we are social

Location-based services increasing in popularity
The Mobile Life Study by TNS discovered that more than 60% of users worldwide who don’t already use location-based services (LBS) want to. Currently, nearly 20% of mobile users are using LBS, with 22% using these services to find friends who are nearby, 26% using them to find restaurants and entertainment venues, 19% checking public transport schedules with LBS, and 8% using them to book a taxi. In particular, the use of LBS in developed Asia is greater than the rest of the world. In the past three months, 45% of smartphone users in developed Asia have used their phones to purchase or research for something they have bought, compared to 21% of smartphone users globally. Smartphone users from developed Asia are also more receptive towards location-based mobile advertising compared to the rest of the world. More than 30% would be interested in mobile advertising if it was related to something they were interested in, 28% wouldn’t mind if it was promoting a deal near their current location, and 25% would be interested if it was something they were already searching for. This signals the opportunities for location-based marketing that marketers can capitalise on.

LinkedIn opens office in Hong Kong
Professional networking platform LinkedIn has opened it 9th APAC office in Hong Kong to better serve its 471,000 members, with a focus on running initiatives to attract new sign-ups as well as market its various premium services such as Hiring Solutions, Marketing Solutions and Premium Subscriptions to firms. LinkedIn released a snapshot of its users in Hong Kong – “Management Consultants” is mentioned 10,853 times in users’ profile titles, ”Public Relations” is mentioned 3,812 times, while “Fashion Designers” is mentioned 958 times in Hong Kong. 

Hispanics in US more active on social media than average American
According to a recent Nielsen report, Hispanics in the US are highly active on social media. In February 2012, Hispanics increased their visits to social networks and blogs by 14% from a year ago. Compared to the average US adult Internet user, Hispanics are 25% more likely to follow a brand and 21% more likely to post links, articles, videos and websites. They are also 17% more likely to build or update a personal blog.

Increasing usage of tablet devices for purchasing decisions
A study from Local Corporation revealed that US consumers are increasing their use of tablets alongside their desktop and laptop PCs. 80% of all tablet owners surveyed said they used their tablet to research and purchase products, with 23% doing so in conjunction with using their desktop or laptop PCs. 50% of respondents used a tablet device to research products prior to a store visit, 43% use a tablet device to research products before making purchases on the computer, and 29% use a tablet device to research purchases during a store visit, a finding that should be particularly revealing to retailers who wish to better target consumers and improve their in-store experience through mobile devices. In particular, 19% of tablet users also used their mobile phones to research and make purchases.

StumbleUpon reaches 25 million users
Discovery and recommendation engine StumbleUpon hit 25 million users earlier this week, and saw a growth of about 1 million users every month since October 2011. Its active user base spend about 7 hours every month hitting the Stumble button, and around 20% of the 1.2 billion Stumbles made every month are made on mobile phones. StumbleUpon is responsible for referring more traffic to websites than any other social network in the US, and has more than 75,000 advertisers. At the moment, it has plans to create international versions of its own discovery engine as only 15% of Stumblers are currently based outside of North America, a potential development we can look forward to here in Asia.

The team here at We Are Social spends a lot of time tracking the latest developments in social media.

A large part of that investigation is designed to help us put together an accurate and up-to-date picture of social media platforms and their audiences around the world.

However, in addition to mapping out today’s social media behaviour, we also spend a lot of time thinking about what’s going to happen next – understanding how social media are likely to evolve, and identifying the next big opportunities for brands and organisations to connect with their audiences.

We’ve been working with a number of brands around the world over the past few months to explore that future, and those explorations helped inform a presentation we gave this morning at the Internet Show in Singapore.

The focus of our session was ’12 Provocations’ on the things that we believe will determine the next wave of success in social media.

It’s important to note that these aren’t ‘predictions’ in the classic sense; rather, they’re the areas we believe brands should be thinking about and bringing to life if they want to stay at the forefront of social media excellence.

