Mobile more popular than TV 
A new survey by InMobi has revealed some interesting statistics about how mobile has permeated the lives of Singaporeans. 50% of respondents regarded mobile as their primary or exclusive means of accessing the Internet. 44% had discovered something new while 27% found better options via mobile advertising, and 29% found relevant products and services nearby using their mobile devices. Singaporeans also appear to be more tolerant of mobile advertising, with 71% of respondents claiming to be comfortable with mobile advertising as they are with TV or online advertisements, which is 5% higher than the global average. When it comes to making purchase decisions, 47% of Singaporean consumers who responded refer to their mobile devices before making a purchase, compared to 34% who rely on TV. Most importantly, Singaporeans seem to be very active in mobile payments, with 52% having made transactions over their mobile device, and a further 70% planning to perform mobile commerce activities this year. Perhaps mobile payments could really take off in Singapore.

How Indians access YouTube
A significant number of Indians access YouTube via their mobile devices. In particular, 29% of YouTube views in India come from mobile. This figure came from Ad:tech 2012‘s Master Class series, during which the engagement generated by YouTube videos was also shared. 63% of users search on YouTube for related videos, 57% of users watch another related video, and 52% read comments posted for the video.

China’s Internet population
According to data from CNNIC used to compile this infographic byThem, China’s Internet population is now 513 million big. 55% of China’s Internet population is male, the other 45% female, and each user spends about 2.7 hours online every day. China’s e-commerce industry is seeing tremendous growth , with 6 trillion RMB in e-commerce transactions that is growing 45% year-on-year and encompasses a total of 190 million online shoppers. 44% of Internet users shop online at least once a week. China’s Internet users are also active on social media. 50% of users have more than 1 social network profile, and 30% log into a social network at least once a day.

A marketer’s guide to Pinterest
There’s been much ado made about Pinterest for the past couple of months, but we couldn’t resist posting this lovely infographic by MDG Advertising. Its users are overwhelmingly female, 87% of its users to be precise, and the majority who are “pinning” are 35 to 44. Pinterest hit 11.7 million unique monthly US visitors in January 2012, and although its referral traffic to websites of 3.6% for the month of January pales in comparison to Facebook’s 26.4%, it has potential for growth as long as marketers’ interest in its platform as an effective network for branding and engagement with audiences is sustained.

The Oscars on Twitter
The 84th annual Academy Awards was not as tweeted about as the Grammy Awards were, but still let’s take a look at how the Twitterverse reacted. The show was tweeted about 2.05 million times throughout the 3-hour program, and peaked at 18,718 tweets per minute during Cirque du Soleil’s performance at the award ceremony. Meryl Streep received the most mentions amongst other award nominees with 74,793 tweets, and Hugo was the film most mentioned with 110,179 tweets.

How Sina Weibo is faring against Twitter worldwide
There’s no doubt that Sina Weibo is big in China – it receives 1 in every 100 Internet visits in China. How then does it fare against Twitter, which is used internationally? Resonance China charted the percentage of visits both microblogging services received in the respective countries they’re used in for December 2011, and Sina Weibo sees a higher penetration in China than Twitter in the many countries it is available in, such as US, UK, India and Brazil. Interestingly enough, Twitter sees a higher percentage of visits in Singapore, where it is receiving 0.85% of Internet visits, compared to US, which sees only 0.23%, and UK, which accounts for 0.44%. This could be due to users accessing Twitter via third-party applications such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, or perhaps through Twitter’s mobile apps.

Sina Weibo promotes social good through its charity platform
Sina Weibo has included a charity platform ‘Gong Yi‘ to its microblogging site that will allow users to ‘follow’ and donate to good causes on the site itself. The concept seems slightly similar to Facebook Causes, a social fundraising tool available to non-profits that wish to integrate donation capabilities with their online efforts. The Gong Yi homepage categorises charities into education, child assistance, medical care, animal protection, and environmental protection, and on each charity’s page is displayed a progress meter that shows how far along it is to hitting its target amount of donations, as well as a donation button. Once Gong Yi is out of its beta phase, it’ll be interesting to see whether non-profits utilise the platform given the 250 million users on Sina Weibo.

Navigating the weibo waters in China
There are plenty of figures on the number of users Sina Weibo has, but the great takeaway from this infographic by Digital Jungle is the demographic data of Sina Weibo users. Apparently, females dominate Sina Weibo – 70.2% of Sina Weibo users are female, and the other 29.8% male. The majority of users, 68% of users to be precise, are aged 18 to 25, while 32% of users spend more than 3 hours on Sina Weibo per day.

