Half of Facebook post reach happens in the first half hour
Research by Socialbakers has revealed that 50% of the reach of a Facebook page’s posts occurs in the first half hour, and 80% in the first 3 hours. The below chart, based on a sample of 1,000 posts, displays the real-time minute-by-minute increase in reach.

Time spent on Google+ far behind Facebook
Google+ users spent an average of 6 minutes 47 seconds on the network during March, a far cry from the 6 hour 44 minute average on rival platform Facebook. Whilst this does represent growth from the 3.3 minutes spent in February 2012, in contrast to Facebook’s dip from 7 hours 9 minutes in March 2012, the rate at which G+ is catching up can be, by these figures at least, dismissed as negligible. Figures reported by Nielsen also revealed 20 million unique US users of the G+ Android and iPhone apps, a 238% increase from March 2012 and 28 million desktop users, up 63% in the same period. However, there is likely to be some crossover between the two groups. In fact, accusations have come in that Google+ is essentially a ‘desolate wasteland’, based on the activity of the top 100 global brands. According to research by Millward Brown, 40% of these posted to Google+ either infrequently or not at all, with seventeen (including Nike and Pepsi) not having posted anything for over a week. McDonald’s, as shown below, have never had a single post.

How much Vines are shared
Research has been produced into how much branded Vines are shared to celebrate the app turning 100 days old. They discovered that branded Vines are shared 4x as often as branded online videos and, of the top 100 most shared, 4% of Vines were branded, compared to 1% of online videos. In total, 5 Vines are shared per second; more of these come during the weekend than the rest of the week combined. Time-wise, Vine frequency peaks from 10am-11am Eastern Time.

75% of top US retailers and restaurants are on Foursquare
Three quarters of the US top 100 retailers and top 100 restaurants are now on Foursquare, of which a full list can be found here. As for smaller businesses, Foursquare claim that over 1 million businesses have been claimed, but this includes some chain stores; only 17% have ever tried a promotion with the network. Larger businesses are seeing a positive effect from their campaigns; Bloomin’ Brands had 678 users redeem an offer for Outback stores in Richmond, VA, which gave a free appetiser for every second check in. Karen Soots, VP of media services at Bloomin’ Brands, praised the campaign’s effect, saying that if they were to do that nationwide at many restaurants over three weeks, it’s “millions of dollars in incremental revenue”.

Facebook about to spend some more pocket money
After last years acquisition of Instagram, it was widely considered that Facebook’s major acquisition strategy was primarily defensive rather than offensive. Yet this week there are rumours that Facebook are in final stages of talks with mobile-device driving application Waze, in a deal that could be worth as much as US$1 billion. Waze is a crowd-sourced GPS driving app with just shy of 50 million users, and this acquisition sees Facebook taking another step into the mobile world, whilst acquiring a hugely valuable asset in the map space. It is a hugely proactive shift for Facebook, looking to cement their positioning in the mobile market place, after the launch and subsequent fall of Home in the past few weeks. Keep. Your. Eyes. Peeled.

Hamilton Island and Weibo Announce Landmark
In an industry first, Tencent, China’s largest social network with over 800million+ active users has partnered with Australia’s Hamilton Island to broadcast the Great Barrier Reef island to the booming China market.

This week Hamilton Island is launching its official Tencent Weibo channel, kicking off the partnership and commencing its strategic deep engagement with China’s affluent travellers of the future. Working closely with Tencent, and Hamilton Island’s first Chinese ambassador Chao Xian Yang, Hamilton Island plans to build a strong Tencent Weibo community and fan base for Whitsundays’ island.

When should you pin?
A new study by Digitas and Curalate recently shed some light on Pinterest engagement specific to the Fashion/Retail, Automotive and Electronics sectors. For all three markets, the study revealed that, unlike Twitter and Facebook, Pinterest is all about users telling the brand story. In fact, 70 percent of brand engagement on Pinterest is generated by users versus brands. See more here

Target launch deals with Facebook
Retailer Target has produced a set of offers, which will automatically generate Facebook posts when claimed, unless the user turns this feature off. Starting with around 700 discount offers and expected to grow to 1,000, the campaign is set to be hosted on a Target website called ‘Cartwheel’. Users can claim a deal at any point, producing a unique barcode that tracks every offer they claim. This barcode is then scanned at checkout. Cartwheel works seamlessly with mobile, meaning that a discount can be claimed at any point in the process, even as you’re walking towards the checkout.

AA’s first class lounge open to those with high Klout scores
American Airlines have decided to open their ‘Admirals Club’ lounges free of charge to those with high Klout scores, regardless of whether they’re due to fly with AA. Anyone with a score of over 55 will qualify for a free one-day pass in any one of 40 airports and can take advantage of the benefits including free WiFi and beer. The campaign hopes that these people will then tweet or post to Facebook expressing their gratitude, though this is not a requirement of claiming the offer.

