We Are Social’s Tuesday Tune-up #72
News
News
Welcome to this week’s Tuesday Tune Up with a round up of the latest social media news from around the globe…
Australian advertisers paying double the CPC of the US on Facebook
Ad management and technology company Marin Software released their fourth quarter Global Online Advertising Trends Report during the week and one of the most interesting findings was in relation to CPC rates being paid by advertisers on Facebook. The study found that Australian advertisers on average are paying CPC rates of US$0.66 in comparison to US$0.33 in the US and US$0.39 in the UK. There were no conclusions in the study for why Australian advertisers are paying double the CPC rate of the US with average CTR’s found to be similar. The average Australian CTR is 0.07%, US at 0.09% and UK on average 0.07%.
Facebook: Graph Search
As we discussed last week, Facebook has launched Graph Search which they are calling their third pillar along with News Feed and Timeline. For marketers the tool, especially as it evolves forward will provide excellent opportunities to better understand customers, their likes and behaviour. One example will be the additional data available to brands and community insights which can be used to increase engagement with more relevant content or campaigns to increase overall interaction, via for example profile likes, musical preferences, favourite restaurants or demographics. Furthermore brands will have a greater opportunity to be discovered by those who have used the search tool themselves searching by for example by location and therefore the chance of gaining new high quality fans will increase. The most important point though will be how Facebook users react to Graph Search, if they like it, or have privacy concerns relating to the tool and their overall active usage.
We have produced a comprehensive post detailing everything you need to know about the feature here.
Twitter and Manti Te’o
One story which received quite a lot of press in the past week was that of American NFL footballer Manti Te’o and the discovery of the hoax regarding his girlfriend. The background to the story being that Te’o had fallen for Stanford college student Lennay Kekua, who survived a car accident only to then pass away months later of cancer. The link to social media was Twitter, as the two had supposedly first met via Twitter which was one of the biggest ways the two then communicated during their “relationship”. Sports publisher Deadspin last week revealed that not only was the Lennay Kekua Twitter account fake (as well as Instagram), but also had been created using someone else’s private photos from Facebook. When asked for a comment, especially regarding fake accounts, Twitter declined to comment and advised that they had not have a role in the story.
Social Media and Sport
Continuing on with our sports theme, is a story about the relationship between sport, it’s celebrities and social media. A recently published infographic has revealed the winners and losers on Facebook and Twitter. The most followed sports team on Facebook is FC Barcelona with a total of 39 million fans currently whilst Portuguese footballer Christiano Ronaldo leads the way individually with 53 million Facebook fans. The infographic also includes the Most Tweeted Sporting Moments with 150 million tweets being sent during the London Olympics and 80,000 tweets per minute after Usain Bolt won the 200m.
Macca’s launch behind the scenes App
McDonald’s Australia has launched an iOS App called TrackMyMaccas, which takes consumers on an augmented reality tour of food production at the restaurant; whilst the consumer is in-store and shows them where their food has come from. The App is one way to show customers about the food products and packaging used in McDonald’s food. In addition, the brand is currently running a campaign celebrating Australia Day and having been in Australia for 40 years with 13 restaurants changing their names to Macca’s, including signage and an integrated advertising campaign.
Small Business use of Social Media in Australia
Following on from last year’s Yellow Pages report, Salesforce has put together an infographic regarding the SME landscape in Australia specifically relating to social media use. The top three social platforms used by Australian SME’s are Facebook (86%), Twitter (32%) and LinkedIn (25%). SME’s developing their social media presence varies per industry sector with the Cultural, Recreational and Personal services sector leading the way.
Instagram has 90 million monthly active users
Instagram has revealed that the app now has 90 million active monthly users and 40 million photos are uploaded per day. In the past month following the much criticised new privacy policy and terms of service (which went into effect on Saturday) being released (and then amended) there had been many in the media questioning that Instagram had lost up to a quarter of its active users unhappy with these changes. These figures instead show that this is not the case. In addition, Instagram released that it receives 8,500 Likes per second and 1,000 comments per second.
Worldwide smartphone penetration on the up
An article by eMarketer has examined the growing smartphone market around the world, predicting that, by 2016, roughly 75% of certain markets, including the US and UK, will own one of the devices. The mobile phone market is incredibly saturated, with 130% combined market penetration of smartphones and non-smartphones. As such, they argue that the coming years will see an increase in the former and a decrease in the latter, resulting in the following figures:
Boxtcode launch in Tamworth
Boxtcode, an Australian developed location-based app that allows smartphone users to see or hear an advertised message and instantly engage with it has been launched in Tamworth. Smartphone users simply tap in a four digit code (into the Boxtcode app) as promoted through a brand advertisement and are then be directed to a website or sent a promotional coupon. The four digit code can be advertised via social media, TV, print, radio or online. One of the first brands to use the technology is Destination Tamworth who will be using it to promote the annual Tamworth Country Music Festival.
Another big Facebook announcement
In addition to last week’s launch of Graph Search, Facebook also made an announcement specific to their Open Compute Project. The project which started in 2011 was created with other technology companies to use open-source computer hardware. Key participants of the project include Rackspace, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. Last week another participant company advised it will be releasing a silicon-based optical system to members of the group that enables both the data and computing parts in a rack of servers to communicate a 100 gigabits a second, meaning systems will be faster and use much less power.
