It’s Tuesday, you’re on the internet, and this is  your mostly social, partially mobile Tuesday Tune-Up…

1. Twitter beat Facebook in Q1 advertising performance
According to a study of 45 billion ad impressions on Twitter and Facebook in Q1 2012, Twitter gets considerably higher CPMs than Facebook.

The main difference between ads on Twitter and Facebook are that almost all Twitter ads appear in user’s streams, whereas Facebook ads appear to the side of the user’s page, perhaps this is no surprise and it underlines why Facebook have been recently pushing their ‘Featured Stories’ ads.

However, another recent study shows that Facebook’s average CPM has risen by 43% over the last quarter.

Remember though, what advertisers want is lower, not higher CPMs, and the accompanying news that the average cost per fan rose by 43% in the same time period is jut as unwelcome.

2. Facebook users tagging their location more
According to a presentation by Facebook product manager, Josh Williams, around a quarter of all users include location information in their updates every month, and they do so an average of 10 times each a month.

With their geo-coding and place editing API now open to third-party developers (including those at Instagram), expect this number to rise significantly.

3. Facebook introduces school-specific Groups
Facebook’s ‘Groups for schools’ allow users with school email addresses to join online communities related to their place of study. This new feature will give students the opportunity to share documents with one another whilst also communicating with class mates.

Not all schools are eligible for this yet, but once they are, individual classes, sports teams and clubs will enable users to join their relevant groups with the possibility to download and share documents.

Although this was already happening unofficially, it will give students more structure to their Groups.

The open question for us here at We Are Social is whether this is a precursor of a larger roll-out to companies and other organisations.

4. Facebook purchase Tagtiles
After having bought mobile sharing app Instagram, Facebook has made a smaller purchase: the Tagtile team and their assets. This mobile-based customer loyalty management startup, is described as ‘helping local businesses identify and engage with customers’.

With Facebook seeming to be establishing a strong-base of mobile-minded ideas, Tagtile, a hardware device that allows individuals to earn rewards after tapping their smartphone against the Tagtile Cube, have said they will not currently be taking on any new customers.

5. Instagram hits 40 million users
Instagram, the photo sharing app that was bought by Facebook last week for $1 billion, has had 10 million downloads in just 10 days, with only 5 million of them on Android.

6. Google+ reaches 170m users, redesigns
Google announced last week that Google+ had reached 170 million users, and released a re-design of the site:

In other news, Google+ updated their site to allow users  to include a larger photo, a move which was followed by Facebook just days later.

7. Pinterest beats Twitter and Facebook’s revenue per clicks
According to Convetro CEO Jeff Zwelling, Pinterest represented 17.4% of social media revenue for e-commerce sites in Q1 2012, up from just 1% last year, based on a measure of 40 of Zwelling’s clients sites. They project that Pinterest will stand for 40% of revenue by the end of the year, reducing Facebook’s ‘revenue drive’ to 60% from 86% a year ago.

More importantly, on a revenue per click basis, Pinterest crushes Twitter and beats Facebook by 27%.

8. Tumblr attempt to find money in creativity
Tumblr’s CEO and founder, David Karp, revealed to GigaOm that he hopes Tumblr will make its mark by enabling people to express themselves in a deeper way than other sites that are currently around:

We are one of the few tech companies that cares about creators. We are not trying to build a network but we’re giving people a way to express themselves. I’m hoping in the next one or two years, we will prove we are company that is bent on helping them do great.

Karp also gave a full interview to AdAge, which is interesting to both users and marketers, in relation to the future of the site.

9. Spotify becomes more web-friendly
Spotify, the music streaming service, has plans to spread itsself even further across the web. They are introducing a new feature that will integrate the service, via a “play button” widget, onto web pages. After downloading the Spotify software, you will be able simply press the ‘play’ button and listen for free.

They’ve also teamed up with Tumblr allowing users to post songs, playlists and full albums directly to Tumblr.

They’re also introducing brand apps, with launch parters ranging from AT&T, Intel, McDonald’s and Reebok. AT&T’s “Surround Sounds,” will place songs to the locations where they were written, recorded, played or performed, allowing users to find music by searching maps.

