1 in 5 viewers start watching a show after hearing about it in social
According to a Horowitz Associates poll of US heads of TV households conducted in January, 19% had begun watching a show after reading about it on a social network or blog.

Facebook holds IPO, share price drops
Facebook held its IPO on Friday, with the company listed on the NASDAQ. Despite the share price returning to the initial $38 price after the first day of trading, this was partly due to the banks underwriting the share price to stop it falling below $38. Regardless, 421.2 million shares were sold valuing the company at a whopping $104.2 billion, a price which has since fallen significantly in early trading today in New York.

General Motors suspends Facebook ad spending
General Motors, America’s biggest automaker and 3rd biggest advertiser, in an interestingly timed move announced last week that it will stopped buying Facebook ads for the forseeable future. Industry reaction has been mixed.

With Forrester also saying Facebook doesn’t pay enough attention to marketers, this can’t have helped Facebook’s first day of trading. Ironically, a source close to the GM had said their move was partly due to Facebook telling them to prioritise community management over ads. Something, it should be noted, that GM is still wisely planning to invest $30 million in.

Facebook redesign mobile apps
Facebook has updated its mobile apps so that images will now appear larger and at a higher quality in a bid to improve engagement.

Facebook also acquired Lightbox last week, once hailed the ‘Instagram of Android’ – perhaps in a bid to assure investors that Facebook will do what it takes to win in the mobile-centric future of social networking.

New Facebook Page Manager App
Managing Facebook Pages on a mobile has long been difficult, but this could all be about to change: Facebook is testing an app called Facebook Pages Manager which should make all of this far easier. Good news for marketers.

Twitter re-launch recommendations
Moving forward, new Twitter users will now receive a number of auto-generated recommended followers from the Twitter ecosystem. According to Twitter:

These tailored suggestions are based on accounts followed by other Twitter users and visits to websites in the Twitter ecosystem. We receive visit information when sites have integrated Twitter buttons or widgets, similar to what many other web companies — including LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube — do when they’re integrated into websites.

Interestingly, viewers will also be able to view tweets from these users in an example timeline.

Twitter teams up with Nascar to enhance hashtags
Twitter has teamed up with Nascar so that consumers worldwide can create a “complementary live race experience”. The Twitter page will combine race-related tweets and photos giving behind-the-scenes exclusive for individual races. In effect, for one advertiser (Nascar), they’ve made a pretty radical change to the hashtag experience:

Up until now when users click on a hashtag, they are shown a page littered with tweets which have included that particular hashtag. But in Nascar’s case, Twitter will curate those tweets through an algorithm, and by hand to give users a behind-the-scenes look at the race.

Twitter hits 10m UK users, 140 brands have used promoted products
For a company that has only had an office in the UK for one year, Twitter is going from strength to strength. It’s now reaching 10 million UK users of which 80% are active on mobile. 340 million tweets are sent per day and brands have bought into the product: 140 have used Promoted Products in the last year.

Tony Wang from Twitter UK gave Marketing Magazine an interesting Q&A about Twitter’s advertising approach going forward – it’s worth a read.

YouTube video views are falling
Since December, views on YouTube have fallen by 28% – but it’s an intended consequence of the Google-owned site’s shift from a video search engine filled with snack-size content to a full-fledged, couch-potato-optimized entertainment destination. At YouTube, the “view” is out and “engagement” is in – although time spent on the site hasn’t risen like execs will have hoped:

New Google+ study reveals minimal activity and weak user engagement
A new study has shown weak user engagement and minimal social activity on Google+, giving greater credence to the theory that it’s just a ghost town. Google has refused to give metrics for the Google+ active user base, probably because compared to other social networks it has far less activity. A study showed that within a sample size of 70,000 public posts, the average post receives less than one +1, less than one re-share and less than one reply. Another problem is that users don’t return to post again:

As the report sums up:

At the end of the day, Google+ simply does not show the same level of ravenous user adoption and engagement that we’ve seen in other social networks.

Pinterest is worth $1.5bn – at least according to investors
Pinterest has recently gained $100 million of funding from Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten in a simultaneous attempt to increase revenue (which is currently minimal) and mark a shift away from big American tech players; the deal values the company at $1.5 billion.

Quora raises $50M valuing the company at $400M
Quora has raised $50 million from its co-founder Adam D’Angelo and other investors including Peter Thiel and Josh Hannah, both of whom are familiar with the online Q&A space, valuing the company at $400 million. It will be interesting to see what it invests in to try and grow the daily active user count again.

vKontakte loses important court case
vKontakte, Russia’s largest social network lost an important court case last week, which ruled that the site’s proprietary file-sharing system – and arguably its biggest selling point – is illegal and breaches copyright. Facebook has long struggled to even come close to over-taking vKontakte, but the fall-out from this court ruling may well help Facebook.

