The campaign is timed with the build-up to the French Open, sponsored by BNP Paribas.  According to ClickZ, followers can ”tweet to Twitter-controlled robots who will hurl tennis balls at Tsonga live on the court.”  The balls will come from a variety of angles, and tweeters will even choose where to place their ball, using a drag-and-drop interface on the web.

To participate, fans log in to the campaign’s website using their Twitter name and password; the robot chooses tweets at random among those submitted.

The event will be live-streamed on the campaign’s website today, 3 days before the French Open takes place on Sunday, 5/26.

“I’ve always loved a challenge and when BNP Paribas asked me to take part in a world-first experience to mark its 40-year partnership with Roland Garros, I was immediately intrigued. Being trained by fans on Twitter a few days ahead of the French Open – what a daring challenge,” Tsonga told ClickZ.

Watch a video promoting the campaign here:

Competing for the prize of free Dunkin’ Donuts Iced Coffee for one full year, fans are engaging with brand by submitting a Vine video with #IceDD.  The six-second video is meant to “show how Dunkin’ Donuts Iced Coffee puts pep in their step,” reports ClickZ.

According to Scott Hudler, vice president of global consumer engagement for Dunkin’ Brands, fans were the reason Dunkin’ Donuts began to use Vine: ”We see Vine as an untapped resource that is in the beginning stages of its popularity. Our interest and inspiration to launch our official Vine account came from Dunkin’ Donuts guests.”

“Our guests are on Vine and sharing how they run on Dunkin’ – from their cravings for Iced Coffee, to enjoying a donut, and much more, in a new and creative way. We see an opportunity to like and comment on our guests’ videos and also to create our own Vine videos that are fun, engaging, and make people smile while they’re on-the-go,” he told ClickZ.

Here’s one (rather elaborate) Vine submitted by a Dunkin’ Donuts fan:

Dunkin’ Donuts has seen great results from visual marketing campaigns, says Hudler — so engaging fans on Vine makes perfect sense.  And according to the latest research from Unruly, branded Vines are 4X more likely to be shared than branded online videos.

Is your brand experimenting with Vine?

“We’d like to thank you for making YouTube the special place that it is. For showing us how video can create connections, transcend borders and make a difference. For clicking these links even if you aren’t sure what they’ll be, but you trust us. In short, thanks for making us better in big ways and small ones, too. We can’t wait to see what you come up with next.”

The stats:

• more than 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute (the equivalent of over four days of video being uploaded each minute)
• more than 1 billion people visit YouTube every month (roughly one out of every two people on the Internet)
• millions of partners are creating content for YouTube 

Haven’t been on YouTube in a while?  This week is is also YouTube’s Comedy Week – so look no further for some lunch break amusement.

Google+

Google+ Redesign

• Google Launches Content Recommendation Engine For Mobile Sites, Powered By Google+ - mobile content recommendations will appear as small widgets at the bottom of the screen as users browse a news site that has enabled this service; Forbes is the launch partner (TechCrunch)
• Google+ Games shutting down on June 30th in favor of Google Play game services – Google+ Games will be shut down on June 30th; it will be replaced by the launch of Google Play game services, “a cross-platform tool that will sync progress, achievements, and other gaming data on Android, the web, and even iOS” (The Verge)
• Google Intros Stand-Alone Hangouts App – Hangouts is “the gold standard of video messaging;” last week Google introduced a stand-alone mobile Hangouts app, so users can access Hangouts directly via mobile without using the Google+ app (Mashable)
• Google+ completely redesigned, now automatically enhances photos and highlights your best shots – the new Google+ redesign resembles the platform’s tablet apps, with a three column view and photos/videos taking up the full screen width (The Verge)

