I had the pleasure of attending Social Media week in NYC in February, which was combined with the Chinwag/ UKTI organised NYC Digital Mission.
During the week long stay in a snow covered NYC, key learnings from both events are summarised below:-
– Watching US television, it struck me how much more important Instagram is to US advertisers compared to their UK counterparts, with ads often directing users to Instagram instead of Facebook/ Twitter.
– Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp is intriguing, and made me think if it is truly worth $19 Billion, then what does that make China’s (equivalent) WeChat worth, with their user base of 600M (and growing)?
– I was very impressed with the Unruly lab session at Social Media week, and am convinced they have nicely cornered a potentially huge market with their analytical tools/ Social predictive methodology – here is the Unruly story:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6fmsXaBQdw.
– I was similarly impressed with a Mission visit to the Huge agency, in DUMBO (down Under Manhattan Bridge), in Brooklyn. Huge are one of the leading digital agencies in the US and clearly have an impressive set up. The ethos of open plan/ laid back exterior (dogs roaming the corridors) contrasts with the work ethic, and business acumen that has secured their place as a market-leader.
– At Regroup we have a firm view on international expansion, and I was very interested in cost-effective shared offices that we toured with the Digital Mission in the upcoming DUMBO area of Brooklyn (think Shoreditch).
All in all a great trip, and thanks to Chinwag and the UKTI for arranging such a great and informative event.For more info on the event – http://www.slideshare.net/Chinwag/digital-mission-nyc-2014-companies
YouTube has announced this month that it has started auditing the number of views that a video has received.
The move, to combat artificial boosting of views, has come amidst concerns that buying views or using redirect tactics to boost views is becoming more commonplace to make clips look more popular than they actually are.
YouTube stated that it will “periodically” validate the views on video clips and remove identified fraudulent ones from the total.
“Some bad actors try to game the system by artificially inflating view counts. They’re not just misleading fans about the popularity of a video, they’re undermining one of YouTube’s most important and unique qualities,” Google (YouTube’s owners) stated in a blogpost.
“While in the past we would scan views for spam immediately after they occurred, starting today we will periodically validate the video’s view count.”
The move is a strong message From YouTube to reassure advertisers that view counts will be an accurate measurement going forward. This tallies with Facebook’s recent clampdown on zombie accounts and fake follows, in ultimately a drive to improve advertiser and user-trust.
C;ick here for more information:- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26043794
Full details were announced this week for the Affiliate Management Days event, to be held at Chelsea FC, London, UK, on May 13th – 14th.
The affiliate market has blossomed into an estimated £14 B industry in the UK – driven by the omnipresent Voucher code, cash back and price comparison sites, which are seemingly single handedly revitalising the TV advertising market in the UK.
The 2 day event focuses on affiliate management techniques, and will be hosted by Geno Prussakov, recognised as the ‘go-to’ source of information and inspiration for advertisers, agencies, and affiliate programme managers.
It is sure to be a great event. Full details can be seen here and there is an early bird discount available – www.amdays.co.uk/register
Danny Sullivan, the SMX Chief Content Officer and Editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, will head up the SMX London 2014. Danny is one of the best respected names in Search Marketing and as he so seldom visits the UK, SMX London 2014 is a rare opportunity to get up close to this search luminary!
“SMX London is an amazingly vibrant event.” Said Danny Sullivan “In 2014, there is so much going on in our space. We will make sure our programme is crammed full of cutting edge, up to the minute, actionable content.”
The programme is to be released soon and registrations received before 7th February will receive the Super Early Bird rate with £500 off the full rate.
http://searchmarketingexpo.com/london/register
Yandex, Russia’s leading search engine, has signed an agreement with Facebook to enable the Search giant to access content from some of Facebook’s users in a move designed to further improve its search results.
Yandex has an estimated 60% of the Russian search market, more than twice that of Google’s market share in Russia (c26%).
In a statement this week Yandex said it would get full access to public data from Facebook users in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, and Turkey.
This means that search results on Yandex will now include Facebook posts as well as user comments on posts.
The agreement is understood to be a non-cash deal, designed to be mutually beneficial; Yandex gets more sophisticated search results, and Facebook gets to be seen by a wider audience in Russia, where the market has previously been dominated by local players such as Vkontakte.
Yandex raised $1.4 billion in an initial public offering in the US in May 2011 priced at $25 per share. The stock has since risen by around 70% as Yandex benefited from increased online advertising in Europe’s largest online market.
The move highlights Google’s ongoing struggle to make an impression in massive markets such as Russia, and in China, where Baidu and Qhihoo dominates the search landscape.
It will be interesting to see how this impacts Yandex’s already strong position in the Russian marketplace. I believe it will fortified and will lead to similar partnerships going forward.
Interesting developments last month at Tencent’s WeChat, where a new Android update roll-out may affect the power-balance between China’s Internet giants.
WeChat; China’s biggest instant messaging application, with well-over half a billion users, announced a major update to its’ Android app last month, that signals clearly its’ monetisation strategy going forward.
The new 5.1 version of WeChat is notable for the following updates:-
1) WeChat has increased the number of participants that are accommodated in group-chat from 40 members to 100. Users can only have one such group, unless they pay a nominal fee using WeChat’s mobile payment functionality.
2). Users can now top-up their own personal mobile phone accounts, and can do so as well for anyone in their contacts list. This is can be done via the WeChat payments function.
3). Users can now input a delivery address into their profile, which will enable the sending of physical goods purchased on Tencent’s Yixun e-commerce platform. Yixun is fully integrated into WeChat.
4). In the app’s popular plane game, players can revive their fighter jet after it crashes. Users simply pay a small fee via their WeChat payment account.
The 5.1 update facilitates far greater e-commerce integration and represents a move into more commercial pastures for WeChat looking to monetise its’ huge and ever growing user-base.
The Android app is being rolled out exclusively through Tencent’s MyApp store, which highlights a clear statement of intent to eat into competitor app stores market, such as Baidu and 91 Wireless’ HiMarket.
The 5.1 update is hot off the back of version 5, which saw prominent roll-outs of paid stickers, social gaming, as well as formal introduction the WeChat mobile payment feature.
If Tencent succeeds in using WeChat as a new conduit for e-commerce revenues, it could change the power balance among China’s Web giants. The undisputed leader in all-things-online-shopping has always been Alibaba, which generated an estimated $5.7-billion in sales during China’s Cyber Monday ‘Singles Day’, about 21% of which came through mobile.
Alibaba has been fighting back by aggressively pushing its own messaging app, Laiwang, and by developing online-to-offline functionality for its Alipay payment platform.
It will be interesting to see who gains market share off the back of these developments. Watch this space.
More info/ download here:- http://www.wechat.com/en/Android_5_1.html