We Are Social Asia Tuesday TuneUp #1
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News
Asia Tuesday Tuneup
A very warm welcome to We Are Social’s first Asia Tuesday Tuneup! Each Tuesday, these posts will bring you the week’s top social media stories from across Asia and around the world, along with analysis and opinion from the We Are Social team in Singapore. And in the true spirit of sharing, we’d love to hear your thoughts, questions, suggestions and additions in the comments as well.
Japan uses social media to revive tourism
The Japan Tourism Agency recently unveiled a social media-led initiative to revive tourism following the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear incidents earlier this year. The Agency is offering 10,000 return flights to selected social media influencers around the world as part of a push to promote Japan as a safe and attractive holiday destination, and create excitement amongst online communities.
Instagram exploring integration into Chinese social networks
Instagram‘s CEO Kevin Systrom has revealed that the socially driven photo-sharing brand is exploring ways to integrate the service into China’s home-grown social networks. With Twitter and Facebook both blocked in China, it’s clear that Instagram needs to find new routes to make its product available to the world’s largest social media population.
Marketers use fan numbers to measure social media success
A newly-released survey suggests that although marketers realise fan numbers aren’t the be-all and end-all, they do end up relying on them for measuring success. 60% still used fan numbers as a primary measure of gauging success. The folly of this is clear: just accruing fans is not enough; it’s what you do with them which is important.
Vitrue research into Facebook fans
Vitrue have produced a really useful bit of research outlining how the demographics of Facebook overall are markedly different from the sub-group who like Pages, who tend to be younger and predominantly women. In the case of consumer packaged goods Pages, the fans skew even more female but are slightly older.
Chinese business social networking to grow 500% by 2013
A report from Tianji, China’s most popular professional social network, suggests that the total number of people in China using social media for professional purposes will increase to over 100 million by 2013, with the figure set to reach more than 60 million in the coming 12 months alone. Tianji currently plays host to around 9 million users in China, just ahead of local rival Ushi.
Brands fail to respond to customer queries through social
According to a study released by SocialBakers, ‘companies only respond to 5% of all their Wall questions on average’, with the telecoms, airlines and retail sectors leading the way and responding the most.
China steps up social media censorship
After the widespread uptake of micro-blogging in China, coupled with a backlash against the government, a communique from the ruling Communist party has vowed to step up social media censorship.
Trend for dual-screen viewing continues
According to a YouGov survey more than three quarters of UK viewers now use other media whilst watching TV, with 43% of them commenting on social media whilst watching programmes on TV.
How the F8 changes are affecting Facebook Pages
Analysis from PageLever suggests that the recent Facebook changes have made more fans see Page updates, but those fans are seeing fewer updates:
Facebook’s changes, announced at its F8 Developers Conference last month, appear to have boosted brands’ visibility among more of their fans but decreased the frequency with which a brand’s fans see its messages, according to a study of more than 300 brand pages. In what should be considered good news, the new layout has substantially increased fan interactions with brands.
EdgeRank Checker have produced other research, highlighting how engagement is generally up massively, with comments up 14% and likes up 16%, although impressions are down 22%. In addition, engagement has dropped on smaller Facebook Pages, meaning that although this is good news for big brands, it’s bad news for local restaurants:
Google+ launches more updates in bid to improve UI
Google+ rolled out three new features last week, in a bid to increase the amount of time people spend on the site:
1) They’ve launched a what’s hot on Google + feature, to highlight – how did you guess?! – what’s hot on Google+:
2) There’s also now Google+ Ripples, which allows you how to track how popular posts are shared, and who the big conversation drivers and contributors are:
3) Finally and most interestingly, they’ve launched Google+ Creative Kit which allows users to edit their photos with some cool effects:
With Google+ now also available with Google Apps, one can hardly accuse Google of giving up on Google+ just yet.
BBC moves to human-edited Twitter feeds
The BBC has announced that its four core Twitter feeds will now be curated by real people. Nieman Journalism Lab has an interesting post about the effect human curation can have.