Some of the underlying trends will (hopefully) sound familiar, but the key takeaways from this session were the implications for brands and marketers within these trends.

You’ll find the full context for these 12 provocations in the SlideShare deck above, but here’s a convenient overview:

1. Mobile Social
The future of social will be mobile, so marketers need to adapt their approach and content for smaller screens and slower connections.

2. SoLoMo Takes Over
With that shift to mobile, location-specific mobile platforms (SoLoMo) will move to the core of our audiences’ social media activities. As a consequence, marketers need to work out how they can bring their brands’ social promises to life wherever they have relevance.

3. Search-Social Crossover
People will increasingly turn to their social networks to get more personally relevant answers to their searches. As a result, conversations will become a central component of SEO – one reason why we believe Google is banking on Google+.

4. Social Baked-In
Social media experiences are no longer confined to host platforms. The Like, Tweet and +1 buttons are now ubiquitous across the web, and this trend towards ‘social everywhere’ functionality will only accelerate in the coming months.

5. Social CRM
There’s much more value to be earned from a conversation than there is when you simply talk at someone. As a result, brands need to shift the focus of social media activities away from an advertising mentality and into a more supportive, interactive approach.

6. Inclusive Content
People are more engaged when they are actually part of the action. As a result, brands need to explore ways to create content that features everyone in the audience, rather than simply delivering one-size-fits-all broadcast messaging.

7. Interface Innovation
The way we interact with internet-powered devices is changing all the time, and that change is accelerating. Brands need to rethink the ‘point-and-click’ paradigm of traditional web experiences, and start exploring multi-sensory social media experiences.

8. Curation and Funnelling
People are struggling to keep up with all the activity in their various social streams, and are turning to aggregation services like Flipboard and Zite to help manage that flow. However, there is currently no place on these platforms for platform-specific display advertising (e.g. Facebook banner ads) or hosted apps, so brands need to identify better ways to use core content to engage people organically.

9. Social ‘Nicheworks’
Brands are realising that huge fan bases mean little if no-one’s engaged. The savviest brands will begin to build small, highly engaged communities where they can learn more about what their audiences want, need, and desire.

10. Corporate Social Proactivity
Beyond just making great products, people expect brands to make a meaningful impact on their world. As a result, brands need to explore ways to actively build their broader communities, and use social media to celebrate these activities.

11. Influencer Measurement
A brand’s promise is much more credible when a third party endorses it. As a result, influencer activity will form a key part of brands’ social media strategies, but in order for that to be effective, we need more sophisticated and reliable ways to measure meaningful influence (beyond generic measures like reach). We fully expect to see the big monitoring companies push this area in the coming months.

12. End-to-End Measurement
Any marketer who says that they still don’t know which half of their marketing dollars is wasted is clearly not investing enough in measurement. Simple techniques like UTM tracking (for online purchase) and control group research (for offline purchase) can help reveal highly meaningful indications on the dollar value delivered by each specific social media activity.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive list, so we’d love to hear your thoughts on the trends that are shaping the future of social media too – why not let us know in the comments or via twitter?

And if you’d like a more tailored view of the implications these ‘12 provocations’ will have for your brand, just drop us an email and we’ll be happy to explore the future with you.

Chinese marketers to increase digital spend, but request accountability
A joint study by R3 and independent ad tracking company Admaster reveal that Chinese marketers intend to increase their digital spend in 2012 by 26.9%, compared to 18% in 2011. 25% of those surveyed have budgets between RMB 5 to 10 million or S$990,150 to S$1.98 million, while 6% have budgets above RMB 50 million or S$9.9 million  The focus will be on online video with a share of digital spend of more than 23%, followed by microblogs with 20% and social networks with 16%. Only 16% of the 150 companies surveyed believe that they are actually getting competitive digital media buying rates, with fewer than 40% satisfied with the reliability and quality of measurement of their campaigns. This certainly bodes well for digital agencies.

