Singapore turns to social media for travel & food products
Nielsen recently released their annual global social media report, which showed that social media is playing a bigger role in influencing the purchasing decisions of Singaporeans when it comes to travel and food. 68% of Singaporeans turned to social media when choosing a restaurant. More than two-thirds also read online reviews such as blogs when it came to food and beverage products. Singaporeans are known for being foodies and given that the nation is a food paradise, this trend comes as no surprise. Also, 67% said they would choose travel products based on recommendations that are shared online. At least 30% of Singaporeans post comments online about brands every week. Most impressive is how Singapore has the highest penetration of social media users via mobile phones in the world, with 70% of Singaporean social media users logging on to the platforms via their mobile phones - 23% higher than the global average of 47%.  While the top three categories conversed about in Singapore are F&B, travel and entertainment sectors, in Southeast Asia as a whole, entertainment, electronics and clothing were the top three categories that were most influenced by social media.

Most Indians are ignorant about privacy on social media
A study conducted by IIT-Delhi revealed that 75% of the participants had never read the privacy policy on any website that they interacted with. 40% of the participants said they will not save or share personal information via emails. The survey observed that most people were concerned about their financial privacy but not so much their social media privacy. More than 70% have not read the privacy policy of a page before sharing their personal information such as on social media platforms. The survey studied the behaviour of 10,427 people to analyse the security and privacy aspects of complex networked systems like Facebook and Twitter. The study clearly pointed to the fact that people were not informed of privacy laws and much education is needed in this area.

Line gains popularity in Thailand
Mobile messaging apps such as WeChat, KaKao Talk and now Line are posing a real threat to Facebook in Asia.  Line, a Japanese Whatsapp rival just announced that it has surpassed 10 million downloads in Thailand. The app has more than 82 million downloads worldwide. Thailand is Facebook’s 17th largest market with 17.9 million users, and with a bulk of the Thai population becoming heavy users of mobile messaging apps, there is a real challenge for Facebook to grow any further in similar markets.This is why Facebook needs to get more competitive in the messaging space. Despite being the market leader in social media in Asia, Facebook is bound to lose out to these emerging players if it does not continue to seek opportunities to grow in the mobile realm.

“Too many updates” poses the biggest social danger for brands
A study by SocialVibe has found that consumers ‘unfollow’ brand pages on social media platforms simply because there are too many updates from the page. 1 in 3 American social media users ended their social connection with a brand due to this reason. A key finding was that 22% of respondents said the brand’s content and values were different from their original perception. This is increasingly becoming a concern for brands as well – to ensure that the content they post reflects accurately what the brand truly stands for.

Convergence of TV and social networking in Canada
Canadian TV viewers are becoming mini ambassadors of their favourite TV shows. According to a Q2 survey from Solutions Research, 3 out of 10 internet users considered themselves a “social TV viewer”.  Contrary to popular belief that Twitter is more famous as a go-to platform whilst watching TV, people posted more comments on Facebook. In Canada, Facebook has a 61% reach whilst Twitter only has 25% reach. However, 15% said that they watched a TV show after being prompted by a tweet. This is a trend that the industry is watching to see grow in 2013 as TV shows get increasingly integrated with social media platforms, especially hashtag interactions, in most scenarios.

How much do Chinese social media users value their privacy?
Privacy is a key concern for many social media users around the world, so it was interesting to review the statistics presented in a recent Nielsen survey of Chinese social media users. The results revealed that 38% of Chinese users create profiles with real names on social networking sites while only 23% and 13% do so on microblogs and location-based services respectively. 23% of microblog users posted personal updates frequently whilst 19% of social networking users and 15% of location-based service users did so. In terms of friend requests, microblog users were the most approachable with 63% accepting friend requests while only 59% do so on social networking sites and 48% for location-based services. The data seems to indicate that users tend to utilise social networks for real-life relationships whilst microblogs were used for more casual and open communication with fellow social media users.

