What we find most interesting in its findings are the cultural differences that these rankings highlight: few brands achieve universal success, and there are some discoveries that seem to go against ‘popular’ marketing wisdom:

• Coca-Cola is the largest brand page in the world on Facebook, but Pepsi is a clear leader in India, Facebook’s third-largest market;
• Nokia and Blackberry are still amongst people’s favourite brands in many of the world’s most populous nations, with Indonesia, Mexico, Egypt and Turkey all demonstrating that these brands still hold huge sway around the globe;
• Categories like confectionary and technology appear to have widespread appeal, but each country demonstrates its own idiosyncrasies, and US preferences are by no means representative of the picture we see elsewhere in the world.

From this perspective, it’s clear that local attitudes and behaviour are still central to people’s preferences, and to the things they choose to engage with in social media.

Marketers looking for deeper insights into this issue may find particular value in our recent report on the ‘global vs. local’ aspect of global social media management.

Increase in daily visits to Chinese social networking sites
Social networking sites in China saw its number of active users achieve a steady growth with daily visits reaching 82 million in February 2012, a 3.57% growth compared to the month before, and a 15.78% growth from the previous year.

Japanese social networking site Mixi rumoured to be sold
According to tech blog Asiajin, founder and CEO Kenji Kasahara of Japanese social network Mixi is looking to sell his 55% majority stake in the company. Even though the speculation has been rebuffed by Mixi through its statement, it’ll be interesting to see who Mixi will be acquired by if the speculations prove to be true, and how it might be revamped to compete against the increasingly popular Facebook. As of March 2012, Mixi has exceeded 27.1 million users, and allegedly still has 15 million monthly active users, holding the lead against Facebook’s 10 million monthly active users, which makes it an attractive offer indeed.

Online video viewing in Asia
According to the Nielsen Global Multi-Screen Report, 4 out of 5 people in Asia have watched online video content in the past month, 6% higher than the global average of 74%. 40% of those surveyed watch online video content on a daily basis. In terms of daily viewership, the Phillippines leads with 41%, while Indonesia and Thailand both follow with 36%, and Vietnam with 34%. Surprisingly, only 15% of Koreans and 11% of Japanese report viewing online video content daily. In fact, 64% of those surveyed in Japan report not having viewed online video on any device in the past 30 days. This highlights to brands how they can more carefully craft their regional approaches to their audiences, perhaps by creating more video content to encourage conversations and sharing amongst their audiences in the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand.

Moreover, only 33% of digital consumers in Asia trust online video ads, while 36% claim that they only find messages delivered via online video advertisements relevant when they’re searching for product information.

One billion people use social media
According to a report from the ITU, there’s now over one billion people using social media worldwide. More interestingly, mobile is fast becoming the main way that the majority of people are using Facebook.

Use of geo-social apps grow
It’s well known that smartphone use is rising, but one of the interesting questions for a while has been whether the rising number of smartphones will see more people using geo-social apps like Foursquare.

Judging by the latest research from Pew, the answer is yes. In the last nine months, use of geo-social apps has risen by 50% to 18% of all US smartphone users. In terms of market penetration, it’s actually still quite low but it’s the next twelve months which are key for these apps. If they don’t break through now, they never will.

Over half of UK youth using Twitter
A quarterly survey of 540 young people across the UK found that 53% used Twitter in April compared to 42% at the end of 2011. It’s worth emphasising the relatively small sample size, as these figures seem markedly higher than other studies we’ve seen. It’s easier to believe their daily use figures:

Social TV becomes priority for TV channels
After 193% growth year-on-year of ‘social viewing’, TV channels are starting to view social viewing as a way to re-build live audiences. Bravo now plans social interactions in the initial concept stages, alongside other elements of the production.

Facebook changes apps ecosystem
Facebook is replacing the current Apps and Games dashboard with a new App Center feature that they will roll out over the next few weeks. The new feature will sort apps by categories and user ratings.

It’s an interesting change from a year ago, when Facebook relied on algorithmic discovery of new apps – but popularity is still incredibly important, as the best-rated apps will fly to the top of the Center. The by-product of this is that once again, ratings will be important, and developers will have a clear metric to measure their work by.

They’ve also launched a beta version of a paid app programme where users would pay to use an app – different from the previous model, where users would pay for in-app extras. In theory, it will mean there are more fun games on Facebook.

Facebook trials new ad unit, proposes changes to Privacy Policy and Groups
Facebook is also testing out a new ad unit, where individual users could pay anything from zero to $2 to have their posts promoted and stay at the top of the News Feed. Although generally this seems like a bad idea, it could have its uses – for example, letting all your friends know you’ve become a father or similar. Nonetheless, the point of Facebook’s algorithm is that it shows up users’ most important posts in the News Feed, so this ad unit is almost an admission of failure by Facebook. It will be interesting to see whether it progresses beyond its current trial.