Ronaldo stars in Facebook challenge for documentary
Football star Cristiano Ronaldo took part in a live-streamed Facebook challenge last week called #RonaldoLive which tested his ‘sporting expertise’. The live-stream came from a testing facility in Madrid, in which Ronaldo had to receive, control and shoot a wave of footballs from chutes suspended above his head.

The first 100,000 people who connected to the #RonaldoLIVE Facebook app were automatically be entered into a competition to challenge Ronaldo, giving them the power to choose which goals he shot into.

Manchester City partner with Foursquare
English Premier League champions Manchester City have partnered with Foursquare, in the social network’s first official partnership with a football team. What the deal means is that City fans can now check in at the Etihad Stadium, City Square, City Stores and other official venues in return for special offers on merchandise and food and drink. They’ve also launched their own badge.

Foursquare launch two new badges
Foursquare have launched two new badges for two of the year’s biggest sporting events. Saturday night’s Champions League Final had a badge which users could obtain simply by checking in and using the words ‘UEFA Champions League’ and the Olympic Torch Relay also has a badge. To acquire the badge, users have to check-in to the nearest Olympic Torch Relay venue when the flame passes through their city.

Ikea turns to Pinterest to promote new range
Ikea are promoting their new Indian range of products partly through Pinterest. They’ve built a micro-site to draw awareness to the new range which includes an option to view a showcase of the range on Pinterest. As it’s a flat-pack campaign, you do actually have to build the pinboard for this one.

Intel launches employee curated digital magazine
Intel have launched a digital magazine which will allow many different staff members to chip in. Intel iQ is a social-publishing platform which resembles a digital magazine. A story gets to the iQ front page when a certain number of people recommend it, and as recommendations grow, so the size of the story on the front page increases. Intel have said they expect the number of contributors to the site to grow to thousands, which is really quite impressive.

Wickes rolls out first social media campaign
Wickes, the DIY retailer, has made its first foray into social media with the launch of a Facebook app which allows fans to create a sharable digital portfolio of their DIY projects. It’s based on the idea that people are very happy when they complete a project. It seems a bit useless – papering over the cracks of a lack of a real social media strategy.

Forbes recently carried the following article from me, commenting on Facebook’s IPO and whether their valuation is justified

Facebook’s share price may follow an erratic pattern over the next few days and weeks, as did LinkedIn, Groupon, and Zynga after their recent IPOs, but it is a good long-term bet.

With a likely valuation of over $100 billion, at a massive multiple of a hundred times 2011 profit, the company might not look so promising based on its current business model and associated revenue and profit growth. But that’s not what you’d be investing in.

It comes down to these three  factors:

Global dominance. Facebook almost completely dominates social networking globally. It has 900 million monthly active users and 526 million daily active users, numbers that are still growing rapidly (although admittedly user growth has stalled in mature markets like the U.S. and Britain). Perhaps more importantly, the average time people spend on the site is astronomical, with U.S. users logging on average more than seven hours a month, regardless of whether they access by PC or on their phone, as most now do (and again these are numbers that are growing, not declining). Facebook is dominant in all major world markets other than China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia, and based on current growth it’s only a matter of time before that list shortens to China alone.

Strong leadership. MySpace lost its lead because of Rupert Murdoch’s lack of understanding of social media and resulting mismanagement. Mark Zuckerberg, on the other hand, is what you would call a digital native, and he really gets it. His leadership of Facebook’s product development over the last eight years has proven his abilities, as he has constantly evolved and grown the site’s offering. A few hiccups aside, he has consistently made it more and more attractive to both new and existing users with each release.

Not only that, but with the acquisition of companies like Instagram, Glancee, Gowalla, Beluga, Snaptu, Friend.ly, and FriendFeed, Zuckerberg has shown that he has his eye on the ball, and has successfully brought into the Facebook fold external ideas and technologies that keep it ahead of the game (and has taken potential competitors off the field in the process). With Facebook’s dual-class share structure guaranteeing that he’ll remain in control of the reins of power, with a post IPO war chest of around $8 billion, we can only expect both product development and acquisitions to accelerate.