How are Chinese netizens using social media?
Statistics gathered in a (different) recent Nielsen survey showed that Chinese netizens used a variety of social media platforms to fulfill their varied needs. With the only exception being the ubiquitous microblog that seemed to be used for almost all aspects of their social media life, social networks were the next most popular platforms, albeit with a strong slant towards the social and fun aspects of their online lives.

How are Sri Lanka’s Top 100 brands using social media?
Statistics gathered in a recent study of social media usage by top brands in Sri Lanka showed that 78.59% of the country’s internet users had Facebook accounts, putting the country at 74th place in a ranking of the Top 100 Facebook countries with a userbase of 1,395,960. The demographics trend younger in Sri Lanka, with 18-24 year-olds forming the largest age group with 572,344 users, followed by 25-34 year olds. 68% of Sri Lankan Facebook users were male and 32% female.

The study showed that 88 of the Top 100 brands had official websites while 5 had sites that were under construction and the remaining 7 had no web presence at all. Examining the home pages of the 88 brands, the study showed that 27 had a Facebook icon, 14 had a Twitter icon, 10 had a YouTube icon, 6 had a Google+ icon, 5 had a Flickr icon, 2 had a LinkedIn icon and only 1 had a Foursquare icon.

The study also showed that there were brands that had a Facebook page but didn’t have a Facebook icon on their home page indicating a lack of integration of social media sharing buttons. An awful pity considering Facebook seems to the social networking platform of choice for Sri Lanka’s increasingly wired population. We’ll be following up with a much more detailed report on Sri Lanka’s social, digital and mobile landscape in the next few weeks as part of our on-going #SDMW series of reports.

More users follow retailers on Pinterest than other social networks
Social commerce is growing with an increasing number of marketers using the power of social media to influence online purchases. Pinterest was the social media darling for marketers registering a userbase of 23.4 million in the US in July 2012, which equated to about 10% of all internet users.

However, user demographics are highly important for all marketers so a study was done to show the age distribution of users in the US. More than 60% of US Pinterest users were aged 35 and above with an average age of 40.1 while 79% of them were female. A study in March 2012 showed that users followed 9.3 retailers on Pinterest versus 8.5 on Twitter or 6.9 on Facebook.

Pinterest was also more influential than Facebook or Twitter in influencing purchases made by US female social media users. The click-through rate resulting in a purchase for Pinterest was estimated at 59% in May 2012. This is significant for retailers as although Pinterest user numbers are significantly smaller than Facebook or Twitter, their users were more valuable from a social commerce standpoint with higher average spend and a higher propensity to share their finds.

Social Media Penetration in the Middle East and Africa
Social networks have been making waves in online sharing mindsets in traditionally reserved cultures such as the Middle East and Africa.

Social networking is on the rise in these regions especially amongst the younger and well-educated segments of the population that access these networks frequently via mobile phones. eMarketer forecasts social network penetration in the Middle East and Africa region at 70.2% or 144.3 million users for 2012.

Facebook is particularly popular in the region, largely due to greater ease of access via a low-bandwidth version that works well on 2G phones. eMarketer estimates Facebook penetration in the region to reach 117.8 million users in 2012.

Picture-perfect social commerce
Asian consumers in Singapore and Hong Kong are flocking to niche social networks Pinterest and Instagram in droves but what’s really making retailers sit up and notice is the rate at which consumers’ are spending after visiting these sites. Researchers found that Singapore-based users visit both international and local social commerce sites whilst Hong Kong users visit global and Chinese e-commerce sites after surfing Pinterest and Instagram. It’s interesting to note that whilst Facebook drove 47% of traffic to Instagram in the US, 33% in Australia and 22% in Singapore, the largest source of Instagram traffic in Singapore came from Twitter at 42%.

More Asian consumers make purchases online weekly
A Nielson study of more than 28,000 ecommerce consumers in 56 countries uncovered that 62% of Asian consumers made online purchases on a weekly basis. This is higher than the global average of 52%. A quick glance at the chart below revealed an interesting statistic; it appears that 81% of Asian consumers provide feedback about a grocery category using social media on a weekly basis.

