We Are Social Asia Tuesday TuneUp #137

News
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#icebucketchallenge goes viral around the world
A hashtag called #icebucketchallenge started trending over the weekend on social media. This tag is associated with a cool challenge, accomplished by dumping a bucket of ice water (or ice cubes) on yourself, then posting and tagging a photo of the feat on social media. Upon completion, challengers nominate 3 people to either follow suit with the challenge or donate $100 USD to the US-based ALS Association (an advocacy, care and research association for ALS).  The ALS association is aiming to utilise the ice bucket challenge to encourage people to pay attention to, or donate for those affected by the disease. There have been more than 118,000 tweets mentioning the #icebucketchallenge in the past 30 days according to Topsy. The ALS Association had subsequently raised $7.6 million in donations over the course of a two-week period–a sum that trumps last year’s $1.4 million raised in the same period.

The ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) ice bucket challenge is now taking over America, and when Mark Zuckerberg nominated Bill Gates for the challenge, he gave him 24 hours.

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Surprisingly, the #icebucketchallenge also went viral in China. The hashtag  has already ranked as the most trending topic in China in just two days. There have been 167,000 discussions and 180 million views on the #icebucketchallenge, reaching 16,000 individuals in China so far. The challenge successfully attracted a massive amount of influencers and celebrities from different industries to challenge the game as well.
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Twitter turns favourites into retweets
According to The Next Web, Twitter has been experimenting with a new feature that turns favourited tweets into retweets on mobile and web versions of the site; this feature has also started to annoy some Twitter users.  A number of users are seeing the tweets they favourited from the brands they follow or the people they follow automatically turned into retweets, and appearing on their Twitter timelines. The Next Web also mentioned that the new feature has impacted some users’ Twitter user experiences, making the users feel frustrated because the retweets are irremovable and appears permanently on their timelines. Twitter appears to be experimenting with many more different features on a regular basis, such as payment and shipping option.

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Sina Weibo grows to 157 million monthly active users 
According to Sina’s Q2 2014 report, the platform has grown to 157 million monthly active users, up by 30 percent in the past 12 months. For daily active users, Sina Weibo has reached 69.7 million. Compared with WeChat, however, Sina Weibo is still far behind WeChat’s massive MAU base of 438 million. WeChat’s dominance may have been strengthened by their recent launch of its first foreign-made game, a WeChat edition of the popular Candy Crush Saga on Android.

New Facebook tracking tool works across devices
Facebook has created a new reporting tool, which will allow advertisers to track consumers across devices. The advertiser can find out which device a user saw an ad on, and where they made a purchase. This allows them to discover when a mobile ad led to a desktop sale, or vice versa. The tool places trackers on an advertiser’s sites and apps, which can measure a variety of conversion types: web views, basket adds and purchases.

Twitter releases Promoted Video beta
Twitter has launched a beta version of its Promoted Video ads, which will charge advertisers only when a user hits play. The network claims its intention is to create a richer video experience for users, but it must also have revenue generation in mind. Here’s what the ads look like on mobile.

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Twitter adds celebrity mobile features
Twitter has added two new mobile features that it hopes will facilitate conversation between celebrities. Now, verified users on both Android and iPhone can receive mobile alerts whenever another verified user follows them, while those on iPhone can also choose to view only verified users in their stream.

Fanta produces comedy series for Vine
Fanta is taking to Vine to produce a set of weekly comedy videos. Dubbed #FantaForTheFunny, the campaign will enlist three different Vine celebrities, in the hope that it will appeal to teens and young adults.

Groupon sees success on Snapchat
Groupon has launched on Snapchat. The brand’s opening gambit saw it send out a Snap promoting a deal for Wiz Khalifa tickets. They sold out in two minutes after 700 clicks, 250 screenshots and 1,000 direct messages, all resulting from that one piece of content. Another example has seen Groupon set up a competition, asking fans for their best ‘hey grill’ chat up lines, for the chance to win (you guessed it) a grill.

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AT&T’s @SummerBreak campaign spreads across social
Telecoms company, AT&T, has created a cross-platform social media campaign around ‘Summer Breaks’. This includes a set of YouTube videos, uploaded three times a week, as well as content on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Vine and Snapchat. For the latter, it has accrued almost 45,000 followers in two months, all from scratch and without the help of paid media.

AmEx produces content through design partnership
American Express has partnered with a number of artists to produce a series of social content on the theme of design. This will be posted between now and the end of the year, and it’s already producing some effective results: Instagram interactions have doubled, while Twitter favourites have increased three times over.

Brands talk shark week on social
In case you missed it, last week was shark week. Naturally, a number of brands wanted a bite (sorry) of the action. Here are some of the best examples.

 

 

 

Premier League to get tough on Vines
The Premier League is looking to clamp down on people sharing unofficial Vines. The Premier League’s director of communications, Dan Johnson, said of the move:

You can understand that fans see something, they can capture it, they can share it, but ultimately it is against the law. It’s a breach of copyright and we would discourage fans from doing it, we’re developing technologies like gif crawlers, Vine crawlers, working with Twitter to look to curtail this kind of activity.

We’ll see how successful they are. If we’re honest, we’re pretty sceptical.