Forbes suggested that another bit of news this week from Facebook could make them drive considerably more revenue than users paying to highlight posts: proposed changes to their Privacy Policy would allow them to target ads based on the information Facebook has about you, off-site. Expect rumours of a Facebook powered ad-network to persist, until they actually launch one.

Facebook introduces file-sharing for all groups
In a smaller update – but one that could make their usage grow considerably, especially for collaboration purposes – Facebook has (as we predicted) introduced file-sharing capabilities for all Groups.

Facebook Timeline is good for engagement, Reach Generator has slow uptake
In good news for brands, a new study has revealed that Timeline has helped to increase the lifetime of the average post by an hour and a half, and has also boosted engagement by 13%.

According to Marketing Week, Facebook’s Reach Generator is having a slow uptake, with many brands not seeing the point of the cost.

As Robin Grant, Global MD of We Are Social says in the article:

Reach Generator is a “blunt instrument” which promotes every post for a monthly fee, which can be inefficient compared to promoting just the more important stories.

Facebook finds itself faced with a media agency landscape that just isn’t geared up to take a conversational approach to marketing – it’s as if media agencies woke up to find that their media plans are based on Newtonian physics in a world where quantum theory reigns.

Quite.

Twitter comes under fire over verification process, buys RestEngine
Digital Trends carried a fascinating story about how they lost their verified tick on Twitter, solely because they stopped advertising with Twitter. It reflects very badly on Twitter – stop buying adverts and you’re suddenly cast out as a pariah. It removes any doubt that the relationship between Twitter and businesses was anything more than transactional.

Twitter’s focus on growing engagement on the site was highlighted last week when it purchased email marketer RestEngine, which TenCrunch postulates they’ll use to make their tweet digest emails more relevant. Theoretically, the digests will tempt more lapsed users to return to the site, and thereby boost engagement.

Google+ releases new iPhone app
Google has released a new iPhone app for Google+ which is designed to be more beautiful and make the stream more immersive. According to Google, the new app will create ‘a carousel of beloved memories’ and if you believe that, you’re less of a cynic than me.

One of the more salient comments I’ve heard recently was about how Google+ wasn’t a stand-alone offering, but is part of the ‘Google product’. There’s definitely some truth in this – from now on, users will be able to respond to Google+ comments directly through their Gmail notifications.

Engagement grows for brands on Google+
According to a new report, engagement with brands on Google+ is up 112% in the last three months but that’s mainly for the top 20 brands; brands who have been circled less aren’t seeing nearly the same engagement or rate of growth.

One brand which is successful on Google+ – far more than on other social media platforms – is Cadbury, and their Head of Digital gave an interesting interview explaining their strategy.

Bing makes search more social
Bing has re-designed its search engine to make it more social, with the help of a new sidebar which includes four components:

• An “ask friends” feature that lets users post a question to Facebook
• A list of “friends who might know” about the topic of a user’s query. This pulls information from users’ Facebook profiles to make suggestions based on what friends “Like”, photos they’ve added, where they’ve lived, work history, where they went to school and more.
• Suggestions of experts, enthusiasts and other “people who know” about a topic based on their public activity and authority on networks like Twitter, Quora, Foursquare, Google+ and others.
• An activity feed of real-time posts and queries, from which users can answer their friends questions and “Like” posts. This activity will simultaneously appear on Bing and Facebook.

This is very impressive stuff. Although, just like Google+, no-one actually uses Bing, so it’s hard to tell what difference this will make.

According to CNet, Facebook supremo Mark Zuckerberg gave the engineers a lot of guidance in building this, repeatedly telling them:

Don’t try to do social by building social on the side. Build it into the experience.

I’m sure I’ve said that before…

Foursquare looks to merge check-ins with coupons
Foursquare has thus far failed to drive significant revenue – but then again, it hasn’t really tried that hard to do so. Now it’s planning to through offering coupons for check-ins. The idea is that they’ll charge venues a small fee for issuing the coupons and through this, make a lot of money.

Foursquare check-ins finally link up with Facebook properly
Foursquare has also finally introduced a link-up so that Foursquare check-ins are posted to the Facebook Timeline Map. Overdue.

The Wall Street Journal is using Facebook to cover Facebook
After Facebook Timeline launched, there was a lot of reporting about how it wouldn’t help media organisations, despite social being ‘their saviour’.

Well, the Wall Street Journal is starting to disprove the comments about Timeline, launching a Facebook Page to cover Facebook’s IPO and using Timeline to tell Facebook’s story. It’s a nice idea, but as with similar ‘projects’, it’s hit the stumbling block of a lack of fans. As of today, the page has 980 fans, compared to 490,000 for the main newspaper Page. Even considering that people might read the Timeline without liking the Page, it’s basically a really good bit of journalism which isn’t being seen by anyone. They might as well have built a Facebook App…

Uniqlo launch wake up app
Uniqlo have launched a social wake up app, which changes the music it plays depending on the weather – and then shares the time, weather and temperature at the time users stopped the alarm to Facebook or Twitter.