How will Facebook’s purchase affect Instagram in China?
With Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram on track for completion, there’s a risk that the latter will be blocked in mainland China. This will certainly bring Instagram’s growth of 100,000 downloads per week within China to a screeching halt. That would be a pity especially since the cross-posting functionality offered by Instagram puts it on the path to phenomenal growth in China, especially since it’s one of a handful of applications that supports posting to Sina Weibo (over 350 million registered users) in addition to Twitter and Facebook. Here are some numbers to ruminate over: Instagram has over  80 million registered users and saw more than 4 billion photos uploaded globally since its launch in October 2010. More than 50,000 Sina Weibo users signed up and 100,000 photos were shared to Weibo from Instagram since March 2012. Consider too the number of pictures uploaded to Instagram with China-related hashtags: 120,000 photos with the hashtag #Beijing, 125,000 with the hashtag #Shanghai, and 440,000 with the hashtag #China.

Social media risk management
Social media is a double-edged sword. When well-managed, it can be a powerful tool to propel your brand or product to international success and recognition as it allows brands to connect with consumers virtually seamlessly. Unfortunately the reverse is true in a crisis. Recent surveys reveal that social media is ranked as one of the top 5 risk factors to corporate performance. Here’s how social media measures up in a rundown of risks: 41% of US executives surveyed said global economic environment was a risk, 32% found government spending and budgets risky, 30% felt regulatory changes were a risk, and 27% said social media was a risk. It is significant to note that social media risk tops the list after broader economic and regulatory concerns. As for the top platforms in the rapidly expanding social media world with the largest potential to damage a brand, the top 3 were Facebook, which 35% of marketers considered presented a significant risk, 25% for Twitter, and 15% for YouTube and other video-sharing sites.

In a study of the types of risk social media posed to brands, 66% of respondents to Altimeter’s survey said reputational damage to the brand was a critical or significant risk. Release of confidential information was the next biggest concern with 32% of respondents citing it as a significant or critical risk.

Age in the time of social media
Death may be the great equalizer of men but the Internet and social media has likewise levelled information barriers for many users around the world. The sheer magnitude of the number of social media users are but one part of the story; demographics such as age, gender and income levels are significant factors for consideration in targeted marketing. Dispelling the notion that social media is the domain of the very young, studies have shown that the average age of a social media user in the US is just under 37. Here’s how the top social media platforms stack up in terms of users aged 35 and above: 55% of Twitter users are 35 and above, 63% on Pinterest, 65% on Facebook, and 79% on LinkedIn. Interestingly, the average age of Facebook users has increased in the past 2 years whilst the reverse is true for Twitter.

Sina Weibo officially implements ‘user contracts’
We previously wrote about Chinese microblogging service Sina Weibo‘s new ‘user contracts’ that seek to further control and censor users’ posts through the creation of a user committee that will enforce the terms of the contract and mediate any issues. This new scheme has gone live and will apparently be carried out in the form of a points system. Weibo users will be given a total of 80 points each, and will have points docked off for breaching the terms of the contract. Accounts that have been depleted of all 80 points can be subjected to deletion by Sina. At the moment, there is still no sign of the points system being implemented, since there are no points detailed on user profiles as yet. Many Sina Weibo users also still seem oblivious to these changes, and will most likely be largely unaffected by this scheme. 