Sina Weibo launches Weibo Places
Sina Weibo has launched a new location service that will collect and arrange posts that a user has made on Sina Weibo that contains a geo-tag into a timeline that includes maps of each location. It also allows users to check-in at specific locations, or search for new places to visit which they can then mark as ‘want to visit’. The latter functionality sounds similar to what Chinese location-based app Jiepang already offers, even though Weibo Places appears to be more an aggregator tracking the history of a user’s location-based posts. In addition to the web application, Sina Weibo has also partnered with several third-party mobile applications such as photo-sharing app Tuding001.

China’s e-commerce site Tmall launches an iPhone app
China’s leading e-commerce website Tmall has launched an iPhone app, which allows users to browse and purchase items from all of its B2C brand partners and independent stores, with the addition of social functionalities such as ‘likes’ and comments. The mobile app also supports full order management, such that purchases can be tracked whilst they’re on the road. This signals the growing trend of m-commerce whereby consumers are making purchases from their phones while on-the-go, and Tmall seems to be capitalising on this with their dedicated mobile app. It’s interesting also that Tmall has decided to launch an iPhone app first while the iPad and Android versions are currently in the works, which signals the increasing popularity of the iPhone in China.

Boris Johnson joins Sina Weibo
Boris Johnson’s campaign for re-election as Mayor of London has even seen him join Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo in a bid to win over London’s Chinese community. However, Mayor Johnson certainly hasn’t quite gotten the hang of it yet.

Mobile an increasingly important media channel in Thailand
Statistics from mobile ad network InMobi reveal that mobile is an increasingly important media channel in Thailand, with 44% of mobile web users claiming that their preferred method of going online is through a mobile device. Most importantly, 75% of mobile web users are as comfortable with mobile advertising as they are with TV or online advertising. Mobile is fast becoming an important driver of consumer purchasing decisions with 38% of Thai respondents saying they have been introduced to something new via mobile advertising, while 13% have reconsidered a product because of mobile advertising. M-commerce will also be a driver of this mobile movement, with 68% of mobile web users planning to purchase a product through their mobile device over the next 12 months. Marketers clearly have an area of opportunity to better target Thai consumers through mobile advertising given their receptiveness to it.

Trust in social grows
According to Nielsen’s latest Global Trust in Advertising report, social networks and consumer-generated media continue to have a significant impact on advertising as consumers’ reliance on word-of-mouth in the decision-making process has increased significantly. The report showed that 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends above all other forms of advertising – up 18% since 2007, with trust in consumer opinions posted online up to 70%, a 15% increase in four years.

Sponsored ads on social networks, a new format included in the 2011 Nielsen survey, were found to be trusted by just 36% of consumers, underlining that a paid strategy for social networks alone is not enough.

Consumers respond to social media symbols on TV
A new survey has reinforced the idea that social media and television are a perfect match. The survey, carried out by Accenture, found that one-third of US television viewers interacted with a social network ‘after seeing a social media symbol on the TV screen’, with the Facebook ‘Like’ being the most recognised symbol. Interestingly, US television viewers are more likely to recognise QR codes than Twitter hashtags.

Facebook tests and launches a range of new features
It’s not exactly news that Facebook is focusing on mobile – witness the purchase of Instagram – but it is interesting that they’re focusing on all mobile users. Recently, they’ve launched a new ‘Facebook for every phone’ app which creates a much better mobile experience for non-smartphone users, and in good news for brands, includes the ability to vist Facebook Pages within the app. It’s a move which shows Facebook is keen on mobile domination across the market.

Facebook has implemented a ‘listen’ button on artists’ fan Pages that lets users instantly stream songs from an artist’s catalogue. The feature could help make Facebook a go-to option for people looking for new music, similar to the Myspace in its glory days, but more likely will just integrate music more strongly into the existing Facebook product.

Facebook is also testing a new “trending articles” feature to highlight social reader articles within users’ News Feeds in an attempt to drive more users to Open Graph news apps. Particularly for smaller news sites, this could have a big impact on the number of people reading their site.

