Five Friday Facts #28
News
News
ROI of social media in China
According to a survey by office services firm Regus, 47% of businesses surveyed successfully used social networks for customer acquisition in 2011, which is a 7% increase from the previous year. China saw the greatest increase in customer acquisition from social networks among the countries studied, from 44% in 2010 to 65% in 2011. India saw the next biggest increase from 52% in 2010 to 61% in 2011. These results show that companies from India and China are more effective in using social networks to acquire new customers than are the US and UK. It’ll be interesting to compare these statistics to 2012 results as companies increasingly recognise and track the ROI of their social media activities.
India could become world’s biggest Facebook user by 2015
According to SocialBakers data, India currently has 57 million registered Facebook members, behind the US with 157 million users and narrowly behind Brazil with 59 million. However, India is set to overtake the US in terms of number of Facebook users by 2015, with growth primarily driven by mobile Internet users, especially in second- and third-tier cities. Mobile already accounts for half of all Internet use in India, where fixed-line penetration is below 10%. Currently, the Facebook penetration of its online population stands at 56.57%, even though its number of users only make up 3.91% of its total population, which indicates much room for growth as long as its number of Internet users grows at a proportionate rate.
Mobile Commerce in Singapore
Paypal’s mobile commerce study reveals that mobile shopping is extremely prevalent in Singapore, with the mobile commerce market seeing a 660% increase in just one year between 2010 to 2011. Mobile shopping comprised 23% of the entire online shopping market in 2011, nearly 6 times its share of the online shopping market in 2010. Singaporeans spent S$244 million through their smartphones in 2011 compared to S$82 million through tablets, although the average spend per head on tablets was significantly higher at S$380, as opposed to smartphones, which amounted to S$274. This reflects the opportunity for brands to use location-based social services to engage their consumers in an in-store retail environment and convert engagement to sales. For case studies on how brands are driving mobile commerce through social technologies, do check out our SoLoMo report here.
Pinterest gets backing
Even though Pinterest has been seeing a decline in number of users, Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has confirmed its US$100 million investment in the visual social platform. WSJ also reported that sources value the start-up at $1.5 billion. This backing paves the way for Pinterest’s business model of social commerce, which would tie-in its existing social sharing functionalities. In particular, Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani announced
“We see tremendous synergies between Pinterest’s vision and Rakuten’s model for e-commerce. Rakuten looks forward to introducing Pinterest to the Japanese market as well as other markets around the world.”
Fox is the most social TV network
Social TV has taken off in a big way in the US, with many major networks redefining TV viewers’ experiences by socialising the medium because they recognise the phenomenon that is multi-channel consumption. For example, commenting about TV shows on social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter grew by 194% between April 2011 and April 2012. FOX was the top social broadcast network for the month of April with 28% of broadcast social share, with NBC trailing in second place at 21%. One of their social TV initiatives include partnering with Twitter for DM-based voting for X Factor, which allowed users to DM @TheXFactorUSA even without being followed by X Factor on Twitter.