We Are Social Asia Midweek Mashup #138

zahirah.taha

LINE’s user-generated stickers received US$12 million in sales
Earlier this year, LINE allowed users to create and register their own stickers. Since going live in mid-April, over 1.7 million sticker sets have been created and within three and a half months, have generated almost US$12 million (SGD$1.5 million) in sales revenue.

WeChat driving change in China’s app ecosystem
China’s app ecosystem is fast expanding, as consumers increasingly spend on apps. Notably, China was ranked the third largest contributor to iOS revenue. Junde Yu, Asia-Pacific Vice-President of app-ranking firm App Annie, noted that the key driver of this change is WeChat. With 438 million users actively using the platform to interact with other users and even play games, WeChat has been responsible for this behavioural change in Chinese mobile users.

‘Twitter for voice’ app Bubbly sold to Indian mobile services firm
Amidst the speculation of the future of Bubbly, the company has announced that it has been acquired by an India-based mobile company, Altruist Technologies. Bubbly is intended to be used alongside Altruist’s one-to-one messaging platforms and will be cross-promoted and its resources shared. However, even with the deal, Bubbly will remain an independent business.

Chat Apps Continue to Grow
Yesterday, WhatsApp’s CEO Jan Koum tweeted that the service now had an impressive 600,000,000 monthly active users and is continuing to grow at an astounding pace – gaining more than 9 new users every second. Other chat apps such as WeChat, LINE, Kakaotalk, Tango and Viber also appear to be increasing monthly active users. For more information, you can read our blog post on the subject.

Facebook Cracks Down on “Click-Baiting”
Facebook is cracking down on “click-baiting” headlines. They’re the headlines that encourage people to ‘click to see more’, without giving away much information about what they will actually see. In an attempt to give users a better experience on the platform, Facebook will weed out these stories that many feel are clogging up their News Feed.

Screen Shot 2014-08-26 at 16.14.16

There was also an interesting second update from the platform, regarding sharing links in posts. Facebook announced yesterday that links that are shared by inserting them in the caption of a photo won’t do as well as those displayed in the link format (which appears when you paste a link while drafting a post).

Facebook Relaxes News Feed Ad Frequency Limits
Facebook has adjusted its advertising policy to show ads more frequently in the News Feed. a spokesperson from Facebook explains:

We will not show more ads; rather, we are updating the spacing between ads, and relaxing some of the parameters around insertions of ads from the same advertiser.

Now, users may see the same ad twice a day; previously, the limit was one. Similarly, two News Feed ads may be served daily to users who haven’t liked the Facebook Page of the brand in question (again, up from one previously). The aspect that remains seemingly unchanged is the daily limit of four News Feed ads that can be shown to people who have liked a Page.

Screen Shot 2014-08-26 at 12.18.15

Instagram introduces Hyperlapse
Today, Instagram unveiled Hyperlapse, one of the company’s first apps outside of the platform itself. This all-new standalone app allows the creation of stabilised moving time-lapse videos. The app prompts you to record a video, after which it uses clever algorithm mapping and creates an ultra-smooth, floating-through-space type effect. The idea is to imitate not only the popular hyperlapse videos created using DSLRs and thousands of still frames, but also the cinematic motion tracking shots that appear in movies like Goodfellas and Kill Bill.

Instagram Starts Offering Essential Ad Tools
Instagram, the Facebook owned photo sharing platform, has finally made itself more ad-friendly by rolling out a suite of analytics tools. These are aimed at brands and offer various insights and analytics, including reach, impressions, engagement and the performance of paid ad campaigns.

Vine Finally Lets You Import Videos From Your Phone
Last week, the six-second video-sharing service Vine was updated to allow users to upload existing videos onto the platform; granting the wishes of many, especially marketers. The move should encourage people to use the platform more often – the absence of this feature, until now, has resulted in some users opting for Instagram instead. In addition to video import, the Vine app will also let you edit the imported video, though only on iOS versions for now.

SlideShare Axes Its Freemium Model
SlideShare, the presentation-sharing platform with 60 million users owned by LinkedIn, announced last week that it is making its PRO level features, such as analytics, free, but claims there will be no update on advertising for now.

Pinterest’s new News feature
Pinterest has updated its mobile notifications section with a new feature, “News”. This new tab gives you a snapshot of what’s up with your Facebook friends and all the different Pinners or boards you follow. You can now learn about latest projects people are collecting Pins for, or interesting brands they are following. The one thing you won’t see are Pins that people save to their secret boards – after all, they have to keep some element of mystery, don’t they?

Screen Shot 2014-08-26 at 14.11.49

Pinterest Launches A New Analytics Dashboard
Pinterest has also launched a new analytics dashboard that gives business users more insight into their Pinterest account, providing potential advertisers with a glimpse of their mobile and audience analytics for the first time. It tracks impressions, clicks, repins, and likes. Essentially, the dashboard is designed to provide a quick view into a business’ overall reach on Pinterest, and help those brands better understand how fans are interacting with their content.

Screen Shot 2014-08-26 at 16.58.47

News and Ads to Debut on Snapchat
Snapchat might expand its service to videos, news articles and ads. A new service called Snapchat Discovery which would show content and ads to Snapchat users, has been discussed with various media companies. Set to debut in November, this could be an interesting move for the startup, whose 27 million users worldwide are used to an ad-free platform – but the offering could provide Snapchat’s first revenue and demonstrate its potential value to investors.

Facebook Launches ‘Mentions Box’ Device During Emmys
The Emmys took place this weekend, and Facebook debuted the Facebook Mentions Box, an interactive device that stars could wield to answer questions from fans. It’s similar to the InstaStop Video Q&A Station that Instagram launched at the Golden Globes in January.

Screen Shot 2014-08-26 at 16.20.57

Brands out in Real-Time Force at the Emmys
And of course, brands jumped on the real-time marketing bandwagon that accompanies any major event these days. The real-time winners included Netflix, which embraced presenter Jimmy Kimmel’s mocking of Ricky Gervais’ ‘Netflix face’ with one of the best tweets of the evening.

 

However, it wasn’t all good. Mercedez Benz showed a lack of understanding of the ‘real time’ concept with this unimaginative tweet sent a full four days before the event.

 

Puma’s Twitter Hashtag Campaign Just Went Very Wrong 
Puma was caught out in spectacular fashion when Twitter pranksters hijacked their campaign. Whilst trying promoting ‘Forever Faster’, Puma asked fans to tweet their favourite Puma-wearing player to get a personalised “autograph” Twitter card. As you’d expect, things all went terribly wrong when rival fans changed their Twitter names to resemble some not so nice phrases to accompany Puma’s messages, which were tweeted back to the user. Here are some (of the tamest!) examples…

Screen Shot 2014-08-26 at 16.07.59Screen Shot 2014-08-26 at 16.08.14