We Are Social: Tuesday Tune-Up #1

Hello, We Are Social Australia and welcome to our first weekly mashup of the big social media stories making headlines at home and abroad.

We’ll be posting a new Tune-Up every Tuesday, making sure you’re up-to-date on the news that matters to Australian marketers.

Facebook Places Deals launches in Australia

Facebook Deals opened to Australian brands today after launching in Europe and then the US earlier in the year. Deals will launch with four partners including: Westfield, Commonwealth Bank, KFC and 7-Eleven. Westfield is offering sizeable discounts from retailers Angus & Coote and Cotton On. 7-Eleven is offering 450ml Coke for $1. The Commonwealth bank is offering a free monthly movie pass for check-in + open a savings account + use a credit card. KFC’s deal is a coupon for a Krusher and one chips for $4.45.

Bonds Hipster Design Crowd Sourcing Contest

Bonds new ‘Don’t just wear our new Hipsters, create them’ asks you to choose a photo that would look and feel great on a pair of Hipsters. People can enter via Facebook Connect, Instagram and or direct upload. The best three images will be made into limited edition Hipsters available for sale.

Foot Locker Art Prize

Foot Locker Art Prize competition recently invited artists to create a sneaker-themed art piece for the chance to win $50,001. Whilst sneaker art is not a new idea, it did receive a respectable 6,000 entries. Kalin Thomson won the first prize for this effort:

Large businesses leading the charge with social media

According to a recent Roy Morgan survey of 13,381 Australian businesses – new media (Internet, Mobile Phones and Social Media) is expected to become more important in terms of media budget allocation in the coming year, and traditional media to be less important. The study showed that social media expectations was highest among large businesses with revenues over $50 million.

New Balance Urban Dash Challenge

To promote the their first Flagship store in New York, New Balance have created the “Urban Dash” an iPhone app that challenges participants to find virtual batons throughout NYC. Each day, New Balance are releasing batons into hotspots, and if you make it to the store with out having it claimed by another player, you’ll win a free pair of New Balance 574 Shoes. The player to redeem the most batons will win a 14 carat gold baton valued at $20,000.

2Day FM Holden Cruze Car Chase

In the spirit of mobile reality gaming, 2 Day FM this week announced their Holden Cruze Car Chase. A new iPhone and Android App enables listeners to participate in a reality game and a chance to win a car and $10,000. The app borrows heavily from the Mini Getaway Stockholm.

McDonald’s Dollar Drink Days

McDonald’s Canada created an ice-cool experiential stunt at an Alberta summer beach party, by unloading a big ice sculpture filled with $1 coins. In just 5 hours, they gave out $4,000 in $1 coins, all to promote Dollar Drink Days at McDonald’s.

MyStarbucksIdea reaches 150 crowd sourced idea implementations
In 2009 Starbucks launched their ideas community in an effort to better listen to their customers. Since then they have received over 100,000 ideas. This week they celebrated 150 launched ideas sourced by their fans. Recent launches include Sesame Bistro Boxes, Petite Cake Pops, Android App, Mocha Coconut Frappuccino and 24oz Reusable Cup.

Listening and responding really does work
An interesting bit of research from Forrester, with one notable conclusion: 50% of businesses have seen a notable increase in their overall business’ success, just through listening and responding in social media:

Facebook Messenger launches
Last week saw the launch of Facebook Messenger a new service designed to ‘simplify how messaging works, and gives you a faster way to message friends and small groups.

Messenger is a separate app, so it only takes one click to get to your messages or send a new one. Messages are delivered through notifications and texts, so your friends are more likely to get them right away’.

Inside Mobile Apps have an interesting interview with Lucy Zhang, the founder of Beluga, the app which Facebook Messenger sprang from.

Facebook aggregates status updates in news feed
Facebook launched a new feature last week, where the news feed aggregates posts about the same topic together, linking them to a relevant page.

There is a real chance that this will help brands’ Pages grow, with them appearing in the News Feed with an ‘organic’ social recommendation.

Facebook launches targeted advertising by postcode
In a move which is undoubtedly designed to get more small, local retailers advertising on the site, Facebook has added postcode targeting to its ad tool. Interesting.

