Tag: messaging

LINE Launches Emoji Keyboard App To Lure New Users

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Read original story on: TechCrunch

Earlier today, Japanese messaging app LINE introduced Emoji Keyboard, an iOS app that provides over 3,000 stickers and emoji for users to use in any app of their choice. Emoji and stickers have been generating great revenue for LINE, and it loves to remind users of them with auto-suggestions. To learn more about sticker usage and brand opportunities, check out our POV here.

Interestingly, the app is available worldwide with the exception of its three major markets: Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, which take up over half of its 205 million monthly active users. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that LINE is trying to lure new users into its app ecosystem, independent of its chat service, as it looks to grow its presence in the U.S. and other global markets outside of Asia.

McDonald’s Debuts The First Branded Geofilter On Snapchat

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Read original story on: TechCrunch

We reported last summer when popular messaging app Snapchat added a new location-sensitive Geofilter feature and pointed out its great potential for brand integration. Now, almost an year since the debut of the feature, Snapchat is finally turning it into an ad unit, with McDonald’s on board as the first brand to offer special Geofilter for Snapchatters in at any of the over 14,000 McDonald’s stores across the States. As Snapchat continues to expand its platform and diversify its ad offerings, we expect to see more integration like this to pop up for brands to explore.

 

LINE Tests Messaging Apps’ True Potential With Music Streaming Service

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Read original story on: TechCrunch

LINE, the Japanese messaging app with 205 million active users, is continuing its platform expansion by launching its own in-app music streaming service. First tested in Thailand two months ago, the paid service is now officially rolling out in Japan, LINE’s main market.

According to the source, however, due to the stronghold of conservative record labels, Japan remains a rare instance in the global markets where music streaming has yet taken hold and sales of physical copies still dominates—even Spotify doesn’t have much presence in the country. Therefore, LINE will have to find a way to leverage its huge user base to jump-start the music streaming market.

This new service came as a natural step in LINE’s vigorous platform expansion. Within the past year alone, the popular messaging app has introduced its own mobile payment component, dipped into in-app ecommerce in Taiwan and SE Asian markets, launched LINE Taxi to compete with Uber in Japan, and even pilot-tested LINE TV, a YouTube-like video service in Thailand. This new branch-out into music stream will continue to diversify its services and revenues, showcasing the vast potential that messaging apps hold as full-fledged media platforms.

 

Twitter’s Double-Punch Move To Catch Up

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Read original story on: TechCrunch

Right on the heels of a crucial personnel change, with Dick Costolo stepping down as CEO and Jack Dorsey taking over as interim replacement, Twitter announced today that, starting July, Direct Messages (DMs) will no longer have the 140 character limit it enforces for its public tweets.

The Wall Street has responded favorably to the return of Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and current Square CEO, as Twitter’s stock share up 3% since the announcement. The lift on DM character limit, on the other hand, seems to hint at Twitter’s ambition in developing its long dormant messaging features. With competitors like Facebook and Pinterest quickly expanding their messaging platforms, Twitter looks well poised to catch up under new leadership.

 

Facebook Continues To Expand Its Platforms

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Read original story on: TechCrunch

Upholding the promise of expanding its platforms made at the Facebook F8 Conference (read event recap here) back in March, the social network has now officially added the first mobile game app on its Messenger platform app list, making “Doodle Draw Game” the first true game available since the platform launched in April. Messenger app has been logging a healthy growth rate, adding 100 million users in the last three months.

Meanwhile, Facebook is also accelerating the rollout of its in-stream “Buy Buttons”. Up until now, Facebook has only been testing the “Buy Button” with a few selected test merchants, but is now opening it up to any retailer on Shopify‘s ecommerce platform. The speed-up came just days after Pinterest unveiled the new “Buyable Pins”, and it almost seems like a reactionary move from Facebook to keep up with the race of social ecommerce.

Still, all things considered, Facebook is doing a great job, arguably the best among all social media platforms, at expanding its platforms with new features, be it in-line video player, Instant Articles, messaging apps, and games, all working to keep users inside its own cyber ecosystem and never need to leave.

Facebook To Add Games To Messenger App and Commercialize WhatsApp

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Read original story on: The Verge

Facebook has confirmed that it is in talks with developers about creating native mobile games for its newly expanded Messenger platform, which was unveiled last month at its F8 developer conference. Few details have surfaced besides the confirmation, but it is clear that these new games will be downloadable as in-app purchases from Messenger’s third-party add-on store, which has been populated with chat enhancers like stickers and gifs so far.

Besides gaming, the social media giant already launched a “Businesses for Messenger” initiative to allow businesses to talk with their consumers directly on the Messenger app. Similarly, Facebook is now also looking to make WhatsApp, the other chat app it owns, more brand-friendly. According to Bloomberg, the company is looking into ways to bring the business-to-consumer communication model to WhatsApp.

Taken together, this points to Facebook’s ambitious plan in turning the two massively popular messaging apps it owns into well-rounded media platform that supports its mobile ecosystem. Just last week, messaging app Tango launched in-app ecommerce store in a similar attempt to broaden its reach, but it is obvious that Facebook has a far more advantageous position to capture more attention and leverage that into building out its messaging platforms.

