We Are Social Asia Tuesday Tuneup #188

News
dinnie.lim

YouTube Launches Creator Space in Mumbai, India
With creator studios in Los Angeles, London, New York, Tokyo, Sao Paulo and Berlin, YouTube has chosen Mumbai for its next Creator Space. This comes as no surprise as web video has been rising rapidly in popularity in India, with major creators All India Bakhod, and The Viral Fever at 1.3million and 1.1million subscribers respectively.

Naver, parent-company of LINE, launches Periscope-styled real-time live-streaming app, V, for celebrities
There is an increasing popularity of mobile live-streaming like Twitter-owned Periscope, with ten years of content watched on a daily basis. Popular messaging app LINE‘s parent company Naver has launched a social celebrity live-streaming app V.

V allows you to watch the comings and goings of your favourite celebrities, leaving comments on their past streams as well as “heart” them to let fellow fans know how you feel. A Chemi-beat (short for Chemistry Beat) also allows you to track the level of interaction you have with your favourite celebrity, this will be influenced by the time spent watching videos and live-streams. The app has been downloaded 160,000 times 24 hours after release.


The V app is available on iOS and Android.

Google and Twitter get cosy with desktop search result integration
It is now possible to view tweet feeds and hashtags on the desktop version of Google’s search results. Twitter and Google announced a new partnership in February, and Twitter integration has been available on Google’s mobile website and apps since May, but it’s nice to see the pair getting along so well with another public display of affection on all of our desktops…

Facebook overtakes Google as traffic source for news and media
Traffic analysis from Parse.ly with data from over 400 major news and media outlets, has revealed that Facebook has overtaken Google as a traffic source and bolstering the theory that search has hit a plateau while Facebook’s growth trajectory continues to head skyward.

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Facebook finally gifts pages and ads with gifs
After rolling out gifs to individual users in May, Facebook has now allowed select business pages to use the flashy graphics. It has been reported that Mark Zuckerberg has in the past held reservations about flashing banner ads in case they negatively affected user experience. I’m less bothered about flashing images and more about the constant penis enlargement ads I’m served. The user reaction to gifs will be monitored closely before a full roll-out to all businesses.

Coca-Cola’s Brazilian brand Kuat's first gif offeringCoca-Cola’s Brazilian brand Kuat’s first gif offering

Facebook is planning to spruce its events offering right up
It’s time for Facebook events to get an overhaul and new details have been confirmed by the Facebook product manager for Facebook Events, Aditya Koolwal. One main goal is to separate out public and private events more significantly. Koolwal has also revealed that the ultimate goal is for Facebook to offer users a tailored list of what’s going on in any given city at any given time. Now please excuse me, I have a ‘WORLD’S LONGEST Slip ‘N’ Slide!!!!’ to attend.

Twitter ads now being served through mobile apps
Brands can now access more users with Twitter creative, through mobile apps (that aren’t Twitter) via the Twitter Audience Platform (TAP). Macy’s, who has used the technology reported engagement rates much higher than industry benchmarks. See below how the Twitter ads appear to users. I’ll just type Twitter one more time now. Twitter.

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Twitter CFO calls for patience as stock falls below IPO price for first time
Bad times for Twitter as its stock dropped below $26 last week, the price set during its initial public offering in November 2013, against a background of ongoing concerns about a lack of growth in its user-base. One reason offered by Twitter for its trouble attracting new users is that it remains “too difficult to use” to truly reach a mass market beyond celebrities and journalists. I’ve taken it upon myself to look into the matter in depth myself. A quote from my mother: “I agree”.

Kik receives $50M cash injection from China’s Tencent
Tencent, the biggest internet company in China, who also own WeChat, is set to help Kik realise its dream of becoming the “WeChat Of The West” through a strategic partnership and a $50m investment. Kik, according to GlobalWebIndex, is currently the 4th placed messenger app amongst 16-24 year-olds in US, behind Facebbook Messenger, Snapchat and Skype. Kik plan to use the money for innovative development in the hope of taking on the the big players of the messaging world, with ambitions of taking on even Facebook Messenger.

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Old Spice get it right again by cracking tough Imgur crowd
After its ‘loony’ Instagram adventure game, those mentalist nutters at Old Spice are all aboard the banter train once again with a new batch of promoted content on Imgur. The notoriously picky users of the platform have responded well to the ‘Gif off’, with one erudite user exclaiming: “The beautiful bastards in your marketing department understand me better than any man.”.

Man from UNCLE Instagram hack brings out the secret agent in users
The Warner Brothers UK team have used Instagram to hide a secret message for users. The message is revealed by regramming the image and applying a certain filter with the chance of winning a swanky watch fit for a spy. I’d love to tell you which filter it is but if I did I would have to kill you.

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Ronald McDonald’s WLTM Tinder audience to advertise to
McDonald’s have surprised Tinder users in Australia this week after launching a competition on the dating app where users can win a trip to Thailand by swiping right when faced with the brand’s profile. With more late night trysts with sauce-covered hot chicken McNuggets than I care to mention, I’m confident for a match.

UK vlogger guidance issued followed Kim Kardashian’s banned selfie
New guidelines have been issued in the UK to vloggers after claims have been made that influencers have been put under pressure to keep commercial partnerships a secret from their fans. The new rules outline exactly what you can and can’t do within the UK advertising code and will act at the go to guide to help vloggers push back on unreasonable requests.