We Are Social Asia Tuesday TuneUp #99

News
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Philippine telco Globe gives free Facebook access to subscribers
36 million Globe users can now access Facebook via mobile for three months without data charges. This service is available on all smartphone OS’s (except Blackberry) and feature phones, regardless of app or browser. Users will be prompted with pop-up notifications to notify them that they are about to access free data or options to purchase data credits upon clicking links that lead to external websites. A market like Philippines would benefit greatly from this move, as the country is dominated by the prepaid segment.

Indonesians tweet to beat traffic
With a population of over 10 million, commuters in Jakarta often spend up to 5 hours a day in traffic to get to work. Hence, more road users are turning to Twitter to warn fellow travellers of traffic-choked roads or arrange car-pooling. A website and associated Twitter account Lewatmana.com allows commuters to share real-time information about traffic conditions such as jams, flooded roads, or areas affected by the city’s frequent demonstrations. With over 14,000 tweets a month, the service has proven to be a success with over 200,000 followers.

Q4 looks bright for WeChat
WeChat is now the world’s top messaging app ahead of Twitter (218 million) and Whatsapp (350 million) with over 600 million users this month, including 150 million out of China. WeChat continues to grow bigger with a direct connection to Google+, where users can log in via Google products, email or QQ email.

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Aside from that, WeChat is now also available in French and has fully integrated WeChat Payment into the platform. With China’s November 11th, or “Single Day” coming, the equivalent of Black Friday in the United States, we look forward to see how WeChat Payment fares.

Coach’s “Try Your Luck” WeChat activity
American luxury leather goods company Coach has recently created a new tab “WeChat Activities”, specifically to house their ongoing campaigns. To increase subscription rate, they have also just added a “Try Your Luck” section whereby fans may stand a chance to win gifts in their weekly giveaways on Mondays.

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#MACHalloween# campaign on Weibo
M.A.C has recently collaborated with special makeup effects artist Rick Baker to launch a campaign called “#MACHalloween#” on Weibo. Fans are encouraged to refer their favourite Halloween makeup designs by Baker to their friends by end of the month. The look with the most referrals will result in the release of its full tutorial on Halloween itself. 

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Twitter now the most important social network for US teens
Twitter has replaced Facebook as the most important social network for US teens, according to a survey of thousands. Of those questioned in Autumn 2013, 23% said that Facebook was the most important social network to them, down from 33% in Spring 2013 and 42% in Fall 2012. Twitter was most popular with 26% in Fall 2013, though that was down from 30% in the Spring, while Instagram had consistently grown over the seasons (from 12% to 17%, then on to 23%) leaving it level with Facebook in second place.

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The growth of social ad spend in Western Europe
Social ad spending is to continue growing in Western Europe, according to research by eMarketer, reaching $2.82bn by 2015.

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Facebook introduces video ads to mobile app
Facebook has introduced video ads to its mobile app, allowing them to be displayed in the mobile news feed for the first time. Currently, the feature is limited to adverts for other apps, and the videos will not auto-play. However, this could well be just the first step in the growth of video advertising on Facebook’s mobile platforms.

Instagram reveals sponsored posts
Instagram has revealed what its sponsored posts will look like, as shown below. Evidently, they’re pretty similar to normal posts on the network, but include a ‘Sponsored’ banner for clarity’s sake. For more information on the news and its implications for brands, have a look at our full blog post on the matter.

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Signs of success in Twitter’s IPO
Twitter’s IPO is set to be the biggest of its sort since Facebook, with the network seeking $1.4bn from the sale of 70m shares at $17-$20 each. This would lead to a $10.9bn valuation, which seems to be an intentionally low figure intended to ensure growth on day one. Indeed, financial spread betting firm IG predicts that share prices will double on the first day, with the price potentially rising to as high as $30bn. The network’s value has already trebled to £17.9bn ahead of its market debut, as ‘grey market’ traders begin to buy and sell unofficially valued stock on IG’s Index. All the signs point to a successful IPO for Twitter.

‘Sessions’ and ‘Time travel’ make Vine more flexible
Twitter-owned video-sharing network Vine has introduced two new features: ‘Sessions’ and ‘Time travel’. The first allows users to save posts for later, working on up to ten videos at any one time, while the second allows users to edit posts by moving or replacing individual shots within a video.

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The two features together combine to allow greater flexibility and quality control in the video creation process, which should be good news for brands who are willing to invest in the production of Vines.