Huggies ‘TweetPee’
This week, in weird app news… introducing ‘TweetPee’, a nappy sensor plus Twitter alert that tells parents when their baby needs changing. The campaign from Brazil also allows parents to keep track of the number of Huggies they’ve used and even order online when they’re running low. The campaign is certainly a fun and innovative one – we wonder how many parents will be hooking their children’s nappies up to Twitter.

Coke zero’s #motherpiece campaign for forgetful children
Yesterday marked Mother’s Day in many countries across the world, the day of the year that celebrates children forgetting to get their mum anything. Coke Zero to the rescue! They targeted absent-minded children (particularly boys, for some reason) and asked them to tweet their best excuses with the hashtag #motherpieces, pushing the campaign through a set of promoted tweets. The best entries were then selected to send in a personal photo, with 10 classically-trained painters on hand to create a ‘motherpiece’ of the winner. If they sent in their home address, they’d also receive a framed copy. Mother’s Day salvaged.

A social farewell to Sir Alex Ferguson
Last week, the news broke of Sir Alex Ferguson retiring after 27 years in charge of English Premier League football club Manchester United. Twitter was quick to react, with over 1.4 million mentions of the story in the hour following its announcement.

Sir Alex Ferguson retires. #thankyousiralex

— ManUtd_PressOffice (@ManUtd_PO) May 8, 2013

The hashtag #thankyousiralex, used in all of MUFC’s communication surrounding the topic, was mentioned more than 100,000 times in the first hour. The hashtag ended up being one of many trends – the story took up 8 of the trending spots in the UK and 4 worldwide. A number of brands managed to jump on the bandwagon, too; both Nando’s and Premier Inn poked fun at the idea of ‘Fergie time’, the inexplicable period of extra time added whenever Manchester United needed points.

In honour of Sir Alex Ferguson we’re proud to introduce #NandosFergieTime – all our Manchester Nando’s will be open 5 minutes later tonight.

— Nando’s (@NandosUK) May 8, 2013

As tribute to Sir Alex Ferguson’s 26 yrs at #MUFC you can request a #fergietime checkout this Sunday in Manchester to get 26 extra minutes

— Premier Inn (@premierinn) May 8, 2013

Our tribute to #siralex: Special Edition Packet: ow.ly/i/242tV #mufc #fergie

— Golden Wonder (@GoldenWonderUK) May 8, 2013

Our friends at Salesforce sent me this quick guide to creating the perfect Facebook post. It highlights some very useful tips on how to structure a killer Facebook post.

I would also add:

• Create content that appeals to emotions rather than our rationality
• Create content that hits the sweetspot between brand goals, community interests and conversation trends
• Post with positive sentiment generate high engagement than posts with negative sentiment
• Amplify highly engaging posts using Facebook Promoted Posts to add fuel to the fire.
• Use status updates if your goal is to deliver higher reach (up to 10x photo posts)

8 out of 10 Australian users connect with brands
According to eMarketer, this year 11.4 million people in Australia - more than half of the population - will be social network users. And that’s not all. According to a December 2012 survey from Latitude Insights and The Social Hatch, 82% of social media users had connected with a brand via a social site.

On Facebook nearly three out of 10 users reported connecting with 11 or more brands.

Half of Australia’s social brands don’t talk to customers
A recent survey has shown that of the ASX100 companies, only 50% are using social media to talk to their customers. Telstra, Coca Cola and Woolworths have more than 340,000 Facebook fans each, but at the time of checking, none of the companies had responded to any of the last of 10 posts on their timelines according to The Australian.

Retailers Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi have disabled comments on their Facebook pages.

With Australians being some of the most brand friendly social media users in the world (see above article), not engaging these users in conversation or actively listening and creating a dialogue is not just a missed opportunity, but a misunderstanding of the role of social media in marketing.

Social is a conversation. If you want to talk more about how you can be part of the conversation, then let’s chat.

Facebook report Q1 earnings & increase in monthly active users
Facebook has reported its earnings for Q1 2013, announcing revenue of $1.45bn, up 38% from Q1 2012. 85% of total revenue came from advertising, amounting to $1.25bn, up 43% from Q1 2012.

The network simultaneously noted an increase in Monthly Active Users (MAUs). While growth slowed down in markets like the US, Canada and Europe, MAUs were up from 901 million in Q1 2012 to 1.1bn a year later, while Daily Active Users (DAUs) increased from 526 million to 665 million in the same period.

A great deal of this growth was down to mobile. Q1 2013 saw 751 million mobile MAUs compared to 488 million the year before, while there are now 189 million Mobile Only MAUs.

