We Are Social’s Thursday Tune-up #69
News
News
It’s a Thursday Tune-Up this week! Hoping that everyone had a fantastic Christmas and now looking forward to a brilliant New Years!
2012’s Most Memorable Global Social Media Moments
From the explosion of Pinterest in January to Obama’s election victory posts 2012 has been packed with monthly events that have taken place on social media, now compiled by The SEO Company and Nowsourcing into one infographic entitled “The State of Social Media 2012”.
The Biggest Australian Social Media Blunders of 2012
Courtesy of Mumbrella, the list of the biggest social media blunders involving Australian brands in 2012, includes seven memorable inclusions from Target to Seven News. For the most part involving Twitter and Facebook, brands were often hammered for infrequent social media monitoring, user posts going viral and brands deleting user generated comments only to provoke further uproar. In the dynamic and ever changing world of social media, the hope is that brands will evolve and learn from these debacles and steer clear of making the same mistakes.
Nielsen and Twitter Launch Social TV Rating
Twitter is now one of the biggest ways TV viewers can quickly comment on and view sentiment on the program they are watching. TV shows all use (and rigorously promote) Twitter hashtags for viewers to include, which many then include within the program content itself (for example The Voice or Q&A). Nielsen has now teamed up with Twitter to launch a social TV rating, which will provide a standard metric for the reach of TV conversation on Twitter. The metrics will be extremely valuable both to TV networks but also advertisers as an addition to TV ratings data already available.
Facebook can tell you what’s ‘Nearby’
Facebook have made some major updates to the Nearby feature for its iOS and Android apps, choosing where to eat will never be easier. The feature combines recommendations, likes and check-ins of your friends to provide you with suggestions of where to go and what to do in the area that you’re in. As people are already spending an increasing amount of time on Facebook this upgrade to the app will only entice them to use it more, and make full use of all its offerings.
The new Facebook Poke app has arrived
As discussed in last week’s Tune Up Facebook has launched a new Poke app, which can be used to send messages, photos and video that expire – once the time set by the sender is up the content is removed from the app. Much like the features of mobile app, Snapshot, users of Facebook’s Poke app can add doodles and text to images but also gives you the option to report or block users. The fast paced nature of the app should attract a younger audience to communicate with friends in a new and exciting way.
Facebook Privacy Breach Hits the Zuckerberg’s
Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi ran into issues with Facebook privacy after posting a photo of the Zuckerberg’s testing the new Poke App during the Christmas break. The photo she posted on Facebook was then posted on Twitter by a user who subscribes to her on Facebook. Following this a round of tweets (now deleted) ensued with Randi Zuckerberg eventually tweeting about digital etiquette and asking permission to post photos.
Video ads are on their way to Facebook
Are you ready for video ads to invade your news feed? Well get ready because Facebook plan on unveiling a new video-ad product by April 2013. Facebook will offer video advertisers the opportunity to target large numbers of users in their news feeds, where the same video ad can be shown to you up to three times in one day over several platforms despite the user not having any relationship with the advertiser. The auto-play function will potentially prove to be controversial as it’s currently planned to enable video advertisements to automatically start playing and expand out of the news feed into the webpage.
Facebook’s mobile ad network exchange is no more
In a surprising move, Facebook has after three months pulled the plug on it’s experimental data sharing mobile ad network which was testing the ability for advertisers to target ads on third-party mobile apps using Facebook’s data. Facebook is choosing instead to focus inwards to the social network and improve ads on the platform itself. This brief experiment has highlighted the power of Facebook’s data and doesn’t preclude the possibility that Facebook will one day create its own fully fledged online ad network.
Facebook Collections has moved into its second phase of testing
The testing of Facebook’s Collections feature, which enabled people to ‘want’ and ‘collect’, has now moved into its second phase. This phase of testing is looking at the language of the feature, testing different verbs to match the users desired action.
Facebook are also looking at gaining an understanding of how the feature is interacted with in terms of sharing. There is the possibility that Collections could remain a premium post type and require page owners to buy ads in order to promote it, and for the foreseeable suture Collections will remain on desktop only.
Facebook are testing paid for Inbox messaging
You’d think these messages that only make it to your ‘Other’ messaging folder do so for a reason, but Facebook has launched a test which has given a small number of users the option to pay $1 to bypass this barrier and have their message moved into the receivers Inbox. The test is only for user-to-user so fear not, no companies will be able to spam you just yet, and at this stage only one of these messages can make it into your inbox once a week. Facebook believe by charging they will “discourage unwanted messages and facilitate delivery of messages that are relevant and useful.”
Instagram’s new Terms of Service ruffles feathers
Instagram caused uproar when they updated their Terms of Service. The update was received negatively, threats of deleting accounts and boycotting the service were made if changes to the terms did take place. National Geographic made quite a statement with their post, along with others from the photography community on Instagram. They don’t want to loose the rights to their own imagery but it seems Instagram won’t be selling their photos any time soon. As the furore exploded online, Kevin Systrom the Co-founder of Instagram published a blog post attempting to quell and answer the biggest user concerns about the new terms. Soon after the first changes were announced another set of “new” new Terms of Service where announced to try and calm the critics.
The impact of the Twitter/Instagram Face-off
Instagram removing online previews out of Twitter didn’t go down well, insisting that users click out of one app and then into another definitely does not provide the best user experience. As the graph below shows daily visits to Instagram have gone up following the change, but the number of Twitter for iPhone users who visit the instagram.com site is 11 percentage points less than the number of people that used to look at Instagram content inline.
The number of active Twitter users has increased
Twitter announced through a tweet that they have now hit 200 million monthly unique users, up 60 million in the last six months since Twitter last shared numbers on its sixth birthday. It’s a huge milestone for the company who have seen huge growth during 2012, with even the Pope joining the network in December to share messages, photos, videos and links. This is a long way off Facebook’s one billion monthly active users, but Twitter are clearly hot on their heels.
Follow the journey of your favourite Donna Karan dress
Have you ever wondered how a couture gown goes from initial idea to the red carpet? Well now you can discover the journey for yourself using a custom Facebook app which was created by We Are Social.
We designed and developed the app that tracks the journey of the Atelier gowns, with a world map shows where the gown is on its global travels, and the scrolling timeline shows each gowns updates in its individual profile. The app provides Facebook users with the opportunity to experience the gowns journey around the world.
Inspiring 26 acts of kindness
NBC News’ Ann Curry has inspired a nation and even the world to join in and be part of the 26 acts of kindness campaign, asking people to perform acts of kindness in honor of the Newtown shooting victims. The Twitter hashtag #26acts has taken off and people are tweeting constantly about the good and selfless deeds they’ve been doing. Be it visiting the elderly, buying a coffee for the doorman or simply sharing a photo that’s going to make people smile, the power of social media has made this happen. The message has gone from one person on a platform with the ability to speak to many, to millions on a platform talking about the way they’ve made a difference.
Memes from your Facebook photos!
It is now possible to create memes from your Facebook photos with a new tool from Cheezburger. It’s a great way to create something that will resonate with your Facebook friends and definitely one to try ASAP!
