We Are Social Asia Tuesday Tuneup #183

News
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What the Fork?: Introducing China’s new social media app

The app is as irreverent as it sounds. It’s been described as “Instagram blended with WeChat and Line stickers”, and it’s just launched in China.

Users of “Fork” get to edit photos with all sorts of outrageous, anarchic stickers to desired comic effect. It’s weird, rebellious, quirky, and of course like any good social media tool, you get to share these photos with your friends. Score.

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India will have 500 million Internet users by 2017: new report

IAMAI-KPMG estimates a total of 500 million Internet users in India by 2017, up from 350 million currently. They’re attributing the jump to cheaper smartphones and more 2G subscriptions boosting Internet usage rates in the country.

Interestingly, even though India has the second highest number of Internet users in the world (after China), online penetration rate is still at 19 per cent.

Twitter removes background wallpaper from users home pages

No official reason was given for this.

Some are suggesting that this was done so Twitter would have more control of their ad display experience. For instance, if a company wanted to do a full homepage advert on Twitter, it would be able to do so now. Twitter backgrounds are currently completely blank, with “a very slight hint of blue”.


YouTube viewing time grows 60% in a year
Q2 looked good for YouTube, as overall viewing time grew 60% year-on-year. Mobile was particularly strong; the average viewing session on mobile grew 50% in the same period to 40 minutes. According to Google’s chief business officer Omid Kordestani, more people now watch YouTube on mobile than watch video on any US cable network.

Facebook is working on a virtual assistant
Facebook is developing a virtual assistant for its standalone Messenger app. The feature’s details are still under wraps, but we can expect the ability to ask real people for help with searching for products and services. Oh, and it’s being referred to internally as ‘Moneypenny’, making it the closest most Messenger users will get to being James Bond.

Facebook to create fully shoppable pages
Facebook is building ‘Shop’ pages, where users can enjoy the entire shopping experience, from discovery to purchase, within the network. We don’t know exactly what they’ll look like yet, but here’s a mock up for the impatient among you:

Facebook shop pages

Snapchat moves Discover front and centre
Snapchat has made it easier to find its Discover feature. It’s moved the content publishing service within the Stories tab, from the top right hand corner to top, front and centre (as below). So, now you can discover Discover.

Snapchat new Discover placement

‘The Power of Four’ from 20th Century Fox and We Are Social
To promote the upcoming Fantastic Four film, 20th Century Fox and We Are Social’s Singapore office have created ‘The Power of Four’. It’s a content-led Instagram campaign that asks users to work in teams of four and locate hidden visuals across each character’s feed, for the chance to win tickets to an exclusive movie screening.

The Power of Four

Pinterest and Waitrose form partnership
Waitrose has launched a Pinterest campaign dubbed #TasteOfSummer, which asks customers for input into what makes the ultimate ‘taste of summer’. Interestingly, the platform actually approached the supermarket about the campaign, as it looks to test content and introduce advertising into its business in the UK.

Waitrose Pinterest

Master baiters: rise (and fall?) of click bait

by Alex Cole in News

The Drum recently published this article by me about the advantages and disadvantages of click baiting. They’ve been kind enough to let us reproduce it in full below.

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It’s been dubbed the ’21st century headline’. Our online news feeds are littered with it. Even the Independent is doing it. That’s right, I’m talking about clickbait.

Following on from prolific ‘baiters’ like the Mail Online, Upworthy and other, less reputable, publications, the Independent has brought its clickbaiting A-game of late as it tries to gain traction in an increasingly competitive digital environment.

In the unlikely case you don’t have a clue what click baiting is, it’s basically a term to describe all those open ended, ‘you’ll never guess what happened’ headlines you see on your social media timelines.

If, like me, you have been clicking to find out the answer behind Kim Jong-un’s weight gain or what exactly JK Rowling said about Draco Malfoy that would make me feel really old, you too have been pulled in by clickbait, don’t be ashamed, it gets to the best of us.

It uses sensationalist words and frequently deceptive statements, crafted to make you desperate to know more. It compels you to click and subsequently makes you feel a little bit dirty (and more than often, disappointed) once you have.

Clickbait has obvious advantages for publishers: more traffic to your site or content, leading to more advertising revenue and better SEO. But marketers need to consider the negative consequences of attracting readers with bait.

While baiters may see a bump in traffic now, this is unlikely to last in the long term. More and more people now consume their news via social platforms, most notably Facebook. Last year, Facebook came out against the clickbaiters, stating it didn’t want its users to suffer at the hands of spammy stories that “drown out content from friends and pages that people really care about”.

According to Facebook, 80 per cent of its users say they prefer headlines that help them decide whether an article is worth reading and as such, the platform’s algorithm penalises the headlines that don’t. This is particularly relevant now that Facebook hosts native video content; a lot of clickbait directs users to videos, something Facebook would much rather its users watch in their News Feeds.

Larger publishers like the Indy will suffer less from Facebook clickbait penalisation than its smaller counterparts. The real hit for the publication will come from loss of credibility; to me, some of the baits feel like the publishing equivalent of David Cameron’s “Call me Dave”. It’s unnatural  –  not expected from a quality newspaper.

Publishers’ reputations are built on their integrity and clickbaiting has long been associated with the way into poor content. The Independent may be doing itself some favours in web traffic numbers right now, but in the long term, is its aim really to become the next Mail Online or Upworthy? I know there’s an argument for ‘adapt or die’, but surely not if you have to lose your identity along the way.

And, from a purely observational point of view, it seems like those bemoaning the baiting by far outweigh the occasional fan sharing one of ‘those’ links. The existence of publications like ClickHole confirms the growing awareness of the tactics, if nothing else.

For now, the Independent continues to try to draw readers towards its ‘snackable’ online content, whilst users try and stop themselves from clicking, and subsequently sigh with disappointment after watching a video they’ve seen already on one of their social channels.

Putting personal opinion aside, I wait with ‘baited’ breath to discover whether this change in tactic will prove to be a master stroke by the Independent, following in the Mail Online’s footsteps by appealing to a non-traditional audience or finding itself alienating just about everyone.