Why Messaging App Tango Launched In-App Shop

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Read original story on: TechCrunch

Mobile messaging app Tango is taking a page out of WeChat’s playbook with the launch of an in-app commerce service called Tango Shop. Initially available in the US, Tango’s e-commerce platform is powered by two retail giants, Alibaba and Walmart.  The Tango shop features a wide variety of items that can be purchased without leaving the chat app. Payment and logistics are handled by the two retail partners.

Messaging apps have enjoyed a meteoric rise in recent years, emerging as a major platform in the mobile ecosystem. As of the third quarter of 2014, 616 million global users were using chat app and mobile instant messengers, spending 7.6 hours per month on them on average. Accordingly, mobile messaging commerce has been seeing some early success in Asia markets with LINE in Japan and WeChat in China, where it has become the de facto mobile Internet platform in China, particularly for retailers.

However, messaging app-based mobile commerce has yet to take off in the U.S., where the relatively high usage of iMessage and persisting popularity of SMS has made it harder to build a mainstream audience for chat apps. Still, if the recent success of Snapchat, with its relentless push towards original content, is any indication, messaging app-based mobile commerce could certainly take off in the U.S. market sooner rather than later.

Chinese Jewelry Retailer Deploys In-Store Beacons Via WeChat

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Read original story on: Mobile Commerce Daily

Chinese jewelry brand Chow Tai Fook teamed up with Beijing-based beacon-provider Sensoro to install a beacon-powered e-coupon distribution system that operates via popular messaging app WeChat, in 237 stores across 4 major cities in China. The campaign, which reportedly resulted in over 32,000 participating consumers and over $16 million in sales, highlights the advantages of seamlessly integrating beacon interfaces within an app that consumers are already using and familiar with.

Snapchat Grows Up And Asks For User’s Trust—And Ad Dollars

Posted on by Lab Team

Initially launched back in 2011, Snapchat has greatly matured along with its ever-expanding user base, transforming from a tool for sharing disappearing photos between friends into a content-sharing platform for consumers and brands.

Last October’s security breach, which resulted in over 90,000 leaked Snapchat photos, severely damaged users’ trust. So it’s about time that the company launched a number of initiatives to show that it takes its users data and privacy seriously. Last week, these included releasing a first-ever transparency report, shutting down third-party apps, and expanding its bug bounty program.

As Snapchat matures, it is also winning over advertisers and media partners with its massive amount of users in highly coveted young demographics. Since the introduction of its first official ad format, Brand Story, Snapchat’s advertising platform has become increasingly lucrative, reportedly asking brands for over $750,000 a day for its Discovery ads, which embeds video ads into choice-based viewing activities of brand’s target audience.

Top Five Takeaways From Facebook’s F8 Conference 2015

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With more than 30 million apps and sites currently on Facebook’s platform, Facebook is much more than just a social network. At their big F8 Developer Conference today, Facebook made some major announcements that uncovered their detailed plan for building out its platforms, as well as helping developers and publishers alike connect with users and monetize their content.

Messenger App To Become A Platform And Disrupt Ecommerce

As we reported earlier this week, Facebook is expanding its Messenger app into a full-fledged media platform by allowing integration with third-party apps and content. More importantly, it is also looking to disrupt ecommerce with a new mobile shopping experience. Equipped with real-time shipping notifications and enhanced receipts, the new Messenger Platform promises to connect shoppers to businesses by integrating all disconnected emails generated through online shopping into one cohesive chat thread for easier access and tracking.

New Parse SDK To Connect The Internet of Things 

Parse, a mobile development platform that Facebook acquired 2 years ago, is coming out with a new SDK that will make it easier for developers to create apps to connect a variety of connected devices. One demo featured a garage door opener build on Parse’s new platform. This puts Facebook directly in competition with Apple’s HomeKit and Google’s Nest Platform, as well as a handful of other IoT platforms.

Mining Insights From App-Generated Data

Mobile apps generate tons of untapped data all day, and Facebook is looking to make better use of them with a new Facebook Analytics for Apps. Essentially a “Google Analytics” for mobile apps, it will help developers and content owners alike gain valuable insights into engagement or conversion rates of Facebook-powered apps.

Bringing New Video Experiences Into Social

Besides a new video plug-in tool that allows easy embedding of Facebook videos on other sites, Facebook is also looking to integrate its new Spherical Videos, which let viewers move around in a 360-degree view, right into the News Feed, laying the groundwork for virtual reality video in your social stream.

New Ways Of Monetization Glue The Platform Together 

To help publishers better monetize their content, Facebook unveiled an upgrade of its video ad platform Live Rail that will add support for mobile display ads—especially native ads, Facebook’s Audience Network—while also improving content targeting using Facebook’s anonymized data. Moreover, the previously mentioned deep integration of content and apps on Facebook Platform will undoubtedly bring in ample opportunities for monetization.