Thursday, November 13, 2014

• Amid flagging investor sentiment, Twitter held its first Analyst Day, and announced a slew of upcoming product changes: the stock rose 7% in response: Loads of coverage: NYT, Bloomberg, Reuters, TechCrunch, AdWeek: (1) An "instant timeline" that would allow new users to get value out of the service right away, without having to follow anybody first. Twitter would use algorithms to figure out what might be important and interesting. The feature would also be shown to returning users who don't have "healthy" timelines, Chief Executive Officer Dick Costolo said. (2) By early next year, ways for people to "record, edit and share" video using the Twitter application. (3) A "what you missed" feature to show people the most important tweets that were posted since they last logged in. (4) Starting next week, an update that allows people to share public tweets within private messages. (5) Changes to the Twitter homepage, which draws 125 million people each month who don't log in or sign up. (7) New mobile applications besides Twitter and Vine. (8) Content organized around geography and events. (9) A "quick promote" option so that users can turn their tweets into advertisements with a couple of clicks.

• Tencent Q3 results (Q3 rev: $3.2B, 38% Y/Y, operating profit $1.2B, 56% Y/Y) indicate sharply slowing growth on WeChat engagement as well as games monetization: Tencent released its third quarter results for 2014 yesterday and, as analysts predicted, its growth in mobile games has slowed. In fact at RMB 2.6 billion (US$424 million) this quarter’s mobile gaming revenue is actually down compared last quarter, although Tencent blames that mostly on “delayed launches of upgrades.”. Here are a few other highlights from Tencent’s Q3 earnings report: Q3 revenues of RMB 19.8 billion (US$3.2 billion), up 28 percent from same period last year. Operating profit of RMB 7.5 billion (US$1.2 billion), up 56 percent year-on-year. Value-added service revenues saw revenues of RMB 16.5 billion (US$2.6 billion), up 38 percent on Q3 2013. Gaming revenues from WeChat and QQ (the desktop and mobile IM app) reached RMB 2.6 billion (US$423 million), but there’s no breakdown specific just to WeChat’s gaming platform. QQ hit 819.8 million MAUs, up just 0.5 percent year-on-year. WeChat messaging app now has 468.1 million active users (MAUs) in Q3 2014. That’s up from 438 million MAUs in Q2. It represents quarterly growth of 6.8 percent – by far the lowest it has ever seen. WeChat’s growth is nearly half the rate that it saw from Q1 to Q2.

• #Amazoncart lets you add products to your Amazon cart by replying on Twitter: The hashtag #AmazonCart was unveiled earlier this year, and according to Dowitcher Designs, it’s currently used in around 5,000 tweets per day. How it works: Someone posts an Amazon product on Twitter, you reply to that tweet with #AmazonCart and Amazon puts the product directly in your cart. Amazon is doing its part to promote #AmazonCart with Vine videos and pictures all tagged with #AmazonCart.   

• Chinese click on far more mobile ads than Americans, rely far less on TV and watch a lot of videos while commuting: The IAB U.S. and China Mobile Report 2014 finds that a whopping 71 percent of China's mobile-toting consumers watch full-length TV shows straight from a smartphone or tablet on a weekly basis. Only 28 percent of U.S. respondents said the same. Seventy-six percent of Chinese consumers used smartphones while on public transportation, and 49 percent pulled out their phones while in cars. Only 26 percent of Americans used their smartphones on public transport (likely because many buses and trains still lack Wi-Fi) while 64 percent used phones while in cars.  And 91 percent of China's users play with mobile ads monthly versus 62 percent of U.S. users.