10. Brands try Pinterest competitions
Over the weeks ahead, we’re sure we’ll see more brands trying out Pinterest, and both Harrods and Confused.com have been running competitions this week.

Harrods are inviting consumers to design a mood board for a Jubilee themed window display for a chance to see their window display put into action. Confused.com have encouraged females to submit a picture to a Pinterest board of them in their biggest heels, as part of a ‘Driving in Heels’ campaign which highlights the danger of, surprisingly, driving in heels which are too big.

11. Kentucky Fried Fail
Amidst tsunami warnings in Thailand, KFC Thailand suggested people take cover – but crassly suggested they made sure to stop and pick up their favourite KFC first. Although no tsunami surfaced, KFC were forced to apologise for their misjudged post. Perhaps one they could have chickened out of…

What was the highlight of your social media week? Leave us a comment!

The Facebook + Instagram deal is a movie in which Facebook has been cast as the pantomime villain, the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang out to steal the innocence of the Instagram kids. 

But we disagree. If this is a movie, it’s closer to the plot of The Fighter; in which the washed-up veteran helps train the younger sibling to become world champion.

A better analogy of the deal, certainly, bar the washed up part. Facebook is the current champ and shows no signs of being toppled any time soon.

So let’s take a breath, distil the sense from the madness, and discuss why Facebook + Instagram is good news.

It’s ours, and they can’t have it. 

“Facebook is evil,” they cry. “Let’s all delete our accounts, that’ll show them!”

This, a week on from the petulant reaction to the app’s much anticipated launch on Android, isn’t going to have anyone at Instagram or Facebook quaking in their boots.

Instagram is a great app with an engaged base of contributors – but users and owners aren’t the same thing.

The app was built by a couple of guys, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. It’s theirs.

In a miracle of engineering, genius and luck, they built it in 8 weeks and took it from unknown to number one photo app in the App Store in a matter of hours.

Initially, some of the appeal of Instagram was being part of a member’s only club. Die-hard users balked when Instagram for Android launched because they didn’t want Android users in their club.

They didn’t want their platform ‘diluted’, even though many Android phones have camera comparable or better than an iPhone.

The same thing happened when the Facebook deal was announced. But here’s the thing; for Instagram it was either evolve or die.

Instagram wouldn’t have been able to fight off better funded apps by bigger competitors forever. If not this deal with Facebook, Instagram may have been bought by another big company and gutted.

Facebook + Instagram is better than no Instagram at all.

Instagram wasn’t going to be free forever

Instagram is free to download. It doesn’t make any money. Thus far it has run solely on investment funding, meaning at some point they would have had to monetise to repay investors.

Either they’d have had to start charging for the app – driving away new users – start charging for filters, which would have pissed off their core fans, or start rolling out ads, which would have pissed off everyone.

Sure, at some point Facebook will seek to recoup their $1billion investment by making money from Instagram.

That doesn’t have to mean simply ads. Data is king, and Instagram will provide a ton of it via social graph integration.

Monetisation may come in the form of sponsored content and accounts, as it does on Twitter, or perhaps in the rebirth of Facebook Deals – dishing out offers to users who check-in with uploads from restaurants or hotels.

For now, the Facebook investment gives Instagram time, money and support to improve the app before monetisation in any form is even considered.

And let’s face it, whether you love it or you’ve never heard it, they need to make improvements.

Instagram is a flawed platform

Instagram works because it is simple. True. But it could also be argued that the app is too simple. It’s lack of features means it lacks true social and viral potential.

At the moment it’s a closed graph. Unless you go to the popular page, your feed is populated only by content created by users you follow.

Users can only like or comment on each other’s pictures. There is no curation aspect, no retweet/reblog/repin function, the same functions that have proved the success of Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest.

There is no way to manage more than one account. No way to filter posts into separate content streams.

You can’t, for example, have a separate account or separate stream for food pictures and sunset pictures, something which Pinterest has proved users want in order to better navigate content.

There is no tagging function on images, users can only be replied to in the comments, and then only users on the Instagram platform.

At least some of these gaps in the Instagram experience will be explored now, and hopefully we’ll have an even better native app to use.

Instagram isn’t dead

“Where’s Gowalla now?” said a user on Twitter, complaining that Facebook will be the death of Instagram.

