We Are Social’s Tuesday Tune-up #89

Tuneup
debbie.mundell

Welcome to this week’s Tuesday Tune-up, and round up of social media news from around the globe.

Yahoo to purchase Tumblr for $1.1 billion
As has been rumoured during the past week, Yahoo is set to purchase Tumblr in a deal worth US$1.1 billion, as announced by both parties yesterday. For further details on the deal, and what effect it’s likely to have, check out our full blog post on the subject.

Flickr gets big revamp
Following on from the big news about the Tumblr acquisition, Yahoo has also announced a major revamp of the photo-sharing network Flickr. The three major changes announced provide a completely new look and feel to the platform. These changes include a grid layout with big pictures in full resolution, a newly updated Android app (now the same as the iOS version) and Flickr is now offering every user 1 terabyte of free storage. Users can now easily share photos to their favourite social networks, of course including Tumblr.

Yahoo partner with Twitter to personalise Homepage Newsfeed
Yahoo announced late last week that it has partnered with Twitter to bring tweets directly into the Yahoo homepage newsfeed, on both web and mobile. Tweets will now appear directly in the Yahoo news feed and is divided into sections including ‘All Stories’, ‘News’, ‘Local’ and ‘Sports’.

Sensis Social Media Report 2013 released
The latest Sensis report into Australian social media usage has just been released. A few of the most interesting statistics include:

Aside from the above, the report also reported that Australians access their social media first thing in the morning, and just before going to bed. 37% of Aussie social media users access their networks in the morning (probably from bed!), and 42% do a final check just before going to sleep. It is possible to download the report here.

Exposure to car brand tweets increases brand consideration
Research produced by Twitter into 1800 UK Twitter users has found that those exposed to a tweet by an automotive brand are more likely to visit their website, search for an auto-brand or engage in ‘lower-funnel’ activities, including registering for a test drive and locating a dealership. Dividing the participants into three groups: those who have been exposed to at least one automotive brand tweet and two control groups representing the average Twitter user and average internet user, they found that those in the first group were 74% more likely than the average internet user to visit the website of a car brand, 54% more likely to search for one and almost twice as likely to engage in the lower-funnel activities mentioned above.

The most talked-about brands on Facebook
Socialbakers has produced a list of the top-10 brands on Facebook by the ‘people talking about this’ metric, both in the US and on a global scale. Interestingly, New York-based ‘DealDash’ top both categories, despite a much smaller audience than other pages, suggesting that people enjoy talking about low-priced offers to an extent that even Coca Cola and Walmart cannot replicate.

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Social media users attempt to perfect their persona online
Social media users seek validation from others and look to attain this through massaging the truth in their online persona’s, according to research from the Future Foundation. 34% of social media users agree that they hold a “strong desire” for recognition from others, which has led to certain ways of behaving online, including 68% of drinkers admitting to de-tagging themselves from at least one photo. In total, 44% agreed with the statement “I wish I could be more like the person I describe myself as on social media.”

Facebook bringing structured updates to mobile
Facebook’s structured updates, which allow users to share how they are feeling or an activity through a set of pre-ordained emoticons, are being rolled out on mobile. Available to some desktop users since January and more widely rolled out in April, the feature is now accessible via m.facebook.com, though not yet on the platform’s iOS or Android apps. Constructing one of the new status updates will look as follows:

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Then, once it’s been posted, you’ll see something like the following:

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Twitter strike deals with ESPN and Fox
Twitter is looking to grow its connection with the TV industry through two new deals with ESPN and Fox. The first will see ESPN host highlight clips of major sporting events within its tweets, an opportunity for both rich content and mutually beneficial advertising opportunities; ESPN will sell ads within the clips and have also agreed to purchase a minimum number of ‘Promoted Products’ from Twitter. Fox, meanwhile, are set to feature show previews, recaps and more.

YouTube introduces new functionality to allow purchase of goods
Google last week announced a new ‘channel gadget’ for consumer goods brands. The plan is to allow users to seamlessly move from watching, say, a video about hair straightening, to looking at featured products, browsing retailers and checking prices and availability, then purchasing the product online. Unilever are set to be the first to use the system, for their TRESemmé haircare range.

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The new Google+
Google+ has made a number of updates to its service, specifically in stream, related hashtags, hangouts and photos. The updates to stream are intended to create a more visually immersive experience across all devices, with changes including a multi-column layout, larger photos and animated elements, such as the sharebox bouncing and cards flipping or fading.

Related hashtags look to enhance your ability to enter conversations about the topics you love. So, whenever you write a post about, say, your favourite sports team, Google+ will determine what it’s about and tag it accordingly. The system can then identify and rank conversations and allow you to click on the relevant hashtag for more opportunities to browse related content.

Hangouts have been expanded as stand-alone apps on desktop, iOS and Android for sharing not just live video, but also text and photos. Additional features such as a conversation history and notifications synced across devices attempt to produce a more seamless overall experience.

Finally, photos have been upgraded with four different ‘auto’ features. Assuming permission is granted, Google+ will ‘auto-upload’ your images to the network, preventing them from being left on your phone and ensuring that they’re backed up online. ‘Auto highlight’ helps choose the best images in any given album by emphasising or de-emphasising on a number of factors, from the people and landmarks present to the quality of image or fact that it’s a duplicate. For those photos that aren’t as high quality as others, ‘auto enhance’ will fix things like the light and focus. Finally, there’s a feature called ‘auto awesome’, which looks to automatically create exciting content from the photos you upload. Say you upload in a series of similar photos, for example, Google+ will try to create an animation from them. If you post a few different family portraits, the feature will choose their best smiles and compile this into one image.