Domino’s brings pizza ordering to Facebook
Domino’s have launched an app which allows customers in Australia and New Zealand to order their pizza directly through Facebook. It remains to be seen whether Facebook will take a slice of the revenue from each order and whether topping it all off will be some free dips.

Pay with miles run instead of money
Nike have been running a really nice campaign in Mexico: rather than paying for a new pair of trainers with money, you can bid for them with miles you’ve run in your Nike+ enabled trainers. Nifty. You might even call it a sweatshop.

Ford teams up with PeerIndex
Ford have teamed up with PeerIndex for a massive influencer campaign, where they’ll send 1,000 social media users various ‘perks’ including a hologram of their new car, the B-Max.

Cathay Pacific’s Klout perk
Cathay Pacific have launched a cool perk using Klout scores: anyone in the international terminal at San Francisco International Airport with a Klout score of 40 or higher will be allowed into the airline’s lounge, which is normally limited to Cathay’s First Class and Business Class passengers. Flying.

Made In Chelsea star in trouble for plugging freebies on Twitter
Made In Chelsea star Rosie Fortescue (yep, me neither) could be in breach of strict Consumer Protection Regulations for repeatedly plugging products on Twitter she’d received for free, without disclosing she’d received them for free.

Twitter resists demands to release Occupy tweets
Twitter is contesting a US court order ordering it to hand over the message history of one of its users, on the basis that tweets are owned by individual users, rather than the company. It’s a great way of championing freedom of speech – Twitter, I applaud you.

Smartphone usage in India
Smartphone users in India spend a total of 81 hours a month on their mobile devices, even though mobile habits differ quite distinctively between male and female users. For instance, female smartphone users spend most of their time on online apps when they use their mobile devices, whereas male users spend the majority of time on offline activities. In addition, men spend 50% more time browsing the web on their smartphones than women do, although women prefer social sites more than men. Social networking sites make up 43% of web pages visited by women, compared to just 32% for men.

Instagram in Thailand
ZocialRank has revealed that Instagram has more than 153,582 Thai users, who have uploaded just over 11 million photos which are shared across various other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Flickr. Female celebrities are the most followed personalities on Instagram in Thailand, making up 9 out of 10 of the most followed Thais on the platform. Check out ZocialRank’s infographic through this link.

Tablet device usage affecting “bricks-and-mortar” purchase habits
A survey by mobile advertising network InMobi and Mobext found that 69% of tablet owners had made purchases using these devices in the last 30 days. Nearly 10% of respondents would purchase “big ticket” items through their tablet devices, whereas only 2.9% of smartphone users would choose to do the same. An important point to note would be that over 20% of tablet early adopters claimed to have made less trips to bricks-and-mortar stores after obtaining their tablets. This signals to retailers not only the need to make their various digital properties mobile-friendly, but also to provide a different experience in both their physical stores and e-commerce platforms such that one does not necessarily cannibalise the other. As such, marketers should increasingly look at using social media to drive both offline footfall and online traffic to e-commerce sites at the same time.

How brands influence consumers
A survey by customer intelligence solutions Market Force revealed that 78% of US consumers’ purchase decisions were impacted by the posts made by companies they follow on social media. In addition, 79% of respondents “Liked” a company’s Facebook page because the business offered discounts and other incentives, 70% “Liked” businesses that post details on sales and events, and 28% do so to share their favourite things with friends. Even though offering discounts and deals is not a long-term social media strategy that brands should adopt, the findings reflect the need for a content strategy that incorporates varied content to engage their audiences on social media.

Sina Weibo’s new social ads
Sina Weibo has added social ads to its current offerings of brand ads and search ads, which will harness data from the demographic profiles of its users for more accurate ad targeting. There are two types of ads available, namely banner ads that will be displayed either at the top or bottom of the newsfeed on users’ profile pages, or promotion ads of topics, events, videos or products. Reports on ad performance will also be made available, and advertisers will be able to access information on the reach, click-through rate (CTR), engagement, earned reach and engagement, as well as quality and growth of a brand’s weibo followers through its social ads. According to Sina, nearly 100 companies have purchased social ads thus far, but the take-up rate will likely increase once brands catch wind of this new ad feature.

Sina Weibo tightens control over its users
Since admitting its failure to fully implement the real-name registration mandate for microblogs in China, Sina will introduce a new ‘user contract‘ to Sina Weibo users on May 28 that clearly seeks to further control and censor users’ posts. This initiative will see the creation of a ‘community committee’ or a neighbourhood watch of sorts involving members of the public as well as regular members recruited from Sina Weibo’s user base, who will seek to implement the terms of service. The terms have been translated by netizens and can be found here.