‘Occupy Obama’
For months, Google+ had been banned in China. When the firewall was mysteriously removed last week, thousands of Chinese web users flocked to President Obama’s Google+ Page, in a move dubbed Occupy Obama. Yes they can.

LiveJournal Singapore launches LJ checkouts
LiveJournal Singapore will be launching e-commerce features through its brand new LJ Checkout platform, catering specifically to the unique local ecosystem of ‘blogshops’, which are online shopping websites hosted on the LiveJournal platform itself. The suite of new features include product catalogue creation, a shopping cart system, and an online payment gateway which will see it partnering with MOLPay. Given that the 50,000 or so blogshops in Singapore generated US$72 million or S$90.25 million  in 2011, it’s no wonder LiveJournal Singapore is responding to this particular niche.

What happens on social media in 60 seconds
If you’ve ever thought that you can’t accomplish much in a single minute, think again. This infographic by Social Jumpstart shows you what happens on social media in a mere 60 seconds, and some of the figures are breathtaking indeed. 2 million videos are viewed on YouTube, 700,000 messages sent on Facebook, 25,000 stumbles on StumbleUpon (updated figures provided by a StumbleUpon representative), 7,610 searches on LinkedIn – all in the space of a minute.

Facebook announces partnership with mobile carriers to offer carrier billing
Today at Mobile World Congress, Facebook announced what could be a potentially game-changing move: it’s created an ecosystem where people can pay for things on their mobile phone bill directly through Facebook, in just three steps.

Facebook set to launch new premium ads and speed up Insights
According to a document leaked to Gigaom, Facebook plans to update its premium ads product by requiring their premium homepage ads to be in page post format.

According to Facebook, page posts significantly outperform other types of ads with 80% more chance of being remembered, a 40% increase in engagement, and a 16% increase in fan rate. These changes are expected to go into effect on Wednesday.

Facebook is also giving Insights, its analytics tool, a revamp. It is expected that they will soon show Page performance data in real-time or near real-time rather than on a 48 hour delay. This is an opportunity to give businesses the understanding necessary to drive higher ROI, which will in turn attract more brands and advertisers to the platform. According to Chad Wittman, EdgeRank Checker’s founder, making real-time Insights data available through the API “will give Page owners an opportunity to see how their Page actually lives and breathes”.

Twitter’s global takeover

Twitter now has over 500 million users just ahead of its sixth birthday. This phenomenal global growth appears to have no plans to cease, with Twopcharts predicting it will hit 600 millions users in around 108 days. On top of this, Twitter has taken yet another step in its international growth by announcing that Google’s Russian rival, Yandex, is their new real-time search partner. Yandex says it has licensed the “full feed of all public tweets” covering all languages. This is an extremely clever move for Twitter in both extending its coverage and utility beyond its home market and English.

LinkedIn launch ‘Follow Company’ button
As of today, LinkedIn have launched an embeddable ‘Follow Company’ button, which companies can add to their sites, to allow anyone to follow their company on LinkedIn. Big news for those who like to stay connected.

Google+ integrates with Google Voice, adds ‘More By’ to search results
Google have announced that Google+ will now be linked to Google Voice by bringing information from your Google+ circles into your Google Voice phone account to make it even easier for you to organise your contacts. This means it will be easier than ever to manage your callers – i.e. ‘Creepers’ go straight to voicemail. It’s another step towards Google bringing Google+ to every Google web app, indicating that Google+ is now the “new mode of usage of Google” that its leaders envisioned – at least from Google’s perspective.

Google have also recently added a new ‘More By’ link to the authorship tag in search results which when clicked, brings up a personalised search results page containing all content by the author. At the top this features information about the author from Google+ and then below lists all the blog content. This is expected to soon be populated by more social content.

Pinterest hype not backed up by the numbers
Looking at the latest research from comScore, Pinterest actually lost users in the UK in January, despite only having 300,000 users to start off with. This might burst some people’s bubbles, but Pinterest is the ultimate embodiment of the Emperor’s New Clothes – just look at the graph! As for the rest of Europe, it’s barely even registering.

PeerIndex launch reward scheme
PeerIndex – a competitor to Klout – has launched a reward scheme, called PeerPerks, which offers free products and discounts, to those they consider influential. Visitors to PeerPerks.com can choose the offer they’re interested in and then find out if they have the Klout clout to be eligible for it.