In addition, Facebook has delivered “real-time” analytics to Page admins for the first time. This overdue improvement provides new abilities to help marketers measure how well a post is performing on their Pages now, rather than 48 hours later, and modify their content (and advertising spend) accordingly.

It’s an interesting move now, as over the next few weeks, Facebook will introduce more granular metrics, measuring actions other than ‘Likes’, within its ads management platform. Facebook’s product manager for Pages Insights David Baser said the measurable actions “could be anything [such as] commenting or sharing a page post, claiming an offer, or, instead of just installing an app, actually using an app or doing things within an app.” The new feature titled “Action Measurement” will appear as a column and pie chart in Facebook’s Ads Manager and will help marketers tailor ads for relevant consumers.

It seems clear that Facebook are trying as hard as they can to get existing advertisers to spend more money with them – both through letting marketers optimise the performance of their posts, and by making advertising more measurable.

Google products get the social treatment
YouTube aims to become more social and increase revenue by possibly introducing Google+ comments to the site. It could be a mutually beneficial move for Google – encouraging better quality comments on YouTube and also increased use of Google+.

In a smaller piece of news, Gmail users can expect to see recent photo and video thumbnails from Google+ when they hover over the “people” widget within their inbox.

Foursquare announces advertising platform launch
Plans for a mid-June launch for a paid-media platform have surfaced which will give Foursquare merchants the ability to promote a deal to check-in at a given place. According to the reports, Foursquare is pitching brands to become launch partners, and it’s a move which we can definitely see being of particular interest to restaurant chains.

Tumblr to overtake blogs, will introduce advertising
Tumblr looks set to overtake ‘blog’ by the end of the year in Google searches. Between the two terms, ‘blog’ is currently ahead but XKCD blogger Randall Munroe believes that ‘Tumblr’ will see more Google searches by October 12 this year.

Pinterest losing its interest
After its explosive growth in recent months, it seems Pinterest’s bubble may have burst and might now actually be losing users. Monthly active users of their Facebook app are down from 11.3 million on March 1 to just 8.3 million currently. It’s likely that the hype around the photo-sharing and curating site motivated many people to join, but have now decided that Pinterest is not their thing.

Quora and Path both raise funds and plan expansion
According to TechCrunch, Quora is set to raise between $30 – $50 million in its Series B fundraising, giving it a $400 million valuation. Co-founder Adam D’Angelo will also be investing up to $20 million of his own money along with other investors according to one source.

Location-based app Path closed its Series B funding of ”more than $30 million” with investors including Sir Richard Branson, which values it at $250 million. In his email statement, Path CEO Dave Mortin noted the investors’ commitment to building Path “for the long term” with the funding being used for “international growth and expansion as well as user adoption”. It’s unclear whether he meant they would be spending money on advertising, or just on improving the product to boost user adoption.

Klout launches Brand Pages – ‘a new twist on influence’
Klout, the influence measurement company, is now topping 12 billion API calls a month– and has launched Brand Pages to try and work more with brands. According to Klout, the newly launched Brand Pages give ‘influencers a place to be recognised and have a direct impact on the brands they care about most’.

Red Bull have teamed up with Klout for the Beta launch and are offering their top advocates the chance to win a trip to the X Games or, more likely, some merchandise. It’s good to see Klout trying something new, but what they really need to work on is their influence measurement which could do with some work.

Brands tweeting and the Olympics
If you’re working for a brand which isn’t an official Olympic sponsor, even mentioning the Olympics on social media channels could get you in hot water. While Rax Lakhani makes a fair point that it will be impossible for the IOC to keep an eye on every tweet and the rules are clearly overbearing, it’s still an unnecessary risk to break them.

It was notable in the pre-Christmas period how little variety there was on brand social media accounts, with everyone talking about Christmas and little else, so it will be interesting to see how skilled community managers perform in posting content which deflects attention away from their competitors’ Olympic sponsorship, without breaking the rules.