As Jon Russell from The Next Web points out, the terms under Article 13 are of particular concern as they point out the wide range of content that users must refrain from posting, subjected to the community committee’s discretion.

Article 13) Users have the right to publish information, but may not publish any information that:

1. Opposes the basic principles established by the constitution
2. Harms the unity, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of the nation
3. Reveals national secrets, endangers national security, or threatens the the honor or interests of the nation
4. Incites ethnic hatred or ethnic discrimination, undermines ethnic unity, or harms ethnic traditions and customs
5. Promotes evil teachings and superstitions
6. Spreads rumors, disrupts social order, and destroys societal stability
7. Promotes illicit activity, gambling, violence, or calls for the committing of crimes
8. Calls for disruption of social order through illegal gatherings, formation of organizations, protests, demonstrations, mass gatherings and assemblies
9. Has other content which is forbidden by laws, administrative regulations and national regulations.

Users who fail to comply will subsequently be subject to the following consequences.

Article 23) Processing of regulation violations includes: the processing of content and accounts.

Content processing includes: deletion, preventing reposting, disabling commenting or annotation, etc.

Account processing includes: preventing posting of weibos, forbidding following, and deletion of the account.

It remains to be seen how much different the user behaviour and content on Sina Weibo will be after these terms are implemented on May 28.

China’s mobile Internet revenue
China’s mobile Internet revenue totalled 15.87 billion yuan or S$3.13 billion in the first quarter of 2012, an increase of 167.2% from the same period last year. Mobile e-commerce contributed the largest share of 42% to the revenue, followed by mobile value-added services which include video, music, and e-reading at 41.5%, mobile games at 8.7% and mobile marketing at 7.1%. We can clearly see the emphasis on mobile marketing given the increase in number of mobile users as well as the increased sophistication in which mobile users utilise their devices, which is reflected in the increase in revenue for mobile marketing even as all other sectors see a fall from Q1 2011 to 2012.

Internet and social media penetration in Indonesia
eMarketer predicts that the number of Internet users in Indonesia will grow by 38.6% to reach 59.6 million this year, accounting for nearly a quarter of Indonesia’s total population. Similarly, the number of social network users in Indonesia is expected to continue growing by 51.6% in Indonesia to 52.1 million social network users in 2012. Currently, Indonesia has 42.27 million users on Facebook. This would rank Indonesia as the second-fastest-growing country of social network users in the world, narrowly beat out by India, which had surpassed its number of Facebook users earlier this year.

Growth of online video advertising
Emarketer predicts that the online video advertising market will grow more than 40% annually for the next three years before levelling off at a growth rate of 20%. Even so, half of this US$1.8 billion pie is divided between the two major players – Hulu and YouTube. According to comScore, Hulu recorded 1.75 billion video-ad impressions in March, which indicates a 39% year-on-year increase. Marketers are increasingly re-allocating their TV spend into online video advertising, especially since sites like YouTube have an international reach and therefore a wider audience beyond US shores. We’ll likely see this trend carry forward into the future as marketers reallocate ad spending amongst a broader mix of mediums.

Participation inequality: 1/9/90 rule no longer applies?
After carrying out an in-depth investigation into how the UK online population uses digital media, the BBC has developed a new model of digital participation: The Participation Choice. Going against accepted models, specifically the 1/9/90 rule, it suggests that participation is now the norm, claiming that 77% of the online population in the UK is now active ‘in some way’. For those wanting to know more (as well as those who remain unconvinced), a presentation on the research should be available later this week on the BBC Internet blog.

The impact of Twitter (it’s bigger than you think)
Some research from Edison suggests that Twitter is managing to reach beyond the one in ten Americans who actively use the service. The research reveals that more than four or ten Americans hear or read about tweets almost everyday in the media. With numbers that large, the importance of Twitter as a broadcast network is evident, both for brands seeking to get their message out there as well as those seeking to combat any potential social media crises.

Poor social media customer service? You just lost a sale!
A new report from American Express exploring consumer attitudes and preferences towards consumer services confirms the value of social media as a customer service tool. It found that of those who use social media to make customer service queries, 83% had chosen not to make a purchase because of a poor customer service experience. The report also found that while consumers who use social media for customer service are the most vocal in both their praise and criticism, like their offline counterparts they are much more likely to share a negative experience, telling an average of 53 other people about it.

Facebook popular with mobile users
While most already expect that mobile will play an important part in Facebook’s future fortunes, research from comScore underscores how important it is in Facebook’s present: in March, US mobile visitors spent an average of 7.35 hours on their mobile site and/or app, putting Facebook way ahead of Twitter and Foursquare.

