It’s Friday, and not a moment too soon!

Pretend to work while we entertain you with the internet…

Stoned: The greatest music video ever made is on crack

Unfortunate: These poor hilarious children

Available: Your favourite bands for a price

Alcoholic: You after playing these internet-themed drinking games

Found: Holy shit Manbearbig is real

Shocked: Guy suing The Oatmeal finds why you don’t sue the internet

Explained: How to live based on advice from Yahoo Answers

Ruined: Your favourite movies by these on set pictures

Blogged: The adventures of the man from all the news

Followed: Ben Affleck joins Twitter

(Above: The Bacon Sundae by Burger King. Yes it’s real.)

We Are Social Australia is looking to add the right people in a range of roles across the business.

We’ve grown dramatically, both globally and here locally, where we’re working with some of the biggest and most socially ambitious companies in Australia - and now we need more great people to join us in our Sydney office.

We are looking for;

• Front end Developers – Mid level
• Back end Developers – Senior level
• Digital Producers
• Account Managers
• Account Directors
• Social Strategists
• Community & Content Managers
• Social Media Researchers
• Interns

How to apply;

Send us an email with your name and the role you’re applying for in the subject line.

Attach your CV, and then introduce yourself in no more than 400 words – tell us your background, examples that clearly demonstrate your proven track record – links to work if possible, and importantly, why you want to work at We Are Social.

We suggest adding links to LinkedIn and your social profiles.

We look forward to hearing from you.

We Are Social featured in The Australian
Our MD Julian Ward had some choice words in an article in The Australian this week, discussing the benefits of social media for brands;

“The ability to actually maintain attention with a consumer is immensely valuable, especially when other channels are less able to do this.”

“The challenge is crafting a content and editorial strategy that holds value and continues to intrigue and engage those on the receiving end. As a brand, do you want to answer customer questions or do you want to be the most talked about and engaged brand within your category?”

To find out more on how you can be engaging with your customers, and finding new ones, drop us an email.

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 GMhad 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.

Welcome to your weekly social status update, a round up of the biggest stories in social media.

Without further adieu;

Paying for Tweets a PR disaster waiting to happen
An ABC Media Watch revelation last Monday has opened a can of worms for organisations paying celebrities to tweet for them. The Australian highlighted the negative response by the Australian public to the South Australian Tourist Board paying chef Matt Moran $750 to tweet about Kangaroo Island. We Are Social’s own Julian Ward commented on how less than a dozen tweets can create a crisis for a brand:

The total reach of potentially damaging tweets was 3,453,843 and the cost is huge but unknown at this point. By doing what they have done, what does it say about the brand? Why go so cheap and why risk so much?

Facebook advertising revenue stalls despite strong growth
Figures from the 1st quarter of 2012 have shown that even the might of Facebook is not impervious to the advertising business cycle. Sales of $1.06 billion in Q1 were slightly down on the $1.13 billion reported in Q4 of 2011, though it’s not uncommon for marketers to tighten their belts at the start of a new year.

Even so, it’s important to emphasise how Facebook’s users remain enamoured with the site – the social network now has 900 million users, of which 526 million use the site every day.

Despite this Facebook has shown strong growth in areas beyond new users. A recent amendment to their filings for their public offering has shown that Facebook now hosts over 42 million pages and 9 million apps. Since December 31, 2011 the number of pages with 10 or more likes has increased by 5 million and  the number of integrated apps has increased by 2 million.

Facebook upgrades Android app
Late last week Facebook released an updated version of their Android app including updated messenger features and new shortcuts to encourage photo sharing. From the outside this seems like a direct attempt by Facebook to negate Google’s advantage on the platform.

As they own the operating system Google can integrate Google+ into the phone in ways that Facebook cannot. The updated app hopes to combat this by adding new icons allowing users to access Facebook’s camera feature with ‘one tap’.

Facebook have further enhanced their Android offering by announcing that Android apps will now work the same as web apps – if you click on a link to an app from your mobile Facebook News Feed, it will now load on your Android phone (or take you to the download page if it’s not installed).