In other Olympic news, the IOC has launched the nicely designed ‘Athlete’s Hub’ which will bring together social media updates from different athletes. While you could just follow them all on Twitter, this is an easier way to follow the Olympic stars, with less effort for the ordinary fan. Nice.

Honda ask people to give up Pinterest – sort of
The new Honda campaign for the CR-V strikes of one where somebody has come up with a decent pun – Pintermission – and built a campaign around it. The campaign revolves around offering active pinners $500 to give up Pinterest for a day, and instead go outside and do the things they’ve been pinning about. It even features personalised invitations and persuaded a few super-users to give Pinterest up for a day.

But as Adweek neatly put it:

The campaign is nicely designed and executed, but somewhat frustrating. If the only way your brand can relate to Pinterest is by dissing it, isn’t it disingenuous to build a whole campaign around it?

Quite.

Dr Pepper’s new Facebook Connect campaign
Dr Pepper have launched a new campaign called ‘The Best Day Of High School’ which creates a bespoke video for each user by connecting it up with their Facebook profile. Considering how long Facebook Connect has been around, it’s a little underwhelming.

Air New Zealand give consumers cashback for recommendations
UK-based Air New Zealand customers can earn £50 for every Twitter, Facebook, email or blog recommendation that turns into a premium economy booking. Consumers that register for the trial can earn cashback on bookings for the premium economy seats. Although the campaign will probably show impressive numbers, it will be hard to prove it has convinced people to book who wouldn’t have otherwise.

Fulham FC attempt Foursquare Super Swarm
Before their home game against Wigan on Saturday, Fulham attempted to unlock the Super Swarm badge for all those checking-in on Foursquare. While this isn’t particularly innovative or interesting on its own when you consider there was a crowd of 20,000+ at the Cottage, Fulham also plan to introduce special offers on tickets and retail items throughout the season that you can only redeem with Foursquare.

Italian ‘blog killer’ law returns
In a quite incredible story, the Italian government is trying to pass a law so brilliantly ridiculous one could be mistaken for thinking Silvio Berlusconi was still Prime Minister.

The proposed law – which is designed to protect those libelled online – works like this:

In order to protect people from online defamation, this law states that each webmaster of whatever website must rectify within 48 hours (even if you’re a private blogger who just left for the weekend!) any page on the website itself, if somebody just tells him or her (how?) that they consider themselves wronged by that page. No discussion or reply allowed, no judge needed, and the fine for not “rectifying” within 2 days is 12,000 Euros [about S$19,693].

Nuts. In other words, if one writes a fact and anyone disputes it, the person will have to change what they’ve written. Looks like the trolls have finally won.

Google Maps loses lead in mobile mapping in China
According to Beijing-based research firm Analysys International, the Google Maps app now accounts for 25.3% of mobile client usage in China, a decline from 46.3% around the same time last year, and now second to Autonavi by a mere 0.2% in terms of the apps Chinese consumers turn to for their online mapping needs. Considering the rise of location-based social networks in China, such as location-based check-in app Jiepang and other photo-sharing apps that use geo-tagging, losing out on market share could be very disadvantageous for Google, considering its already diminished presence in China with Google search capturing a small percentage of the online search market dominated by Baidu.

Blackberry photo app PicMix on par with Instagram’s initial growth
Blackberry’s 60,000 apps in its App World may seem paltry compared to Apple’s App Store and Android marketplace Google Play, but Blackberry developers have been catching on to the photo-sharing craze as well. PicMix, an app that includes photo filters and photo-sharing functionalities, has reached 1 million users within the last two months, which its founder claims is progressing at a pace faster than Instagram in its initial stage. The app has had over 7.5 million photos uploaded by more than 1 million members thus far, with 32,000 new members signing up every day. Its user base is spread out all across the globe, with 40% of members hailing from Indonesia, 10% from Venezuela, and South Africa in third with 9%. Let’s see whether PicMix can indeed become the Instagram for Blackberry devices.