Global social media report reveals top industries on Facebook
Socialbakers has published a report on the top 10 performing industries on Facebook and brands within each. Auto and alcohol brands came out on top for both engagement and fan growth.

Facebook finally sets a date for its IPO
Facebook shares will float on the US stock market on Friday the 18th of May, according to sources in Silicon Valley,  following a Zuckerberg-helmed roadshow that kicked off yesterday in New York. It had been expected that the founder would not attend the roadshow, instead being led by COO Sheryl Sandberg and CFO David Ebersman, but he did and initial reports suggest he came across as ‘likeable and affable’.

Another milestone for Facebook’s Instagram: 50 million users
CNet claims that Intstagram has now reached 50 million users and is adding 5 million users per week.

Facebook adds Instagam-lite functionality for feature phones
Facebook hasn’t forgotten about those of you without a smartphone, updating their Facebook for Every Phone app to provide simple photo filter options so everyone can join in the vintage-feel-fun.

Facebook makes another mobile acquisition: Glancee
In what’s arguably a blow for Foursquare, and definitely one for direct competitor and SXSW darling Highlight, Facebook has acquired location app Glancee. While Facebook has been typically quiet on its plans for the app, it fits in well with the company’s location strategy of going beyond simple check-ins toward allowing users to share their past, present and future locations.

Facebook releases mobile app data
The Facebook developer blog last week revealed the traffic it drives to mobile apps, sending 160 million visitors to mobile apps just last month (an increase of 100 million since late February). The impact of integrating Facebook functionality is revealed further by looking at the top grossing apps for mobile – 7 of the top 10 iOS and 6 of the top 10 Android apps are integrated with the platform. Facebook suggests that features like Single Sign On and Open Graph have been responsible for the phenomenal growth of apps such as iOS video sharing app Viddy, which now has more than 16 million users.

Open Graph is ‘steroids for start-ups’. Or is it?
More evidence of the impact of Facebook’s Open Graph, with the latest study looking at how Facebook helped accelerate growth for apps such as Pinterest, Viddy and Socialcam. Inside Facebook has also delved further into Viddy and Socialcam’s techniques, which seem to be pretty successful.

The risks associated with this kind of super-speed growth, and dependence on the Facebook platform, are becoming evident too, with Pinterest’s recent sharp drop in active users being put down to Facebook disabling the auto-publish function and today’s furore over the Washington Post’s and the Guardian’s decline in traffic from their social reader apps, which Martin Belam has expertly dissected.

Facebook’s new ‘action links’
Also of interest to brands, Facebook has reintroduced ‘action links’, the customisable links which provide a way for users to engage with apps more easily, increasing the viral potential of each story. Foursquare is one of the first to take advantage of the new functionality, adding a “save this place” link to check-in stories. Clicking on an action link will share a story on users Timelines. Previously, users could Like or comment on an activity or click to visit the app, but there weren’t app-specific calls to action that functioned this way.

The social (engineering) network?
Facebook’s desire to get users to share their organ donor status has come under the spotlight this week. Although some are clearly happy to sign-up  (by the end of its first day 100,000 users had registered), it does raise questions over Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for Facebook and if it will continue as a platform that connects individuals or becomes one that seeks to influence them.

Twitter personalises discovering stories
Twitter will roll out  a redesign with increased personalisation of the Discover tab in the coming weeks. It will use additional signals, such as tweets that are popular amongst people you follow, to select stories to display. The new design will also show who tweeted about particular stories, adding a social context to them.

Google+ Hangouts On Air now available to users worldwide
Originally only available to selected broadcasters, Google+ has now made its Hangouts On Air feature available to all users. If you have something to say to the world you will be able to broadcast live publicly from Google+, YouTube or a website, see viewing figures, and record and share your broadcast.

Pinterest drives more sales than Facebook
On the other hand, Pinterest’s reputation as a driver of sales continues to grow. According to jewelry retailer Bottica, Pinterest drives 10% of its sales compared to 7% from Facebook. More importantly, those customers spend twice that of Facebook users. It goes to show that people perhaps really do use Pinterest to discover new products.

Foursquare partners with OpenTable to offer dinner reservations
Foursquare have launched a function to actually make a dinner reservation through their app using OpenTable. OpenTable, an online reservations service is currently available in over 15,000 places across the US, handy for users and another incentive for restaurant owners to maintain their Foursquare presence.

LinkedIn claims B2B top spot
Research from HubSpot indicates that LinkedIn is the place to be for B2B conversions. In 2011, LinkedIn generated a visitor-to-lead conversion rate of 2.60%, on average four times higher than Twitter (0.67%) and seven times higher than Facebook (0.39%). It’s also growing faster than these two rivals but recently fell behind in monthly user activity.

Man City vs Man Utd scores a million tweets
The popularity of sporting events on Twitter continues: after the record-breaking tweet total generated by the Barcelona-Chelsea game, data from Sysomos suggests that the Manchester City vs Manchester United football match received over 1 million mentions on Twitter.