Instagram sharing on Twitter increases 20x in 12 months
The Instagram juggernaut keeps on rolling. Not satisfied with being bought for $1 billion dollars this month the photo sharing app has been taking Twitter by storm. Sharing between Instagram and Twitter has doubled in the last two months and is 20x what it was a year ago.

Though some of this growth can be attributed to the new Android app, research shows that the average number of shares is also increasing. Impressive.

Facebook tests and launches a new set of features for select brands 
Facebook is testing a new button that will simplify the process through which Pages create Sponsored Stories directly from their posts. Rather than using a complex ad dashboard, the ‘promote’ button will appear on the Page publisher as well as on posts that have already gone live.

The feature is aimed at small to medium sized businesses that want to promote their content but cannot afford premium products such as Facebook Reach Generator.

Facebook has also made Offers available through the API to a select number of partners. Offers are a new type of story that enables Page Owners to post coupons that fans can collect through the News Feed.

Making this available through the API will allow developers to integrate the feature into their social media management systems.

In addition, Facebook have also relaunched their ‘Locations’ app to fit the Timeline layout. The app allows users to search from a company’s Page to find business locations near to them. At the moment the app is only available to select brands working with Facebook.

New Facebook Timeline apps
Christian Hernandez, Facebook’s Director of Platform Partnerships has revealed the latest set of Timeline apps to be released. JustGiving, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Sky Italy and Canal+ are among the 18 new additions to the Open Graph world.

LinkedIn launch iPad app
LinkedIn have added an iPad app to their iPhone, Android and Mobile Web products. The app has the ability to sync with the iPad’s calendar offering the user Linkedin profile data on attendees of meetings and conferences.

Google+ launch share button
Google+ have launched a share button available to publishers worldwide to add to their site. What’s interesting about it is that is stands alongside the +1 button, in case users want to share to their Circles without necessarily showing approval to a story. Particularly at a time Facebook are downgrading the importance of the share button, it will be interesting to see how this performs.

Barcelona vs Chelsea sets new Twitter record
There’s nothing like a sporting giant killing to get us all talking. Last Tuesday was no exception with Chelsea’s dramatic upset of the reigning European Champions Barcelona sending Twitter into a frenzy of excitement. The game knocked the NFL’s Superbowl off the top spot as the biggest sporting event on Twitter peaking at 13,684 tweets per second. This demonstrates the growing use of Twitter as a way people share experiences of live events on a mass scale.

Will.i.am live-tweeting during The Voice 
Building on the theme of enhancing live events through social media, The Voice judge Will.i.am was not satisfied with merely providing entertainment through the UK’s TV screens. Will tweeted from his judging chair during the show to provide followers with extra insight into how he was feeling about his act’s performances.

Channel 4 air live Twitter response ad
On Sunday night, in the first ad break for Homeland, the UK’s Channel 4 premiered the trailer for Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s new film. Viewers were then asked to share their thoughts on Twitter using the hashtag #areyouseeingthis, with the best tweets picked out to appear in a live response ad in the next break. It was the first time ever viewers tweets have been shown in a live response ad and it worked – the hashtag was a trending topic in the UK, and the response ad worked well:

With Prometheus also teaming up with Zeebox, a dual-screen TV app, to offer a pair of Premiere tickets to one winner out of the many who watched a synchronised ad through the app, it was a successful night for the film’s promo team.

Gawker’s new commenting service
Gawker have launched a new proprietary commenting system called Burner, which is based on anonymity.

What’s interesting is not so much the change itself, but the reasons behind it – namely, to disrupt commenting cliques. Removing names means that in theory, it won’t just be the same people repeatedly dominating commenting threads. Which all in all, is probably a good thing.

Elle launches Shoppable Trend Guide
Elle have launched a clever Facebook app where users can click ‘love’, ‘want’, ‘own’ or ‘buy’ on each product page. By default, all interactions with the app are shared automatically on their Facebook Timeline — so even if users don’t make a purchase, they may draw curious friends in to interact with the app. It’s a nice way of attempting f-commerce – including purchase as part of the app, rather than being the entire point of the app.

Pepsi launch global campaign focussing on social
Pepsi have launched a new brand campaign called Live For Now, which puts social at the heart of the campaign. This is partly through a ‘social media cheat sheet’, the #NOW board which pulls together the hottest stories from social media.