Twitter

• Twitter Acquires Big Data Visualization Startup Lucky Sort, Service To Shutter In Months Ahead – Lucky Sort, a start-up focused on data mining through statistics, was acquired by Twitter; the service will be shut down, and part of the team will join Twitter in San Francisco (TechCrunch)
• Yahoo partners with Twitter to bring tweets directly into its US newsfeed on the desktop and mobile Web - “relevant and personalized” tweets are now directly incorporated into the newsfeed on Yahoo!’s US homepage (The Next Web)

Yahoo! Places Tweets in News Stream

Pinterest

• To Ease Small Screen Nesting, Pinterest Mobile Adds Search Suggestions, Mentions, And Notifications – updates to Pinterest on mobile include search suggestions to make single-screen pinning easier, as well as push notifications and tagging with @mentions (TechCrunch)
• Pinterest Makes Pins More Than Pretty Pictures – Pinterest will be showing more information about images on the site, including “pricing and availability of pinned products, cook time and ingredients for pinned recipes, and ratings and casts for pinned movies” (AllThingsD)

Tumblr

• Yahoo Buys Tumblr and Promises “Not to Screw It Up” – Yahoo! is acquiring Tumblr for $1.1 billion; David Karp will remain CEO and “Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business” (AllThingsD)

Any updates to social networks that we missed?

Please email marissa@modernmedia.co if you have additional updates, or a social network that you feel should be on the lis

Twitter Is The Fastest Growing Social Network Worldwide

A new report from Global Web Index found a rise in active engagement across social platforms worldwide, with Twitter experiencing the fastest growth.

The top social networks all saw impressive growth between Q2 2012 and Q1 2013:

• Facebook’s total number of active users increased by 35%
• Twitter’s growth was even faster in the same period, at 44%
• Google+ saw active user base growth of 33%

What’s driving this growth?  A combination of mobile and increased numbers of older internet users.  Mobile is playing a huge role, with a 60% increase in the number of people accessing the internet via a mobile phone since Q1 2011.  The report found that iOS and Android users are significantly more likely to use Facebook, Twitter and Google+ compared to the average internet user around the world.

Growth driven by older internet users is less dramatic, but still impressive.  Between Q2 2012 and Q1 2013, Twitter saw a 79% increase in active users among the 55 to 64 year old demographic. The 45 to 54 year old demographic saw the fastest growth on both Facebook and Google+, growing by 46% and 56% respectively.

Ranked by number of users, Facebook remains #1 and Google+ remains #2, with 359 million monthly active users.  YouTube comes in right behind Google+, followed by Twitter and then China’s Sina Weibo.

As the big platforms continue to grow, local social platforms worldwide are seeing decline, with the notable exceptions of China and Russia.

See a preview of the study here:

Younger Brits are also much more likely to read posts from organizations, brands or events on social networking sites via mobile: over 56% of 18-24 year olds have done so, vs. just 35.5% of all smartphone users.

Over 33 million Brits own a smartphone, and smartphone penetration in the UK has reached 67%.  The data from comScore shows that marketers have a significant opportunity – especially with the 18-24 year old demographic – to reach their target audience on mobile.

Here are the highlights, using data from over 10 million Vines during a one-month period:

• 5 Vine videos are shared on Twitter every second
• branded Vines are 4X more likely to be shared than branded online videos
• more Vine tweets occur during the weekend than all of the weekdays combined
• most Vine activity occurs between 10-11am EDT
• the largest number of Vine tweets (19,667) was sent on Monday, April 15 at 3-4pm EDT – just after the Boston Marathon explosions

What kind of engagement are Vines seeing?  The #1 tracked Vine over the month-long period had 47,000 tweets; the 100th most-shared Vine in this period had 1,400 tweets (click here to see the top 100). Out of the 10 million Vines sampled, just 51 garnered over 2,000 tweets; 176 Vines earned over 1,000 tweets, and 433 Vines had over 500 tweets.

“This data can really help brands determine a strategy for using Vine in their marketing efforts. We have already seen brands like General Electric, adidas, AT&T, Volvo, Pepsi-Co and GAP adapt to the platform,” said Matt Cooke, CTO and co-founder at Unruly. ”There is a massive opportunity here for brands to get really creative with this 6-second sensation, either to grab people’s attention quickly or as part of a much larger content marketing strategy.”

