We Are Social Asia Tuesday Tuneup #152

Tuneup
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Tencent invests in Chinese public wifi provider
WiWide, one of the earliest entrants to the Chinese public wifi sector, has recently received RMB 300 million (US$49 million) series C funding from Tencent and Dianping as part of WeChat’s public account WiFi connection program. WeChat users would now be able to connect to a local wifi hotspot by following a business’ public WeChat account, allowing businesses to then push alerts and promotions to connected customers through WeChat.

Users with higher education and salary tend to have more WeChat contacts
A recent report by Beijing Normal University shows that the penetration rate for WeChat in Beijing and Shenzhen accounted for 51.7%. An interesting finding was that 40% of the users have only 50 WeChat contacts or less. In China, male users have more contacts than female users, and users with higher education and salary tend to have more WeChat friends.

Korean chat app Kakao Talk launches secret chat
Kakao Talk, now called Daum Kakao (after merging with one of Korea’s largest Internet portals), has rolled out a new ‘secret chat’ mode that has an end-to-end encryption feature. This is in response to the recent privacy storm of President Park Geun-hye wanting to get hold of user data. This encryption feature would ensure that all ‘secret chat’ messages would only be readable by users involved in the conversation and no data would be accessible to other parties, even Daum Kakao.

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Line Pay goes global
Messaging app Line is expanding its e-payment system, Line Pay (previously only available in Japan) to the entire world. Line Pay allows users to register a card, with which they can make purchases on the Line store and in participating offline shops.

Over half of digital display ads are never seen
According to Google research, 56.1% of all digital display ads are never seen by a human(we don’t have figures on any other life forms).

Twitter execs are selling off stock
Twitter’s top dogs sold off almost $50m in personal stock in November. The company’s CEO, Dick Costolo, sold off almost 50% and co-founder, Evan Williams, shipped out $28.7m. We don’t want to say they’re jumping ship, but all this nautical language is an excuse for a picture of the fail whale. Remember the fail whale?

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Adjustable photo filters on Twitter
Hooray for filters in all their photo-saving glory. Twitter has added ‘adjustable filters’, with an intensity slider – now the only difference between you and David Bailey is a wealth of talent and celebrity friends.

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Tumblr adds buttons from external sites
Tumblr has added some new buttons for users that post content from specific sites. Etsy gets “buy”, Artsy “browse” and Kickstarter “pledge”, while anything that comes from Do Something allows you to, errr, “do something”. Nice.

New Tumblr Buttons

Geofilters available to all Snapchatters
Snapchat has had geofilters for a while now – super special filters that show up in a specific location. Previously, they could only be created by selected partners, but now this functionality is available to everyone. Must be nearly Christmas.

G+ adds pinned posts
You can now pin posts on Google+ profiles and pages. So can the Brooklyn Nets, as you can see in the example below. As you might expect, a pinned post will appear above all others.

Google Plus Pinned Post

Toyota wants us to #BuckleUpForLife
Toyota is asking Twitter and Instagram users to upload photos with the hashtag #BuckleUpForLife, the name of a charity with which it’s working. For every picture, the car manufacturer will donate 10 car seats for children.

Build a Honda on Twitter
Remember when you could make a Mercedes on Instagram? Now you can build a Honda on Twitter. It’s an interesting trend in the automotive industry, but we imagine it’ll be a while before we see a Ferrari on Friends Reunited. Or an Audi on adult friend finder.

Honda_Twitter

Heineken will make your party better
Last Thursday, Heineken ran a campaign asking Twitter users to explain why they needed a Heineken-themed do. Tweets sent in with the hashtag #SparkMyParty were entered for the chance to win everything you need for a party: a DJ, beers and, of course, balloons.

Stella buys Instagram ads
Stella Artois has become the first beer brand to purchase Instagram ads, thinking that we may all be planning a merry Christmas. Here are a couple of the shots.

Stella Instagram 1

Stella Instagram 2

Celebrate advent on Instagram
Too old for a chocolate advent calendar? No, you’re never too old, but if you will be such a Scrooge about it, there’s an online version you can try with ASOS. Using #Instaadvent1 through #Instaadvent24, the fashion retailer is running a daily advent-themed competition in the build up to Christmas.

ASOS Instagram advent

Ted Baker wants to help Santa take an Elfie
Don’t you hate it when you want to take an Elfie, but all your elves are missing? Well so does Ted Baker. It’s created a ‘choose your own adventure’ game on Instagram, where you can find the missing elves. You might even win a prize.

Brands on Black Friday
Lots of brands got involved with Black Friday, as you might imagine. There’s a roundup of some of the campaigns here. Amazon allowed Twitter users to ‘tweet to unwrap’ early deals, Kohl’s asked trivia questions with a $500 gift card prize and Target requested #Salefies from those who didn’t get trampled in the carnage.

Brands tweet about Peter Pan Live
NBC has plans to build a ‘live tradition’, starting with last week’s ‘Peter Pan Live’.Brands got involved with the massive televisual event.

 

 

 

Skeletor takes over Honda Twitter
Fed up of trying to conquer Grayskull, Skeletor took over Honda’s Twitter account last week. It’s gone back to normal now, but our contacts in Eternia say that he had a lovely time.