We Are Social: Tuesday Tune-Up #6
News
News
You can take our TVs, but you’ll never take our smartphones
A recent Google Mobile survey found that 81% of Australians used their smartphones at home during the past 7 days – compared to just 66% on the go.
Nearly 1 in 2 user their smartphone while watching TV, and 1 in 5 Aussie smartphone owners would rather give up their TV than their smartphone.
It’s not all just fun facts – the business implications of the survey are pretty clear; Smartphones are good for business.
49% use their smartphone to research and then call businesses – while 45% visit a business they’ve found using their smartphone.
2 in 5 of Australian smartphone owners use mobile search daily – more than the UK or Germany – and almost as high as the number who use desktop search daily.
As for Apps, Australian survey respondents had 25 apps on average per smartphone – that’s versus 23 in the US & UK – with Australians also averaging 8 paid apps per phone.
With studies suggesting smartphone usage will increase dramatically this year, it’s time to get phone smart and optimise your business for mobile, otherwise the answer to the eternal question, ‘Who you gonna call?’ may end up being ‘Not you.’
Australians thinking global, skipping local media
The analysts at Experian Hitwise put together some data on Australian Media consumption, and the results show that when it comes to news, loyalty isn’t the headline.
In the News & Media – Print category, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne centric-Herald Sun all hold between 9-9.5% of the market, showing we aren’t above clicking interstate for news updates.
But perhaps most interesting is the New York Times, currently ranked 9th – proving that Australians are happy to go offshore when local sources don’t provide the quality they want.
This also occurs in the finance sector, where The Financial Times (UK) has 135% more visits than the Australian Financial Review, especially interesting given they both use paywalls, and in the Apparel sector, where ASOS and Net A Porter outperform local players Forever New, Cotton On, Witchery and Country Road.
Foursquare Australia offering rockstar deals
Forget the badges, being a Mayor on Foursquare now means getting rockstar perks thanks to the Westfield West Lakes in South Australia – who are offering a VIP parking space for the current Mayor.
Businesses have so far been quite slow to park themselves in creative spaces when it comes to rewarding loyal customers via Foursquare – hopefully we start seeing more of these tangible perks (or parks) opening up soon.
CMOs continue to spend more on social media
According to a survey from the American Marketing Assocation, CMOs continue to intend to spend more on social media.
CMOs are already putting more money towards social – 7.1% of their entire marketing budget in August, compared with 5.6% in February, but more interesting is the long-term trend: they’re intending to spend 17.5% of their marketing budget on social media over the next five years.
Half of UK Facebook users log in each day
According to Facebook’s Head of Insight Management, Robert D’Onofrio, half of the UK’s Facebook members log in daily.
What’s interesting is that it’s not just kids logging in – although 18-24s are the most active user group, 50% of the 35-44 age bracket return each day.
Twitter use doubles among business leaders
Twitter use among business leaders is now 61%, double the level it was a year ago.
Presumably this is because of their belief in social media: 61% said they felt social media was changing the way they did business, up from a quarter in 2010.
Social sharing buttons drive massive traffic increase
According to research which covered the top 10,000 sites, social sharing buttons drive an almost seven-fold increase in mentions on Twitter for websites. Impressive.
Groupon’s negative influence on reputation
Some interesting findings from two researchers at Boston University:
These guys have studied over 16,000 Groupon deals in 20 US cities between January and July this year. They monitored each deal every ten minutes or so to determine how sales varied over time and also counted the number of Facebook likes that each deal generated.
At the same time, they collected Yelp reviews–some 56,000 of them for 2,332 merchants who ran 2,496 deals–examining how merchant reputations changed before and after a Groupon deal.
But their most controversial finding is that a Groupon deal seems to have an adverse impact on reputation as measured by Yelp ratings. Their analysis shows that while the number of reviews increases signifificantly due to daily deals, average rating scores from reviewers who mention daily deals are about 10% lower than scores of their peers.
