We Are Social Asia Tuesday TuneUp #117

Tuneup
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WeChat now has 355 million active users 
According to Tencent, WeChat has now grown to 355 million monthly active users (MAUs), and up from 271.9 million monthly users in Q3, 2013. It is important to note that WeChat had 30.6% of growth on monthly active users from Q3 2o13 to Q4 2013 base on Tech in Asia’s calculation of MAUs. It looks like the intensive competition between the chat apps giants will be continuing in 2014. It is still hard to predict who will be championing this battle with WhatsApp being owned by Facebook, which has 465 million monthly active users and Japan’s leading Chat app – Line (who have not revealed their active user figures) with 350 million registered users.

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Facebook eventually opens office in Indonesia 
With Indonesia being one of Facebook’s largest user base in Asia, their newly opened office in Jakarta does not come as a surprise.  With 64 million monthly active users in Indonesia, Facebook also identified that Indonesia as one of the key countries to help Facebook reach the next billion in its user base. Dan Neary, Facebook Asia Pacific vice president points out the market potential:

We have 65 million users in Indonesia — that’s 90 percent of everybody that’s online. We’re also focusing on the 80 percent of Indonesians who are still not connected, and so there’s lot of opportunities for us to collaborate with the government and public sector.

Social numbers from Tencent
The leading Chinese social media giant, Tencent experienced a robust growth with $3.15 billion in profit in 2013. From Tencent’s Q4 and full year 2013 financial report, it clearly shows that Tencent intends to focus more on mobile and ecommerce. The company seems to be very keen on integrating both WeChat and ecommerce, in order to dominate the market share in China.

Here are the key platform statistics:

(Note: Please see the difference between WeChat and Weixin as defined by Tencent: “In view of the evolution of Weixin and WeChat from communications services to multi-functional platforms, we have revised the definition of combined MAU of Weixin and WeChat since the fourth quarter of 2013 to denote the total number of user accounts that sent out one or more messages via Weixin/WeChat or conducted other proactive operations on Weixin/WeChat, such as logging into Game Center or updating Moments, at least once during the last calendar month prior to the relevant date. Comparative figures have been restated to conform to the current period’s presentation.”)

Time spent on digital increasingly outdoing television
The time US adults spend using mobile phones has surpassed that spent watching TVfor the first time, with averages of 151 minutes and 147 minutes per day respectively, according to research by Millward Brown. In China, people spend an average of 170 minutes a day on their phones, more than double the TV time, and people in Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil and Vietnam also spend more time on their phones than Americans. Interestingly, eMarketer sources show that mobile accounts for significantly less time than TV, though for the first time digital as a whole has overtaken TV. This study concludes that US adults spent five hours and nine minutes every day on digital media, compared with four hours and 31 minutes in the previous year:

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The UK’s figures are slightly behind: in 2013, TV accounted for more time than digital. However, this is set to change in 2014, when digital will account for three hours and 41 minutes of the average adult’s day, compared to three hours and 15 minutes of television. Of this digital time, non-voice usage of mobile phones will account for one hour and 49 minutes.

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Instagram photos with faces get more likes and comments
Research conducted at Georgia Tech has found that Instagram photos that contain faces are 38% more likely to get likes and 32% more likely to be commented on. Saeideh Bakhshi, a researcher on the study, attributed this to a human urge to see the faces of others, and found it interesting that this translated into an online context.

Google releases ‘Android Wear’ software
Google has made its ‘Android Wear’ software available to developers, in the hope to gain traction in the smartwatch market. The video below shows off some recent advances in the field.

Forrester argues that Facebook is failing marketers
A blog post from Forrester Research has argued that ‘Facebook Is Still Failing Marketers’. Having made a similar point last October, the piece’s author points to low organic reach, discontent amongst brands and fears over fake fans as reasons to concentrate social efforts on other platforms.

Facebook growing its share of mobile ad dollars
The mobile ad business is growing fast. Up by 105% in 2013, it is forecast to exceed a value of $31.5bn this year. Google remains the biggest player, though its market share is decreasing due to the rapid rise of Facebook as a mobile advertiser. With just 5.4% of mobile ad dollars in 2012, Facebook’s share increased to 17.5% in 2013 and is set to grow to 21.7% in 2014.