But Gowalla, along with many of the acquisitions Facebook has made, was a secondary platform, miles behind Foursquare in terms of user adoption.

Facebook made those acquisitions to bolster their talent pool and internal development projects.

But Instagram is different. Instagram has a massive user base and no competitors in sight.

With that in mind, the app will continue as a standalone product, just as YouTube has underneath the Google umbrella.

As Kevin Systrom said in his official statement;

The Instagram app will still be the same one you know and love. We are excited to build a better Instagram for everyone.

This is a departure for the Facebook way of doing business. In the past, Mark Zuckerberg has favoured folding acquisitions into Facebook under that one brand name.

As part of the deal, Instagram will keep its branding and will effectively act as Facebook’s standalone photo app.

You don’t have to be on this train

The bulk of complaints against the Facebook deal have centred on Facebook’s use of data.

With Instagram now heading for deeper Facebook integration, possibly in the form of check-ins, tagging and friends, users are worried how Facebook will use that data.

The truth is they won’t use it any differently from the way Instagram would have used it if they’d have stayed an independent enterprise.

Part of that use is for advertising, sure, but it’s also about social integration; letting you share more easily with friends.

If you don’t like it, don’t stay. Perhaps this deal is the impetus you needed to leave and start your own photography app/community.

Perhaps you’ll be a $400m man in a couple of years time…

The deal will improve Facebook mobile, too

450 million of us access Facebook every month from a mobile device, many to upload and share pictures.

The problem is that the functionality is bad. Facebook didn’t just spend a billion dollars buying Instagram to fix their photo app, but this will certainly be a benefit of the friendship.

This isn’t just about filters, this is about function. you can reminisce about pokes all you want; Facebook was built on photos.

Making them easier to upload, share and edit will keep Facebook on top for a little while longer.

If they’re willing to take Instagram along for the ride, with the brand and community in tact, then even better.

Are you for or against Facebook + Instagram? Leave us a comment and share your thoughts.

The world is waking up to the news that Facebook has acquired mobile photo sharing platform Instagram for a cool billion dollars.

Here is a round up of the reactions from around the webs;

Mark Zuckerberg makes the announcement on his Facebook page;

I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.

For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together.

You can read his full statement here.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom breaks the news via Twitter

The tweet linked through to the Instagram Tumblr where Systrom had posted an official statement;

It’s important to be clear that Instagram is not going away. We’ll be working with Facebook to evolve Instagram and build the network. We’ll continue to add new features to the product and find new ways to create a better mobile photos experience.

The Instagram app will still be the same one you know and love. You’ll still have all the same people you follow and that follow you.You’ll still be able to share to other social networks. And you’ll still have all the other features that make the app so fun and unique.

We’re psyched to be joining Facebook and are excited to build a better Instagram for everyone.

You can read the full statement here.

TechCrunch highlights how Facebook has made way for Instagram;

This is a really big departure from the way Zuckerberg has historically run Facebook as a single product. He has always been insistent that everything feed back into Facebook itself.

Keeping Instagram as a separate product and brand is reminiscent of what Google has done with keeping YouTube and Android as separate fiefdoms within the company following their acquisitions.

The website has also remade their logo in honour of the acquisition. You can read the full article at TechCrunch.

Quora weighs in
Over on Quora the techsperts have been sharing their views. Ryan Charles, former head of mobile at Zagat, said;

If you’ve read The Facebook Effect, you’ll understand how pivotal photo sharing was to Facebook’s growth. The ability to tag a user in a photo was also a tremendous social and viral mechanism for Facebook.

Instagram could easily become a baked in component of a Facebook mobile OS and the team understands how to build a mobile community from the ground up.

Tech commentator Robert Scoble shared his views on the $1bn price tag;

Today Facebook has NO revenues from mobile. None. That’s amazing, since so many people, hundreds of millions of us, use Facebook on mobile clients.

Instagram will let Facebook develop a new kind of Open Graph advertising. One where Facebook will be able to offer mobile developers a lot of money in return for opening their apps up to Open Graph.

Venture capitalists in Silicon Valley are slobbering over this new potential revenue stream, so having lots of VC buy-in (they just got a nice payday) will be very important.