Your Facebook profile photo is determined by your culture?
A new study reveals that the Facebook profile photo you choose is likely a reflection of your culture more so than anything else. Research Digest points to a study by psychologists in the USA which shows that Facebook users in the US and Taiwan have a distinctly different approach to choosing their profile photos. 200 Facebook profiles of users based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the National Taiwan University in Taipei were chosen, where half the users in Taiwan were US citizens, and half those in Illinois were Taiwanese. It was discovered that Facebook users originally from Taiwan were more likely to have a zoomed-out picture, where they were seen against a background context. In contrast, users from the US were more likely to have a picture of their face in close-up. The second study observed the Facebook profiles of 312 students at three US universities in California and Texas, and three Asian universities in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, which yielded the same conclusion. Although this is nothing conclusive, it does suggest that one’s culture influences the act of self-presentation, even on social networks like Facebook. Companies therefore have to be more aware of the cultural nuances of how people in different regions use social media, as this would affect the way they engage their audiences online.

The most social retail brands in India
A study by social media management infrastructure platform Simplify360 looked into how retail brands were using social media in India, and determined that Pizza Hut is the most social retail brand in India. The brand is popular with teens and influences both male and female social media users, and received a large share of positive reviews with 71.3% of all comments that mention the brand on social media platforms channeling positive sentiments, and only 4.45% of negative brand mentions. Dabur, the fourth largest FMCG Company in India, is second on the list and also received more positive than negative mentions on social media, but Indian food products corporation Brittania did not fare as well, with 59.21% positive brand mentions and 13.5% negative mentions. Rounding off the top 10 are Amul, McDonald’s, Big Bazaar, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Parle and Domino’s, which shows an equal number of homegrown and foreign brands making up the top 10 most social retail brands in India. For more information on how these brands fared, here’s Simplify360′s slideshare presentation.

Smartphone habits of users in India
eBay‘s India Mobile Commerce Survey revealed how mobile users in India used their smartphones. Around 94% of respondents log on to the web with their smartphones, while 80% of respondents said they were “always on” the mobile Internet. Another 84% of contributors often use mobile Internet at home, 66% do so when at work, and 55% while waiting for friends. The social, local, mobile opportunities for brands in India are also particularly high, with 65% of respondents locating bricks-and-mortar stores on their phone, while 57% researched brands, 55% attempted to track down special offers and 48% checked product availability on their mobile devices. In particular, 57% of respondents had used their mobile devices to look at prices online before going to a mall or a physical retail store.

Mobile users don’t want to receive social marketing messages
The Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA) Mobile Marketing Council surveyed some 1,200 UK mobile consumers about how they felt about social media marketing, and around 35% believe that brands should not have a mobile social media presence. A further 31% said that they actively dislike the idea of communicating with brands via social media, while 44% of users said that marketing on mobile social media was “too invasive”. 62% also said that they did not enjoy reading updates or comments from brands, which begs the question why they followed or ‘Liked’ the brand in the first place. Even though there is a disparity between what consumers say and do, where 23% of those surveyed claim to be happy interacting with brands on mobile social media when a larger proportion of 43% likely do it, this does signal to marketers that they can’t afford to be ‘pushing’ advertising messages on mobile social media.

Nearly 9 of 10 buyers look at reviews before making a purchase
A new survey from Reevoo delved into the way we react to recommendations and how much we are influenced by our friends online. More then half of respondents said friends’ recommendations were influential, closely followed by consumer reviews (48%), advertising (24%) and advice from sales assistants (22%).

One very interesting stat comes from the rather large 88% of consumers who ‘sometimes or always’ consult a review before making a purchase, and with 63% of those spoken to more likely to make a purchase from a site that has user reviews.

Twitter the most popular social media platform for the FTSE 100
A fact that has remained unchanged for some time now, Twitter remains the most popular for the top FTSE 100 companies to stay social, with 69 companies having an official account compared to 63 in 2011.

The research from CorpComms Magazine also shows that one in ten FTSE 100 members are actively engaging on Pinterest, while YouTube is the fastest growing platform in terms of popularity. Facebook has also seen an increase to 47 members having a presence on the network, compared with 33 in 2011. Google+ is gaining momentum with 40% of FTSE companies with a profile.

Facebook releases its own photo app
Facebook revealed its simply named ‘Facebook Camera’ app on Thursday, something that it appears to have developed independently of Instagram, which lets users experience a photo-only version of Facebook and adds 15 filters and cropping and straightening tools directly in the app, marking Facebook’s first foray into photo editing.