360Buy has over 40 million users
E-commerce is booming in China, with a total transaction value of 240.1 billion yuan or S$47.71 billion for the year 2011, and China’s second-largest B2C e-commerce site 360Buy.com is reaping the benefits. It has over 40 million registered users to date, and have been processing around 400,000 orders per month for the past two months. Its sales income is also increasing at a rate of about 200% per year, which may have received a boost due to its new hotel bookings and travel services additions. Judging by the current rate of growth for China’s B2C market, we don’t expect 360Buy’s growth to be slowing down anytime soon either.

Tumblr’s new ad revenue model
Having recently passed the 50 million blog mark, Tumblr announced its first foray into paid advertising at Ad Age’s Digital Conference on Wednesday. Tumblr will start offering ad units  from 2 May 2012 via the “Radar” post that appears on a Tumblr user’s dashboard, which currently features an officially curated selection of images that highlights notable or popular posts. Prior to the repacking of Radar as an ad unit, Tumblr had 15 partnerships wherein Radar was used to promote content from brands. Radar placement currently receives 120 million impressions per day from users logging into their dashboard across devices. At present, Tumblr makes money by receiving a cut from sales of custom blog themes that are sold on its platform, as well as charge users to highlight posts for their followers within their dashboards for US$1.

US online video market
Data from comScore revealed that 181 million or 83.5% of the US Internet audience watched nearly 37 billion online videos in March 2012, with the average viewer having watched 21.7 hours of online video content. Considering that the duration of the average online content video was 6.4 minutes long, each viewer could have watched up to 203 videos in a month. Google Sites, driven primarily by YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property with 146.1 million unique viewers in March, followed by Yahoo! sites with 60.6 million, VEVO with 51.3 million, Facebook.com with 45.1 million and Viacom Digital with 44.3 million. The opportunities for brands to engage with its audience through video content seem pretty great, as is targeting their audiences via video ads.

SocialBakers have just added a new report on their top Facebook pages series, this time for India:

KFC Thailand’s Facebook fail
Amidst tsunami warnings in Thailand, Kentucky Fried Chicken (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 received severe backlash for their misjudged post which read:

Let’s hurry home and follow the earthquake news. And don’t forget to order your favorite KFC menu.

KFC Thailand has since taken down the offending post and apologised on its Facebook wall.

Google+ targets Japan
We recently posted about how LinkedIn is reaching out to the Japanese market by creating a Navi site dedicated to demonstrating to Japanese users how to use LinkedIn. In a similar vein, Google+ has also created a TV commercial and dedicated Japanese site demonstrating to Japanese users how to use Google+. Google+ has previously tried to boost its visibility by linking up with Japanese super-band AKB48.

In addition, Google announced last week that Google+ had reached 170 million users, and released a re-design of the site which we posted about last week.

Pinterest-like site Mogujie’s revenue stream
While Pinterest has been in the fire for secretly profiting off users’ affiliate links, China’s Pinterest-like site Mogujie.com is having no problems with generating revenue. It has been revealed to be earning over 100,000 RMB or S$19,909 per day in ad referral clicks to Taobao, China’s largest e-commerce site. Based on its own figures, Mogujie has grown to 9.5 million registered users by the end of March, of which 2.2 million users are active daily visitors who browse through about 750,000 items on Taobao every day, and end up buying 60,000 of said items. That’s a pretty impressive referral and purchase conversion rate.

Twitter beats 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 is that almost all Twitter ads appear in users’ streams, whereas Facebook ads appear to the side of the user’s page. Perhaps this comes as no surprise and it underlines why Facebook has been recently pushing its ‘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 unwelcomed.

Financial firms prefer Twitter over Facebook
Twitter is the most popular social networking site for U.S. financial institutions. Corporate Insight‘s report revealed that at the end of 2011, 92% of financial companies tracked had a presence on Twitter, up from 51% in 2010, compared to the 88% which were on Facebook. In particular, many firms were using Twitter as a customer service tool.

