We Are Social's Monday Mashup #114
News
News
Twitter beat Facebook in Q1 advertising performance
According to a study of 45 billion ad impressions on Twitter and Facebook in Q1 2012, Twitter gets considerably higher CPMs than Facebook. The main difference between ads on Twitter and Facebook are that almost all Twitter ads appear in user’s streams, whereas Facebook ads appear to the side of the user’s page, perhaps this is no surprise and it underlines why Facebook have been recently pushing their ‘Featured Stories’ ads.
However, another recent study shows that Facebook’s average CPM has risen by 43% over the last quarter.
Remember though, what advertisers want is lower, not higher CPMs, and the accompanying news that the average cost per fan rose by 43% in the same time period is jut as unwelcome.
Facebook’s Timeline to turn into MySpace?
The introduction of Facebook’s timeline has offered users many positive changes, however, Piotr Łój who works for a Polish graphic design company has highlighted what could be described as a significant negative: animated GIFs now display properly, complete with anoying animations, harking back to the old days of MySpace. We wonder how long it will be before Facebook changes track on this.
Facebook users tagging their location more
According to a presentation by Facebook product manager, Josh Williams, around a quarter of all users include location information in their updates every month, and they do so an average of 10 times each a month. With their geo-coding and place editing API now open to third-party developers (including those at Instagram), expect this number to rise significantly.
Facebook introduces school-specific Groups
Facebook’s ‘Groups for schools’ allow users with school email addresses to join online communities related to their place of study. This new feature will give students the opportunity to share documents with one another whilst also communicating with class mates. Not all schools are eligible for this yet, but once they are, individual classes, sports teams and clubs will enable users to join their relevant groups with the possibility to download and share documents. Although this was already happening unofficially, it will give students more structure to their Groups.
The open question for us here at We Are Social is whether this is a precursor of a larger roll-out to companies and other organisations.
Facebook’s profile photos get suspiciciously larger
Google+ updated their site to allow users to include a larger photo, a move which was followed by Facebook just days later. Facebook images previously measured 130 x 125 pixels in comparison to the new 166 x 160 pixels.
Facebook users able to download their personal information archive
In addition to the personal information Facebook made available to its users in 2010, according to a post made on the Facebook Public Policy European Page, you will now be able to ‘Download your information’ and look through all friend requests you’ve made, IP addresses you’ve logged in from as well as a copy of all posts, images, private chat conversations and similar activity you have participated in via your profile.
Facebook purchase Tagtiles
After having bought mobile sharing app Instagram, Facebook has made a smaller purchase: the Tagtile team and their assets. This mobile-based customer loyalty management startup, is described as ‘helping local businesses identify and engage with customers’.
With Facebook seeming to be establishing a strong-base of mobile-minded ideas, Tagtile, a hardware device that allows individuals to earn rewards after tapping their smartphone against the Tagtile Cube, have said they will not currently be taking on any new customers.
Instagram hits 40 million users
Instagram, the photo sharing app that was bought by Facebook last week for $1 billion, has had 10 million downloads in just 10 days, with only 5 million of them on Android.
Now anyone can make money from YouTube (in theory)
YouTube has extended its partner programme, now offering the opportunity for anyone to earn advertising revenue from their videos.
Google+ reaches 170m users, redesigns
Google announced last week that Google+ had reached 170 million users, and released a re-design of the site:
LinkedIn’s new company update content targeting & reporting
LinkedIn will be introducing two new features to company pages, ‘targeted updates’ and ‘follower statistics’. The first, ‘targeted updates’, will allow page admins to target their updates to specific followers based on detailed criteria, for example, industry and job function.
Follower statistics will add a new layer of reporting, with various metrics perhaps designed to persuade companies they can use LinkedIn as more of a marketing platform.
LinkedIn competitor Viadeo secures $32 million funding
Viadeo, a LinkedIn competitor, claims 1 million new members join Viadeo every month, receiving over 3 million profile views with 150,000 new connections made every day. With a new $32 million round of funding, to enable them to increase their growth across the world – especially in China – LinkedIn might not have the competition sown up just yet.
Pinterest beats Twitter and Facebook’s revenue per clicks
According to Convetro CEO Jeff Zwelling, Pinterest represented 17.4% of social media revenue for e-commerce sites in Q1 2012, up from just 1% last year, based on a measure of 40 of Zwelling’s clients sites. They project that Pinterest will stand for 40% of revenue by the end of the year, reducing Facebook’s ‘revenue drive’ to 60% from 86% a year ago.
More importantly, on a revenue per click basis, Pinterest crushes Twitter and beats Facebook by 27%.
