World Welcomes New Pope On Social Media

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Thousands gathered at St. Peter’s Square yesterday to celebrate the announcement of Pope Francis, and millions welcomed him on social media.

Twitter said that about 130,000 tweets per minute were posted about the new pope, amounting to a total of more than 7 million tweets. For a brief time, every worldwide trending topic was pope-related, including hashtags such as #habemuspapam and #Bergoglio. Staying true to true Twitter humor, #ReplaceMovieTitlesWithPope also trended worldwide.

“HABEMUS PAPAM FRANCISCUM” was the first official tweet from the Vatican, and it generated 54,000 retweets. Pope Francis takes over the Twitter handle @pontifex after the departing Pope Benedict XVI’s Twitter account was wiped clean of his previous tweets in early February. A full archive of Benedict’s tweets are cataloged on the Vatican website.

Facebook was also buzzing about the new pope. Discussion terms included Pope, Jorge Bergoglio (the new Pope’s full name) and Vatican were the main phrases trending on the platform. By midday yesterday, mentions of Pope Francis were up by 3.7 million percent.

YouTube had more than 700 videos uploaded and tagged “Pope Francis.” The highest viewed clips were serious news pieces, while some older videos parodying the event surfaced. A clip from the comedy “Stripes” that quotes Bill Murray’s Sgt. Hulka saying “Lighten up Francis” was getting healthy views as well.

Source: CNN

Harvest Moon: Gritty Reboot

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Fake live action movie trailers about video games and cartoons are becoming so common that someone had to establish a YouTube channel around that idea eventually. Sure enough, this has come to pass and their first trailer is for Harvest Moon, where all of the different mates of the game are hilariously played by one woman!

21 & Over Tumblr Is High-larious

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When straight-A student Jeff Chang’s (Justin Chon) two best friends (Skylar Astin and Miles Teller) take him out for his 21st birthday on the night before an important medical school interview, what was supposed to be a quick beer becomes a night of humiliation, overindulgence, and utter debauchery. Check out the official Tumblr for the film and grab ahold of Jeff Chang and whip him around the page. If you’re feeling in the mood, hit the “make it rain” button and watch different Jeff Chang’s fall from the sky! The site is also filled with Tumblr content like movie stills and easily shareable animated gifs and jpgs that fans can comment on and promote to their friends and followers.

 

 

 

Line Gaming Platform Sees 100 Million Downloads

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Line has seen 100 million game downloads via its mobile messaging app. The Japanese mobile firm attached a gaming platform to its mobile messaging app in July 2012.

Currently, Line has 16 games on its game platform, including Line Pop and Line Bubble that have been downloaded more than 30 million times. While Japan is the company’s biggest market with 45 million downloads, Line is popular in various East Asian markets, with downloads in both Thailand and Taiwan exceeding 10 million.

Source: TheNextWeb.com

Zero TV Group Now At 5 Million, Says Nielsen

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According to Nielsen, 95 percent of Americans watch TV in their living rooms. The company decided to examine what the other 5 percent are doing and got some interesting results.

“This small group of video enthusiasts is tuning out traditional TV — and the trend is growing,” the company reports. “This ‘Zero-TV’ group, which makes up less than 5 percent of U.S. households, has bucked tradition by opting to get the information they need and want from non-traditional TV devices and services.”

Nielsen’s Fourth-Quarter 2012 Cross-Platform Report says the U.S. has more than 5 million Zero-TV households in 2013, up from just over 2 million in 2007. While most of these households don’t fit Nielsen’s traditional definition of a TV household, they still view video content.

It’s worth noting that the TV set itself hasn’t been thrown out in most cases, and more than 75 percent of these homes still have at least one TV set for things like DVDs, games or web surfing. However, when it comes to video content, a growing amount of these households are using other devices.

“The average American spends more than 41 hours each week — nearly five-and-a-half hours daily — engaging with content across all screens,” Nielsen notes. “They spend most of that time (more than 34 hours) in front of a TV, and consumers spend three of those TV hours watching time-shifted content. Viewing behavior varies by ethnicity, however: the average African-American spends close to 55 hours, Hispanics just over 35 hours and Asian Americans spend more than 27 hours.”

Source: Nielsen.com

Kabam Publishing Handling Third-Party Titles

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Kabam has announced it is launching Kabam Publishing. This new business unit is designed to bring to third-party game developers the same technology platform and marketing tools that Kabam uses.

“Game developers around the world recognize that Kabam customers are among the most enthusiastic free-to-play gamer. On a per-player basis, Kabam monetizes games at eight times the rate of other companies. We have and will continue to hand select extremely compelling games that our players truly enjoy,” said Amit Ranade, president of Kabam Publishing before adding, “Kabam also has one of the industry’s most sophisticated performance marketing operations. We know how to drive discovery, engagement, and monetization of games arguably better than anyone else in the industry.”

Kabam has already worked with third-parties on movie licensed projects such as The Hobbit, The Godfather and upcoming Fast and Furious 6. Kabam Publishing has 15 partners in place, including Reality Squared Games in China, 5th Planet Games in California and Venan Games in Connecticut, with as many as 50 third-party games expected by the end of the year.

Android Senior VP Andy Rubin Steps Down

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Google announced that it has replaced Andy Rubin, senior vice president in charge of Android, with Sundar Pichai. Pichai is currently the senior vice president of Chrome, a position he will retain.

“So far, we have been in a world which has been pretty straightforward: Android phones and tablets and Chrome laptops. But lines do blur,” said Pichai. “The way we think about it internally is as a user, you sign in to both these devices, you use search, Maps, Gmail [and other Google products.] All your Google services work seamlessly across devices.”

“Today we’re living in a new computing environment,” wrote Larry Page, Google CEO. “People are really excited about technology and spending a lot of money on devices.”

Source: Bits.Blogs.NYtimes.com

Mojam Charity Event Raises Over $500k

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Mojang revealed that their Mojam game jam has raised $517,489.25 for charity. 86,531 people donated an average of $5.98, with $295,553.96 going to The Electronic Frontier Foundation and $194,493.28 for Block By Block.

“Massive thanks to all who donated – you’re probably a lovely person,” Mojang stated.

The Mojam resulted in the creation of four games, working with members of Grapefrukt, Ludosity, Oxeye Game Studio, Vlambeer and Wolfire Games. Markus “Notch” Persson also shaved off his beard on the game jam’s live stream since they raised over $500,000.