Imagine that Benchmark now “asks” all of its member companies to support such a new advertising scheme? This could result in billions of revenues for Facebook and member companies.

The Guardian highlighted the negative sentiment the deal has garnered;

Instagram and its various analogues have created a legion of smartphone users who are quite literally uploading billions of damaged images into the public record.

Make no mistake, you aren’t an artist. If you were an artist, you wouldn’t be using Instagram in the first place. You certainly wouldn’t be using a filter as a crutch.

At the end of the day, that’s what Instagram filters are: a crutch, a misguided replacement for a properly composed shot and a decent sensor.

- Chris Zeigler, writing at The Verge

The precedent is worrisome, though, if it means every time a startup encroaches on one of Facebook’s presumed strengths it will need to take out its pocketbook to defend its turf. That’s hardly a robust justification for a lofty valuation.

- Robert Cyran at BreakingViews

Twitter explodes
The most vocal outrage has been reserved for Twitter, with everyone from journalists and tech bloggers to Instagram users venting about the deal;

The strangest part of the deal
The Atlantic and Quora also picked up news that Instagram had sealed an extra $50m in funding only last week;

As a former entrepreneur myself, my sense is that there’s no way Instagram would have knowingly shrunk it valuation slice if they knew a potential sale was imminent.

It’s more likely that either the Facebook deal floored them, or that they were using the latest round of venture funding to show off their accelerating valuation to Facebook.

- Matthew O’Brian at The Atlantic

It seems clear that closing the investor round helped Instagram improve its negotiation position/valuation with Facebook. Instagram (closed) a big round that gave it enough money to stay independent for a long time while growing the company.

At that point, Facebook’s only option was to go big or go home.

- Muhammad At-Tauhidi on Quora

We are still gathering our thoughts here at the We Are Social office, and will be posting them on the blog shortly.

In the mean time, tell us; is this the end of Instagram? Does this change anything? Let us know in the comments.

Welcome to the final Tune-Up of 2011, the illustrious number 19. Not quite as good as number 100, which the UK just celebrated (congrats!), but certainly not without merit…

Here are the Top 10 stories in social media this week;

1. Facebook announces top trends of 2011

Facebook Australia are hosting a nice metrics app which shows the top status trends (above), most popular people, brands, characters, movies and television shows from Australian Facebook users in 2011.

If you’re wondering what a Skrillex is, it’s a dubstep thing, apparently.

It all looks very nice, but where there’s smoke, there’s Google, and not one to miss out on a bit of stat action;

2. Google lists top Australian search terms for the year

Google have published their annual Zeitgeist – the hottest trends on Google.com.au over the past year.

Apparently, we’re a nation of cake-eating, mine-craft playing plankers. But no-one else is allowed to call us that.

“Siri, where’s my cake pop?”

3. Social networks used by over three quarters of consumers
A new study from Ofcom produced some interesting findings about the state of social:

Social networking is a global phenomenon, with over three quarters of consumers in the markets we surveyed saying that they have visited a social networking site, with the majority saying they visit them on a daily basis.

This is much higher among 18-24 year olds, with eight in ten (83 per cent) visiting on a daily basis.

Social networking sites are most popular in Italy, with 91 per cent ever having visited and a quarter visiting over five times a day (24 per cent), while in the UK eight out of ten (79 per cent) have ever visited with one in five visiting over five times a day.

UK consumers are more likely to access social networking sites on a mobile phone than other countries, with 43 per cent of those with social networking site profiles saying they do so compared to just 30 per cent in the US.

More widely, the UK is Europe’s most digitally aware nation (second only to America) and this is underlined by Britons spending more time online, owning more smartphones and even watching more TV online.

Nonetheless, perhaps the most interesting graph in the whole report is how different age groups use social media to share news. The graph underscores how young people are ‘always active’:

4. Companies look to expand social media spend in 2012
An interesting bit of research from Grant Thornton highlighting how although just 43% of companies worldwide currently use social media, 61% plan to increase their usage, with it breaking down by country as follows:

The quicker growth amongst BRIC countries is backed up by the latest research from KPMG, which suggests that brands are keen to use social media in those markets as a cheap and effective way to boost brand awareness.

