We Are Social’s Tuesday Tune-up #70
News
News
Happy New Year! We hope that you are having a great 2013 so far.
Here’s our regular mash up of the latest social media news from around the world starting with a couple of articles about 2012 in review.
Zeitgeist 2012 – Google’s yearly review
Each year Google release their annual Zeitgeist report providing insight into the biggest global searches made and what captured our attention, views and clicks. Click here for the 2012 report overview and below is the video:
Top 10 Australian Viral Ads for 2012
Specific to the Aussie market Google has also revealed what the top 10 best viral ads were in 2012 on YouTube. The list itself includes a number of satirical video’s from Nova DJ’s Fitzy and Wippa to ad’s selling lamb and beef. Google advised that due to the popularity in Australia of movie and game trailers that they have created a separate ranking just for this category. Within this separate list movie blockbusters Iron Man 3 and Dark Knight Rises both ranked well.
Top Music, Artists and Apps from Spotify & iTunes
The music streaming service Spotify also released their review of the top music, artists and Apps of the year. It is possible to view the top songs per country and also global statistics for other categories. From an Australian perspective it is fantastic to see that Gotye had the most popular song for “Somebody That I Used to Know” which also came in number one position for most shared song. Meanwhile across at iTunes, the top selling album was Adele’s “21”, biggest song was “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen and TV series for most downloaded was “Downtown Abbey” season 2 which beat out favourites “Breaking Bad” season 5 and “Mad Men” season 5 amongst others.
Japan and Korea show highest New Year social activity
Twitter announced that the highest Twitter activity for New Year’s Eve came when midnight struck in UTC+09:00, the time zone including Tokyo and Seoul, with 33,388 tweets per second providing further evidence for the site’s popularity in Asia. Other peaks can be seen on the map below:
New Year’s Eve also saw record activity on Sina Weibo, the Chinese microblogging site. The network recorded 729,571 messages per minute, 52% higher than the previous record set on Chinese New Year.
ANZ Buzz launched for Sydney Festival 2013
The ANZ Bank has launched a socially driven platform called ANZ Buzz supporting their relationship with the Sydney Festival. The platform gives users the opportunity to link all their social accounts and to create a personalised summary of their festival event activity on desktop, tablet or mobile devices, via the promoted hashtag #sydfest. Hashtagged posts are then published to the website from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. A promotional video has also been released about the platform as well:
Luxury brand Burberry flaunt Spring/Summer 2013 collection via video campaign
As widely reported by the media around the world, Romeo Beckham has been signed up by Burberry as the face of their Spring/Summer 2013 line and last week the brand released a video with the entire collection which was posted to their Facebook, YouTube and Twitter channels. The video features Master Beckham along with two models and the collection of clothes and accessories throughout. The video has so far had over 260,000 views on the Burberry YouTube channel so is gaining great exposure for the brand.
Snapchat vs Facebook Poke
Although Snapchat seems to be winning in the battle of the Apps when it comes to brands using Snapchat or Facebook Poke, there have recently been a couple of examples of brand promotional campaigns that have gone live using each. In New York a frozen yoghurt chain called 16 Handles has been running a Snapchat promotion for their customers with a coupon that self-destructs within 10 seconds. Users who take a photo of themselves or their friends at a 16 Handles location and send it to the brand’s Snapchat account will receive a coupon offering a discount anywhere between 16-100% off their next purchase – however they have only 10 seconds to get a cashier to scan the coupon! The first Facebook Poke campaign has also gone live with Delta Lingerie who shot a 10 second video of a model getting dressed in their lingerie. The video couldn’t be shared, viewed again or saved by the user however at the end of the video users were directed to the brand’s website where they were able to claim a discount.
Three quarters of world leaders now on Twitter
A study of 164 countries by the Digital Policy Council shows that 123 of heads of state are on Twitter in either a personal or official capacity. This is up from 42% in 2011 and just 20% in 2010.
The most watched leader on Twitter is Barack Obama with 25 million followers, with Hugo Chavez a distant second on 3.5 million.