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Facebook games are hugely popular
According to new statistics, Facebook gaming is an incredibly popular part of the network. Roughly 375 million people (a quarter of the network) play Facebook games each month, and 735m referrals are sent every day. The most popular game? You guessed it. Candy Crush, of course.

Share Facebook albums with a limited selection of friends
Facebook launched v8.0 of its app for the iPhone and iPad recently, with an interesting new feature: users can now share photo albums with ‘only these friends’. Users can already do this for photos and status updates, despite it being reported that this feature, too, was brand new.

TED takes over category on Facebook Paper
TED took over the whole ‘Ideas’ category of Facebook’s standalone news feed app, Paper, last week. The move was in line with the TED 2014 conference and sees Facebook looking to source high quality content for Paper.

The difficulty of Twitter for brands
Last week, we marked Twitter’s 8th birthday with a piece by our very own Emily Hawes, who discussed the development of Twitter as a social network. She pointed out some of its difficulties, highlighting a slowing user growth and decrease in timeline refreshes. She attributed these in part to confusion felt by new users, as well as weaker relationships than on other social networks. This comes at the same time as research that suggests that 30.6% of brands are still unconvinced of Twitter’s value as a marketing resource: 45.1% of brands cited their greatest challenge as “measuring ROI and results”, followed by “building an audience” (42.1%) and “engagement” (36.8%).

Twitter trialling new features, may drop @replies
Twitter is testing a number of new features this week, including the potential ofdropping the well-recognised @reply. The change is included in the alpha version of Twitter’s new Android app and it’s believed that this may be part of a wider move across the network.

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Naturally, the move has led to debate about the effects across Twitter. We Are Social’sRobin Grant spoke to The Drum about the issue, saying:

Since inception Twitter’s been making changes to try and make the platform less confusing. Recently, these developments have picked up even more pace, perhaps as a result of its recent first earnings announcement, where attracting and holding on to new users was flagged as an issue for the platform.

Yesterday’s news that Twitter is experimenting with phasing out @ replies completely won’t be popular with loyal Twitter users – change never goes down well, especially to something as fundamental as the @ reply.

Many see this as one of Twitter’s key differentiators, and the new Twitter tests look more like what happens when you tag people in Facebook posts. But with Twitter’s current focus clearly tuned into keeping new users engaged, rather than placating its existing community, it’s unlikely the prospect of short-term protest will disrupt its long-term plans.

In addition, two more features are being tested. First of all, a new reach figure will allow you to ascertain how many people actually saw your tweets. This should prove useful for brands’ analytics, though Twitter may end up regretting the decision to show people how few followers are seeing each tweet. The second feature, ‘fave people’, allows users to siphon off a select set of contacts and view their tweets in a separate stream.

Twitter pulls #Music app
Twitter has pulled its #Music app from the app store. Existing users have until 18th April with the app, which hoped to make the most of the popular topic of conversation on the network. That one goes down as a failed experiment.

Pinterest looking to grow revenue and users
Pinterest is planning to introduce adverts, with a huge asking price of $1m to $2m per ad. Evidently, the network is aiming its offering at premium brands, though no date has been announced for their launch as yet. This isn’t the only recent move aimed at revenue driving, either; the network is launching ‘Gift boards’, curated entirely from buyable items, which it hopes will raise further money from e-commerce.

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The network is also looking to expand into new markets and is now available in four additional languages: Hindi, Greek, Hungarian and Romanian.

Vimeo buys Cameo
Video-sharing platform Vimeo has acquired Cameo, the mobile, cloud-based app that that aids in shooting, styling and sharing short films. Kerry Trainor, Vimeo’s CEO, said of the move:

Vimeo is committed to empowering all creators, and the ubiquity of HD camera phones is driving the largest wave of video creation ever seen. What we love about Cameo is that it gives even novice video-makers the power to create beautiful, well-crafted videos.

