We Are Social Asia Tuesday Tune-Up #198

News
dinnie.lim

McDonald’s China proves critics wrong and wins Weibo over with grey burger buns.

103102823-modern_china_burger_3.1910x1000

When McDonald’s China revealed the grey bun last month in celebration of the Chinese national day, many scoffed at the colour that they found unappealing. This grey bun is made of a steamed flour bun commonly found in Chinese cuisine. Users on Weibo raved about their love for the grey buns, shared photos and their reviews for the mantou buns. We’ll like to say that this is a win for McDonald’s.

Facebook engineers try living life with slower connections on 2G-Tuesdays.

fb4evryphoooooooooon
To give their engineers a taste of what it is like to access Facebook on 2G connections, the social media platform is allowing staff to switch their connection to speeds. This should help the engineers understand the restrictions of a low-speed connection and design a better Facebook experience with that in mind. Facebook has previously released Facebook Lite, a version of the app that is stripped down that takes fewer resources to load and use.

 

 

New ‘Local Market’ Facebook product spotted during testing
Facebook users have spotted a potential new feature being tested, when ‘Local Market’ was said to have appeared briefly in the Facebook iPhone app. The feature, which is being tested by Facebook in Auckland, New Zealand, Melbourne and Sydney, is a more structured market place system which pulls in items being sought or sold currently within Facebook sale groups.

Facebook goes after its next billion users with new ‘Slideshow’ ad
With already half of the world using it, Facebook has its eyes on the other half. It has developed a slide show style ad product which marketers can use to target mobile only customers who just have 2G connections. After training its engineers and employees on the difficulties of 2G by introducing an initiative called ‘2G Tuesdays’, advertisers can now upload three to seven photos which then create a slideshow on Facebook as opposed to sharing video ads, which can be difficult for people with poor connections to load.

Coca-Cola and Netflix have already tested the format, which is now available worldwide. Facebook will look to use this product in countries like India, Indonesia and Kenya (where the ‘next billion’ most likely reside) in the hope of picking up more $$$. Figures show that nearly half of its ad revenue currently comes from the U.S and Canada, despite only 17% of its daily users coming from there.

Facebook introduces detailed targeting
After scoring an ‘A’ last week for its targeting capabilities, Facebook has taken it up one more notch again with detailed targeting for ads which enables marketers to combine demographics, interests, behaviours and categories.

A new notifications tab is set to spice up Facebook’s… notifying
The Facebook notification tab is set to become less of a generic list of birthdays and comment alerts from your mum and more of a ‘you-centric-newsfeed’. Yes, you’re right, that does sound worse than what we’ve currently got, but Facebook has promised that the new notification tab will suck in some of the best widgets from the Facebook sidebar on desktop. Also, if you have your location history enabled you’ll be able to see information on local popular events, weather updates, cinema times and nearby places to eat and drink linking to reviews.

Instagram builds its own version of Snapchat Live Stories
Following in the footsteps of Snapchat and Twitter, Instagram is now offering curated content streams for popular events, the most recent being Halloween. Users in the U.S. had a prompt on Saturday evening to “Watch Halloween’s Best Videos” as curated by Instagram staff. By bringing popular event content together in one place, it also gives brands an opportunity to squeeze in on the act through sponsorship.

20151031-instagram-halloween

Live sports updates are being tested in Facebook messenger
The company that wants to be everything to everyone strikes again and this time it’s trying to steal the thunder of Twitter when it comes to live sports updates. Facebook is now letting some users in the U.S. subscribe to Major League Baseball World Series scores and highlights that will then pop up within your Messenger chats if you so wish such horrors to befall you. One user said he was having a lovely chat with his friend on Messenger, at 8:58PM with approximately 50% battery, about the New York Mets and the Kansas City Royals game when he received the below notification. #FacebookKNOWS

This-prompt-popped-up-in-Messenger-when-a-user-was-chatting-with-a-friend-about-the-Mets-Royals-game

Q3: What’s going on at Twitter?
Twitter’s quarterly earnings report has revealed a few interesting nuggets of information regarding the company’s health. Its business growth continues to outpace its user growth, with it not adding as many users as it even was three months ago. To try and remedy thisTwitter will be unveiling a new World Series ad campaign to promote its much hyped Moments live event section this week.

Twitter currently targets ads to people even when they aren’t logged into the site, but it’s now looking to take this one step further by growing revenue from ads it sells on third party sites and apps. Although people are interacting more than ever with Twitter ads, the company now faces the problem of making less money per interaction. It also seems that the model of selling ads based on their ability to generate likes and retweets is fast becoming outdated, with Facebook now offering marketers ads which are orientated around business objectives like driving product sales as opposed to likes and shares.

Snapchat adds slow-mo, fast-forward and rewind video filters
Snapchat is desperate for people to keep coming back for snaps and to view ads (which is how they make their money), which is why it has introduced a new suite of tools to edit your content.

snapchat-filters-gif

You can now use speed modifiers which let you add slow motion, fast-forward, or rewind effects to your videos or if you fancy, all three together for some real high quality lolz (do ‘the kids’ even use lol anymore?).

snapchat-video-filters

Another little bit of inside Snapchat goss – they’re also adding 3D Touch capability for the iPhone 6S and 6S+, so you can strong tap for quickly adding new friends or sending a snap.

And the award for 1st Snapchat sponsored lens & Discover channel goes to…
The first sponsored Snapchat lens has landed and it’s been bought by Twentieth Century Fox to promote The Peanuts Movie. This lens is suggested to anyone who takes a Snapchat selfie for a short period of time (seeing as the ad has been reported to be worth approx $750,000 per day – definitely NOT peanuts) and when you select it, Peanuts characters will be overlaid onto your picture, while the theme tune plays and “an endless stream of candy corn” spews forth from your mouth. H’okaaaay!

The first branded Snapchat Discover channel is James Bond’s ‘Spectre’. Live for just 24 hours, it’s filled with interviews and behind the scenes footage.

And it’s gone down with the fans like a chilled martini after you’ve just shimmied your way along the entire length of a gondola’s wire with a man lobbing hats lined with razor blades at you, only to be greeted by another man who has jagged metal spikes for teeth at the other end. Yes, very well.

Target’s new website helps trick-or-treaters find candy gold mines
Trick or treating just got technological thanks to Target who have created Treatster, a website which lets people find the best places in their neighbourhood for great trick or treat booty and avoid apples etc. Bleurgh! Sadomasochists can also add their own homes, if they think they think they can handle the resultant stampedes.

treaster2 (1)

Treatster also ties in with Target’s YouTube activity called The Candy Carnival, which lets users explore cobwebbed rooms in 360 by tilting and angling their phones.

How big brands tackled the Rugby World Cup
Brands are always quick to jump onto sporting events as they draw such mass attention and a lot of user conversation. Here’s a quick overview of how two main sponsors, Mastercard and Heineken fared, as well as non-sponsor, Guinness.

Heineken has been reported to have consistent levels of social media engagement throughout the tournament down to their on-going content series ‘The Heineken Rugby Studio’, hosted by former England captain Will Carling. Fans were also encouraged to tweet questions in for the stars of the tournament, which kept people engaged over longer periods of time.

Mastercard had a surprise viral hit when a fan claimed he was busted by his girlfriend for lying about going to the Australia V England game when he was caught in one of their photos. Their nifty community management grabbed headlines.

Reply

Due to not being an official sponsor, Guinness had to take a bit more of an inexplicit route to their content but through adversity had some great reactive moments, including the below, produced following the shock Japan win.

It also ran a video series seeded on social featuring rugby heroes such as Jonny Wilkinson.