We Are Social: Tuesday Tune-Up #2
News
News
Facebook Australia statistics update
According to Facebook Australia, the number of active Facebook users increased to 10.5 million in July 2011, up from 10 million in December 2010. Data shows that Australian Facebook users are (slightly) more likely to be female and aged 18-35. The average user visits 26 times per month and spend on average 5 hours and 2 minutes per month.
Australian Banks getting social
Recent research by Deakin University has shown Australian banks are becoming more active in the social space. Overall the banks fall into 3 categories; very active (CBA, NAB & Westpac), partly active (ANZ, BOQ, Adelaide & Bendigo & AMP), and inactive (Rural, Suncorp, Members Equity & Bank-West). The study identified that “only the NAB has aligned its brand across all social media services. CBA and NAB have recently started engaging on Facebook. YouTube is the most widely used. CBA, NAB, and Westpac are then most active on Twitter.
Hat tip to @rossdawson for the blog post.
Telstra to provide Facebook as a customer service channel
Telstra has joined up with Facebook to provide a new online live chat service for billing and account enquiries. The live-chat function will be available 24×7 in recognition of customers preference. The new service adds to a number of service initiatives launched by Telstra in the last two years, including Twitter service and their peer to peer community Telstra crowd support.
NZ online ad spend jumps 19.5%
Figures sourced from the Interactive Advertising Bureau NZ, show that online ad spend in NZ rose by 19.5% year-on-year, driven by growth in the search and directories and display categories. Growth drivers for the overall market include an increase in online video and social media as well as an escalation in the number of consumers accessing the internet from mobile devices.
Sales soar as HP quits TouchPad game
The news of HP’s withdrawal from the tablet market has sent sales of the TouchPad soaring, with Australian retailer Harvey Norman saying that it moved more than 6000 TouchPads in an hour on Monday, charging under $A100 for the 16GB model (source).
Record Numbers of U.S. Visits for Facebook and Twitter in July
Facebook and Twitter both saw record numbers of US visitors in July – with Facebook bringing in 162 million unique visitors, and Twitter bringing in 33 million. Ordinarily this data would not be interesting – both social networks have been growing at a fast rate for a number of years – but after the research which suggested Facebook was losing users, this is a clear riposte that shows that Facebook is still growing, even in mature markets.
The number of unique visitors for both MySpace, and more surprisingly, LinkedIn is decreasing.
Foursquare launching events
After the successful testing of event check-ins during the past two SXSW conferences, Foursquare is launching Events on a larger scale, teaming up with ESPN for sports events, MovieTickets.com for movies, and Songkick for concerts.
What it means is that when you check in to a place where an event is happening, you’ll be able to check in to the event, too. There are hundreds of thousands of events planned at more than 50,000 venues in the next few months, and each event appears in the app a couple hours before it starts. Currently brands/ businesses cannot brand the events themselves, but Foursquare are looking into ways to improve it.
Curated lists come to Foursquare
In other news from Foursquare, they’ve just rolled out ‘tip lists’, letting people create lists of theirs favorite places in the city. You can create an unlimited number of lists on any topic and share them with your friends, whether they’re members of Foursquare or not.
The new autocomplete feature lets you add places to your lists quickly and even suggests related venues based on Foursquare’s Explore algorithm. There is an option to let friends add to your lists or you can keep them so only you can edit them, and there are some good lists already out there.
From brands point of view, this move gives some extra engagement opportunities. Brands can also create lists, making it an excellent way for them to share the top spots in a city or to create adventures based around a certain theme.
Obama joins Foursquare
Now that the White House has joined Foursquare, you’ll now be able to discover tips featuring the places President Obama has visited, what he did there, plus historical information and more.
Brand New LinkedIn Mobile Experience
Seamless mobile experience? LinkedIn have done it right and are not ashamed to shout about it. The new mobile applications are two to ten times faster across all features, making a huge difference when you’re on the way to a meeting and need to pull up the most up-to-date information as quickly as possible. The mobile app experience now starts with the Update stream, which appears to be the most used feature on LinkedIn.
There is also a new feature allowing users to browse and interact with groups. You can easily access the list of groups you’re a member of, browse discussions, and exchange information and ideas by starting new discussions or commenting on existing ones.
GroupMe joins Skype
Following on from last week’s release of Facebook Messenger, based on the Beluga product they previously acquired, Skype is to acquire group messaging service GroupMe, which allows users to create on the fly private phone groups with others, to send text messages throughout the group, and to set up free conference calls.
Blogging and Facebook plug-in boost LA Times’ traffic and content
We are all aware of how a top blogging community can boost traffic, as a piece on Nieman Journalism Lab about the Los Angeles Times website highlights. In the last few months latimes.com has seen record traffic numbers, jumping to 189 million pageviews in May from 160 million in March, largely thanks to some interesting blogging. Those are some Hollywood numbers right there, but it also highlights a more interesting wider point: how traditional media owners are focussing on blogging (including live-blogging) to drive page views.
Another interesting learning from the LA Times is how after bringing in a Facebook Comments plug-in, the quality of comments improved: in other words, when people are more accountable to their comments (and without pseudonyms) many of the trolls disappear.
Yahoo partner with Facebook for Six Degree of Separation experiment
A really nice, social project from Yahoo:
The Small World Experiment is designed to test the hypothesis that anyone in the world can get a message to anyone else in just “six degrees of separation” by passing it from friend to friend. Sociologists have tried to prove (or disprove) this claim for decades, but it is still unresolved.
Now, using Facebook we finally have the technology to put the hypothesis to a proper scientific test. By participating in this experiment, you’ll not only get to see how you’re connected to people you might never otherwise encounter, you will also be helping to advance the science of social networks.
You can register for the experiment here.
First football match streamed on Facebook
The opening game of this year’s FA Cup was the first ever to be streamed on a Facebook Page, as Budweiser tried to highlight its sponsorship of the FA Cup by streaming it via its Page. They’re yet to release any figures, but considering the low profile of the match, Budweiser execs are unlikely to be having a ball.
Burberry launches new fragrance via Facebook Page
In an innovative move, Burberry have launched their new fragrance by sending out free samples to those who register on a tab on their Facebook Page – ahead of a full launch in September.
L’Oreal’s ‘Expert’ launches on their Facebook Page
L’Oreal have launched a new campaign to give men grooming tips: it includes a character called the Expert, who can help men and give them advice, including on their perfect Facebook profile picture as shown by the video below.
Topshop partners with Scvngr
Topshop has become the first brand outside the US to partner with Scvngr, the location-based gaming service, with a campaign aimed at student customers:
Students can get rewards, including discounts or entry into exclusive competitions, in return for checking into the nearest Topshop store via challenges on the Scvngr mobile app.
The challenges include activities that encourage students to browse products and collections, which helping customers to discover products via a gaming scenario. The campaign launches this week and will run until the end of November, with new challenge and rewards launched midway through.
Orange’s Keep Me Cool campaign
With the overwhelming heat of the British summer forcing many to flee overseas, Orange have come to the rescue, offering free ice cream in different cities, in the postcodes which tweet the most. It’s enough to warm anyone’s heart.
Children’s hospital uses Facebook reminders
For young organ transplant patients, social media could be the key to their success – with one hospital in Iowa notifying patients via Facebook when they need to take their medicine. Clever.
The new OED…
As well as the more traditional words, the new Oxford English Dictionary includes the words woot and retweet – which we wouldn’t mind you doing to this post…