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LINE PASSES 400M ACCOUNTS: Japan-based mobile messaging app LINE announced yesterday that it has passed 400 million registered users, up from 300 million in mid-November of last year. It's important to keep in mind, though, LINE does not report monthly active users (MAUs), so user numbers from LINE aren't directly comparable to those for WhatsApp or WeChat. The company also noted that it saw a record 10 billion messages sent on March 12. That's compared to WhatsApp's recent announcement that it set a record of 64 billion messages sent in a single day. LINE cited growing usage in North America and Europe as contributing to its uptick in users. (LINE)
KICKSTARTER IN Q1: Crowd-funding site Kickstarter has released quarterly numbers for the first time, providing a snapshot of how the site has done since the beginning of 2014. During the first quarter of the year, over $112 million was pledged by a total of 887,848 people. Over three-quarters of those who pledged money did so for the first time. And in total, 4,497 projects have been successfully funded so far, meaning they met the fundraising goal they'd set. (Kickstarter)
YOUTUBE'S ENGAGED USERS: People who are referred to publisher sites from YouTube spend more time on these sites than people referred by any of the other major social networks, according to an analysis by Shareaholic. Google+ was second, followed by LinkedIn. Twitter beat out Facebook, with the two social networks taking fourth and fifth place, respectively. So, while Facebook is the undisputed leader for getting people to a given site, other social networks refer the kind of user, on average, who's much more likely to stick around. (Shareaholic)
FACEBOOK MARKETING PARTNERS MERGE: Austin-based Facebook Preferred Marketing Developers Spredfast and Mass Relevance have merged and will now operate under the name Spredfast, according to the companies' announcement. The two companies joined forces "to create the first and only software platform to integrate social into every marketing function ... driven by our shared mission to empower clients to access every piece of social data submitted in real-time." Per Inside Facebook, the two companies operate in 84 countries and process more than 650 million pieces of social content per day. (Spredfast, Inside Facebook)
TWITTER INSTALL ADS?: Mobile app install ads have done well on Facebook, and now Twitter looks to be getting into the game, according to sources who spoke to Bloomberg. Mobile app install ads push users to the app store to download a particular app, targeting mobile users who aren't necessarily scrolling the app store for the latest game or service.
An ad-targeting company that apparently tested the Twitter app install ads said they were as effective as Facebook's similar ads.
Twitter has been pushing to increase revenue lately and mobile is by far and away the biggest piece of Twitter's business, so it makes sense that the social network would go after these types of mobile-specific ads. The ads could roll out in the next few weeks. (Bloomberg)
TWITTER BAN RULED UNCONSTITUTIONAL: Turkey's Official Gazette published a ruling this morning from the constitutional court deeming the government's ban on Twitter a violation of freedom of expression and individual rights. Turkey's Prime Minister banned Twitter in the lead up to the elections, and the service continues to be restricted. The Court said that they had sent their ruling to Turkey's telecom authority and the Transport Ministry, which controls communications, but it's unclear if the ban will be lifted. (Business Insider)
US GOV'S 'CUBAN TWITTER': An in-depth investigative report from the AP has uncovered an effort by the U.S. government in 2010 to create a Twitter-like service in Cuba that would undermine the Cuban government. The service used "cellphone text messaging to evade Cuba's strict control of information and its stranglehold restrictions over the Internet. In a play on Twitter, it was called ZunZuneo - slang for a Cuban hummingbird's tweet," according to the report. The plan was to wait for the service to reach a critical mass of users and then begin introducing political content into the stream, which might begin to incite government resistance. At its peak ZunZuneo had 40,000 subscribers. (AP)
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