We Are Social Asia Tuesday Tuneup #170
News
News
Internet.org’s Asia rollout continues in Indonesia
Internet.org has proceeded to launch in Southeast Asia’s most populous nation Indonesia, even in the midst of poor reception in India. The Facebook-backed programme provides internet services to developing countries through a range of free apps and websites. Last week, a group of Indian companies withdrew their support for Internet.org, citing concerns over ‘net neutrality’. They were afraid this would come at the expense of local businesses.
WeChat may soon appear in BMW cars in China
Online messaging in your car is a close possibility, if you’re driving a BMW in China. BMW AG has revealed that it plans to introduce Tencent’s WeChat into its cars in the country. The carmaker says this is coming in response to consumer requests for the app, which currently boasts roughly half a billion active users a month. Ford Motor has also said that its in talks with Tencent to integrate WeChat into their cars.
Social ad spend to hit $23 billion globally
New figures from eMarketer show that advertisers will splash out a huge $23.6bn on social networks this year, a 33.5% increase on 2014. The publication estimates that, by 2017, this figure will rise to $35.98bn, or 16% of digital ad spend globally. Unsurprisingly, a lot of this investment is finding its way to Facebook. eMarketer estimates that the social giant will collect $15.5bn in ad revenues this year – that’s 65.5% of all social network ad spending worldwide.
Facebook owns four of the five largest social networks
Facebook has a huge base of users and projected Q1 2015 figures from Business Insider show quite how many, especially when taking into account the other platforms it owns. Of all social networks and messaging apps, Facebook is the largest with 1.43 billion projected monthly active users, followed by WhatsApp with 725 million. In third place is Facebook Messenger (600 million) and fifth, Instagram (300 million). In fact, WeChat is the only member of the top five that Facebook doesn’t own.
Mobile use overtakes desktop for first time
This year, time spent on mobile devices by UK adults daily will surpass that spent online via desktop and laptop computers. eMarketer estimates that UK adults will spend two hours and 26 minutes each day with mobile devices this year, up 27 minutes on 2014 and an almost fivefold increase from 2011. eMarketer calls the growth ‘vigorous’ – we’d be hard pressed to disagree.
Twitter homepage attracts logged-out users
Twitter has a new homepage, designed for those who either aren’t signed in or are not using the platform at all. Users can click one of a selection of topics to be shown popular tweets around that subject, with categories including Pop Artists, TV Shows & Stars and (of course) Cute Animals. It’s only available in the US at the moment, but expect a broader roll out soon as internet users demand an easier way to find images of puppies in knitwear.
Periscope is winning the live-streaming war
Twitter-owned Periscope is growing more quickly than its rival, Meerkat, which has actually seen a dip in its monthly active users since the start of April. Twitter’s superior resources are proving decisive, as are some potentially sneaky tactics, such as cutting off Meerkat’s access to Twitter’s social graph.
On another, possibly unrelated, note, if you google ‘Meerkat vs.’, it autocompletes with ‘cobra’ ahead of ‘Periscope’. So there you go.
Lenovo and We Are Social create #LightandSeek exhibition
Lenovo and We Are Social created a one-day-only art exhibition, powered entirely by the brand’s Yoga Tablet 2 Pro. Dubbed #LightandSeek, users were encouraged to take photos of their favourite pieces and upload them to Twitter using the hashtag. The event was accompanied by a live Instagram guide.