board has decided to predict what the big moments of 2016 will be by tweeting 366 pieces of content in one day in something which they’re describing as “sort of like the Farmer’s Almanac of social media”. The new Twitter account centres around a fictional peanut vendor who used to sell salty snacks at ballparks. If any of the tweet predictions come true this year, they’ll be re-posted.

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Brand wars for Star Wars
According to Twitter, Star Wars was mentioned 6.5 million times on the platform leading up to the theatrical release of the newest film. Disney led the way by owning the Promoted Trend on Twitter and changing it on the hour, every hour with one of the hashtag emoji related to the film.

https://twitter.com/GMA/status/677471962264915968/photo/1

Verizon also offered fans exclusive access to the stars in the way of a Twitter Q&A.

https://twitter.com/verizon/status/676599238202163200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

The social world celebrates 2016
As 2015 drew to a close, Twitter ramped up the social celebration by introducing a new fireworks emoji which was unlocked when people used the hashtag #HappyNewYear in English or over 35 other languages. For the first time ever, people’s tweets and videos were also show on the big screens underneath the Times Square Ball as well.

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Sprinklr has also produced a nifty infographic which collects data in real-time from people talking about resolutions on Twitter and Instagram, showing the most mentioned resolution topic is happiness, with working out, weight and smoking also featuring frequently. Happy new year!

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