Facebook testing regional filters for Pages, post reach data, newsfeed games
Facebook is also now testing region-specific Pages so that the Page’s content can be customised depending on fans’ location whilst maintaining a single number of Likes.

Facebook is now allowing Page admins to see post reach data directly on their posts, making it easier for brands to see which posts are more engaging.

And Facebook is now letting users play game demos without leaving their news feed. The addition comes as part of Facebook’s goal to improve game discovery on its network, in a “try-before-you-buy” type of approach.

New Google+ Android app
Another update on the Google+ side is one that should put a smile on Android device owners’ faces, with an updated Google+ app now available on the platform. This follows the release of the new iOS app at the start of the month and includes a new photo-first interface – echoing Facebook’s app move this week. The app also allows its users to create and use “Hangouts”, edit and +1 posts.

Google+ enhances search results for brands
A new addition from Google now sees Google+ within its search engine results. Previously search results would show a mixture of Google+ recommendations on the top right. Now for some brand related searches, the results come with only the brands Google+ page displayed.

<

How Google+ impacts SEO performance
Econsultancy’s Kevin Gibbons has been researching the impact of Google+ on organic search and has written a post testing Google’s own theory that “on average, search ads with annotations have a 5-10% uplift in click through rate and the AdWords Social Extension helps you to show more of them”.

Using Soft32.com’s Google+ page as an example, he set some tests and his results were rather interesting. He concludes that while +1′s are actually currently having a negative impact on click through rates, brands with a strong Google+ profile are seeing growth in organic traffic (especially in the last six months) and finally that a strong social footprint is more likely to future proof SEO – not a quick fix.

British Airways helps Brits home via Facebook with Olympic theme
Airline British Airways is to launch a competition for its Facebook fans, giving away 240 flights to bring people home for the Olympics. Fans can nominate friends and family who will also get a ticket to the Games thrown in. Winners can be from one of 20 selected international destinations, including Sydney, Moscow and LA.

Nominators are limited to those in the UK and nominations are all via Facebook. BA is also offering 50 free flights to family and friends of Team GB athletes.

Foursquare launches Olympic Day Badge
It was bound to happen really and to be honest it is quite a nice tag-on to the Olympics social presence. Foursquare has announced that it has partnered with the Olympics to release an Olympics Day Badge.

The badge can be unlocked by those that follow the games and check-in at two sports-related venues between now and Olympic Day (June 23rd). Tips have been left at the venues from the Olympics and the scheme is aiming to encourage users to Get Fit in the lead up to the games.

London Olympics protesters suspended from Twitter
An “Official Olympic Protestors” group, overseen by Space Hijackers, has had their twitter account suspended due to a trademark complaint from the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. As the Space Hijackers so eloquently put it themselves:

Twitter, the beacon of free speech which so vocally lent its support to the Arab Spring did, of course, what everyone expected and immediately curtailed to the interests of big money and business. We, The Official Protesters, were immediately locked out of our account, losing access to thousands of followers, in a move designed to silence our dissent.

This is certainly a troubling development from the social network and it has been criticised for the controversial move. We Are Social’s Global MD, Robin Grant, commented:

Twitter has a proud history of being a conduit for political protest, and we all remember the parody @BPGlobalPR account that was allowed to build an audience of 150,000 followers despite breaking BP’s trademarks during the Deepwater Horizon crisis.

More recently Twitter stood up for its users by challenging a US Court order to release one user’s data. But in this instance Twitter has been inconsistent with its previous position and let its users down by taking this politically motivated action.

House Beautiful integrates Pinterest from its print magazine
Home design magazine, House Beautiful, has made a rather clever addition to its latest edition, via Pinterest. The publication is letting users post photos from its “Kitchen of the Month” article in the magazine on their Pinterest boards using an app. The apps include the House Beautiful Connect app for iOS and the Digimarc Discover app for iOS and Android.