Judging by another survey, it seems the increased spend will go – unsurprisingly – mainly on Facebook and Twitter campaigns:

5. Facebook hits 1 billion – and rolls out timeline worldwide
According to Gawker, Facebook will make one billion Dollars in profit in the calendar year 2011 – double its profits from the previous year.

More to the point, it’s limited outgoings means Facebook is swimming in cash.

These extraordinary profit figures mean that if and when a Facebook flotation does come, the social network will be valued at a least 100 billion Dollars. And that’s a lot of money.

In other FB-news, a long time after it was announced, Facebook Timeline is finally available worldwide.

Once users activate Timeline, they get a seven-day review period to check what goes on the Timeline before it goes public.

Timeline is also now available on iPhone, Android and Mobile Web.

6. New Google+ updates and changes to Hangouts
With the end of the year just a few days away, Google have decided to launch some new updates to Google+.

First up, they’ve added the option to ‘change the volume’ of Circles, so that the overall stream can be better weighted to your interests:

They’ve also updated Brand Pages in a really positive way: they can now have multiple admins with a notification flow to enhance Page management, and they also have launched an aggregated count of all users who have engaged with a Page:

They’ve also launched a whole range of updates for Hangouts including video Hangouts on mobile which are designed to make them more accessible. To whom is another matter…

7. Facebook considering new ad formats
AdAge reports that at the end of March, Facebook is planning its first push into mobile advertising – by putting Sponsored Stories into the mobile News Feed.

It’s an interesting development as Facebook believes its userbase will be growing on mobile, meaning that this is almost certainly the first of several steps.

Judging by a post on Inside Facebook, the social network has also launched a new premium ad unit, allowing brands to post Coupons on their Pages and then push these through traditional Facebook social ads.

8. KLM to introduce in-flight matchmaker zone
Dutch airline KLM’s latest social campaign is a deft touch: customers will be allowed to see fellow passengers’ social media profiles, and based on their interests can choose to sit together.

9. Heineken launch social Christmas tree – and hire We Are Social
Heineken have launched a Facebook campaign where fans can send a Merry Christmas message to 16 friends in a sendable graphic. These messages will then come alive on a real tree in Singapore.

In even more exciting news, Heineken have hired We Are Social (that’s us…) to work on Bulmers and Jacques, two of their cider brands. We’re looking forward to working together.

10. Sherlock Holmes film utilises Stephen Fry’s Twitter following
It’s not original using celebrities for endorsements, even in social, but this one caught our eye for its inventiveness: Stephen Fry has been posting Holmes-esque cryptic clues on his Twitter channel to promote the new Sherlock Holmes film, and the first person to crack them each day wins a prize.

A good campaign, well executed, without any elementary mistakes.

The Week According To The Internets:

• Push This Button Of The Week: Make Everything OK
• Viral Video Of The Week: How Santa Uses Siri
• Single-Serving Tumblr Of The Week: Comic Sans The World

Capping off a spectacular 2011 for We Are Social, we’re pleased to announce our new premises at Fox Studios, in Sydney’s Moore Park.

Our expansion over the past 12 months has been rapid, and our team has grown considerably. The new space means we’ll have room to expand even further in the new year, and allow us to better serve clients new and existing.

Feel free to drop in if you want to discuss the ways we can help your brand engage in conversations in social media – help we’re already providing for Kia, eBay, Paypal, HP, HarperCollins, Sydney Water and many more.

Here’s the new address in full;

We Are Social
Level 5 Frank Hurley Grandstand
Fox Studios Australia
Driver Ave, Moore Park
NSW 1363

And a map;

It’s best to call ahead if you do decide to visit so we can get you booked in at the gate.

We look forward to seeing you soon, and to giving you the tour!

Google+ may have have launched their long-awaited pages, but brands shouldn’t necessarily rush to sign up.

It seems the search giant have jumped the proverbial gun, with pages currently having no option for multi-admin access, no way to transfer pages between owners, and no option to add a vanity URL.

Addressing concerns from users in the Google+ forums, Google+ Community Manager Toby S. gave an update on the status of branded pages;

First, there is no multi-admin functionality yet, but it is a priority for our team and coming very soon!

Second, our team is working on a way to transfer page ownership so that, if a page owner leaves his or her company, the brand page can be maintained. That’s also coming very soon.