Budweiser run Zeebox dual-screen campaign for FA Cup Final
In more football news, Budweiser ran a dual-screen campaign together with Zeebox to allow users to interact with Saturday’s FA Cup Final. Most interestingly, viewers could also play a Be The Ref social game within the app, which let them enact the part of the referee or dispute decisions, and share their decisions with other friends via the app’s Facebook integration.

Nutella goes nuts over Facebook
Nutella claims that it’s Facebook ads outperformed TV in a recent campaign. Ferrero attributed 15% of sales from their Christmas campaign to Facebook, and it was also the channel that gave the highest return on investment. It’s fair to say that social media helped them spread their story.

Der Big Mäc: McDonalds Germany crowdsources burger
In celebration of it’s 40th anniversary in Germany, McDonalds will create its first crowdsourced burger. As part of the ‘Mein Burger’ campaign, fans were asked to create their own burger using an online burger-builder, name it and put it to the public’s vote. After 5 million votes were cast on over 100,000 burgers, the winner emerged as the ‘Pretzelnator’. According to McDonalds (and somewhat implausibly, considering the number of votes), 1 in 4 Germans took part in the campaign:

Baskin Robbins launches Foursquare promotion for Men In Black 3
Despite the first Men In Black movie being released over 10 years ago, marketers are hoping to cash in on the franchise’s success a third time around. One of the more interesting promotions comes in the form of a Foursquare check-in competition from Baskin Robbins, which is supported by a mobile site where consumers can register and also add Facebook check-ins or share their entries. Check-ins on either platform enter the user into a sweepstakes as well as earn them achievement badges they can share across Facebook and Twitter.

National Trust: a great British day out
The National Trust are launching a campaign that asks Facebook users to design a ‘Great British Day Out’. Aimed at targeting a younger audience, the Facebook app allows users to select a National Trust destination, choose a theme for their trip and invite friends. Facebook users can vote for the top 20 days out with the winner eventually being decided by the National Trust.

Republicans expand social media efforts with ‘Social Victory Centre’

The Republican National Committee digital team has created the ‘Social Victory Centre’ app, the first of its kind in the political sector. Working on the principle that politics is inherently social, they hope that the app will amplify natural sharing activities such as recommending articles. The app also features a ‘phone from home’ ability that allows those in non-contentious states to make calls on behalf of the RNC to attempt to persuade voters in battleground states.

Social networking activities win a clear lion’s share of people’s attention, with this set of data suggesting that Facebook captures an average of more than 465 minutes of people’s time each month.

If that’s true of every one of the platform’s 901 million worldwide users, Facebook now accounts for almost 800,000 years of human time every month. Astonishing.

Meanwhile, in light of our recent report on the importance of location-based mobile social, we were particularly interested to read that location-based services are currently the fastest growing area of interest.

Thanks to Massimo for sending us the link.

Singapore:

Hong Kong:

Pakistan:

China’s Qzone still dominates the Asian landscape with 531 million registered users, but its compatriot, Sina Weibo, has been attracting the most attention in recent months.

With 27 million (9%) of the platform’s 300 million users checking in every day, and more than 100 million posts every 24 hours, it’s clear that Sina Weibo is one of the most active platforms in Asia.

Similarly, Tencent’s Weibo offering also claims around 300 million users, and is definitely up there in the world’s most important social networks.

Meanwhile, Facebook has added more than 20 million users across Asia in the past 6 months, and now claims more than 192 million users across the 24 SDMA markets.

Although it has now been nudged back into 3rd place on the global Facebook user rankings by Brazil, India has still added more than 7 million Facebook users in 2012, and its 46 million users account for more than 5% of the worldwide total.

Interestingly, despite being blocked in most of China, Facebook now counts more than half a million users on the mainland, in addition to the 15.5 million users across Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

Twitter also continues to be hugely popular across the region: it’s now the number one platform in Japan, with Japanese the second most used language on Twitter worldwide.

Twitter has maintained its popularity in Indonesia too, although Facebook is still the Southeast Asian country’s most popular platform.

The potential financial benefits are particularly noteworthy: using social media to handle activities like customer support can deliver significant cost savings, and also help improve response times and levels of customer satisfaction.

LinkedIn acquires SlideShare
It was announced hours ago that professional networking platform LinkedIn has acquired SlideShare, a sharing platform for business documents, videos and presentations, for US$118.75 million or S$147.51 million. SlideShare users have uploaded more than 9 million presentations since it was founded in October 2006, and nearly 7.4 million presentations hosted by SlideShare have been embedded across more than 1.4 million unique domains. In March alone, SlideShare saw nearly 29 million unique visitors. We’ve already seen some form of integration between SlideShare and LinkedIn in terms of social sharing functionalities, being able to view SlideShare content from within your LinkedIn Stream, and hosting SlideShare content on your personal profile, so there’s definitely some form of fit between the two companies.

