Monday, September 22, 2014

Celeb turn to chat apps as cozier alternative to Twitter, Facebook

I believe many of you would have followed your favorite stars, celebrities, or singers on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram..Don't you want to be more personal..

It seems to be more and more expensive to advertise on Facebook and Twitter as million users are using them; neverthless, how much of huge volume of information being posted get noticed!

Chat apps such as Line, Kik, Snapchat, WeChat and Viber place marketing messages front and center to people enthusiastic enough to follow stars and brands on them. These apps, which are most-used on smartphones, threaten to take away advertising dollars from the social media leaders.

Teenagers and young adults find them more alluring than traditional social networks or basic SMS texting because chat apps are loaded with attractive features like animated smiley faces, colorful digital stickers, drawing tools, quick photo-sharing, video, and the like.

Its popularity is leading a wave of investment and experimentation, music stars and youth-oriented companies are turning to chat apps an alternative way to better-targeted publicity, and showing that they're hip. Meaning that instead of reaching multiple millions on Facebook, chat apps is the right option that enable marketers to to reach the right people. On average, U.S. adults spend about eight hours a month using the most popular chat apps, Kik, and teenagers probably spend more.

Line, for example, has sticker sales as key source of revenue. The company also allows people to design and sell stickers, which people across 124 countries submitted 30,000 sticker sets and earned $12 million in sales in the program's first three-plus months. But Line doesn't intend to survive on sticker sales alone, instead aiming to be messaging and entertainment platform in the U.S. and achieving it by creating partnerships with major brands.

Source: Latimes by Paresh Dave

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