NBA All-Star game adds social media offering
Yesterday’s NBA All-Star game saw two separate social activations. First, the annual Slam Dunk contest was opened up to Twitter, with users able to vote for their favourite player – by using their surname and the hashtag #SpriteSlam.

Second, and perhaps more interestingly, they teamed up with Shaker, a virtual nightclub which lives within Facebook. This allowed them to create a site which gave fans a chance to interact, chat, watch exclusive interviews and highlights, and test each other’s NBA knowledge. The by-product of all this is that is has been dubbed the most social NBA All-Star game, ever.

Could ‘Fringe’ be saved by a hashtag?
US TV-show Fringe was threatened with cancelation – because its audience was too, um, fringe. But a clever social media campaign has reached a lot of people, suggesting that it might be saved. It’s worth reading the full story to learn about the viewers’ strategy to save the programe, and how they’ve managed to reach such a huge online audience with their campaign.

Ford crowd-source ideas for mobile innovation
Around this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Ford are looking to crowd-source answers to this question: What will communications technology in vehicles help us do in the future? The most interesting responses will be collated into a “customer vision” for mobile-vehicle interactions, and published via social media storytelling tool Storify. Users will need to focus in order to give Ford the fiesta of ideas they’re looking for.

Eurostar launch new social platform, Eurostar Live
Last week saw Eurostar launch their new social platform, Eurostar Live, with a little help from the We Are Social team in London. It brings social media commentary by the general public about Eurostar’s destinations to 363 public display screens across London and the South East.

Kellogg’s develop Totes Amazeballs cereal after Twitter suggestion
Kellogg’s developed a cereal for The Charlatans front man Tim Burgess after he announced his interest in developing a cereal to his followers on Twitter. They created Totes Amazeballs, after Burgess tweeted that he wanted to create a new super cereal which would be Rocky Road flavoured, using the hashtag #totesamazeballs.

Having seen the tweets, Kellogg’s decided to commission the idea in the singer’s honour, with the cereal ultimately containing Kellogg’s Coco Pops Rocks, marshmallows, shortbread pieces and raisins. It remains to be seen whether this was a one-off, or whether Kellogg’s will make this a serial feat.

Absolut London Instagram competition
As part of the launch of their newly-designed bottles, Absolut London are running an Instagram competition to win one of the limited edition bottles.

People like big chocolate bars
Last week Mars announced it was cutting back the size of a whole range of its products, in order to ensure none were more than 250 calories. Judging by the comments on the Snickers Facebook Page, people like big chocolate bars. Picnic.

Here’s our Five Friday Facts for the week!

Singaporeans’ online and mobile safety habits
Mobile is going to take off even further this 2012, but its upsurge is accompanied by mobile safety concerns. Even though nearly 70% of Singaporeans think using a mobile device for online transactions is faster and more convenient, 61% are worried that their financial details will be at risk if they lose their mobile device. 57% feel that it is difficult to process mobile transactions because of websites that are not mobile-enabled or take too long to load. 48% believe that mobile devices do not have sufficient security features installed as well. These mobile safety concerns will likely dictate how brands make online and mobile payments easier and safer for customers this year.

China has more than half a billion Internet users
The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) revealed that China has already hit 505 million Internet users, ensuring that nearly 40% of its citizens have access to the web. Back when we published the Social, Digital and Mobile in China report last year, China had 485 million Internet users and a penetration rate of 36%, which indicates an impressive growth within a few months.

Facebook expected to hit 1 billion users by August 2012
According to projections by digital marketing agency iCrossing, Facebook will reach its 1 billion users milestone by August this year. Strong growth in emerging markets such as India and Brazil, where Orkut used to be the top social network, will contribute to the increase in new users even as growth reaches saturation in countries like US and UK.

Google+ users in India to get free Wi-Fi access to the service
Users of Google+ in India will be able to log into the social network for free through Wi-Fi provided by O-Zone Networks. This will allow users unlimited usage of Google+ and 10 minutes of free access to YouTube per week. Access to other websites will have to be paid for, which may still be a cheaper alternative to a mobile data plan. O-Zone currently has 5,000 Wi-Fi access points across India, and aims to reach 50,000 Wi-Fi hotspots nationwide by 2013. Even as Google benefits from this move by the increased adoption and usage of Google+, this initiative will also help promote the use of Wi-Fi as mobile uptake continues in India. Currently, 59% of Indian Internet users only access the web via mobile devices, and we will definitely see this figure increase alongside the widespread availability of Wi-Fi.