Check out this fun Valentine’s Day Vine from Tropicana:

What are some of the best branded Vines you’ve seen?  Has your brand tried Vine as a marketing platform?

Klout introduced this new perk last week — and it is available to high Klout scorers regardless of whether they’re booked on an American Airlines flight. Admission includes benefits like free Wi-Fi and beer.

According to AdAge, the American Airlines promotion is broadly targeted, not aimed at users who live in a particular area or who have any specific expertise.

Brands that partner with Klout in this way hope that social media influencers will take advantage of the perks, and then share their experience – via social media – with a large social network.  Some brands, like Chevrolet, have even used Klout for product launches.

Klout recently delivered its one millionth “perk,” and partnerships have included major brands like Sony, Nike, Microsoft, Disney, Audi, Gilt and many others.  What do you think?  Has your brand tried influence marketing?

A team of researchers led by Humboldt State University Dr. Monica Stephens of Humboldt State University (HSU) have released the results of a year-long study identifying the geographic origins of hate speech on Twitter in the U.S. Using the Google Maps API, the team has overlaid the data with a county-level analysis to show the distribution of hate speech on Twitter across the country via an interactive map.

The results? Hate speech tends to be more prevalent in the eastern part of the country than in the west. Concentrations of hate speech show interesting variations by individual terms; playing with the interactive map is both interesting and depressing.

The team analyzed a total of 150,000 geo-coded tweets (i.e. the user had opted into Twitter’s location-sharing service) sent between June 2012 and April 2013, each of which contained one of the homophobic or racist hate words. Rather than using algorithmic sentiment analysis, the project relied upon Humboldt State undergraduate students to read the entirety of tweet and classify it as positive, neutral or negative. Only those tweets that were identified by human readers as negative were used in this analysis.

To produce the map, all 150,000 negative tweets containing each hate word were aggregated to the county level and normalized by the total twitter traffic in each county. This is important because it eliminates population density as a factor that might lead to higher concentrations of hate speech.

More details about the methodology can be found on the group’s Floating Sheep blog (which also features some of the team’s other cool geo-visualizations); there is also an FAQ that addresses some of the controversies this project has stirred up.

Are you surprised at the results?

Facebook

• Facebook rolling out video ads to News Feeds – video ads will be coming to users’ NewsFeeds as early as July; brands will be able to target one of four demographics (AdWeek)
• Facebook is buying social mapping/traffic app Waze for up to $1B to court mobile users – Facebook is acquiring social mapping and traffic app maker Waze; Waze has over 47 million active users (TechCrunch)

Twitter

• Twitter buys scalable computing outfit Ubalo – Twitter has acquired the technology and team behind Ubalo, a startup specializing in making technical computing more accessible for engineers and scientists (AllThingsD)

Google+

• Google+ adds instant replay, rewind to Hangouts On Air – Google added new features to Hangouts On Air, including rewinding during live broadcasts, playback recordings, higher quality during live video, and the ability to start live broadcasts without refreshing the page (CNET)

YouTube

• YouTube launches its paid subscription channels with select partners – each channel will have a 14-day free trial, and many offer discounted yearly rates; partners include The Young Turks, UFC, Jim Henson Company, Mark Cuban’s HDNet and the Sesame Workshop (PaidContent)

LinkedIn

• LinkedIn adds Channels with curated content on LinkedIn Today – LinkedIn Today users can now subscribe to or follow news categories, or ‘channels,’ as well as individual authors (TechCrunch)

Foursquare

• Foursquare updates Windows Phone 8 app, now optimized for Lumia – Foursquare released the latest version of its app for Windows Phone 8, optimized especially for Nokia’s Lumia smartphones (Mashable)

Any updates to social networks that we missed?