Five Friday Facts #14
News
News
Japan’s social giants
Even as the popularity of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook soar in Japan, local social networks are still holding their own. Although Japanese social network Mixi has not seen much growth in new users in the past couple of months, it has remained steady at slightly more than 15 million monthly active users, and has more than 160,000 Facebook-like public pages since this new offering was launched in August 2011. Mobile social gaming platform GREE has about 29 million users, which accounts for 15.3% of its total international userbase, while its rival DeNA’s Mobage has almost reached 36 million users. In comparison, there are more than 6.76 million Japanese Facebook users, and roughly 29.9 million Twitter users in Japan. It remains to be seen whether the local Japanese social networks can continue capturing Japanese netizens’ interest.
Declining rate of new users for Sina Weibo
Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo appears to be experiencing a decline in new users in the past month, which could be a result of the real-name registration mandate passed by the Chinese government. 3 million people have registered with Sina Weibo with their real ID in the past month, which is a significant drop from the peak of 20 million or so new users per month in 2011. We’ll wait and see whether the rate of new users continues to decline past the March 16th deadline.
China’s online video ad revenue
China’s online video advertising revenues has reached 1.687 billion RMB or S$330 million, a 135.3% increase compared to the year before. This momentum will likely carry through to next year as China’s 400 million online video viewers could pass 445 million by the end of 2012.
Facebook and mobile
Facebook revealed that over 60 million users have engaged with mobile applications via its social network, which means having navigated to either mobile web or native applications that integrate with Facebook, and they’ve done so 320 million times per month since the mobile platform launched in October last year. Facebook Page Product Manager Russ Heddleston reinforced the importance of mobile in Facebook’s overall strategy during Inside Network’s Inside Social Apps conference, and said
“We haven’t yet come out with a separate solution for tab applications for mobile, it’s something we’re looking into, and something that would make sense.”
The rise of content marketing
B2B companies are increasingly utilising content marketing in reaching their audiences, and are investing about 26% of their total budgets on content marketing. 60% are planning to spend even more on content marketing in the next year. 74% of B2B marketers use social media, 65% blog, and 52% use videos as part of their marketing activities. In comparison, only 31% are using print magazines, while 30% are relying on traditional media. We can clearly see the shift from traditional to digital and social media, but marketers have not completely refrained from using traditional media as it still remains relevant to specific demographics. It’s notable that only 15% of B2B marketers are using mobile content, but we believe this figure will soon change as mobile becomes increasingly prevalent to companies in light of the evolving user behaviours of Internet users.