New revenue streams. Facebook currently brings in around $1 billion of revenue a quarter, with about 85% of that from advertising. However, the growth in that revenue is slowing, and this week GM, the U.S.’s third biggest advertiser, pulled the plug on advertising on Facebook (although the automaker is still investing in engaging with its communities on Facebook). So what? Ford has come out publicly in opposition, saying it will continue to invest, and Facebook is continually evolving its advertising offering, just like any other aspect of its product, so expect this growth to continue (although it may continue to slow through saturation). However, there are plenty of other potential revenue streams:

• Mobile advertising. Facebook is not currently not showing a significant number of ads to its 488-million-strong mobile audience. That fact has been widely reported as a threat to Facebook’s valuation, but actually it  is a massive untapped opportunity not yet showing in the numbers, and you can expect Facebook to address it effectively in the future.
• Ad network. There have also been some hints in the last couple of weeks of future revenue streams for Facebook. One, indicated by changes to Facebook’s privacy policy, would allow the company to target ads off of Facebook using everything it knows about users, meaning there’s the potential for building a display advertising network using other media owners’ inventory to target ads at users based on their social and interest data—another massive opportunity.
• Paid-for newsfeed priority. Additionally, Facebook recently ran a small test in New Zealand offering users the chance to pay up to $2 to guarantee that all their friends would see a certain status update. That could be perfect for announcing anything from selling your car, looking for flatmates, or publicizing parties, engagements, weddings, births, etc.
• App store. Facebook announced a new app store last week, along with a beta paid-for app program. The company has not yet released any details of how it will make its money, but obviously even if this is only a fraction as successful as Apple’s or Amazon’s app stores, there’s billions of dollars to be made.
• Facebook credits. What’s potentially bigger than all of the above is Facebook credits, a virtual currency now used mainly for social game transactions (which amount to around 15% of Facebook’s current revenue). We’ve already seen credits used successfully by movie studios to rent movies to people on Facebook, and considering both the scale of Facebook’s audience and the time that audience spends on site, this opportunity puts all others in the shade. The recent launch of open graph apps, meaning friends’ actions like “watch,” “listen,” and “read,” have started to show up in people’s news tickers, fuelling massive growth in the use of certain apps, both those of traditional media owners like the Washington Post or the Guardian, which recently reported that Facebook was driving 30% of its traffic, and of new players like Spotify and Socialcam. Think about the potential of buying music from Spotify, renting movies from Netflix of LoveFilm, micro-payments for content from the Washington Post or the Guardian, or even using credits for e-commerce transactions. Credits could be used to buy anything, especially when Facebook makes the 30% cut it charges worthwhile to those selling the product or service by bringing an audience to them, as it is doing through these open graph apps.

So there you have it. Facebook owns the majority of Internet users, is likely to keep them in the future, and has only just started to work out how to make money from them. In short, it’s a good long-term bet.

Here’s a great infographic that explores how people around the world split their time across different online activities.

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.

A great deck from Dr Paul Marsden on how to turn social media into social sales by offering social utility; helping people solve their problems socially and solve their social problems. As he says:

Social commerce works when social features offer genuine social utility that comes in three basic flavours.

• Social utility that helps people solve problems socially using their social intelligence (ability to learn from each other and profit from social situations – e.g. collective buying)
• Social utility that helps people solve the social problem of standing out, by helping them manage their social status by expressing themselves (e.g. fan-first offers that ‘sell’ bragging rights)
• Social utility that helps people solve the social problem of fitting in by facilitating social bonding (e.g. social media gift stores)

He also shows great taste by using our “Get Well” Soup campaign for Heinz as one of his examples.

A great infographic from Socialbakers, pulling together all the latest stats on Facebook’s mobile usage:

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 plan 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’s 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 make 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 look 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 bring 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.

With WiFi problems and the need to let all of the impressions sink in, here’s a delayed recap of NEXT Berlin, and as I predicted, there were some clear highlights…

After an enthusiastic introudction from Matthias Schrader, the organiser of NEXT – Mr. René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, took the stage.

Mr. Obermann delivered a speech about the current state of the digital infrastructure in Germany and the latest developments at Deutsche Telekom. One of  the highlights was the announcement of Telekom’s very own digital incubator, hub:raum. Located in Berlin (the up and coming centre of digital creativity in Germany) it will support up to 15 new projects each year. In addition to the knowledge of Telekom experts and their infrastructure, the startups who get to be part of the incubator will also have the chance of seed financing of up to €300,000. The idea behind it: to open Deutsche Telekom to external innovation and new business ideas.

While this is certainly great news, his comments about the “regulatory regime” keeping the Deutsche Telekom from investing into the infrastructure were, frankly, slightly unnerving. Both sides of this debate, the government and Deutsche Telekom, are both to blame for a noticeable number of blank spots on the German map, where digital is anything but a commodity (Germany ranks 16th in the Networked Readiness Index 2012).