Foursquare takes its check-ins to the web with ‘Explore’
Foursquare has pulled together its 1.5 million check-ins, “tens of millions” of tips, and over 500,000 lists for its new ‘Explore’ offering from its mobile application to the web. Explore is essentially a community-driven and social version of Google Maps, but with information, pictures and tips of the venue. We can’t wait to see how this takes off in 2012.

It’s just two days more before Christmas, and we are wrapping up (pun intended) with our last 5 Friday Facts post of 2011. Enjoy the long Christmas and Boxing Day weekend everyone!

Massive growth of e-commerce on Livejournal Singapore
In Singapore, Livejournal is not used just for blogging, but as a platform for online retailers as well. In particular, e-commerce in Singapore is booming on Livejournal, with 1.2 million Singaporean users and over 50,000 ‘blogshops’ that generated more than US$72 million worth of transactions in Singapore in 2011 alone. Altogether, Livejournal blogshop transactions represented around 6% of Singapore’s forecasted e-commerce volume of US$1.2 billion in 2011.

Online shopping increases by 18% in India
Almost 60% of Indians with Internet access from home or work visited an online store last month, an increase of 18% in unique visitors from the previous year. Deals and coupon sites have contributed to this increase in online shopping, with 16% having visited a coupon site. Traffic on coupon sites increased by a massive 629% from the previous year. comScore estimates suggests that all of India’s coupon sites attracted 7.6 million visitors in total in the month of November.

Increased use of smartphones for capturing images
Photo-sharing mobile applications such as Instagram, which saw its user base increase from 1 million to over 15 million users in 2011 alone, have gained immense popularity and contributed to the shift from traditional cameras to smartphones in capturing images. A study by NPD Group found that smartphones took 27% of photos in 2011, an increase of 10% from the previous year. Conversely, traditional cameras took 44%, down from 52%.

Myspace will exit Japan
Myspace plans to exit from Japan from February 1 next year, although its service will continue to be available for those that use it there. It recorded just 1.09 million users as of August 2011, compared to Facebook’s 6 million odd Japanese users, or Mixi’s 25 million registered users.

Increased use of social media by B2B marketers
B2B companies are increasingly using social media as part of their marketing mix. According to web survey company iTracks, 89% of US B2B companies were using social media marketing as of May 2011. Sagefrog Marketing Group reports that LinkedIn is the top social media platform of choice, with 58% of US B2B marketers who used social media utilising LinkedIn, compared to 50% for Facebook and 43% for Twitter.

For today’s SDMA report, we’re coming home to Singapore:

And seeing as it’s nearly Christmas, we’ve got a bonus report today too. Although Brunei Darussalam is a totally separate country to Singapore, there are many similarities in the two countries’ Social, Digital and Mobile landscapes, so we’ll explore the two of them together:

The island state of Singapore may be small – at just 710 sq km, it’s one of the smallest countries in the world – but its 5 million inhabitants enjoy one of the most advanced digital infrastructures in the world.

At 70% of the total population, Singapore has the highest penetration of smartphones in the world.

Singapore is also home to one of the most digitally native populations in the world: 97% of Singaporeans aged 15-19 use the internet on a regular basis. 80% of all Singaporean internet users access the web every single day.

Indeed, the internet appears to be fast becoming the number one medium in Singapore, with locals spending more than twice as much time using the web as they do watching TV. Nearly half of Singapore’s netizens also choose to get their TV and movie content fix via the internet.

The internet trumps print media in Singapore too, especially when it comes to the lucrative 25-34 year-old audience. At 80% penetration for this group, Facebook‘s reach is well over twice that of the Straits Times.

Social media in general play a key role in Singapore’s digital landscape, with the average local netizen spending about an hour every day on social media sites. Facebook is the clear leader, with more than half the total population maintaining a Facebook account. According to Facebook, well over half of these users check in every single day.

Games are another popular online activity amongst Singapore’s connected audiences, as any trip on the nation’s MRT subways system will attest.

Indeed, it seems Singaporeans convert every moment of ‘downtime’ into an opportunity to engage in some form of connected activity. Glance around any train carriage during rush hour, and the people watching videos or playing games on iPhones, iPads and Galaxies will invariably outnumber those not staring at a connected device. Even short escalator rides are an opportunity to watch another Youtube clip or share something via Twitter.

Although fewer reported data are available for Brunei, the digital habits of the nation’s population appear to be quite similar to Singapore’s.

Internet penetration is even higher than in Singapore, and is second only to South Korea across the whole of Asia.

Critically, Brunei has the highest rate of Social Media use in Asia, with 55% of the population maintaining a Facebook profile.