Toby also weighed in on the subject of vanity URLs;

I can not speak to long-term plans for vanity URLs, but it is currently not a priority for our team and I would proceed under the assumption that they will not become available.

This seems to be something of a #fail for the Google+ team, who launched the pages to much fanfare yesterday.

Even brands that have embraced social are still nervous about the prospect of losing a page due to a staff member leaving the company or going rogue.

Having multi-admin access on social channels not only allows the whole team to take part in community and brand management, but also acts as a security blanket – brands know they won’t lose the page if they lose a staff member.

The way Google+ brand pages are currently set-up, there is no way to safeguard against this.

Brands are also increasingly pointing fans directly to branded social channels through traditional media, by including their Twitter handles and vanity Facebook URL on everything from television spots and billboards to magazines and digital banners.

Not having the option of a vanity URL will be a difficult sell for brands, leaving them with the choice of either including the long-form URL, complete with a 21-character number ID, or asking them to Google their name with a ‘+’ in front, i.e. +We Are Social Australia

While it may seem necessary to rush out and set-up a branded page to stay ahead of the curve, we’d advise proceeding with caution until at least multi-admin access is enabled.

With the success of the platform depending on Google’s ability to entice brands to use pages, they might not just be a case of jumping the gun, but of also shooting themselves in the foot.

What are your thoughts; major fail? Or too soon to tell? Leave us a comment below…

Welcome to Movember, folks! Also know round these parts as ‘Tom Selleck appreciation month’.

To ease you into your month we’ve gathered the biggest stories from the social web for you to digest in one-easy-to-swallow blog post.

Here are the Top 10 stories in social media this week;

1. Facebook and Twitter users spamming friends in exchange for cash

In what amounts to a hijacking of brand advocacy, Socialloot are offering marketing dollars to users who sign up and post about brands to their communities.

The site has over a million users in Australia across Facebook and Twitter, with 500 Australian brands – including Reader’s Digest, Perfume Connection, Starshots and Bevilles Jeweller - offering users cash in exchange for links.

With the company set to go Global next year, it’s worth keeping an eye on. If your friends start trying to sell you random products, it’ll likely be the end of social networking as we know it.

Also, you should totally buy a Slusho.

2. Marketers use fan numbers to measure social media success

A newly-released survey suggests that although marketers realise fan numbers aren’t the be-all and end-all, they do end up relying on them for measuring success. 60% still used fan numbers as a primary measure of gauging success.

The folly of this is clear: just accruing fans is not enough; it’s what you do with them which is important.

 

 

3. Vitrue research into Facebook fans
Vitrue have produced a really useful bit of research outlining how the demographics of Facebook overall are markedly different from the sub-group who like Pages, who tend to be younger and predominantly women.

In the case of consumer packaged goods Pages, the fans skew even more female but are slightly older.

4. How the F8 changes are affecting Facebook Pages
Analysis from PageLever suggests that the recent Facebook changes have made more fans see Page updates, but those fans are seeing fewer updates:

Facebook’s changes, announced at its F8 Developers Conference last month, appear to have boosted brands’ visibility among more of their fans but decreased the frequency with which a brand’s fans see its messages, according to a study of more than 300 brand pages. In what should be considered good news, the new layout has substantially increased fan interactions with brands.

EdgeRank Checker have produced other research, highlighting how engagement is generally up massively, with comments up 14% and likes up 16%, although impressions are down 22%.

In addition, engagement has dropped on smaller Facebook Pages, meaning that although this is good news for big brands, it’s bad news for local restaurants:

5. Google+ launches more updates in bid to improve UI
Google+ rolled out three new features last week, in a bid to increase the amount of time people spend on the site:

1) They’ve launched a what’s hot on Google + feature, to highlight – how did you guess?! – what’s hot on Google+:

2) There’s also now Google+ Ripples, which allows you how to track how popular posts are shared, and who the big conversation drivers and contributors are:

3) Finally and most interestingly, they’ve launched Google+ Creative Kit which allows users to edit their photos with some cool effects:

With Google+ now also available with Google Apps, one can hardly accuse Google of giving up on Google+ just yet.

