We Are Social’s Monday Mashup #254

Mashup
nick.mulligan

Pay your friends through Facebook
Facebook has added free, friend-to-friend payments via its Messenger app. Certain Facebook users (currently in the US only) can add a Visa/Mastercard debit card to gain access to a $ button, by which they can transfer money. The launch was announced in the below video, featuring one Steve Davis (though sadly not the snooker legend).

Facebook to beef up Messenger
Inspired by the likes of WeChat and Line, Facebook is planning to expand its Messenger app into a platform that does more than facilitate conversation. The first step is finding ways for third parties to build on Messenger, though we’ll be expecting further moves in the future.

Tencent profit rises by 50%
Tencent, the Chinese internet giant that owns WeChat, posted net profit of $941m for Q4 2014, up 50% year-on-year. Total revenue hit $3.37bn, a 24% rise over the same period and largely attributed to mobile games and advertising.

Rules for posting on WeChat
WeChat has released 10 ‘commandments’ for posting to its news feed, known as Moments. One of these in particular has caused censorship controversy, as it forbids:

…dissemination of content that is opposed to the basic principles of China’s Constitution, socialist system, national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The remaining nine are more straightforward: thou shalt not infringe, be erotic, be violent, gamble, scam, organize crime, counterfeit, false advertise or make empty promises.

YouTube replaces Annotations with Cards
YouTube is replacing ‘Annotations’, which allow creators to add clickable overlay to videos, with a new feature: ‘Cards’. The updated system benefits from mobile optimisation and a new visual style; cards will appear to the right-hand-side of the video, and can include different images/text depending on which card is used. The six announced thus far are: Merchandise, Fundraising, Video, Playlist, Associated Website and Fan Funding.

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LinkedIn acquires Careerify
LinkedIn has purchased Careerify, a startup that creates software to aid the hiring process. Careerify uses connections across social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook) to automatically discover potential ‘recommendations’ for an open position. As LinkedIn looks to use data to create connections between users and potential jobs, the move could prove very useful.

Jameson lauds the shot for St. Patrick’s Day
Last week was St. Patrick’s Day, in case you’ve forgotten (for whatever reason). Jameson Irish Whiskey used #LongLivetheShot as the basis for a multidimensional social campaign during and after the event, involving a feature called ‘Shots Eye View’ that asked for pictures through the lens of a whiskey glass, videos that celebrated bartenders and geotargeted location-specific Facebook ads.

Red or brown? Heinz and We Are Social settle the debate
Heinz and We Are Social are determined to find the answer to the age old question: Tomato Ketchup or HP Sauce? The FMCG brand is pitting two of its products against one another in a content-led campaign that includes propaganda from both sides, driving to a vote on a dedicated microsite.

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Brands get in on March Madness
As fans of college basketball are well aware, March Madness is upon us. Last week saw a number of reactive responses to shock wins for Georgia State and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, while Acura has created an entire campaign around the event, dubbed ‘March Memeness’.

Tinder bot promotes sci-fi AI film
Ex Machina, a sci-fi film about artificial intelligence, has been using Tinder as part of its promotion. Users who match with ‘Ava’, whose profile picture shows the film’s star, Alicia Vikander, end up conversing with a bot that asks a series of odd questions. She then says ‘you’ve passed my test’ and links to an Instagram account for the film. Alan Turing, eat your heart out.

Ava Tinder bot

You are dead center of the single greatest scientific event in the history of man. #ExMachina

A video posted by AVA (@meetava) on