December 2012 Australian Social Media Statistics
The December statistics as reported by Social Media News for Social Media usage in Australia, are slightly different to average due to the summer period and personal rather than business use of social platforms. The total Facebook users has risen by approximately 52,720 and sits at a total overall of 11,808,360. Also up for the month were Tumblr users now sitting at approximately 3,200,000 and sitting at 4th position. MySpace users dropped by 10,000 despite the recent design release and this figure will be interesting to watch in coming months.
Foursquare updating privacy policy on January 28th
Foursquare advised users via email at the end of December that at 28th January it will be updating its privacy policy. This will involve the addition of two new items being firstly that users full names will show up on each check-in and therefore available for all to see. If users don’t want their actual full name to appear they have the option to update account settings to create whatever “full name” they desire. The second addition is the ability for businesses to access more data on individual users. Currently business owners are able to view check-ins from the previous three hours for a particular day. Foursquare is now going to be extending this option so any business owner who isn’t rigorously checking data multiple times every day will be able to view a longer view of user check-ins. It should be noted that any user not wishing to allow access for businesses to view this information can update their “Location” setting in their account.
Google+ Grows Monthly Users
comScore has released their October 2012 global social media usage statistics revealing that Facebook had a total 822.1 million unique visits with Twitter at 182.9 million and LinkedIn at 161.9 million. The one platform with significant growth year on year was Google+ which in October 2011 had 65.3 million unique visits and for October 2012 a total of 105 million. In December Google claimed the platform has 500 million members, perhaps due in most part because people wishing to use a range of Google products need to do so via Google+ and therefore need to create an account. Also released were estimated mobile usage statistics for Facebook in November 2012. The total monthly usage for Android was 192.8 million MAU whilst iPhone sat at 147.2 million MAU. These figures further prove that Facebook really needs to improve their Android App development especially to ensure continued growth in 2013.
Facebook adds audio to Messenger App, tests voice over IP service
In an attempt to become a yet larger part of overall communications, Facebook has introduced voice messaging to their standalone Messenger App for iPhone and Android. Users will be able to send one another voice messages of up to one minute. More interesting is the news that a voice over IP service is being trialed in Canada, which would look to rival the likes of Skype and Voxer. Whilst these services currently have a powerful market share, the ubiquity of Facebook and subsequent convenience mean that this looks a powerful prospect.
Facebook announce changes to allow greater freedom for marketers
Facebook has announced a variety of changes this week, which will look to benefit marketers in a number of ways. Firstly, ‘flexible sentences’ have been enabled for Open Graph activity, allowing brands to alter the text that appears when someone uses their app.
This is set to be complimented by customisable headlines on adverts for pages, apps and events, which already existed for ads that led away from Facebook. This is set to look as follows:
Finally, Facebook are going to begin bundling together any API changes that will break existing code and will release them on a quarterly basis. Previously, Facebook announced these changes individually and gave developers 90 days to make any necessary changes to apps. However, this meant that changes could build up over time and end up with a new alteration needed every month. Now, all changes can be done at once, saving the time of those building for Facebook.
Pinterest makes its first acquisition
Pinterest has this week made its first acquisition, a recipe site called Punchfork. The two year old site allows users to share images of food and accompanying recipes, as shown below:
Pinterest has long been used for sharing food and recipe related content and Punchfork’s interface is not a million miles away from the social network’s own.
Polaroid launches ‘Fotobars’, stores for printing your Instagram photos
Polaroid, once the king of instant photography, is attempting to venture into the digital age by creating stores where people can print their Instagram photos. The idea stems from the insight that, whilst many of us have hundreds of photos on our phones, few of these ever see the light of day. The company’s website says that it “offers a very easy, simple and cost-effective process to transform your favorite digital photos from your phone, computer or camera into extraordinary, cherished pieces of art”. It will be interesting to see whether people take to the idea, or if this is a desperate attempt at an appeal to a bygone age.
Hunter create Facebook campaign dependent on the weather
Last but not least! We Are Social in the UK has created a Facebook app giveaway, with daily prizes dependent on the ever changing British weather, for British-based Wellington boot company Hunter. Each day, fans will be asked to create and capture an image based on the weather in order to win a prize, ranging from a pair of wellies in wet conditions to fleece socks in the snow. The campaign is based on the insight that one of the few good things about bad weather is getting to wear certain beloved winter clothes and it will be intriguing to see how fans engage with it through the coldest month of the year.