6. BBC moves to human-edited Twitter feeds
The BBC has announced that its four core Twitter feeds will now be curated by real people. Nieman Journalism Lab has an interesting post about the effect human curation can have.

7. Airlines outed for bad customer service in social
There was bad news for two airlines this week: first, American Airlines was declared the least popular airline in social media, with only 12% positive sentiment.

Then, Qantas managed to fully step up to the fail-plate with some unbelievably wooden customer service via social media.

All of this left them flying towards the top of the trending topics, before the fuel of negative sentiment overpowered the account, leading them to truly crash and burn. It’s plain simple: it’s just not good enough to wing it.

8. adidas Originals Womens’ Look Book Instagram Contest
adidas recently launched an interesting city vs city Instagram challenge to encourage fans to capture their Originals styles.

Fans then upload photos of their outfits and their friends’ and tag them with #adidasoriginals and a geo-tag of their city and vote for their favourite look.

9. Chapstick’s social media suicide

A real #epicfail for Chapstick: first they posted an image of a woman with her backside in the air looking for her chapstick behind the sofa.

This photo received a spiral of negative comments which were subsequently deleted. More comments were posted, more comments were deleted, still with no word of apology.

Finally Chapstick issued an apology containing the words “we’re committed to listening…” but we’re not sure that message will stick, chaps.

10. Mexican football team replaces players’ names with Twitter handles
In a nifty move, Mexican football team Jaguares di Chiapas put their players’ Twitter handles on the back of their shirts instead of their names.

They also advertised their sponsor’s Twitter account, rather than the sponsor itself. Tweet idea!

The Week According To The Internet:

• Twitter Account Of The Week: Shippam’s Fish Paste
• Tumblr Of The Week: Barack Obama
• Heartwarming Reddit thread of the week: Boy suffering Leukemia photoshopped into amazing pictures to cheer him up.

Twitter is quietly rolling out updates to their timeline, with select users already seeing changes.

Thanks to Patrick Bisch at Pinglio, we have screengrabs and video of the updates, which include threaded conversations, inline media and in-line listing of retweets.

There has been no official announcement on the Twitter blog or through other channels, yet select users have been seeing the new timeline for the past day or so.

Some of the change in functionality will be familiar to users of mobile clients such as Tweetbot, who already enjoy enhanced controls in the timeline.

By including media in the posts, and not the sidebar, the changes also allow Twitter to stay competitive with fellow microblogging site Tumblr, who have seen phenomenal growth over the past year due to the visual nature of the dashboard – Tumblr’s answer to the timeline/newsfeed.

These changes are long overdue, coming over a year after Twitter rolled out their last major redesign. Facebook have made several major updates since then, also allowing larger media to be displayed in the newsfeed.

You can see some of the updates below;

Inline conversations

Click a tweet to see the thread;

Inline Media

Photo and video will now display underneath a tweet, rather than in the sidebar. This means the media will be display at a larger size;

Profile Lightbox display

Rather than appear in the sidebar, when you click a user’s name their profile will now appear over the page in a lightbox, similar to how Facebook now displays photos;

While these seem like intuitive changes to the timeline, as Patrick points out, they also seem to make the sidebar – a major part of the redesign – rather obsolete.

Is this a move by Twitter to get users to spend more time in timeline? Certainly with their continuing push to bring in advertising revenue, it would make sense to ensure users are lingering for longer.

While we’re waiting for these updates to rollout to our accounts, we’d love to hear your thoughts – are you a fan? Do you have the update yet? Leave us a comment…

Welcome to Tuesday Tune-up #11, We Are Social Sydney’s weekly round-up of all things social.

Here are your Top 10 stories this week;

1. Australian shoppers swayed by social recommendation

According to search marketing agency Outrider, 1 in 3 Australian high earners have bought a product after a friend recommended it on Facebook.

In the same bracket, 1 in 4 have made an offline purchase after seeing a recommendation on Facebook.

Further proof, if it was needed, that targeting influencers is one of the most important tools in the strategist’s arsenal.

Count this as a recommendation, and buy it. Check out the rest of the Infographic here.

2. Social media continues to attract big investment
Research by Booz & Co. and Buddy Media has revealed that businesses are set to spend a higher percentage of total digital marketing spend on social over the next three years.

