We Are Social Asia Tuesday TuneUp #111

News
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13.6 billion messages on QQ to usher in the Chinese New Year
Tencent revealed that during Chinese New Year’s Eve, a total of 13.6 billion instant messages were sent by QQ users.  As reported in TechInAsia, there were 32.7 million QQ messages sent in a minute at the peak of the messaging flood. Also, Tencent revealed in the Chinese- language infographic posted in Sina Weibo that there was 16 million users who made a video call on QQ during Chinese New Year’s Eve. 13.6 billion may seem to be an impressive number but it hasn’t surpassed the tremendous 27 billion messages processed in a day by Whatsapp in June last year.

CNY by TIA

WeChat users sent out cash-filled red packets to friends and families for CNY
WeChat has launched a feature letting users based in China gift money to friends and family last week to celebrate Chinese New Year. According to TechInAsia, Tencent, the parent company, disclosed to Chinese media that during the first two days of Spring festival, over five million users exchanged over 20 million envelopes. After binding one’s bank account to the app, users can send cash-filled virtual red envelopes, a traditional gift for the Lunar New Year, in two ways. Users can either send cash directly to a recipient or to jazz things up, they can put up a sum of cash that would be distributed randomly among a specified group of friends. This scheme marked a successful attempt to get users to bind their bank accounts to WeChat. It seems that WeChat is evolving from messaging app into a catch-all solution for e-commerce, gaming and even consumer banking.

WECHAT HONGBAO From TechinAsia

Will Jomblo be Indonesia’s Facebook for singles?
Jomblo, a social networking site, was launched last week in Indonesia. The domain name may be the reason why this site draws a lot of curiosity because “Jomblo” is the new trending word for “single” in Indonesia. Fair enough, Jomblo wants to be a social dating site for singles, but at the same time it wants to be an online platform where single can meet new friends based on interests. As discussed in TechInAsia, in the future, Jomblo wants to launch a matchmaking feature that matches user profiles based on an algorithm. But the team emphasized that Jomblo is not entirely a dating site, there are non-dating features to keep everyone on the same page. Moving away from positioning as an online dating site may or may not be a good move but so far, Jomblo has garnered close to 9,000 registered members and most of them are single. The team plans to release Android and iOS apps in the future.

Jomblo

Social posts by friends affect purchase behaviour
Social media really does affect purchasing decisions, according to January 2014 polling by eMarketer. This is true of millennials in particular, with 68% of 18-34 year olds surveyed stating that they were influenced to buy products at least somewhat by their friends’ posts. The same was true of 53% of 35-44 year olds, decreasing with age to 22% of those over 65. The younger group was also most likely to share photos and thoughts of new products and services; just 19% of males aged 18-34 said they never did so, and 18% of females – much lower than the gender averages across all age groups: 39% and 34% respectively.

Facebook outdoing Google for referrals?
Facebook is hugely outdoing Google for referrals to the Buzzfeed network, and had been doing so for all of 2013. The graph below depicts the data explaining sources of traffic to the network’s 200 odd websites. That’s a pretty big sample size and, even if it isn’t indicative of an internet-wide trend, it’s certainly an interesting area to watch.

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Facebook celebrates turning ten
Last week saw the tenth anniversary of Facebook’s founding, a milestone that the network celebrated with, among other things, an open letter from Mark Zuckerberg, personalised ‘Lookback’ videos at users’ time on the network and a film, shown below.

The birthday saw the production of a lot of literature about Facebook’s past and future, including a number of pieces by We Are Social. In Marketing, Tom Ollerton discussed what Facebook might look like in ten years, referencing the rise of emotion, increased competition and the network’s ability to purchase competitors. Meanwhile, Andy Spry spoke to the Drum about Facebook’s evolution into a mobile network, while Laura Muldoon looked back on what’s happened in the last ten years.

Twitter releases redesign
Twitter showed off a whole new design last week, with changes including a new colour scheme and font. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like now:

New_Twitter

Twitter’s Q4 results lead to drop in share price
Twitter’s share price dropped by 18% after the release of its Q4 results, which saw monthly active users rise by just 3.8%. We Are Social’s own Leila Thabet discussed the news with Marketing, attributing future success to Twitter’s development as a second screen platform:

But despite owning the ‘second screen’ space, Twitter hasn’t yet been able to monetise its products to anywhere near the extent of Google and Facebook. At issue is Twitter’s lack of an algorithm to determine relevant content, which means it has to show all tweets a person publishes, to all of their followers. This creates a crowded and time-sensitive newsfeed, and promoted tweets can add to the confusion.

Twitter, however, displayed a positive outlook, citing the 30% year-on-year increase in MAUs and 121% jump in ad revenue over the same period.

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YouTube getting tougher on fake views
Google is planning to clamp down on ‘fake’ YouTube views, with brands currently able to buy 60,000 fake views (and the accompanying perceived popularity) for just $50. Philipp Pfeiffenberger, software engineer at YouTube, is quoted as saying:

YouTube isn’t just a place for videos, it’s a place for meaningful human interaction. Whether it’s views, likes, or comments, these interactions both represent and inform how creators connect with their audience. That’s why we take the accuracy of these interactions very seriously. When some bad actors try to game the system by artificially inflating view counts, they’re not just misleading fans about the popularity of a video, they’re undermining one of YouTube’s most important and unique qualities.

Microsoft invests in Foursquare
Microsoft has invested $15m in location-based mobile app Foursquare, after rumours last year of a potential purchase. The move comes at a time of change in Microsoft’s senior personnel, and is seen as the two companies growing closer, with potential consequences on the evolution of Foursquare into a more immersive platform.

Reactive brands during the Superbowl
Last year’s Superbowl saw the birth of the ‘Oreo Moment’, a term now used to describe any brand successfully reacting to a current event. It’s no surprise, then, that other brands had social media war rooms ready to respond to whatever might happen during the game. Jaguar used their ‘Villains’ Lair’ to defend their promoted hashtag #goodtobebad against attempted hijacking by the likes of Lexus, Esurance and Audi, while Hyundai forwent attempting to replicate Oreo’s reactivity, instead focussing on interactions with other brands and users.

Dreft, Kevin Jonas and a sponsored baby birth
Singer Kevin Jonas is having the upcoming birth of his child sponsored by detergent maker Dreft, allowing the brand exclusive access to content to share on Twitter. It’s something that celebrities have been doing with gossip magazines for quite some time – no doubt we’ll see more collaborations like this in future.

 evian loves you like… We Are Social has launched evian’s #ILoveYouLike campaign for Valentine’s Day, responding to users who use the hashtag like below. Running across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, there is also a competition element, with users encouraged to complete the sentence “I love you like…” for a chance to win.  


TGI Fridays say #thankswingman TGI Fridays is looking to build up its Twitter following this Valentine’s Day by paying homage to all the wingmen out there. The first 500 users to follow @tgifridays and tweet #thankswingman will receive a $15 gift card towards a plate of chicken wings, which may or may not be an excellent date idea.

 Domino’s Twitter Meltdown Domino’s Pizza last week ran a Twitter competition, asking users to tweet using the hashtag #DominosMeltdown. For everyone who did, the heat got turned up on a delivery man made out of ice; whoever’s tweet made the pizza finally fall won a year’s supply of their own. That’s a year’s supply of pizza, not delivery men made out of ice.

Melt-Dominos-post

Airbnb helps out with #SochiProblems

As you may have seen, the accommodation at the Winter Olympics leaves a lot to be desired. The hashtag #SochiProblems has taken off, which AirBnB has managed to turn to its advantage, tweeting at users with better places to stay.