UK teenagers would miss the internet more than TV
A survey from Ofcom of 12-15 year olds in the UK found that, if they had to go without one, more would miss the internet than TV. This is backed up by an increase in teens visiting the internet with their phones – 50% of 12-15 year olds accessed social networks from their phone this year, a 17% increase year-on-year.
Disney adds new social features to Club Penguin
Disney’s virtual world Club Penguin has revamped its social features, including automatically completing words and phrases as kids type into its chat systems.
Club Penguin, which started to roll out the new features today, said it has “overhauled” its communications tools to create a safer and more social experience.
The Guardian launches open community news platform n0tice
Last week The Guardian launched a new social ‘community noticeboard’ where you can share news, items to sell or share, upcoming events and is location based. It is still in private beta but takes a little from Craigslist, Foursquare and Ning and is citizen driven. Users can customise their ‘n0ticeboards’ and easily share information and the best news yet… it’s free!
Twitter links up with the US X Factor
A really nice bit of innovation from Twitter: users can now vote on the American version of the X Factor by Direct Messaging the programme’s Twitter account. Our vote is this will be quite a hit.
Airlines outed for bad customer service in social
There was bad news for two airlines this week: first, American Airlines was declared the least popular airline in social media, with only 12% positive sentiment. Then, Qantas managed to fully step up to the fail-plate with some unbelievably wooden customer service via social media. All of this left them flying towards the top of the trending topics, before the fuel of negative sentiment overpowered the account, leading them to truly crash and burn. It’s plain simple: it’s just not good enough to wing it.
Avis launch Avis ArtCar
In an accelerated social media push aiming to differentiate their brand in the car rental market, Avis have launched a Facebook campaign across 8 European countries to encourage fans to design an Avis ArtCar. The campaign allows fans to upload their designs to the Avis Facebook page and vote for their favourites with the three best designs produced and available for free hire in participating countries.
adidas Originals Women’s Look Book Instagram Contest
adidas recently launched an interesting city vs. city Instagram challenge to encourage fans to capture their Originals styles. Fans then upload photos of their outfits and their friends’ and tag them with #adidasoriginals and a geo-tag of their city and vote for their favourite look.
Samsung partners with Condé Nast in Street Style Looks campaign
In order to promote their new MultiView MV800 camera Samsung have joined forces with Condé Nast and arranged for 4 fashion photographers to get snapping street style trends in 4 of the world’s fashion capitals. Not only will the latest fashion looks of the winter season be showcased on the dedicated Samsung Tumblr blog but consumers will be encouraged to upload their own stylish winter ‘looks’ too.
Chapstick’s social media suicide
A real #epicfail for Chapstick: first they posted an image of a woman with her backside in the air looking for her chapstick behind the sofa. This photo received a spiral of negative comments which were subsequently deleted. More comments were posted, more comments were deleted, still with no word of apology. Finally Chapstick apologised, some of which contained the words “we’re committed to listening…” but it will take more than that to salve-age this one.
Reddit reveals the power of Amazon’s supreme customer service
After USPS failed to deliver a parcel of Amazon products to Tanzania where zambuka42 was volunteering, Amazon refunded the order despite it being USPS’ fault. A screengrab of Amazon’s amazing customer service generated 1000 points and comments on Reddit, with 500,000 views.
TripAdvisor sued over red flag feature
Online reviews site TripAdvisor is being sued by a hotelier, over its red flag feature which means that it believes an hotel and its affiliates has interfered with reviews on the site:
Deborah Sinclair of the Riverside Hotel and Restaurant and Evesham has initiated defamation proceedings against the travel review site, after her hotel’s TripAdvisor page was red-flagged. Ms Sinclair claims that TripAdvisor’s decision to red flag her hotel’s page has undermined her credibility and will likely badly damage her business.
If TripAdvisor loses, it will have little room for manouevre, as other cases will undoubtedly follow.
Mexican football team replaces players’ names with Twitter handles
In a nifty move, Mexican football team Jaguares di Chiapas put their players’ Twitter handles on the back of their shirts instead of their names. They also advertised their sponsor’s Twitter account, rather than the sponsor itself. We’ll be watching to see if they can come up with a decent follow-up to this.