The magazine is using Pinterest-enabled watermarks on the special section to aid readers to upload direct to their ‘pinboards’. This is certainly a growing market and a great way to link online presence with real-world print editions. One magazine, Real Simple Magazine, has accumulated over 100,000 followers via Pinterest and says it has double the referral traffic from Pinterest than it gets from Facebook and Twitter combined.

Kylie Minogue fans take to Twitter to unlock video
Last week a new video from Kylie Minogue was unlocked by her fans using the social network Twitter. Fans needed to generate 25,000 #KylieTimeBomb tweets in oder to reveal the song.

At its peak, the campaign was generating 10 tweets per second making it a trending topic in just six minutes. Once the number of tweets was reached the song was made available on iTunes and Spotify.

How Dove used Sina Weibo for its social media campaign
For last year’s Chinese Valentine’s Day on August 6, Dove promoted its chocolate gift set in China through a social media campaign on Sina Weibo. To bring to life the idea of leveraging on Dove’s heart-shaped gift box as a way to express love, Dove brought in Ma Jin, an industrial artist, who wished to build a carriage decorated with Dove’s heart-shaped tin boxes, and which he managed to do through donations of these tin boxes by users on Weibo. The campaign generated 47,683 retweets, 34,328 comments, 850,000 click through social network traffic to Ma Jin’s Weibo page, 3.3 million unique impressions on major social networks, and a 226% increase in Dove’s chocolate gift set sales during the Chinese Valentine’s Day period last year. This activity even resulted in a search trend for “carriage boy.”

Search becomes social in China
China has begun making search engines more social as Baidu, the country’s largest online search player, announced that it has begun indexing real-time results from popular microblogging service Sina Weibo. Baidu now prominently displays real-time news and trending content from Sina Weibo in its search results, and also includes related content from three other microblog services including Tencent Weibo. Results from microblogs are shown at the top of the results page, and are indicated as results that have been taken from these social sites. Zhang Dongcheng, an executive assistant at Baidu, believes this change will bring more relevant search results to users.

We process billions of search queries on a daily basis, and many of those queries are related to the real-time information found on microblog posts. With this deal between Baidu and Sina Weibo, Baidu has completed its integration of high-quality content from China’s four leading microblog platforms.

Instagram adds support for Asian social networks, hits 25 Million Users
Instagram has updated its popular photo-sharing app, which now supports Chinese microblogging service Sina Weibo and Japanese social network Mixi. Instagram has also hit the 25 Million user mark, with 10 million fans joining the network since Christmas. Unfortunately, it’s still yet to be available on Android.

Japanese mobile calling and messaging app hits 20 million downloads
Korean Internet firm Naver’s mobile calling and messaging application Line, which was designed and developed in Japan, has hit the milestone of 20 million downloads worldwide 8 months after its launch, of which 12 million downloads were made outside of Japan. Line sees one million new downloads worldwide each week, and has achieved 5 million downloads in February alone. In addition to sending instant messages , group chats and sharing emoticons, which are functionalities provided by Whatsapp, Line allows voice calls to be made as well. Naver is currently developing PC, Mac and tablet versions of its mobile app, which may see it competing against the likes of Skype, and hopes to reach 100 million by the end of this year.

Top brands on social media in India
According to the findings of NM Incite’s Social Media Brand Equity Ranking (SMBER) index, Samsung mobile is the most popular brand on social media platforms in India in terms of consumers’ top-of-mind on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and other online sites. Ford India came in second, and enjoys high positive sentiments compared to other auto brands, and also receives positive response from consumers on social media in terms of its after-sale services. Maruti Suzuki, a subsidiary company of Japanese automaker Suzuki Motor Corporation, ranks third, while Nike and Flipkart, an e-commerce company, rank fourth and fifth respectively. The SMBER index covers social media buzz of 400 brands in India from the period of 1st January to 31st December 2011.

