We Are Social Asia Tuesday TuneUp #112

Tuneup
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Mobile commerce as the future growth for Line
Line generated over $330 million revenue last year alone, it shows the strong capability of chat app in terms of its return on investment.  According to the COO from Tokyo office, Idezawa Takeshi, revealed that 60 percent of its revenue mainly came from games, while the rest of them were equally split between stickers and business services like official accounts and branded stickers on Line. Since chat apps have been developed, Line has successfully maintained its engagement level with users as well as increased its revenues. When cosmetic brand Maybelline launched a flash sale on Line in Thailand, it sold 500 lipsticks in five minutes, reflecting that Line not only helped the brand to amplify the impact of the campaign in Thailand, but also boosted sales in an effective way. Line intend to move towards mobile commerce and eventually launch Line Mall by March or April, as a B2C and C2C e-commerce marketplace.

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WeChat received 21 million taxi rides booking in the past month 
Leading chat app in China, WeChat also intends to expand its business to the e-commerce field in order to combat with Alibaba. Recently, WeChat added the function to pay for taxis in the app. According to Didi Dache, the taxi – finder app that WeChat collaborated with, the data revealed that the app has already generated 40 million registered users with WeChat’s support. There are a total of 21 million Taxi rides so far that have been booked on the WeChat app. Here are some interesting stats from 36Kr:

We are observing this trend with chat apps opting to go for mobile commerce. Apart from that, new WeChat services (shown below) are aiming to partner with businesses and financial institutions,  as part of a long-term strategic game-plan for Tencent. WeChat’s expansion into mobile e-commerce definitely reflects the stronger ambitions of the company to become a social empire in China.

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LinkedIn passes 50 million users in Asia 
LinkedIn has reached 50 million users in Asia Pacific. The company has been growing rapidly in recent years, according to The Next Web, there were nine countries in Asia-Pacific have more than a million LinkedIn members each. India has 24 million users, Australia has five million, China has about four million, Indonesia and the Philippines have over two million each, while Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and New Zealand each have over a million users. Probably due to Asia Pacific’s large mobile penetration in the world, LinkedIn has reached 1.6 billion unique subscribers from mobile, according to the GSM association report 2013. It is revealed that LinkedIn intends to focus on mobile and has also been appealing to young professionals who contribute to a significant bulk of the workforce in Asia. LinkedIn has also made a big move in China, according to a recent WeChat update that it has integrated profiles from the network.

