We Are Social: Tuesday Tune-Up #4
News
News
Gotye hangs out on Google+
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVrj4EJP2m4&feature=player_embedded
Australian recording artist Gotye jumped on board the Google+ train to talk to fans off the back of his Gold-selling album Making Mirrors.
He joins G+ luminaries such as Snoop Dogg, Madonna and Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus in using the Hang Out function to chat with fans.
The hang out is one of the most impressive features of Google+ and many analysts suggested it would be a hit, but despite a strong start research from Hitwise suggests visitor numbers for Google+ are slowly falling:
Google’s new social network had been seeing a jump in weekly visits, rising from 200,000 the week ending July 2 to 484,000 the following week and then hitting a peak of 1.8 million the week ending July 16.
Since then, however, the weekly visits have been slowly but steadily declining, according to the data. The week ending August 20 saw a slight bump to 1.23 million from 1.19 million the prior week. But then the numbers fell again last week, dropping to 1.16 million.
Nonethless, Google have still launched some new features: sharing with your circles on Google+ allows users to share webpages with their circles, directly from the +1 button.
From there you can comment, choose a circle and share.
In addition, Google has rolled out a Chrome extension to bring +1 to the entire web.
Finally, in a move which is supposed to make it more of a community, Google+ is allowing users to choose their employer or place of education from a drop-down within their profiles.
At the time of testing, profiles supported both US and UK universities.
65% of online adults use social networking sites
Research that Pew has recently released continued the trend for growth in use of social networking sites: 65% of US adult Internet users now say they use a social networking site like Facebook or LinkedIn.
More interestingly, among the boomer-aged segment of US internet users ages 50-64, social networking site usage on a typical day grew a significant 60%.
The report also shows that the frequency of social networking site usage among young adult Internet users under age 30 was stable over the last year, at 61%.
Visit Britain bring social art show to Sydney
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4jrkr431Og&feature=player_embedded
The UK’s national tourism agency Visit Britain has partnered with British Airways to bring a 3D art road show to Sydney – part of a GBP100m (AUS$153m) global four-year marketing program to promote British tourism.
Each visitor to the 3D canvas can have their photo taken for free and will be invited to log on to VisitBritain’s Facebook page, where they will enter it into a competition to win two British Airways return flights to Britain.
While you’re there, why not say hi to We Are Social UK. Maybe take them some sun…
What’s the impact of a bad review?
An interesting post last week investigated how negative service and product reviews impacts consumers’ purchase decisions.
A recently released survey found that 80% of people have changed a purchase decision due to a bad review they saw.
But what makes these findings so revealing is that most people search for products online.
In other words, positive word of mouth online is one of the very most important things a business can have – as witnessed by the explosion of people now trusting blogs on what to purchase:
Facebook check-ins for events updates
A huge marketing potential for brands came in through a Facebook update last week: the ability to check in to events that do not include a physical address.
This change will allow marketers to leverage the event and check in functionality for online and campaign-related events.
Users will be able to check-in to all kinds of events, from TV series and live-chat sessions, even to real-life events (like a football match) which they aren’t actually at.
Facebook launches Translate button
Another update from Facebook is the test of a “Translate” button for comments on Pages. If you click on the button, the comment is automatically translated to your account language.
The Translate button is then replaced by “Original,” which if clicked will untranslate the comment. Clearly, this should make community management of global pages much easier.
Wildfire launches app for Facebook Pages to tie in with Sponsored Stories
Wildfire have created a new app, called Storyteller, designed to help the effectiveness of Facebook Sponsored Stories.
The aim of the app is to encourage the creation of authentic user generated feedback about brands (e.g. “I love my Audi because it has the most beautiful design of any car in the world”) as opposed to the more formulaic stories (e.g. “Jane Doe liked the Audi Page”) that are typically generated by Sponsored Stories ads. Nice.
Twitter places ads in stream from brands users don’t follow
Last month Twitter launched a product allowing marketers to place ads in front of users who were already following their brands’ Twitter accounts.
The new twist to the plan will let advertisers place ads in front of Twitter users who are similar to ones following their Twitter accounts, but not actually following their account.
In discussions with ad buyers, Twitter is describing the concept, which will roll out to a small subset of users by the end of September, as “Promoted Tweets to users like your followers.”
Huge growth for Tumblr
The predictions for Tumblr suggest that the impressive figure of 10 billion posts will be reached within the next week.
This huge number stems from some equally impressive numbers: almost 28 million blogs, more than 37 million posts per day, or 434 posts per second.
Recent comScore data suggests that maybe it’s about time to start paying closer attention to Tumblr, as the platform has emerged as one of the fastest growing consumer-oriented Internet sites over the past year, with its audience surging from 4.2 million visitors in July 2010 to 13.4 million visitors in July 2011 (up by 218%)
In terms of demographics, Tumblr’s popularity is strongest among the teen and college-aged user segments. In fact, 50% of Tumblr’s visitor base is under the age of 25. Teenagers age 12-17 are about twice as likely as the average Internet user to visit Tumblr, while 18-24 year olds are nearly 2.5x as likely.
Of course we’ve known how good it is for some time – you can find the Official We Are Social AU Tumblr here.
Amazon creates reader-author interaction with @author
Amazon has launched quite a cool concept, which should aid author-reader interaction: users can ask the author of the book a question, directly from their Kindle:
To ask a question to an author from a Kindle book, all you need to do is highlight a passage using the controller, type ‘@author’ with your question and send. The question will then go to the author’s twitter account where they then have the choice of answering.
Since the question goes directly to Twitter, questions from the Kindle are limited to just 100 characters. If you wish to ask a longer questions, then you must go to the writer’s Author page on the Amazon website.
If the author does answer your question and you’re following the author on Amazon’s Kindle page, it with then be included as public notes in your book for you to refer back to. If they are unable to answer your question, then other readers can pitch in with their answers on the author’s page.
This should be particularly useful next time a passage of Great Expectations confuses me.
Channel 5 prepares Facebook voting for regular Big Brother
Channel 5 is planning to launch Facebook-based voting in time for the regular Big Brother series, which launches this Friday.
The move will mean viewers of the show can vote for the contestants they want to leave the Big Brother house using Facebook’s Credits payment system.
Channel 5 is the first UK broadcaster to use Facebook Credits for a show, although ITV has revealed it is also exploring the potential to use the currency for voting across several of its own show brands.
Tesco to build online community around books offering
Tesco has turned another page in it’s social media effort, by commissioning We Are Social (that’s us) to create an online community of book bloggers and other online influencers to help drive traffic to the Books section of the brand’s website.
Make me an (Orange) movie star
To celebrate the launch of Orange Film To Go, Orange has created a feature giving people the chance to appear in their very own movie poster.
Each week an artist will create movie posters inspired by the latest iTunes film rental.
The campaign uses a Facebook app, which uploads your chosen profile pic to Orange. The result: your very own bespoke movie poster. Sweet.
Tumblr of the week: Officials Say The Darndest Things
Fun fact of the week: Chrome is 3
Fun train to be on of the week: The Google+ Train