Mobile payment through Visa-certified NFC-enabled smartphones
Many have touted mobile payments as a trend that will take off in the near future, but without support from hardware manufacturers it’s unlikely to gain much traction. We may get to see this happen soon as Visa has certified the Samsung Galaxy S II, LG Optimus NET NFC, BlackBerry Bold 9900, BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry Curve 9360 and BlackBerry Curve 9380 to utilise its new Visa payWave technology. This will definitely help to encourage the adoption of NFC payments and services through mobile devices. By approving the NFC controller that mobile vendors are using in their devices, Visa ensures that a customer’s details are securely authenticated using the secure element on the device without being compromised. We’ll have to wait and see which banks or financial institutions will step up to the plate to offer an application for these Visa-certified NFC-enabled smartphones.

The decline of the media industry
Since we’re in social media, it seems pretty app to talk about this infographic featured on The Next Web that illustrates the decline of traditional media, even as social media is increasingly incorporated as a large part of brands’ marketing and communication tools. Even though traditional forms of media such as print publications and TV are not going to disappear anytime soon, it is still important to note that 41% of people who read a newspaper do so online, compared to 31% who read print newspapers. This signals a shift in where more of your brand’s marketing dollars should go to even as they continue being split amongst several different media.

Social media to take 19.5% of marketing budgets
February’s findings from the CMO survey reveal that social media spending as a percentage of marketing budgets is set to increase from 7.4% to 10.8% over the next 12 months, with a predicted increase up to 19.5% over the next 5 years:

Are brands ignoring Facebook’s interactive potential?
Consulting firm A.T Kearney analysed conversations that took place on Facebook between 50 top brands and their fans. Findings saw that in 2010, 91% of the top 50 brands’ Facebook pages directed users to a one way communication page, and this figure increased in 2011 to 94%.

Additionally, 56% of those brands did not respond to a single customer comment on their Facebook page in 2011; the same percentage of non-responses as in 2010. In other words, a woefully large proportion of brands aren’t interacting as much as they could or should…

Privacy Management on Social Networks
The Pew Research Centre have found that social networking users are becoming more savvy and in control of actively managing their privacy, with 58% of users restricting access to their profiles. The findings, compared to data from 2009, reveal a 7% increase on both the deletion of friends and comments, and found that 37% of users actively remove their names from photos they are tagged in.

Television, commercials and Facebook engagement
Buddy Media has analysed a sample of 44 Super Bowl commercials and 34 associated Facebook Pages. Brands who integrated social media into their Super Bowl ads had the highest level of increased engagement, with a 61% higher growth rate than brands who chose not to reference their presence on Facebook.

Interestingly, fan growth for brands featuring celebrities in their ads was 2.6x higher than average:

Brands who interacted on Facebook about the Super Bowl during time of play, saw a 60% increase in their engagement levels. Similar findings occured with The Oscars, where updates sent shortly before or after the Academy Awards saw an increase in levels of interactions – 2 times higher than posts mentioning The Oscars at other times.

Facebook’s major updates last week
If you haven’t heard, last week Facebook released timeline for pages and a slew of other major changes. Robin has outlined the top ten changes you need to know about, and we’ve also shared our experience of creating a Facebook timeline for a brand. We highly recommend you have a read.

In other updates, Facebook questions now appear in users mobile newsfeeds and Product Manager Jeff Kanter has revealed that upcoming changes will allow page owners to assign different levels of privileges to admins. Kanter explained that pages will offer five levels of admin access, including ‘full access’, ‘publishing-only access’, and ‘insights access’.

Facebook’s Disaster Message Board
Facebook have been testing a feature in Japan called ‘The Disaster Message Board’. It allows users to notify others they or their friends are safe during or after a disaster, by clicking the ‘mark safe’ button. A ‘safe’ tag will be added to the users profile, letting friends and family know they are in no harm. Facebook have said the new feature, still in testing, will not be a permanent placement, but instead become visible when disasters or emergencies occur.