According to Techcrunch:

Beyond serving as a news aggregator, Singh says the site will include other features, like the ability for celebrities to pose challenges to their fans, and exclusive deals courtesy of sites like Thrillist. And naturally, the content can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

But according to Pepsi, the campaign will go above and beyond the Pepsi micro-site:

As part of the “Live for Now” platform in the U.S., Pepsi will present a series of exclusive pop-up, Twitter-enabled concerts this summer featuring major music artists. Additionally, Pepsi’s first of its kind Twitter music partnership will enhance consumers’ music experiences and bring them closer to what is hot in music today.

Considering their previous success in social media, it will be interesting to see how this campaign gets on.

Kraft personally thanks 4,632 Facebook fans with music video
Apart from competition prizes, there’s very little reciprocal love from brands on Facebook. Kraft tried to change this on Tuesday. First, they posted on their Facebook Page ‘LIKE this post, and you never know what may happen’.

The post garnered over 4,600 likes – with each person then thanked in a ‘Likeapella music video’:

C&A Brazil puts Facebook likes on store hangers
Before Mother’s Day, C&A Brazil put Facebook like counters on the hangers in their flagship store – and uploaded their collection to their Facebook Page. Then, whenever anyone liked one of the products, the numbers would update in real-time. A nice way of convincing people to purchase.

Volkswagen create innovative flipbook ad for their Facebook Page
Volkswagen have created a genius little ad on their Facebook page. Through a photo album that doubles as a flipbook you can click to watch the Volkswagen Tricari Arc drive through the desert into an urban area in a continuous loop. The ad builds on what Smart Argentina did in Twitter recently, but is the first of its kind on a Facebook page. (The comments are also worth a read).

Hasbro bully tactics create social media backlash
Toy manufacturer Hasbro have received large scale condemnation for the way they dealt with blogger Martyn Yang. The blogger, whose hobby was writing about the brand, was tricked into giving his home address so that Hasbro could press legal proceedings against him. It seems ridiculous that brands still operate in this way when a quick email or phone call would have most likely wrapped the whole situation up with a far more satisfactory result.

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!

Welcome to your drawsome weekly round up of the top stories in social media, a finger painted top-twelve that won’t leave you guessing.

Without further adraw;

1. Australian Social Media stats – March 2012
Facebook grew by nearly 200,000 Australian users in March, though the surprising figure is the Myspace traffic, with nearly half a million visitors.

Room for Justin Timberlake to bring Sexy Back? We won’t cry him a river if not…

1. Facebook – 10,889,960 Australian users/accounts (up 186,800) – 13 million UAVs according to Google Adplanner. The difference between the user numbers and unique visitors is people probably logging in from multiple locations – home, school, work etc.
2. YouTube – 10,000,000 UAVs (down 1,000,000)
3. Blogspot – 4,000,000 (up 500,000)
4. LinkedIn – 2,100,000 (down 100,000)
5. Twitter – 1,600,000 (down 200,000)
6. WordPress.com – 1,600,000 (steady)
7. Google Plus – 1,289,940 (up approx 90,000 – Estimated calculation below)
8. Tumblr – 1,100,000 (steady)
9. Flickr – 840,000 (down 80,000)
10. MySpace – 470,000 (down 50,000)

2. Visualising the Australian digital revolution
Marketing Mag have put together a neat Infographic on Australia’s digital revolution between 2010 and 2011.

As expected, social media use is surging, up by 127% during 2011. Australians now spend 9.3 hours per week on social networks.

3. Spending on digital marketing continues to rise
According to a survey conducted by Duke University, US marketing budgets will rise by 8.1% over the coming twelve months.

This rise will mainly be spent online, with digital marketing budgets forecast to rise 12.8% over the next year, whilst ad spend on traditional media will drop by 0.8%.

The area which will rise most is social media: marketers said that they planned to allocate 7.4% of their overall budgets to social media in the coming year.

4. L’Oreal has a team of 400 staff working in social media
At Wednesday’s Facebook Marketing Conference in London, L’Oreal CMO Marc Menesguen revealed that L’Oreal has a team of 400 staff working in social media who post new content on Facebook everyday:

It’s a lot of work and requires a lot of commitment. The digital revolution is on at L’Oreal and we are integrating digital and social as early as possible in the marketing process.