The survey also revealed that 65% of the managers already have plans in place to improve social media policies – 63% said these were to better integrate social into overall marketing strategies, and 59% plan to pay attention to social media monitoring and rapid response capabilities.

Yet only 15% already have plans for social revenue-generating platforms.

3. Mobile social media audience grows
A comScore study has found that 72.2 million US residents access social networking sites and blog on their mobiles – that’s 37% more than last year, and means that nearly one third of all US mobile users are going mobile with social.

Nearly 40 million US mobile users, more than half of the mobile social media audience, access these sites almost every day, demonstrating the importance of this activity to people’s daily routines.

69.5% of mobile social networkers posted status updates while on their mobile device, with 52.9% reading posts from organisations or brands.

The future of mobile social looks set for continued growth.

Garner analysts predict that by 2015, companies will generate 50 percent of Web sales via their social presence and mobile applications.

4. 10 biggest Facebook countries – Brazil continues to lead growth
Statistics from Socialbakers show that of the 10 countries with the largest Facebook populations, Brazil is the leading country in the world in terms of user growth:

Which bodes well for We Are Social São Paulo…

5. Kia Australia help fans show their friends a little Respect
To celebrate the launch of the Kia Rio Reborn – a car that demands serious respect – we created an app that allows fans to “respect” each other.

It’s a little bit of fun that also showcases the car’s design and personality. We’ll throw a fist bump for that – Respect!

6. Mums love Facebook
While this may come as an unwanted development for children across the world, Facebook marketers will no doubt be delighted by the latest statistics on the use of Facebook by mums.

According to research by eMarketer, an estimated 23 million US mums are on Facebook this year – more than two-thirds of all online mums in the country, and they’re logging onto the site at least once every month.

Word to your mother.

7. Shorter posts generate more engagement
By looking at over 11,000 posts made by the 150 largest Facebook pages, Virtue have demonstrated that the shorter the posts made by brands, the more engagement.

Although post length will depend on the type of post and its content, this study shows that there are measurable advantages to keeping Facebook posts as pithy as possible.

8. New developments for Facebook
Three significant developments for Facebook were released last week. Firstly is the news that Facebook Pages can now be opened in Facebook’s iOS Apps using the fb://page URL scheme.

This is welcome news for marketers, who can now direct users straight to their Page without them having to open and log in to the m.facebook.com site.

Facebook also released Facebook Messenger, it’s standalone mobile messaging app, for Blackberry users, as well as updating the iPhone and Android versions.

This improves greatly upon the initial release of Messenger that came out in August, with a slick new interface that allows users to see when their friends are typing to them and more easily find and sort their friends.

Finally, the news that Facebook is running a closed, limited test to allow websites – for the first time – to process sales transactions for virtual goods with Facebook’s currency, Facebook Credits.

9. New developments for LinkedIn
LinkedIn has also revealed a few new developments. It has begun its expansion into Asia with the launch of its first Asian language platform in Japanese.

Whether the professional social networking site will succeed in a digital culture where online anonymity is prevalent is yet to be seen.

LinkedIn have also announced Talent Pipeline, a recruiter platform built into the LinkedIn system which enables recruiters to more easily manage and keep record of their talent leads.

LinkedIn also unveiled Classmates, providing high-level insights about alumni and allowing access to more detailed professional profiles that they’ve shared, this tool looks to help users make the most of their school and university connections.

10. Twitter users tweeting more, iPhone integration drives sign-ups
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo announced that Twitter has gone from 100 million tweets at the beginning of this year to a quarter of a billion tweets per day – a 177% change since September 2010.

Over the course of this year, Twitter users have also become more engaged, from 30% of its users active every day in January 2011 to over 50% active daily users today.

He also noted that the recent iPhone Twitter integration has caused a 3x growth in sign-ups.

Was that more than 140 characters? Send us a tweet and let us know… preferably from an iOS5 device.

The Week According To The Internet:

• Misleading Trending Topic Of The Week: 1D HATERS GET OFF TWITTER
• Single Serving Tumblr Of The Week: F*** Yeah Cheese Statues
• Annoying Viral Video Of The Week: Like Mah Status

What say you, social stat fans? Leave us a comment below!