We Are Social’s Tuesday Tune Up #185
Dumb Ways to Die for Games of Thrones.
To celebrate the launch of the season five of Game of Thrones, Egor Zhgun has decided to parody the famous Australian Dumb Ways to Die song made originally for Metro Trains in Melbourne. This video that already counts more than 880,000 views, highlights different ways the characters on the show die throughout the past four seasons.
You drink, Uber drives…
Another great stunt by our friends Uber in Canada: In order to prevent Canadians to drink and drive, Uber has decided to launch Uber Safe. The principle is simple, people are offered to test their level of intoxication on a roadside breathalyser. If you are above the limit, Uber drives you back home for free. How good is that!
Facebook reveals messenger.com
Still reeling from the passing of MSN Messenger? Well, it’s good news for desktop chat fiends, as Facebook has launched a dedicated web interface for its Messenger app. It’s available to English speakers worldwide. Of course, you can still message via facebook.com if you prefer.
Twitter updates RTs, Search and app brand profiles
Twitter has updated its retweet feature, making it much easier to add a comment before sharing a RT with your followers. You can see how it works in the below example, which I just found on the internet somewhere and definitely didn’t spend time creating.
The network is also making a couple of updates to its ‘Search’ function: detailed ‘trending topics’ within Search are replacing ‘Discover’ on mobile, while they’re experimenting with simplifying the desktop layout, including an option to view ‘Live’ tweets in chronological order.
New Twitter search UI rolled out to Safari (not on Chrome yet) is much better. Hope better search results are next. pic.twitter.com/btGT5yQiYi
— Eugenie Sills (@esills) April 7, 2015
Finally, they’re are testing letting businesses pin an app to the top of their profile in Twitter’s iPhone app. The feature is currently being tested by the likes of Periscope and Uber.
Interactive cards to appear on YouTube ads
YouTube is now allowing advertisers to add interactive overlay cards to skippable video adverts. This allows brands to include more information and could well be lucrative for YouTube; now, if viewers skip an ad but click on the card, the platform will still receive a fee.
LinkedIn buys Lynda.com
LinkedIn has made its biggest acquisition to date, the $1.5bn purchase of online education site Lynda.com, home to videos and tutorials on everything from Photoshop to web development. LinkedIn users will now receive prompts to relevant courses, as explained by content head Ryan Roslansky:
Imagine being a job seeker and being able to instantly know what skills are needed for the available jobs in a desired city, like Denver, and then to be prompted to take the relevant and accredited course to help you acquire this skill.
Ad Age discussed the value of the move beyond LinkedIn’s plans around “connecting people to opportunity”. It will provide access to Lynda’s data and all that entails; we could well see the ability to serve ads to those who have completed certain courses, or recruiters being notified when they do so.
LinkedIn launches Elevate
LinkedIn has unveiled its latest app, Elevate, which suggests articles to users and allows them to share said stories across LinkedIn and Twitter. Anyone can download the app, but you’ll have to pay to use it. If you do subscribe, expect to see more networks, such as Facebook, added soon. 
Snapchat’s Coachella filters
Snapchat released a set of time-specific geofilters for Coachella. Each related to a certain artist and was only available while they were on stage. Sadly, there wasn’t one for Shorty Jizzle and the Plumber Cracks.
Brands jump on Instagram’s carousel
A number of brands are using Instagram’s new ‘carousel’ ad feature, which includes four photos and a link. Examples we’ve seen so far: Old Navy has produced a day-in-the-life series, Showtime has highlighted characters from ‘Penny Dreadful’ and Tiffany has juxtaposed a watch with New York architecture.
Mountain Dew turns fan tweets into ads
Mountain Dew has brought back its popular Baja Blast flavour for a limited period. To promote this, it started posting discreet images of the flavour on its social channels, without making an overt announcement. This led to a fair bit of excitement on Twitter and beyond; the brand is now using celebratory user-generated tweets in its own online ads.
Stuart Weitzman combines Instagram and Facebook ads
Fashion brand Stuart Weitzman has launched a campaign that ties together Instagram and Facebook ads, as users are served videos on the former, followed by product posts on the latter. The promotion also includes the use of cinemagraphs, which, in the words of fashion icon Mugatu, are so hot right now. 