Mobile usage in Taiwan
Recent figures from mobile ad network InMobi reveal that mobile web users in Taiwan consume 6 hours of media daily on average, of which 27% is spent on mobile devices, which is more than the 24% of  time spent watching television and catching up to the 33% of time spent going online on desktops or laptops. 76% of Taiwanese mobile web users use their mobile devices while their waiting, 59% use it while lying in bed, and 40% while commuting. Interestingly, Taiwanese shoppers are less likely to use their mobile devices while shopping, with only 11% doing so. Taiwanese mobile web users are very much into social networking and entertainment, as they spend 21% of their time on their mobile devices on social media like Facebook or Twitter, and an equal amount of time on music or videos. 18% of their time on mobile devices is spent playing games, 12% on search for general information such as news, sports, and finance, and 11% on email.

Marketers increasingly aligning TV and online video
A recent study by video advertising company Adap.TV and DIGIDAY revealed that marketers were increasingly planning, buying and measuring TV and online video together. 49% of brand advertisers and agencies surveyed in North America believed that TV was the most appropriate adveritising channel to align with online video, while 40% disagreed and said online video should be more aligned with display advertising. 62% viewed online video as a direct complement to TV, while only 10% saw it as a replacement for TV ads. In terms of integrated planning, 48% of respondents already currently plan TV ads and video together, while another 25% are planning to do so within the next 12 months. We are bound to see a lot more marketers adopt multi-channel approaches to advertising in the next year as they recognise the importance of balancing traditional advertising with more social forms of media.

Zynga’s ‘Draw Something’ sees a decline in daily active users
Although Zynga’s recently-acquired social gaming app ‘Draw Something‘ had exceeded 50 million downloads and boasted more than 14 million daily users in early April, Draw Something has since lost 4 million daily active users in the past month alone according to AppData. In light of Zynga’s new advertising plans for Draw Something, we wonder how keen brands are to jump on board given the lost in interest in Draw Something after the acquisition.

QR code created by the mid-day shadow of the sun
Korean shopping mall Emart created an innovative QR code campaign to drive sales during lunch hours by creating a large display that formed a QR code from the shadow of the mid-day sun, and could therefore only be used from 12pm to 1pm during the day. When users scan in the ‘Sunny Sale’ QR code, they gained access to special offers, including a $12 coupon. The purchased items through the Emart application were subsequently delivered to users’ homes. Through this location-based mobile campaign, 12,000 coupons were sold, the Emart’s membership base increased by 58% from the previous month in February, and Emart saw a 25% increase in sales of the Emart mall during lunch hours.

There’s little doubt that the future of the internet is mobile.

As we saw in last week’s 12 Provocations on The Future of Social, the next 100 million web users will be mobile first, and in many cases – especially in Asia – they will be mobile only.

This shift to mobile will shape an internet that’s very different to the one we know today: rather than a browser-based experience tracked across pages and clicks, the internet will start to merge seamlessly with our physical activities through dedicated apps and augmented products.

So what does that mean for brands?

Enter SoLoMo

Easily one of the least popular names to emerge in recent years, SoLoMo is an abbreviation of ‘Social, Local, Mobile’, and refers to the convergence of these three essential elements of digital marketing.

SoLoMo functionality brings the best of the internet – information, entertainment, and conversation – to everyday situations, adding a layer of ‘augmented utility’ to our daily lives.

But how can marketers harness the immense power of SoLoMo?

This was the question we explored in the second of our two presentations at The Internet Show in Singapore last week (see our first – The Future of Social Media – here).

Our aim was to show that SoLoMo offers much more than tactical, location-based discounts, and we focused on highlighting some of the most inspiring uses of SoLoMo that add incremental value to brands over the longer term.

You’ll find the full presentation in the SlideShare deck above, but let’s dig a little deeper into the case studies we featured in the presentation to add some more context.

Best-in-Class SoLoMo

1. Nike+ GPS
Nike+ has become a case study for marketers the world over for a number of reasons, but it’s the seamless GPS integration that makes it such a compelling example of SoLoMo. The Nike team has approached the whole concept from the audience’s perspective, identifying functionality that adds real value to runners – from tracking your route to connecting you with other runners, and even letting your friends send you live ‘cheers’ while you’re out on the road. And not a discount code in sight.

2. AmEx Small Business Saturday
This is an initiative that succeeds on so many levels, and yet the idea behind it is so beautifully simple: support local, small business, and AmEx will reward you for your patronage. In order to take advantage of the benefits, shoppers simply need to link their AmEx card to their Foursquare account (a very savvy play from Foursquare too), and check-in to participating small businesses in order to get cash-back on their AmEx cards.

