We Are Social’s Midweek Mashup #228
LINE Corporation, the company best known for its messaging app, Line, is contemplating a dual initial public listing in Tokyo and New York City this summer, according to reports from the International Financing Review and the Wall Street Journal. In 2014, company wanted to prioritise growth and user engagement before holding an IPO. However, Line failed to establish an international foothold and its user growth has plateaued, now with just four Asian countries making up the bulk of its users— Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia. If Line holds an IPO, this may raise $2 billion to $3 billion and value Line at more than $5 billion.
Pay for a Q&A with celebrities on WeChat
Want to know your favourite celebrity’s secret pet peeves? Pop them the question, and pay to get their answer. Fenda is a new social question-and-answer service that runs on China’s popular messaging app, WeChat. Launched on May 15, Fenda encourages users to make money by either asking or answering questions. The answers are delivered via voice message, capped at 60 seconds. It has since attracted many Chinese celebrities, from Papi Jiang, to movie stars like Zhang Ziyi and famed sexologist Li Yinhe.
Pricing is set by the user answering the question, so it varies according to how famous that person is. Therefore, asking Li Yinhe, who may have a more niche academic following,a question will cost you US$43, but asking actress Zhang Ziyi a question would set you back almost US$500. The hook? Questions and answers are publicly available, and users only have to pay US$0.15 to listen. Only in China!
Instagram’s timeline algorithm goes live for everyone
Some 3 months ago, Instagram announced their intention to replace chronological timelines by rolling out a new algorithm that will show you posts on the timeline based on the your interactions with various accounts. The new timeline changes have gone live globally following testing by Instagram. How are you finding this new change?
Embedding timelines are now a lot simpler with Twitter’s new update
In the past, embedding Twitter timelines required some basic form of HTML and CSS knowledge, with trial-and-error methods when it comes to creating and saving widgets to Twitter accounts. With the new Twitter Publish, timelines can be published quickly and easily.
Basic customisation can also be done, be it a light/dark theme, the width and height, or customising how much detail to show in the timeline. This will go a long way in helping brands showcase their Twitter timelines on campaign micro-sites or to be shown at real-time events.