Facebook launch free phone calling for iPhone users in the USA
Following a test in Canada, Facebook has now launched a free calling service for iPhone users in the USA. The service is available on the Messenger for iPhone app using free wi-fi or the phone’s data connection. The call quality has been reported as being quite good and similar to that experienced on other apps such as Viber or Skype. Call recipients will get a push notification about a person calling them.
Facebook make Recommendation stories more visual
Facebook has completed a re-design of News Feed stories for user recommendations which includes more images, such as the cover photo (of the place being recommended) and profile picture. Importantly, Recommendations are only enabled for pages associated with a specific location. The additional images are designed to be more eye-catching especially within users News Feeds.
Private Facebook Posts Shared
It has been discovered that users of the Google Chrome extension for the tool Storify who post private Facebook status updates within closed groups are finding that the updates are instead being made public. Facebook has advised that they are investigating the issue and working to resolve it.
Rumours that Facebook has cut access to competitor Voxer
The mobile communications service Voxer has reported that Facebook has cut their access to the social graph because of competitor concerns. Voxer offer a mobile app that gives users the opportunity to communicate with each other via voice, text and a walkie-talkie like service. The move by Facebook is interesting considering their moves towards providing better messaging and voice calling services to users. Voxer however report that they use Facebook mostly as a way to give users access to connect with Facebook friends and they don’t believe the move will have a major impact to users in the long run.
Dunkin’ Donuts heading to California
Dunkin’ Donuts announced via social media that they will be entering the California market in 2015. The announcement included that one of the key reasons for the decision is because of the ongoing push from their social media fans on Facebook and Twitter, plus celebrities who have been calling for the brand to launch in California too.
Panera Bread Company promote ‘hidden menu’ via Social
Panera Bread Company last week sent out a tweet that announced their new ‘hidden menu’ and was met with a range of reactions from excitement to confusion. The idea is that the menu is not mentioned in store, but simply via social, meaning that in-the-know Twitter followers have to go in store and specifically request one of the protein-rich range. This exclusively-social promotion is an interesting idea and could be a very effective example for restaurant or FMCG brands.
Favouriting becoming more popular on Twitter
Over the past year, the option to ‘favourite’ a tweet has become much more popular, as the following graph shows:
This comes as a result of changes made to favouriting by Twitter in December 2011, placing the option in a much more noticeable position and making it easier to access favourited tweets. Interestingly, users are more likely to favourite an @-reply than a regular tweet, potentially showing how users are employing the function as a way of exhibiting a positive response, similar to a Facebook ‘like’.
Twitter and television
Twitter has released some intriguing statistics into the way in which people interact with television on the network. They claim that 60% of Twitter users access the site while watching TV and around 40% of prime time Twitter activity is about television. Using specific programmes as case studies, they showed how big TV events can attract an impressively high amount of online activity.
Twitter tracking the Oscars
Twitter has released a tool for tracking the positive conversation around Oscar nominees in the six largest categories: Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress and Director. They have produced a real time graph that displays positive sentiment around any of the nominees, measured as a percentage score against the average sentiment level of all tweets on the network. This is similar to a project pitting Romney against Obama during the US Presidential Election and is of interest for examining how particular events or news stories have an effect on public opinion.
New MySpace now publicly available
The new version of MySpace, which launched in July, is now open to the public after a period of invitation-only sign-ups. The emphasis remains strongly on music and in particular discovering new music, with an audio deck on each page and a variety of music-related trending stories. The main page also promotes investor Justin Timberlake’s new single. There is yet to be a formal announcement for the new launch.
Foursquare’s maps show the growth of the network
Foursquare has released a detailed map that shows the various places where people have checked in over the last three months.
As can be seen above, this shows various world hubs, but can also be used to show in more detail the areas where people like to check in within a city, such as a clear layout of the runways in Atlanta Airport. In an interview with TechCrunch, Foursqaure’s data scientist, Blake Shaw discussed how having access to all this information is important for the future of the company. He stated how they are experiencing a stage of growth similar to Twitter in 2008, from a place to share information to a location for consumption of that information; that is, Foursquare intends to grow further towards being a tool for discovering new places.
Indy 500 campaign set to use people’s Instagram photos
An Indy 500 campaign is set to use Instagram images tagged with the hasthag #Indy500orBust. These will be placed on an interactive map, whilst users are also given the opportunity to win a VIP race experience by uploading photographs.
Bentley releasing cars with hashtag license plates
For the launch of three new models, Bentley showcased each with a license plate that displayed a hashtag of the car’s name.
The move is very similar to We Are Social’s campaign for Jaguar, where we emblazoned the model specific @sportbrake handle on the side of a prototype car. As such, it seems that we are seeing a growing trend in the automotive industry to attempt to support the launch of new vehicles with online conversation, specifically on Twitter.
Volvic and We Are Social search for brand advocates on Facebook
Our UK colleagues have produced a campaign for Volvic that asks fans to submit photographs that they feel best reflects the ‘Volcanicity’ brand. As an incentive, fans can win ‘once in a lifetime experriences’ around the theme of volcanoes, along with a camera to document them. The campaign is aimed at driving brand advocacy – Deola Laniyan, Account Director at We Are Social, said fans will:
“Become our community managers meaning the content that’s posted is much more likely to resonate with their peers and drive engagement.”