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 annoying 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 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 classmates. 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 of downloading and sharing 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 wasfollowed 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 be taking on any new customers currently.

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.

Foursquare hits 20 million users
Celebrating what its users have christened 4sqDay on 16 April 2012, Foursquare announced that it has reached 20 million users who account for 2 billion check-ins, having added another 10 million new members since it hit the 10 million mark in June 2011. Users who check-in at a location yesterday would have been automatically awarded the ’4sqDay 2012′ badge, which is the second annual celebration of the semi-official Foursquare Day, first coined by its users in 2010.

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.

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 that 1 million new members join Viadeo every month, and receives 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 have to keep a closer eye on its competitor.

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 a 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 remaining logged-in to your Facebook account. Looking in to your likes and preferences, the site acts like a personalised travel planner by also looking at 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 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 of it.

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.

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.

Social media data company SocialBakers has just released a new round of infographics that reveal the top performing Facebook pages across Asia and beyond for the first quarter of 2012.

The analysis ranks pages in terms of a number of different metrics, including average engagement and response rates.

Here are are the scorecards for Singapore, Hong Kong and Pakistan:

Singapore

Hong Kong

Pakistan

Find out more at SocialBakers.

The impressively informative World of Chinese team recently released a Social Media issue of their magazine that shares some fascinating perspectives of the different online beahviours and social platforms in the world’s most populous country.

You can buy the full issue over at their website, but here’s a great 23-page preview to whet your appetite:

Active weibo users in China
There’s no doubt that China’s microblogging platform is an important source of information to Internet users in China. The number of active weibo users has since reached 249 million by the end of 2011, a 59.3% increase compared to the year before. The number of new subscribers is however gradually levelling off after the explosive growth in 2011.

How people entertain themselves online
Ipsos Global Public Affairs surveyed Internet users in 24 countries to find out how people in each country entertain themselves online. China topped all segments with 71% having downloaded and/or streamed movies, 55% having done the same with television programs, 72% with music, and 61% having played video games online. It almost appears that Chinese Internet users escape online to seek solace from the harsher realities of life. In stark contrast, only 9% of Japanese respondents have downloaded and/or streamed movies and television programs, and 24% have downloaded and/or streamed music online. This could be due to the stricter piracy laws that are implemented in Japan.

Most trusted forms of advertising
The Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising survey polled more than 28,000 respondents in 56 countries and discovered that earned media such as word-of-mouth is the most trusted form of recommendation for 92% of those surveyed. Online consumer reviews followed with 70% of global consumers surveyed indicating their trust in them. In Asia-Pacific, recommendations from friends are the most trusted. Almost half of the survey respondents trust paid media such as television, magazine and newspaper ads, but confidence in these media have declined by 24%. Nevertheless, majority of advertising spend is still allocated to traditional or paid media. Mobile phone text ads are the least trusted medium of advertising with only 29% of respondents claiming to trust ad messages they receive via SMS.

Impact of Facebook vs. Google advertising
Facebook ads have far greater reach than Google, as US$100 spent on Facebook and Google advertising will garner you 15 times more unique people reached and 35 times more exposure from just 3 times more of Google’s traffic. Time to shift advertising budgets?

Influencing moms through social media
The opportunities brands have in engaging and influencing mothers are bountiful given how much more receptive moms are to brand messaging. Performance marketing firm Performics‘s survey of nearly 3,000 active social network users uncovered that approximately 61% of moms are more likely to own a smartphone compared to other women, and are more active on social networks as well. In particular, moms are 16% more likely to visit Facebook daily than women without children. Purchase intent of moms after being recommended goods and services on social sites is also 45% higher compared to women without children. Most importantly, 75% of moms are more likely to regard information disseminated by brands on social media as trustworthy. Since mom bloggers control more than US$2 trillion worth of purchase power, these findings are extremely significant to brands.