Tuesday Tune-up #323

News
michele.danno
World’s internet users pass the 4 billion mark, and other fascinating stats

Who crushes more charts than Justin Bieber? We Are Social’s own global consultant Simon Kemp, that’s who. The recent global launch of his  annual Digital Report packed in over 5,000 charts, each revealing insightful stats about the digital world in 2018.



For instance, who knew that the Philippines had the highest average social media usage in the world at almost four hours a day? Or, that the world’s most-used emoji on Twitter in 2017 was the crying laughing face?!

I #love – which happened to be the most-used hashtag on Instagram – these stats! Since his launch in January, Simon’s garnered just about as many downloads as Biebs*, so you’d be wise to download a copy for yourself here.

*this stat is not statistically accurate  



Facebook adds new features for Groups
Facebook ‘groupies’ can now rejoice as Facebook has announced a series of new features to make managing and being part of Groups on the platform more fun. In addition to assigning personalised colours for members and groups, admins will also now have the ability to send out up to 10 group announcements, manage a dedicated ‘rules’ section and access member requests, group insights and other information from a single dashboard.



Instagram introduces shopping-enabled ads
Last week, Instagram announced it has been testing a new way to enable brands to drive sales on the platform. ‘Collections’ campaigns, which were first tested on Facebook, bring together video and direct-response advertising to create a new shopping-enabled ad unit, which allows users to purchase items directly from a brand’s ad without leaving the platform.



Instagram tests ability to ‘regram’ posts to Stories
Another story on Stories? Sigh. Instagram has also confirmed that it is testing a new ‘Add to my Story’ feature, which will allow users to ‘regram’ public posts to their own Stories. The new feature is currently available via opt-in by selecting “allow resharing to Stories” in the ‘settings’ menu. Users also have the option to edit how the post will appear in their Story, as well as the option to restrict sharing of their own content through their privacy settings.



Twitter becomes profitable for the first time ever
After four years of trading on the public market (and one year since the Real Donald Trump took office), Twitter finally reported its first profitable quarter last Thursday – showing a $91 million profit for the fourth quarter of 2017. Despite user growth remaining flat at a (still impressive) 300m users, the social network also reported a 12% year-on-year increase in daily active users. Trump aside, Twitter attributes their success to the popularity of live video content on the platform and the subsequent rise in ad revenue from its video ad formats.

Snapchat hits 187m daily users and sees a boost in ad revenue
Oh Snap! Snapchat attracted an additional nine million daily active users to the platform in the fourth quarter of 2017, according to its latest quarterly report, bringing it to a total of 187 million – up from 158 million in the previous year. In addition to that, the photo-sharing site also achieved a higher-than-expected revenue of $286m (over $30m more than originally predicted). I wonder if they will be using the profit to make some more Spectacles…? This growth for the social network could be a sign that Snapchat is finding it easier to woo advertisers to the platform, as it continues to add more ad formats and open up self-service offerings.

Snapchat allows users to create their own face Lenses
Following the recent launch of its Lens Studio, which enabled all users to create and share their own animated World Lenses, Snapchat has announced it will now open its Studio to allow anyone to make their own event-specific face Lenses. Users will be able to choose from 150 pre-made templates or upload a face image, which they can use as a base for their own Lens. However, the Lenses won’t hang around for long – disappearing after 24 hours of creation, they’re perfect accessories for one-off events.



Snapchat builds livestreaming feature for the winter Olympics
And to complete the Snapchat hat-trick this week, Snapchat has announced the launch of its new in-app feature, called Live, which is currently only available to the platform’s publishing partners. NBC was the first to use the new live video feature to show coverage from this year’s Winter Olympics on 10th February, and it will continue to do so throughout the Games. The content users will see on the platform will be the same as on NBC – only much, much shorter in duration – with each live segment currently planned to be between two and six minutes. The new feature could also spell the start of a fun-filled future in livestreaming for the social network, as opportunities arise with other live events and for a full consumer roll-out.

That’s not a Super Bowl ad, this is a Super Bowl ad

It’s officially been a week since the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl and got looser than your interns at their first agency Christmas party. But the real champions have just been announced via YouTube’s AdBlitz site, which is set up specifically to showcase Super Bowl ads. In addition to naming the top three ads from this year’s game, the site also broke down ads by category, giving Aussies a reason to celebrate with the Tourism Australia ad, which dominated the coveted Travel and Leisure category. Struth!

This post courtesy of Tom Tapson.