Twitter appoints Cynthia Gaylor as head of corporate development
Twitter has fuelled rumours of plans for an IPO with the appointment of ex-Morgan Stanley investment banker Cynthia Gaylor, who worked on the public offerings of Facebook, LinkedIn and Zynga. In what was her first ever tweet, she said:

@amac @twitter @jess look forward to joining and focusing on M&A + strategy. pointed north … let the migration begin!

— cynthia gaylor (@cynthiag) May 2, 2013

Twitter was valued at $9bn after an offer to staff in January and is set to hit global ad revenue of $1bn by 2014. This, along with the above appointment, has led to speculation by The New York Times that “next big step is to go public on the stock market, and insiders say the current goal is to have an initial public offering in 2014″.

Twitter ads now available to all US users
Twitter’s self-serve ads interface, launched in March 2012, is now available to all US users. Previously accessible only by invite, Twitter has used the period to improve on a number of features, from targeting to reporting, and decided to open the self-serve platform to everyone in the US. All you need to do to gain access is visit the page at business.twitter.com and answer a few questions. There has been concern that the increased demand will lead to either a boost in the number of ads appearing in users’ streams, or the price of ads. Russ Laraway, senior director of small- and medium-sized business at Twitter, has stated that “There will be no change in the frequency with which ads show up in timelines”, though it is not clear how price will be affected.

‘Photos of You’ on Instagram
Instagram has launched ‘Photos of You’, which essentially allows Facebook-style tagging of people and brands in photos. Previously, users would @-mention one another, as if on Twitter, to perform a similar function. This form of tagging comes with another key feature: it makes a full archive of all photos someone has been tagged in that appear on that user’s profile, assuming they have given permission. To prevent privacy complaints, Instagram has built controls that allow manual selection of which photos are visible to others. The feature looks to foster increased communication between individuals, but may also be beneficial for brands to interact with each other, as well as influencers with high follower counts and normal users.

Twitter updates Vine for iOS
Twitter has produced a couple of updates for the Vine iOS app, including the ability to shoot with the front-facing camera and tag others in posts. Where it was previously only possible to shoot with the camera on the back of the phone, the screenshot below displays a small button in the bottom left of the screen that allows switching between cameras. You can also see that @-mentioning is set to work much like on Twitter, Vine’s parent platform.

Path exceeds 10 million users
Path, the social network that limits you to 150 friends, has exceeded 10 million users for the first time. After reaching 2 million in Feb 2012 and 3 million in June 2012, the figure sees a large milestone for the platform. They’ve since added a search feature in December and released version 3.0 in March this year, which supported messaging. While the number of registered users is an impressive start for Path, it will be interesting to examine how many active users they manage to retain.

Where does brands’ Pinterest engagement come from?
According to a study by Digitas and Curalate, 30% of engagement on Pinterest comes from brand accounts. The remaining 70% comes from users pinning content from outside of brands’ Pinterest accounts.

J.C. Penney asks fans to come back on social media
Last year, J.C. Penney decided to get rid of sales and coupons, focussing instead on regular, low prices. The move was a disaster and they’ve recently taken to social media in an attempt to remedy it. They took to Twitter with the hashtag #jcplistens, whereby fans were asked which changes should be kept and which reversed. The move is a nice example of a brand using social media honestly, in an attempt to connect with fans. It will be interesting to see if it helps their ailing figures.

Mountain Dew purchases promoted tweets for apology
Another example of a big brand mistake was Mountain Dew’s ‘Felicia the Goat’ advert, which was criticised as both racist and misogynistic. Last week, they purchased promoted tweets to expand the reach of their apology, letting users know that they had pulled the advert. It’s an interesting idea: on the one hand, it allows the apology to be seen by as many people as possible. However, it also provides potentially unnecessary promotion to the original issue.

Lowe’s post six-second tips on Vine
Lots of brands are using Vine. Some are doing it well, some aren’t. Hardware storeLowe’s has strongly entered the former camp with their latest campaign, using Vine to post six-second home improvement tips. The medium brings to life content that is relevant but not necessarily exciting, while the tips themselves are useful, not an unnecessary experiment with a new medium. As such, the form and content compliment one another perfectly.

Stripped screw? No problem, just use a rubber band. #lowesfixinsix #howto vine.co/v/bU61aqq2YOp

— Lowe’s (@Lowes) April 21, 2013

Any sticker peels right off when you use a hair dryer. #lowesfixinsix #tip #stopmotion vine.co/v/bPH2WPpnA7r

— Lowe’s (@Lowes) April 24, 2013

Red Bull’s ‘Imaginate’ Pinterest puzzles
Red Bull is asking fans to solve Pinterest puzzles based on stunts performed by trials cyclist Danny MacAskill. Six videos will be released, each showing a different trick, which fans must watch in order to solve a puzzle on Pinterest. This involves pinning content in the correct order to create an image of MacAskill. Those who do so correctly will be entered into a draw to win signed photos of the cyclist.