5. Social media delivers higher value sales
New research has found that ecommerce sales which occur after exposure to a brand on social media deliver more than $280 per order, compared to less than $100 for those driven by natural search:

6. 10.5 billion minutes spent on Facebook daily, what’s Timeline’s effect?
According to a tidbit of info released by Facebook, in January users spent an average of 10.5 billion minutes on the site daily, excluding mobile – or around twelve and a half minutes each a day.

This increase has mainly come from a growth in the userbase: aggregate minutes per day increased 57% and average minutes per user per day increased 14% year-on-year.

Nonetheless, it’s unclear whether Timeline is driving a boost in engagement, in addition to the figures above.

Inside Facebook detailed a few studies which have been released about Timeline engagement rates, but the small sample size, coupled with the important caveat that most engagement takes place in the News Feed, means that it’s essentially impossible to draw a verifiable conclusion.

The most reliable study comes from Edgerank Checker, which has looked at over 3,500 Pages and they have struggled to find anything which suggests Timeline has a discernible impact on engagement.

7. Local Facebook Pages outperform global Pages in reach and engagement
New research has found that local Facebook Pages with 30-100 fans reach five times more fans (as a percentage) than corporate Pages with 100,000+ fans, with engagement eight times higher.

It goes to show that for businesses with multiple small branches – say, McDonalds – there’s value in having both a corporate Page, and a local Page for each store.

8. Tumblr hits 20 billion posts, integrate with Timeline
Although Tumblr has been very understated in its reaction to the news, the micro-blogging service has now reached 20 billion posts, meaning it’s doubled in size in just six months. Pretty staggering.

The platform has also finally been accepted as social graph partner by Facebook, meaning Tumblr posts can now be properly integrated into the Timeline, Newsfeed and Ticker.

Timeline integration has seen staggering traffic growth for launch partners such as The Guardian, so Tumblr is set to get even bigger. Pinterest who?

9. BBC News personalise content on their Facebook Page

As different people are interested in different news stories, BBC News have added a Control Panel which allows Facebook fans to filter which updates they see. By liking different BBC News sections, correspondents and programmes, more relevant updates will appear in your News Feed.

10. Heineken unveils bottle designed by two Facebook fans
Beer brand Heineken has released a limited edition bottle which was designed by Facebook fans. The competition asked fans to design a bottle and then pair it with another in the gallery, and it attracted 30,000 entries. Nice.

11. Spotify puts over 1,000 years of music on Facebook Timeline

Spotify have launched a really cool Facebook Timeline, which goes through 1,000 years of music history, and lets users discover some music they might otherwise have missed. On song.

12. Twitter user jailed for 56 days
A Welsh Twitter user who tweeted racist abuse about Fabrice Muamba, the footballer who collapsed on the pitch, was jailed for 56 days last week for inciting racial hatred.

That was our pick of the week’s social media news – what caught your eye? Leave a comment!

Welcome to your weekly round up of the biggest stories in social – grab yourself an Instagraham cracker and let’s get started…

1. Domino’s increases social media effort
Domino’s Australia are letting their Facebook fans decide what the next Domino’s pizza will be: from toppings to dough, the fans can decide what the “social” pizza will taste like. How the pizza will turn out is anyone’s guess, but it appears Domino’s may have another social hit on its hands. Who knew pizza could be so shareable…

2. Facebook’s global takeover
eMarketer predicts that there will be 1.43 billion social network users in 2012, which amounts to a substantial share of the world’s entire population. 1 out of 5 people will use a social network this year and Facebook is a key reason for this. Facebook has rapidly expanded into India, Indonesia and Brazil who now join the US and Mexico in the top 5 Facebook countries:

In fact, if Brazil maintains its current growth it could easily jump from fourth to second place, as soon as next month, having already taken over Google’s Orkut which had been leading in Brazil since 2004.

Facebook is also doing well in Japan, where they now have 10 million monthly active users. This figure has doubled in the last 6 months.