Mobile subscriptions in the country also surpass the total number of people, with smartphones again being the devices of choice.

The future hold some exciting developments for these Southeast Asian nations too; in particular, Singapore is set to enjoy widespread 4G coverage in the coming months, while other government-championed digital and social media initiatives look set to ensure Singapore is one of the world’s most connected countries.

Meanwhile, many companies are looking to Singapore’s net-savvy citizens as an ideal testbed for their latest innovations – even Facebook appears to have chosen the island state to be one of the first places to test the new Private Messaging feature for its Pages.

We fully anticipate that the next edition of this report, which we’ll publish in just a few months, will show some impressive new developments in these two countries. Stay tuned…

PS this will be our last post report before Christmas, so we’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a peaceful and relaxing festive period. We’ll be back with another report in the middle of next week.

Here are Five Friday Facts to round-off this week in social media news in Asia and across the world. Have a merry weekend everyone, it’s the last weekend to shop for Christmas gifts!

Record for most tweets per second broken
The TV screening of highly popular Japanese anime Castle in the Sky set a new record for most tweets per second with 25,088 tweets per second earlier this month. It surpassed the previous record of nearly 9,000 tweets per second following the announcement of Beyonce’s pregnancy. This is testament to Twitter’s popularity in Japan, which has an estimated 10,000 million Japanese users.

Fashion-focused social network
Singapore-based Clozette, a fashion-focused social network, is partnering with Glam Media Japan to launch a Japanese version of its site. Clozette is now seeing around 85,000 monthly unique visitors and 750,000 page views, up from 80,000 monthly unique visitors and 500,000 page views back in September. It’s great to see a niche social network from Singapore grow and expand into the region.

How new ‘e-tailers’ are discovered in China
How does social come into play with e-commerce? 42.71% of Chinese consumers discover new online retailers, or ‘e-tailers’, via Taobao, 27.51% through online advertising and 18.22% through friends. Apparently, search and word-of-mouth (not necessarily online) are still important factors. Surprisingly, 11.18% of Chinese consumers discover new e-tailers through Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) as compared to only 3.14% via social networking. Perhaps we will see a change in these figures as social commerce takes off.

Consumers not turning to social media for local business information
In America, the Internet is the number one source people turn to for information on local restaurants and businesses, followed by newspapers and word-of-mouth. 51% of American adults use the Internet to look for news and information about local restaurants, bars and clubs. Surprisingly, only 3% turn to social networking sites, as compared to the 38% who perform search engine queries.

Marketers stumped by measurement challenges
A survey conducted by voice-based marketing automation platform Ifbyphone found that 82% of marketing executives surveyed expect every campaign to be measured. Yet, only 26% think they can effectively measure Return on Investment (ROI) for social media marketing. Of the various tools used to measure marketing campaigns, only 30% of respondents used social media monitoring tools. These challenges with data analytics and tools similarly resound in our post on how marketers are still struggling with social.

Are you a social media enthusiast? Do you believe that social brand communications are the future? Do you want to help shape that future? Then read on…

Since we opened in Asia less than 3 months ago, we’ve been quickly expanding our activities around the region, and we’re now looking to hire the next wave of Social Stars for our Singapore office.

So, if you’d like the chance to join an amazing global team that’s helping to build one of the world’s most exciting companies, now’s your chance!

We’re happy to hear from anyone who considers themself a social media enthusiast, but we have some specific needs right now, so we’d especially like to hear from you if:

• You’re a native speaker of at least one Asian language. We’re particularly interested in Mandarin, Cantonese, Bahasa Indonesia, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese.
• You have experience in a marketing communications discipline in at least one Asian country. If you’ve worked in PR, digital marketing or advertising in Asia, even better.
• You’re sociable and outgoing, and you love to share your enthusiasm for social media with other people. Critically, you also know how to explain social media ideas and strategies so that everyone can understand them and believe in them.

Our most immediate needs are for a seasoned Account Director (7+ years experience) and an Account Manager (4+ years experience), but we’ll welcome applications from people at any level.

You can send us your CV by email, but the easiest way to grab our attention is – unsurprisingly – through social media.

We’re active across a lot of different social channels too, so get inventive – just because you’re applying for a job doesn’t mean you need to restrict your activities to LinkedIn! And as with all things social, a targeted, personalised approach will likely be the most persuasive.

Please note that we don’t deal with recruitment agencies – we firmly believe that it’s only those that have the initiative to seek us out, or that shine brightly enough for us to approach them, who are the right people to join our team.