Five Friday Facts #54
News
News
Asia leads the way for mobile social media users
According to statistics from Nielsen, 59% of social media users in Asia Pacific engage with Facebook, Twitter and other social networks from a mobile device. On the other hand, only 33% of social media users in Europe and the United States use mobile as their primary mode of access, which is almost half of Asia Pacific’s usage. It is also noteworthy that Asia Pacific is 12% higher than the global average for accessing social networking sites from mobile. Nielsen’s breakdown shows that more than 60% of social network users accessing sites via their mobile are from China, Indonesia, Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong. In addition, more than 50% of consumers in Asia Pacific are likely to make a purchase based on reviews on social media. These new findings further support our #SDMW report on Asia, in which we covered the growth in social, digital and mobile landscapes in Asia.
Sina Weibo passes 400 million users
Sina’s Q3 financial report revealed that Sina Weibo has passed 400 million registered users. Sina also sees more mobile traffic than PC traffic – 72% of users access weibo from either mobile only or mobile and PC. With a consistently increasing user base, Sina is still trying to build a revenue model for mobile devices. Despite the growth that the platform is seeing, Sina agreed the competition it is facing from Tencent’s WeChat meant that people spent lesser time on Sina weibo.
China’s consumer behaviour on social networking sites
CNNIC reported that almost 80% of Chinese social media users pay attention to commercial information. 40% of netizens said that they are interested in what is shared by their friends and they regarded social endorsements as a point of reference to help them with their own shopping decisions. A breakdown of what Chinese social media users shared on brands show that 37.2% shared their favourite product, brand or store on social media platforms whilst 25.7% raised complaints should they have a bad shopping experience.
WeChat garners 1 million subscribers in Malaysia within 5 months
WeChat has been in the limelight for a while now due its massive growth to 200 million users globally. The group messaging app, which was launched in Malaysia five months ago positioning itself as ‘the new way to connect’, saw a 400% growth garnering 1 million Malysian users. WeChat already supports up to 17 languages including Portuguese and Russian and is working towards offering Bahasa Malaysia for a wider penetration to the Malaysian market. It is likely that WeChat will garner an even larger fanbase in Malaysia as a number of Malaysian celebrities are already using the service to chat with their fans and friends. The app is ranked 5th among all free apps on iOS, and ranked 2nd in the social networking category in Malaysia.
MTV becomes the first brand to garner 1 million followers on Instagram
Instagram celebrated its second year anniversary this year with 100 million users and more than 5 billion photos shared since its humble beginning. Recently, it has also successfully rolled out the much anticipated web profiles. Earlier this month, MTV was announced to be the first company to have garnered 1 million Instagram followers. The entertainment and fashion industries have taken the lead in reaping the benefits of the visually-appealing and fan-inviting platform. However, the recent Hurricane Sandy showed the world the power of the platform when 800,000 photos were uploaded during the unfortunate disaster, bringing people together as these photos were further shared on Facebook.