Google+ add games, launches blog, adds social search
Google wants people to spend more time using + and therefore are trying to give it richer content – starting with adding a separate Games stream. The initial set of Games includes, you guessed it, Angry Birds – and it’s attracting such big developers, because Google only wants to take 5% of game revenues, as opposed to Facebook which takes 30%.

Google have also launched a Google+ Platform blog for developers, and started adding public Google+ Posts to Google search results.

Twitter launches two new feed tabs
In a change which will make Twitter.com more like the Facebook feed, Twitter have launched two new feeds: one, which is named after your username, amalgamates all the interactions with your account, be it Mentions, Retweets, or Favourites; the other is the Activity tab, and brings together all the different actions from the accounts you follow on Twitter. Clever.

LinkedIn backtracks on social ads
After a user backlash on using pictures in social ads without actively asking for permission, LinkedIn was forced to pull the ad mechanic – instead reverting to the number of connections who had recommended a product. With the site trying to prove to the stock market it can make money, it’s a blow for LinkedIn.

Amazon launches a Kindle social network
Amazon have launched a quasi social network for Kindle users: readers can now create their own user profile and post updates on what they’re reading, etc. It’s unclear at the moment whether these users will also post updates about standing in the way of everyone on the tube while reading, refusing to get out of the way when asked, and generally just being exceptionally obnoxious.

Skype details future plans
Forbes carried an interesting interview with Neil Stevens, VP of Skype about their future plans with Microsoft and Facebook. The most interesting thing he revealed is that over the coming weeks, Skype will launch a service which allows users to ‘call in’ to Facebook users. He also revealed they’ll be launching a premium service to allow Facebook users to call external phones.

New app Banjo lets users stalk locations
A good story from Techcrunch, about Banjo, which has reported high growth:

Banjo, for those unaware, is a new social discovery service which reveals the social network present at any given location at a particular time. To be clear, it’s not another social network, it’s a layer on top of social networks. With Banjo, you don’t have to create a profile, add friends or collect followers, or perform any of the other typical social networking behaviours.

Now, you can enter in any address supported by Google Maps in order to discover that location’s hidden social network, whether the location you seek is a city, a street address or even the name of a local business.

There are certainly some use cases for this feature that will appeal to mainstream users – perhaps you’re curious what people think of tonight’s concert, for example, or what people at a conference are posting pictures of or are tweeting about.

Twitpic founder launches Twitter clone
What do they say? What goes around comes around. After Twitter ripped off Twitpic, Twitpic founder Noah Everett has released Heello, which is a complete Twitter rip-off; despite its low chances of success, it’s picked up some comedic initial accounts.

London riots give Twitter spike in UK traffic
Twitter achieved its biggest ever day of traffic in the UK as a direct by-product of the London riots, with users logging in to find out what was happening. The graph below shows that it achieved 15% more traffic than from the last spike around super-injunctions.

UK riots: the full social media story
British Prime Minister David Cameron suggested last week that social networks could be shut down during periods of civil disobedience in order to stem the violence – a move echoed by Tory MP and active Twitter user Louise Mensch. The move was widely condemned as repressive, and a breach of freedom of speech.

The Wall Blog carried an excellent post about how, although in some instances people had used Facebook to incite trouble, by and large, social networks have acted as a force for good during the riots.

The exception to this was Blackberry Messenger, which by all accounts, fed the riots.

Social media has done so much good in the wake of the riots: be it the Keep Aaron Cutting site which raised £25k for a Tottenham barber, the Something Nice for Ashraf Tumblr which aimed to support the attacked Malaysian student (and raised £22k), the video that went viral of a Hackney grandmother haranguing looters, Twitter users getting together to clean-up the mess from the riots, or Leon Piers who cycled around and provided only verified information on Twitter about the riots in Bristol.

Amidst all the devastation, there was also time for some lolz, including Photoshop Looter and some nice editing.

One of the biggest talking points post-riots has been the sentences handed down. Greater Manchester Police suffered something of a backlash for tweeting the details of all those sentenced, and were absolutely hammered for passing comment on one of the sentences. Policed by the Twitter police.