We Are Social launches evian on Snapchat
We Are Social has been working with evian to bring the water brand to Snapchat, in a campaign which shared exclusive content from evian’s latest ad ahead of its official release. You can see the trailer for the video below. It’s even got a baby Spiderman.

Carlsberg brings happy hour to Instagram
Danish beer brand Carlsberg is offering half price beer to Instagram users in exchange for Instagram photos. Dubbed ‘Happy Hour 2.0′, the campaign asks users to share an image with the name of the venue and #HappyBeerTime (whatever that may be), thus benefitting the drinker, the bar and the brand.

Not your average pitcher of Heineken
Heineken has asked Twitter followers to send in a tweet-sized film pitch using the hashtag #15secondpremiere, themed around “going beyond what you’re capable of”. The campaign received more than 1,800 tweets and a winner will be selected on a number of criteria including creativity, entertainment value and the pitch’s 15 second feasibility. The winner’s pitch will be brought to life and premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here’s one of our favourites.

Taco Bell promotes its new breakfast menu
US fast food chain Taco Bell is launching a breakfast menu, and promoting it bysending pre-paid ‘burner’ phones to 1,000 influencers and dropping others in secret locations revealed to Twitter followers. These phones will be sent challenges by the restaurant, which can be completed by posting to Instagram or Twitter. They are also capable of phoning Taco Bell HQ. You know, just for a chat.

Nivea Men signs Jamie Redknapp up for Facebook campaign
Soccer pundit Jamie Redknapp stars in Nivea Men’s latest Facebook campaign, appearing in a fictional show named ‘Redknapp’s Grassroots Round Up’. The programme takes the form of humorous, scathing reviews of amateur soccer, into which Facebook users can insert pictures of their friends, while selecting particular insults.

‘No make up selfies’ create Cancer charity windfall
As you may well already know, a number of selfies appeared on Facebook this week, taken by women without makeup, in aid of Cancer Research. Two separate Guardian articles discussed the key issues that the meme highlighted: the first pointing out thehuge windfall that the campaign had produced for a worthwhile charity, the second arguing that this only came about after it was initially ousted as an empty gesture.

The effect of Turkey’s Twitter ban
The Turkish government banned citizens from using Twitter last week, in an attempt to prevent the spread of dissent. However, users initially found straightforward routes around the ban, including a quick and easy change to a device’s DNS. In fact, data that We Are Social released to the press has shown that the ban has pushed the number of Tweets in Turkey to record numbers, as Robin Grant discussed with CNET:

The main effect so far of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s Twitter ban seems to have actually been inspiring more people to tweet. Banning Twitter is clearly a counterproductive move that will ultimately have the opposite effect to that intended. The Internet was designed to route around obstacles like PM Erdogan, and its users will continue to find ways to do so.

It appears people in Turkey are enjoying the challenge, tweeting via text message, through an anonymous VPN, by changing their DNS — and it seems even those who may have had little interest in tweeting before are now getting involved. As numerous politicians all over the world have discovered to their detriment in the past, it’s not clever to pick a fight with social media. It’s not one they’re likely to win.

The Budget on Twitter
The launch of the 2014 budget by the UK government saw a typically high volume of traffic on Twitter, with 150,000 mentions of #Budget2014 and 40,000 of #ToryBingo. The latter came after the government reduced the tax on bingo, which received significant negative traction when Conservative Party chairman, Grant Shapps, tweeted the below.


We Are Social’s Ed Kitchingman discussed the tweet’s impact with Ad Age:

The Conservative Party [also known as the Tory Party] must be kicking themselves… Grant Shapp’s tweet was seized on as an example of a party out of touch. Some [Members of Parliament] or commentators might laugh this off as just a storm on social, but this just shows a lack of understanding about social’s influence. One ill-considered tweet has undermined the core message.

Global Marketer Week takes place in Sydney
The WFA’s Global Marketer Week has begun, with a number of events from the likes of Google, Unilever, Diageo and adidas. We Are Social is presenting its latest research on inspiring brand stories, with a panel including senior executives from the likes of Unilever, Fiat and Kimberly Clark.