Tumblr attempt to find money in creativity
Tumblr’s CEO and founder, David Karp, revealed to GigaOm that he hopes Tumblr will make its mark by enabling people to express themselves in a deeper way than other sites that are currently around:
We are one of the few tech companies that cares about creators. We are not trying to build a network but we’re giving people a way to express themselves. I’m hoping in the next one or two years, we will prove we are company that is bent on helping them do great.
Karp also gave a full interview to AdAge, which is interesting to both users and marketers, in relation to the future of the site.
Spotify becomes more web-friendly
Spotify, the music streaming service, has plans to spread itsself even further across the web. They are introducing a new feature that will integrate the service, via a “play button” widget, onto web pages. After downloading the Spotify software, you will be able simply press the ‘play’ button and listen for free. They’ve also teamed up with Tumblr allowing users to post songs, playlists and full albums directly to Tumblr.
They’re also introducing brand apps, with launch parters ranging from AT&T, Intel, McDonald’s and Reebok. AT&T’s “Surround Sounds,” will plots songs to the locations where they were written, recorded, played or performed, allowing users to find music by searching maps. Reebok’s app will create workout playlists, and Intel’s “Sifter” will recommends songs, bands and artists based on what users’ Facebook friends are listening to. Although there no costs to the brands to develop apps (other that spent on the development itself), Spotify obviously hopes brands will then spend advertising money with them to promote them…
TripAdvisor takes Facebook integration to new levels
TripAdvisor has been working over the past few years to create a personalised travel website whilst logged in to your Facebook account. Looking in to your likes and preferences, the site acts like a personalised travel planner by also looking in to destinations your friends have visited and where they would like to visit.
The new ‘Friend of a Friend’ feature will allow your trip to be further personalised by expanding your network to not just your friends, but their friends of theirs.
So now, when looking for a location or hotel to visit on your break, your friends opinions will appear first, followed by their friends. However, if this is not a feature you want to use, you can always opt out.
Kraft’s cheesy campaign
KRAFT Mac and Cheese is celebrating its 75th anniversary and doing so by pushing a social media campaign that the old can in fact be modern.
As the video highlights, these two older women become temporary social media managers and are asked to share their opinions on trending topics and the things people are most interested in. With the older generation becoming involved in modern day technology, the outcome is fun and innovative.
Strip for likes on Facebook? Stüssy do!
Amsterdam-based Stüssy wanted to boost the number of fans they had on their Facebook page so decided that a new approach would be able to increase them significantly – the ‘Strip for Likes’ campaign.
The idea behind the campaign was simple: the more users who liked the Page, the fewer clothes a model would wear. While the campaign is definitely innovative, it’s also demeaning, and with Facebook’s T+Cs you won’t even get to see the goods. A double negative.
Microsoft’s ‘A year in the Like’ project
Microsoft have launched a new project where users are able to see a year of their Facebook Timeline as a summarised video, complete with options such as selecting certain friends to be in it.
Smart Car gets innovative
Smart’s official Argentinean Twitter account played host to a little bit of genius. The creative tweets take you on a drive with a Smart car, which has resulted in a lot of positive attention:
Random House first publisher to use Promoted Products
Random House has become the first UK publisher to use Twitter’s in-house advertising – in this instance, a Promoted Account as well as Promoted Tweets – in their promotion of EL James new thriller Fifty Shades of Grey.
Brands try Pinterest competitions
Over the weeks ahead, we’re sure we’ll see more brands trying out Pinterest, and both Harrods and Confused.com have been running competitions this week.
Harrods are inviting consumers to design a mood board for a Jubilee themed window display for a chance to see their window display put into action. Confused.com have encouraged females to submit a picture to a Pinterest board of them in their biggest heels, as part of a ‘Driving in Heels’ campaign which highlights the danger of, surprisingly, driving in heels which are too big.
Costa’s Facebook success
Costa Coffee announced some impressive numbers last week: they doubled the numbers on their Facebook Page to half a million in the first quarter of this year. They mainly achieved this through effective News Feed optimisation, by knowing their audience – they massively ramped up how much they posted, and the advent on Timeline helped them with their image-heavy content. A case study which is worth reading – perhaps on a coffee break.
Kentucky Fried Fail
Amidst tsunami warnings in Thailand, KFC Thailand suggested people take cover – but crassly suggested they made sure to stop and pick up their favourite KFC first. Although no tsunami surfaced, KFC were forced to apologise for their misjudged post. Perhaps one they could have chickened out of…
An innovative way of dealing with a Twitter troll
After Mufadal Jiwaji insulted TV critic and author Grace Dent on Twitter last night, she responded by pointing out that she was actually a client of the PR agency Mufadal worked for.
While it’s unclear if he lost his job, his confidence will certainly be dented.