Pinterest release new brand-friendly pin
Pinterest has produced a new type of pin, which allows for additional information to be shared beneath the pin when a user clicks on it, with different variations for food, retail and films. The first will include a recipe list, the second a list of purchase locations and the third additional information such as cast, ratings etc. Whilst these pins will currently only link to an initial list of partner sites, they already include big names such as eBay, Etsy, WalMart and Netflix and the list is certain to continue growing.

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Blackberry to launch BBM on iOS and Android
Blackberry is planning to launch the ‘Blackberry Messenger’ (BBM) service on iOS and Android this summer, which will include a “social engagement platform” called ‘BBM Channels’ that is looking to connect users with their favourite brands and celebrities. According to Blackberry, BBM has more than 60 million monthly active users and over 51 million daily, with daily active users spending an average of 1.5 hours a day on the service. Around 10 billion messages are sent via the service each day, suggesting that it will be interesting to see BBM go up against competitors like WhatsApp and WeChat.

Polyvore’s success for indie fashion brands
Fashion social network Polyvore released a mentorship campaign earlier this year, aimed at promoting less well-known designers to a new audience. Judging by their latest results, it seems as though it has been a success. For example, an accessories brand named Meredith Wendell was picked up by Shopbop, a retailer owned by Amazon, with Polyvore continuing to drive 20% of sales. Shoe designer Madison Harding saw overall sales increase by 2,250%, with 70% of traffic through Polyvore. This goes to show the extent to which social engagement can be used to grow indie brands; indeed, Polyvore are planning to make the campaign a yearly affair, with a new set of designers each time.

Facebook bans ‘Social Roulette’
Social Roulette, an application that offers a 1 in 6 chance of deleting a user’s Facebook account, has been banned by the network. The idea of the game is to connect to your Facebook profile and ‘spin the barrel’. 5 out of 6 times this will just post a message on your behalf saying ‘I just played Social Roulette and survived’, but if you’re unlucky (or lucky, depending on how you look at it) the app will delete your entire Facebook presence. Or it would have done. Facebook has removed the application for ‘violating its platform policies’.

We Are Social’s ‘Tweet & Shoot’ campaign with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
We Are Social in Paris has partnered with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to create a ‘Tweet & Shoot’ campaign for BNP Paribas, sponsors of the French Open for the last 40 years. This Thursday, in the build up to Roland Garros, Tsonga will take on tennis balls fired by a machine in a secret location somewhere in France. However, this isn’t just any tennis machine; the campaign is using brand new technology that fires balls based on encoded hashtags from Twitter. Fans can enter a competition in advance to become one of 40 ‘VIP trainers’, who are guaranteed to have a ball fired and receive a ‘Tweet & Shoot’ tennis ball as a memento. Many others will also see their tweets turned into tennis shots through the system explained below:

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Oakley, Sunglass Hut and Shaun White’s ‘Gold Rush’
To celebrate the launch of Oakley’s new Shaun White collection, the sunglass manufacturer has produced a Facebook campaign that encourages users to match a Shaun White quotation with one of their own Facebook pictures. The 5 photos judged by the man himself to best summarise the pictures will win a pair of gold-plated sunglasses.

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We Are Social launch #beginwithabulmers
Our UK colleagues have produced a campaign for Bulmers, encouraging the cider brand’s drinkers to share their experiences of starting off a great experience with a Bulmers, in exchange for a number of rewards throughout the summer. This includes a #beginwithabulmers Facebook app, where fans can share their ‘good times that begin with a bottle of Bulmers’ – We Are Social will also be tracking all mentions of the hashtag across Facebook and Twitter, whose volume will contribute to unlockable milestones and prize giveaways. On top of this, digital outdoor displays will display the best entries in real time across the UK, while XFM will produce a guide to what listeners are doing on Friday evening based on the campaign tweets.

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Guardian celebrate 1 million followers on Twitter
UK newspaper The Guardian has reached the 1 million follower milestone on Twitter and is celebrating with a #1msides campaign, playing on the idea that there are ’1 million sides to every story’. The newspaper is looking to find out more about its followers by asking them to tweet a picture of where they are with the relevant hashtag. They also posted a Vine of their journey from ‘The Manchester Guardian’ to today:

The Guardian is light years ahead of their British news rivals on the platform, with even their closest rival, the FT, on 789,000 and no other paper above 300,000. Activities like this are clearly the work of a paper embracing the age of social media.

Discount for tagging on Instagram
The ‘Sweden Calling’ pop up store has offered shoppers a 5% discount for uploading a photo to Instagram using the hashtag #swedencalling, or by checking in on Facebook. The idea displays both the growing importance of Instagram, as well as a nice way for a small business to create a cheap social campaign.

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An interesting method of dealing with complaints
‘Amy’s Baking Company’ from Arizona in the US, last week gave an absolute masterclass in how not to deal with complaints online. Having featured on an episode of ‘Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares’ in which the chef claimed they were beyond help (see clips from the show here), ABC received a number of complaints on social. They responded in the most vitriolic fashion, including posts like:

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Eventually, they released a statement claiming that all of their online presences had been hacked simultaneously, but never fear! They had the FBI on the case.

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Their comments, naturally, led to a huge response from trolls, including many coming in from Reddit. The number 1 response to their FBI tweet? This.

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