Promoted Tweets are now on mobile
Twitters most recent changes allow for mobile users to see Promoted Products as they do on Twitter.com, with promoted Tweets appearing in their timeline and promoted accounts listed in ‘Who to Follow’.

As user spend less time on Google+ the network rolls out new features
Comscore have revealed that, despite Google+ hitting 90million users last month, people are spending less and less time on the site. Down from 4.8 minutes in December and 5.1 minutes in November, American users have averaged a significantly lower 3.3 minutes on the site in January. Google+ continue to add new features - this week to hang outs, adding a range of ‘diverse’ special effects aimed at encouraging more users to use video chat.

20 Million Gaga Followers
Not content with breaking records in the charts, Lady Gaga has become the first Twitter user to break the 20million followers mark. Racing ahead of the competition (Katy Perry is stuck on 15.7 million whilst Britney Spears is lagging behind with just 13.5 million), Gaga’s main threat is Justin Bieber – with 18 million followers. Gaga claims all Tweets are her own, which possibly heightens her appeal – take note Miss Spears.

Tesco Virtual Fitting Room
The big news this week, was our campaign for Tesco to promote their new virtual 3D fitting room. Emily Shamma, director of Tesco online clothing, said:

We Are Social has really got under the skin of how women discuss fashion online, and built a campaign that will encourage them to try out this new technology by integrating it into their existing social behaviour.

Pampers live webstream TV on Facebook
Pampers UK & Ireland brought their live ‘Sleep WebTV Show’ to their 90,000 Facebook fans, in what could be a Facebook first. The live show ran a question and answers session with specialist Wendy Dean, who instantly answered fans submitted queries on encouraging a baby’s good nights sleep.

Domino’s Pizza ‘Tweet for Treats’
Aiming to boost lunchtime trade, today saw Domino Pizza encouraging fans to Tweet them with the hash-tag #Letsdolunch. The incentive? Each Tweet received between 9am-11am saw 0.01p knocked off a Pepperoni Pizza, which consumers could then buy between midday and 3pm.

KFC’s Facebook party
KFC Australia’s Facebook competition “Goodest Gets Together” gave it’s fans the opportunity to party – with 100 of the winners’ Facebook friends. The competition ran as part of the wider KFC ‘Goodification’ campaign, where fans respond with equally grammatically incorrect responses, including ‘gooder’, ‘gooderer’ and ‘goodest’ – all of which could work in KFC’s favour if they become synonymous with the brand. Winner Liz Daly hosted a party funded by the fast food chain, who flew friends from all around the world to her special event.

Coca-Cola Australia losses community spirit
A social experiment left its followers bubbling up with insults, as Coca-Cola Australia invited its Facebook fans to “Add a word to the person above you to create a happy story!” With more than 700 responses, the fans engaged with a flurry of insults and obscenities, often about each other. Coca-Cola responded by deleting comments they deemed ‘inappropriate’.

Brad Keselowski gains 100,000 followers in less than 2 hours
Want to gain 100,000 Twitter followers in less than two hours? Nascar Driver Brad Keselowski did so after fellow driver, Juan Pablo Montoya, crashed into a safety vehicle mid-race at Daytona 500.  The collision caused a fire ball and the race was halted, giving Keselowski the perfect opportunity to share a Twitpic of the event, to his 85,000 followers. Two hours later, the driver had a following of 185,000, who he actively updated about the progress of the race.  When the race resumed, it was Keselowski turn to take an unfortunate crash- but of course, he didn’t fail to keep his followers updated “Nothing we could do there…never saw the wreck till we were windshield deep. #DAYTONA500″

#RIPGreggJevin
Fuelled by comedian Michael Legge’s tweet “Sad to say that Gregg Jevin, a man I just made up, has died #RIPGreggJevin”, Twitter saw a wave of tributes, as other comedians and popular publications added their humorous contributions, pushing #RIPGreggJevin to the top of Twitter trends.