Hugh Jackman answers Wolverine questions
To promote the upcoming release of ‘The Wolverine’, in which he plays the title character, Hugh Jackman answered the Twitter questions of 11 fans in a series of YouTube videos. He also tweeted the answers and posted links to the videos from his official @RealHughJackman account. This is the latest in a series of social stunts around the film, including a 6-second ‘Tweaser’ released through Twitter’s Vine app.

Yesterday, Facebook unveiled its ‘Facebook phone’. Rather than manufacturing a physical handset, instead Facebook is hijacking the everyday Android smartphone with a clever piece of software (a ‘Launcher’) which turns it into an always-connected Facebook device.

Called Facebook Home, once installed it appears on the home screen of any Android device, and consists of a collection of apps designed around people’s Facebook connections. It’s incredibly visual compared with what people will be used to. Rather than being greeted with a set of apps when they turn on their phone, instead Home will feed through photos and updates from the user’s Facebook feed. This is part of Zuckerberg’s vision to design a phone “around people and not apps” – producing a “great social phone”.

It’s a major move by Facebook and one that makes a lot of commercial sense. Smartphones and social networks are becoming increasingly synonymous and weaving Facebook even further into the experience makes sense from this perspective. People are spending more and more time on their mobiles and of course, Facebook wants this time to be theirs.

More eyeballs on Facebook means more potential for revenue generation, and with over 680m people checking the platform on their mobile every month, it’s clearly an area where there’s more advertising growth to come. And where are these opportunities? While Zuckerberg wasn’t entirely specific about how brands and advertising would be affected by Facebook Home, the highly filtered Cover Feed could offer an opportunity for news feed advertising at a premium over Facebook’s existing offering.

More than that obvious development, as I told Adweek, Facebook Home could be the holy grail of mobile advertising. Aside from mobile operators, no other company is able to keep track of a consumer’s location at all times – which, privacy settings permitting, Facebook could now do with Home.

And the new in-build Chat Heads and notifications features provide a potential mechanism to allow location-based ads to appear in a relatively unobtrusive way – something the mobile operators don’t have. If Facebook can use this to deliver location relevant and timely commercial messages to consumers, it will effectively give Facebook a licence to print money – their long sought after equivalent of Google’s AdWords.

Facebook could potentially take it even further. As Om Malik wrote yesterday:

It can start to correlate all of your relationships, all of the places you shop, all of the restaurants you dine in and other such data. The data from accelerometer inside your phone could tell it if you are walking, running or driving.

This is the third big announcement we’ve seen from Facebook recently, hot on the heels of Graph Search and changes to the newsfeed, but this has the potential to be the biggest game changer yet for the platform.

Whether consumers have the appetite for more Facebook, more of the time will become clear as we watch Home’s performance over the next few months. However, if Facebook has cracked the mobile conundrum, it could now be sitting on a potential goldmine big enough to keep Wall Street happy – at least, for now.

Update: Facebook has released a Q&A trying to reassure critics that any privacy concerns about Home are much ado about nothing, saying:

Home doesn’t change anything related to your privacy settings on Facebook, and your privacy controls work the same with Home as they do everywhere else on Facebook

However, their statement doesn’t exclude the possibility of the sort of location-based ads as I describe above…

This week; Giant Easter eggs, the cutest dog in the world and getting creative on Facebook. 

It’s a four day week guys, which just means you get your Internet fill early!

GRIM: Actresses without teeth.

ANTISOCIAL: One way to avoid shopping crowds.

BRIGHT SIDE: Things can only get better…right?

POPULAR: A collection of the most creative Facebook posts from brands.

MANTERESTING: Pinterest for dudes. 

TECH-HEADS: More through Google glass. 

TALENTED: Sounds you would never expect to hear from a walrus. 

GIANT: The worlds largest Easter egg up for auction. 

EQUALITY: Gay marriage equality box turns red and spreads on social media.

BUNNY-DOG: The dog that just can’t get enough of Easter.

(Image via)

This week; spray on jeans, a classy prom invitation and a Mario Kart love song.

Take a look at what exploded on the Internet this week.

PRANKED: Pepsi and Jeff Gordon take someone for a ride.

ASKED OUT: Will you go to prom with me, Kate?

INTERPRETED: Selfless Portraits for strangers on Facebook.

IMPROVED: Preview for Star Trek Into Darkness remade with Lego. 

PARTY: If famous websites were people.

SNEAKY: This dog is a photobomb master.

PERFORMED: Selena Gomez, Jimmy Fallon and Mario Kart love.

PHOTOSHOPPED: Toddlers or adults?

TROLLED: American Eagle’s spray on jeans.

J-J-J-JULIA: What will her legacy be?

(Image via)