To move on to less serious and more entertaining talks. One of these was the session held by two guys from Greenkern and Goodstein & Partners who introduced the campaign they worked on for Volkswagen China (together – as the rightly noticed and stated – with a hell of a lot of partners): Putting people back into the people’s car!

Let’s start with an introductory look at the campaign:

The main idea: they took the brand’s name seriously and decided to not only make cars for the people (which is the direct translation of “Volkswagen”) but began to make cars with the people, by building the biggest open innovation platform in China – zaoche.cn. If you ever worked on open innovation you know that the motivational and communicational difficulties far outweigh the technical challenges. Here are some insights from the campaign that should help you tackle these difficulties:

#1 Participation needs easy access: The Platform has to work for everyone. Not only for geeks.
With over 120.000 ideas submitted by the participants of the project, it seems like the guys tackled that problem. Easy access is only part of the solution though. The project owners quickly found out that

#2 Participation needs push: Open innovation is not advertising, but needs campaigning.
And if you want to move into an authentic conversation that boosts the buzz (while at the same time keeping the media budget in reasonable borders), you’ll soon find out that

#3 Participation needs followers: Opinion leaders boost the buzz.
Something that only happens if your engagement – and the subsequent engagement of the opinion leaders – has a solid foundation.

#4 Participation needs fertile ground: Engagement grows from strong social media roots.
If you have any doubts about the strong digital and social roots of the Chinese netizens, you should talk to my colleague Simon Kemp from our Singapore office – he will be more than happy to guide you and your brand successfully through the jungle of Chinese social media platforms. If fertile ground is the solid foundation for such a campaign, you won’t get far without insight number 5:

#5 Participation needs interest: Create relevant content
It’s an ongoing mantra of ours that without relevancy for the users, social engagement is (best case) just going to cease, once you stop pushing or (worst case) backfire at you and create a shitstorm.

One more insight before I leave you with another video that truly shows how seriously they have taken this approach (and how closely they have acknowledged the fact that China is different also) is this one:

#6 Participation needs motivation: User acknowledgement keeps the wheel spinning.
And here is how they did it …

Thanks guys for that marvellous case study – for me having worked on something similar for BMW, these were great insights…

Our latest research shows that the number of social network users is still growing rapidly across Asia, with platforms in South and Southeast Asian nations seeing the largest gains since our most recent Social, Digital and Mobile in Asia report just a few months ago:

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.

Tom Smith, founder of GlobalWebIndex, exclusively talks us through their latest reasearch into mobile internet usage around the world.

For many brands, mobile marketing is an exciting prospect but largely under invested, particularly considering the rapid growth of adoption and usage.

Everyone knows that mobile is important, but incorporating it into an overall marketing strategy has been daunting and frequently it has been bolted on the end with a small budget and utilised in a tactical sense.  One barrier is that mobile is still seen as a separate “media” type, but as our research shows consumers are increasingly spreading their internet behaviour across multiple platforms, with the mobile device increasingly at the core. This follows on from Robin’s post on ‘How we use our mobile devices’ that suggests PC, mobile and tablets are going to be interchangeable when accessing the internet. For this reason you cannot look at “The Internet” and “The mobile” separately, they are integrated and linked.

At the Mobile Marketing Association’s Brand and Agency Briefing in London, we discussed our latest set of research that shows that consumers don’t see the distinctions between devices in the same way brands and marketers do and suggests that we need a radical rethink in how we approach mobile:

The briefing gave us a chance to highlight some of the most important insights that coming out of our research at the moment which include:

1. Mobile internet usage continues to grow rapidly, spearheading a multi-platform post PC world and in many markets mobile activities such as news and social networking are reaching parity with PC
2. Emerging internet markets are leading the way, as shown by China and Indonesia, and increasingly being driven by high end smart phones as the huge sales of the iPhone in China demonstrate.
3. There are key internet activities that are becoming device agnostic – this includes social media. It isn’t the device that dictates how people behave online anymore. People’s activities are driving the decision to which device fits the purpose. Certain internet activities have a much higher level of cross-device usage than others; micro-bloggers, for example, are nearly twice as likely to be using PCs, smartphones, and tablets to tweet. Other activities, such as uploading photos and using mapping services, users are much more likely to use mobile phones rather than tablets. These differences are less driven by the device function and more a reflection of the specific consumer segment, their interests and lifestyle
4. Due to growing device agnostic behaviour it’s more important than ever to understand your target audience, as the device is no longer a barrier. Our research shows that specific target segments replicate behaviour across devices. This means understanding your consumer and their needs and interests is more important than ever to delivering great strategy and ideas

In summary, it’s no longer right to look at “Mobile” as a separate platform. We need to plan and build a strategy across multiple platforms.