LinkedIn’s new ‘Intro’ feature
LinkedIn has created a new feature, named ‘Intro’, which links your profile with your iPhone’s email. Once you’ve done so, you will see someone’s LinkedIn details whenever they send you an email.

Another funding round for Pinterest
Pinterest has completed another round of funding, since obtaining $200m in February, at a $2.5bn valuation. This round is even higher, with $225m coming in, amounting to a valuation of $3.8bn. As Forbes points out, Pinterest is now worth almost four times the sum that both Tumblr and Instagram sold for, $1.1 and $1 billion dollars respectively.

Line planning growth in the UK market
The Guardian released an article on Line last week, the messaging app with more than 280m users, in which they explained the network’s growth and talked about its various rich features that go beyond simply ‘instant messaging’. One of the key points that came from this was an interview with Sunny Kim, senior vice president and head of business development for Line Euro-Americas, in which she revealed 80% of Line’s traffic is from outside Japan and discussed their plans for international growth, particularly in the UK.

BBM sees 10 million downloads on iPhone and Android
BlackBerry Messenger was downloaded 10m times in the first 24 hours after its release as a free app for both iPhone and Android. Impressive initial figures, certainly, but it will be interesting to see how many of these are retained as active users.

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Ebay gets more social
Online auction house Ebay has decided to introduce a number of social features. These include the ability to curate collections, follow users, collections or interests and create a profile or, in the case of sellers, a storefront. None of these are a million miles from features offered on Pinterest – a logical move, considering that network’s close links with online shopping.

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BBC Global News partners with Twitter
BBC Global News has become the latest in a list of Twitter partners to include sponsored video clips within paid tweets. Using the platform’s ‘Amplify’ department, the newscaster is producing a set of videos labelled #BBCTrending, which will give viewers a round-up of the day’s trending news after a sponsored pre-roll ad.

Buy someone a coffee through Twitter and Starbucks
Starbucks has announced a partnership with Twitter that allows users to purchase coffee gifts for one another. After syncing their Starbucks, Twitter and credit card accounts, the gift giver simply needs to type “@tweetacoffee to” and the person’s @handle and they can send over a gift of up to $5. Visa are encouraging people to partake by offering a bonus to the first 100,000 to sync their cards: they will receive a $5 gift voucher of their own after sending their first gift.

Apple competitors buy Twitter ads for iPad launch
Every single major Apple competitor bought Twitter ads to coincide with the launch event for the latest iPad. Some of the attempts at brand jacking are shown below.

 

 

Tide’s Vine videos influencing above-the-line
In last week’s Mashup we told you all about Tide’s Halloween-themed Vine videos. Well, they’re taking over a huge amount of the brand’s advertising and have since beenfeatured on TV and billboards, showing how well-constructed social content can have applications above-the-line, too.

We Are Social and Bulmers release Harvestimator
Cider brand Bulmers has unveiled its latest social campaign, created by We Are Social. Run through a ‘Harvestimator’ Facebook app, fans have to guess how many apples will fall from a tree under a variety of conditions and are entered into a draw to win weekly prizes. The introductory video, complete with West Country voiceover, is below.

Nissan Juke promoted by
Nissan’s Juke is set to be promoted through an Instagram campaign. As detailed in the below video, users are asked to post an Instagram video; these will then be produced into an audio-visual track, which will be streamed online live from a launch event on 21st November.

Ryanair’s #GrillMOL Twitter stunt
Michael O’Leary, owner of budget airline Ryanair, took to Twitter this week in an ‘ask me anything’ PR stunt under the hashtag #GrillMOL. Using his, ahem, ‘unique’ tone of voice, he caused both amusement and ire with a flurry of tweets that included sexism and… well, mainly quite a lot of sexism. Marketing Magazine compiled a ‘best and worst’ list.

Guinness’s TV ads receive poor Twitter
Guinness experimented with a new form of above-the-line advertising last week, taking over every ad break in ITV’s the Jonathan Ross show to post videos like the below, which discussed the drink’s effect on male bonding. They encouraged Twitter conversation using the hashtag #RoundUpYourMates, but received little positive reaction, with users describing the activity as painful and even sexist.

NHS’s Lou Reed tweet meets public disapproval
Yesterday heard the announcement of the sad news that Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed had died of liver disease aged 71. The NHS saw an opportunity to promote their own interests and posted the below tweet, which was deleted after complaints by a number of Twitter users, despite what seemed to be genuinely good intentions. It goes to show that, in times of public mourning, it isn’t just brands that can appear selfish by trying to take advantage of the situation.

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