Considering all this, more businesses will now be considering the question ‘deal or no deal’?
Facebook launches Subscribe button
Facebook last week launched the Subscribe button, as part of a wider move which will give users greater autonomy as to what appears in their news feed.
The Subscribe button allows users to see updates from somebody who is not friends with them, provided that person makes their updates public.
Users can also control how many updates they see, with a choice between all updates, most updates, and only the most important.
This is really big news – Facebook users can now have asymmetric relationships for the first time, just like the already can on Twitter and Google+. Users will be able to see other users’ updates, without being friends with them.
Nonetheless, the big question is whether users will actually notice and use their new abilities?
Facebook lets you link your updates to Twitter
In a move which will make Profiles more like Pages, Facebook now lets users link their profile to Twitter, and thereby automatically post their updates.
Facebook kills ability for Pages to message fans
Facebook will disable the ‘send an update’ feature that lets Pages reach fans directly through Messages at the end of the month. The feature was hardly used, so the impact will be minimal.
Twitter adds five new languages, launches web analytics
Twitter added five more languages last week – Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Hindi, Filipino and Malay – as it bids to gain more market traction in Asia.
On a global level, it’s now become a lot more exciting for marketers: Twitter has now launched web analytics, which makes it easy to evaluate as a traffic driver.
Foursquare push notification API ‘coming soon’
Foursquare announced some big news last week, when Dennis Crowley confirmed that a push notifcation API is coming very soon.
This is massive news, which could greatly increase the power of Foursquare:
The addition of push notifications will be a monumental step for the service as it integrates into other mobile apps as a sharing stream: If a friend is at a coffee shop you happen to be near, you could message them instantly to meet up, or receive reminders to pick up dry cleaning as you pass by. The real-life applications open up a world of possibilities, and – more importantly – applications that the average consumer can understand the value of.
9 million users for Instagram
Good numbers from Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom: it now has nine million users, in only eleven months. And I bet the time has just flashed by.
Gap partners with GetGlue
GetGlue has added to its partnership with Entertainment Weekly, by giving users who check-in to one of Entertainment Weekly’s 12 recommended autumn shows, a 40% discount off Gap products, through a badge they can unlock.
The badge is sponsored by Gap, and it will be interesting to see if other brands follow suit with this sort of move.
Lufthansa Oktoberfest badge returns
German airline Lufthansa has launched a badge for Oktoberfest which is available worldwide.
Foursquare users will be able to unlock the badge by following Lufthansa and checking in either at recommended locations around Munich’s Oktoberfest or at German-themed locations worldwide. Relevant categories include Beer Halls, Breweries, German Restaurants and Oktoberfest festivals.
Each user who unlocks the badge will receive a 20 Euro flight voucher good for their next Lufthansa flight. Not the wurst thing we’ve ever seen…
Authors launch tweetathon in support of short stories
Prominent authors have launched a tweetathon in a move designed to stop Radio Four cutting its short story output:
The Society of Authors is launching a weekly short story “tweetathon”, which it believes to be a never-before-attempted collaboration between top authors and tweeters.
It will see the authors Simon Brett, Ian Rankin, Gaiman, Harris and Waters provide the first line of a story on Twitter each week, with tweeters invited to complete the next four sentences using the hash tag #soatale to create a short story in 670 characters.
They’ve plotted this one out well.
Taliban and Nato-led forces argue on Twitter
With the insurgency continuing on the ground in Kabul, there was also an argument online, as a member of the Taliban and the official account of ISAF, the Nato-led organisation, entered into an argument. You can read the full exchange here.
Mexicans killed in warning to social media activists
Two Mexicans were killed and left hanging from a bridge as a warning to social media activists. The duo were reportedly killed for denouncing the activities of the drug cartel in social media.
Fun fact of the week: The Emoticon just turned 29
Viral video of the week: Tom Selleck’s Moustache
Tumblr of the week: Overly Specific Stock Photos