3. Blogs are not dead. There are 6.7m bloggers, half aged 18-34
NM Incite have released research that shows that consumer interest in blogs continues to grow with over 181 million blogs at the end of 2011, up from 36 million just 5 years ago. Not surprisingly this mirrors a growth in bloggers – 6.7 million of them publishing through blogging websites such as Blogger, WordPress and Tumblr whilst another 12 million write blogs using their social networks. The question is, who are these bloggers? Well, half are aged 18-34 and the majority are women, over 2/3 of which are mums.

4. Social media ads ‘justifying hype’
ZenithOptimedia have boosted their forecast for 2012 global internet adspend by 4.5%, now predicting a spend of £2.2bn. The sudden rise of social is evident in a revision to its US forecasts, which had pegged social media spend for 2012 at $1.33bn (£851m) in December, but now predicts $3.42bn (£2.2bn), partly due to $1bn (£640m) of display spend being recategorised as social media spend, and partly due to the medium growing faster than previously thought. Jonathan Barnard, head of forecasting at ZenithOptimedia, said:

Social is justifying its hype now. A third of all display impressions in the US are social. Advertisers are learning to be less interruptive.

5. Facebook updates Timeline Page ‘beginnings’, adds recommendations and launches Mobile app stats
Facebook has added the option to describe the beginning of a page as ‘created’ or ‘launched’. The original options ‘founded’, ‘started’ and ‘opened’ are still available but these new variations make a lot of sense for the different types of entities that run pages on Facebook.

Facebook have also introduced a recommendations feature for place pages that have switched to the new Timeline format. These are displayed in a box beneath friend activity and include a prompt for people to write their own recommendations. These are only available to pages that are associated with locations so if a brand wants to enable this function page owners have to provide an exact address in their About sections.

Another development from Facebook is the launch of a new Mobile Referrals dashboard in App Insights which helps understand the traffic an app receives from Facebook mobile sources. This features data on total mobile app clicks and source, demographic and device breakdown amongst other insights.

6. Facebook Timeline Apps and foursquare’s new Facebook look
In other Facebook news, 3,000 Timeline apps have spawned since Facebook launched the platform 3 months ago and last week Foursquare among others such as Nike and VEVO unveiled theirs. These new launches are likely to persuade more brands and startups that Timeline app development is worth their investment, meaning that soon there will be even more apps channelling user behaviour into Facebook’s content feeds and ad targeting engine. Pinterest is a key example of the success of Timeline apps as it has seen its Facebook userbase grow by 60% since it launched its Timeline app in January. The Onion definitely wins the award for the most amusing integration below:

Foursquare’s Timeline app has a new look for check-ins, badges and mayorships. This features check-in photos showing up full size, a summary of a user’s past month foursquare activity and if a person checks in a few times these will display as a story rather than separately. Neat!

7. The expert’s view on Twitter’s acquisition of Posterous
Twitter recently announced the acquisition of blogging platform Posterous. The exact details of the deal have been kept secret but Econsultancy have brought tohether various expert views to discuss the motivations behind the takeover and what it means for both Twitter and Posterous including those of our very own Mr Jordan Stone.

8. Pinterest is now a top 30 US website
As we all know, Pinterest has been the subject of much attention recently and this is set to continue with the news from Experian Hitwise that it is continuing to rapidly grow. After cracking the top 60 list of US websites six weeks ago they have now entered the top 30. The site received more than 103 million visits in the US this February, which was up 36% on January. With revelations the company is working on an iPad app, growth seems unlikely to slow soon.

9. Instagram announces news of Android App launch
The Instagram is gearing up to launch an Android app, which was flashed briefly at the SXSW Interactive conference in Texas last week, meaning their 27 million userbase is set to increase dramatically.

10. McDonalds #shamrocking has greater success than #McDStories
Following the #McDStories debacle where McDonalds’ own hashtag was hijacked by disgruntled customers, the company are back and seem to have learned a valuable lesson by creating a somewhat more successful meme. Taking its inspiration from Planking and Tebowing, customers share pictures of themselves doing a jig whilst holding a shamrock milkshake. See example below…

 The Week According To The Internet:

• Obama-thing Of The Week: Obama Loves You Back
• Tumblr Of The Week: Hipster Branding
• Viral Video Of the Week: Itchy & Scratchy: The Complete Saga