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The importance of mobile to Twitter
The importance of mobile in social is well documented; however, it seems that it is even more integral to Twitter than Facebook. Facebook sees a higher average time spent per user per month than Twitter on both desktop (6 minutes 24 seconds) and mobile (7:43), though the difference between the two formats is far more marked on Twitter. The average user spends 3 minutes 7 seconds per month on Twitter through mobile, but only 36 seconds on a computer. FacebookTwitterDesktopMobile
Brands are increasingly responding via Twitter
The percentage of UK digital retailers that respond to questions via Twitter is on the up. The figure leapt from 12.3% in 2011 to 47.0% in 2012, and rose again to 50.2% in 2013.
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How TV is discussed on Facebook
A study into TV discussion on Facebook has produced some interesting results. According to SecondSync, 60% of TV-related Facebook interactions happen in real time, while the show is airing, while 80% come from mobile devices. There are also consistent patterns of engagement depending on genre, displayed below:
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Facebook ads perform well for reach
The 2013 Year in Review Global Media Intelligence Report has examined the reach achieved by a number of different media, measuring them on a ‘normalized scale’. According to this, Facebook ads are far better than other online media at reaching users, and consistently improved their performance from Q2 2013 onwards. Screen Shot 2014-02-17 at 11.16.11
Facebook’s trending stories
Facebook has extended the prominence of its ‘trending’ stories, featuring examples in the newsfeeds of certain users. When somebody clicks on the ‘trending’ icon, displayed below, they will see further updates on the topic by friends, pages and public profiles. This could be really interesting, if they manage to successfully target stories based on what’s trending amongst your friends and using demographic and like data. Screen Shot 2014-02-17 at 11.20.43
Pages to watch in Facebook Insights
Facebook has added a ‘pages to watch’ section to its Insights tool, allowing page admins to examine the performance of similar pages. The feature looks to allow easier comparison between a brand and its competitors. Screen Shot 2014-02-17 at 11.27.44
Facebook to show admins responsible for posts and comments
From February 20th, Facebook page admins will be able to see which admin wrote an individual post or comment. The view will only be visible to other admins of the page in question and will not be installed retroactively (i.e. on posts from before February 20th).
Twitter experimenting with new profiles
Twitter is testing a fairly radical redesign of its user profiles, potentially moving away from the classic vertical stream. Some users reported that they had seen vast changes, as shown below, which then reverted to the more classic style, before changing back once more. What does the future hold for Twitter profiles?
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Twitter users more likely to buy new cars
As a result of its parternship with Datalogix, Twitter has released a new service that allows automotive brands to measure the impact of the network on their offline sales. Research supporting the launch of the service found that households with Twitter users were twice as likely as the average US home to purchase a new vehicle, while those who were exposed to promoted tweets were 32% more likely again to do so. Also, automotive brand followers were three times as likely to make a new vehicle purchase. Auto_Image_3
Twitter promoted Vine with growth ads
Twitter has been running ads on Flipboard, the social network aggregation tool. These push viewers to sign up for Vine, with Twitter looking to grow the user base of its video-sharing app.
New BBM features for iOS and Android
BlackBerry has updated its BBM offering for iPhone and Android with a wealth of new features. These include: voice calls, channels, dropbox and location sharing – all of which should help in the battle against various other messenger apps.
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Brands and the Winter Olympics
As a result of Russia’s controversial LGBT laws, Winter Olympic sponsors have seen afair amount of backlash on Twitter, with mocked up images depicting violence inflicted on victims juxtaposed with brand messaging.

Despite this controversy, a number of US sponsors have released campaigns around the event. BMW asked fans to tweet their support for the US Bobsled team that they sponsor, AT&T created an app for fans to develop a ‘USA’ chant and Visa have documented the whole thing using Vine and the hashtag #everywhere. According to We Are Social’s analysis, it is the latter who have dominated conversation around the event, with around 5,000 mentions; McDonald’s is in second place with roughly 3,700 and Coca Cola in third.

#LoveJu and the world’s first social choreography
We Are Social’s Milan office produced the world’s first ever social choreography for Italian football club, Juventus. A Facebook app dedicated to picking the winning #LoveJu design saw 3,122 entries, 4,500 registered users, 290,00 views and 18,118 votes. The winning entry is shown in the below video.

Heineken’s #DateInABox
Heineken tried to get men to show their romantic side for Valentine’s Day, using the incentive of a free sponsored date. Anyone could apply for a box to be sent to their boyfriend, containing details of the date, but in order to receive the code necessary to unlock it, he’d then have to share his mushiest feelings on Instagram. Romantic? Bribery? A bit of both?

Brand on brand on Valentine’s Day
It’s an ever growing trend – brands talking to each other on Twitter. Well, Valentine’s Day saw the perfect opportunity for some set-up brand on brand action, such as the below. You can click through to this article for more examples.

Pizza Hut on OKCupid
In good news for the incredibly lonely, Pizza Hut set up an OKCupid profile for Valentine’s Day, inspired by the marriage proposals they receive on Twitter. Using the hashtag #CommitToGreatness, they’re using the profile to ask fans to propose in more creative ways, with the winner receiving free pizza for life.

Kisses (and Twitter fails) begin with Kay
Kay Jewelers released a new advert, in which a woman is so interested in her phone that a male suitor has to text her in order to present her with a new necklace. They supported this on Twitter with the hashtag #ekbwk (Every kiss begins with Kay), which was met with a nice chunk of online negativity.

The Conservative Party’s ‘Lookback’ video
Everyone’s seen them: the Facebook ‘Lookback’ videos that detail your journey on the platform, from the embarrassing things you did years ago… to the embarrassing things you do now. The UK Labour Party has released a spoof video for their rivals the Conservative party, highlighting the various mistakes they’ve made while in power. It’s probably not as embarrassing as yours, though.