Local merchants didn’t need to fund the discounts – the financial rewards were all covered by AmEx – and the small businesses got an extra benefit in the form of increased publicity and advocacy thanks to the Foursquare check-ins at their establishment. You can learn more about the whole initiative in this case study, but here’s a short video that explains the basics:

3. Starbucks
Starbucks was one of the early pioneers of SoLoMo rewards, and it continues to deliver value from its approach even after a couple of years. The original concept – rewarding the Foursquare ‘Mayor’ of each outlet with a discount – is still one of the most popular applications of SoLoMo to this day, largely because it drives that most elusive of all marketing metrics: loyalty. This is the key reason why Starbucks’s approach to SoLoMo deals succeeds where Groupon offers so often fail – they centre on the longer-term benefits associated with store visit frequency, rather than the short-term gains associated with driving quick awareness.

Starbucks has experimented with a few different approaches too; one that particularly caught our attention was the brand’s recent activity in China, whereby the coffee chain offered a free beverage to everyone who checked in to its outlets if the total check-ins for that week exceeded 20,000.

4. Mini Getaway
SoLoMo functionality is an ideal fit for gamification, and Mini used this to great effect in Stockholm a few months back. As with all the examples in this deck, the underlying concept was very simple: find and ‘capture’ the virtual Mini via a SoLoMo-based app, and if that virtual Mini is still in your possession at the end of the game period, you walk away with a real Mini Countryman. The game succeeded in driving average engagement of over 5 hours – 600 times more than a typical TV ad. The concept was so successful that the car brand extended it to Tokyo too. This video explains the case in a bit more depth:

5. Jimmy Choo Trainer Hunt
This campaign is already a few years old, but it’s still one of the best examples of how to use SoLoMo to deliver a richer brand experience. The basic campaign mechanic involved a pair of Jimmy Choo sneakers ‘checking in’ to various locations around London; if anyone checked in to the same location within 5 minutes of the shoes, that person won a pair of the sneakers in their size. However, the magic of the campaign was the locations the shoes checked in to – alongside the obvious store locations, the brand took people on a ‘scavenger hunt’ across some of its favourite places in London, including bars, restaurants, and other locations that helped to associate the brand with a particular lifestyle. As one of the earliest SoLoMo campaigns, it also succeeded in driving a considerable volume of conversation.

6. Starwood Asia
The Starwood hotel brand has teamed up with Chinese location-based app Jiepang to offer real-world loyalty points to guests who check-in to any of its portfolio of properties. These reward points can be added to the guest’s existing Starwood Preferred Guest loyalty account, offering additional ‘bonus points’ in return for the social advocacy and publicity generated by the check-in – a simple win-win that helps extend the brand’s impact via individual influence and authentic word of mouth.

7. Walgreens
As we saw above with Starbucks, location-based (LBS) deals still have a role to play in strategic SoLoMo, provided they are used to add value. The problem with too many LBS deals is that they offer people discounts on items they were already going to buy, but Walgreens has found a sensible antidote to this. When someone checks in to a Walgreens store via Foursquare, they can ‘unlock’ one of a series of ‘specials’, which can vary by time and day. In this way, the brand can drive cross-selling and increase cart size for each visit – an approach that adds incremental value in the longer-term, without cannibalising any pre-planned behaviour.

Back to You

So what can we learn from these brands, and how can you apply their winning thinking to your own marketing?

Here are our 5 key take-aways:

• Start with the audience, not the technology: novelty has a limited window of value, but real benefits keep people coming back for more. Identify what people actually care about, and build the technology around that.

• Sharing must be about audience benefit: if you want people to publicly endorse your brand, make sure you offer them something compelling in return for their endorsement. The question to ask yourself is, ‘What’s in it for them?’, and not just ‘What’s in it for my brand?’

• Add value through utility: no-one will turn down a discount, but people will go out of their way to get additional benefits. Offer people what they really need, not just a cheaper version of what they already know they want.

• Keep it simple: this is the critical rule if you want widespread adoption. The number one reason for poor SoLoMo performance is asking people to do too much; any more than ’2 steps to benefit’, and you’ll lose the vast majority of potential participants.

• Build relationships, not spectacle: 97% off a full-day spa package is great, but people’s attention is quickly diverted when tomorrow’s deal offers 98% off a meal at that Michelin-star restaurant. The real value in SoLoMo lies in connecting with people, exchanging mutual value, and building relationships over time.

The exciting news is that we’re only at the beginning of the SoLoMo adventure, and the next few months will doubtless bring even more inspiring case studies.

And on that note, we have some exciting SoLoMo ideas of our own here at We Are Social, so don’t hesitate to drop us a note if you’d like to explore the ways we can help you to harness its potential for your brand too.

Please email us if you’d like a copy of the presentation.