THE PHILIPPINES, FEBRUARY 10, 2012: Digital media provider Yahoo! looking to boost its views and reach via social media giant Facebook with the Social Bar.
Launched in mid-December 2011 in the Philippines through Yahoo! News, the Social Bar allows Facebook users to connect and add their friends to share their activities in Yahoo! such as reading and viewing news articles.
Other features of the Social Bar include the option to turn on or off the social sharing feature. The user also has the ability to delete any articles he/she have viewed from the activity feed on Yahoo! and Facebook.
The application has already been released in the United States in September 2011 and has since been picking up increase in traffic dramatically, according to Yahoo! chief product officer Blake Irving in a press statement.
“The Philippines has demonstrated an increasing demand for Social Bar and its easy content sharing tool and with more than 700% spike in daily referrals from Facebook, the country leads in the total user growth in the region and is the no. 2 market globally following US," says Isaac Souweine, Yahoo! APAC head of Product Marketing for Mobile, Communications and Communities
Locally, the Social Bar is now available in Yahoo! News, Yahoo! OMG, and Yahoo! She.
According to Souweine, the app has been very appealing to young users so far. The age group of people who have opted to use the app are 15-30 years old. A total of 25% of daily Yahoo! News users in the country have already opted in. Globally, a total of 24 million users have already opted in 85 sites across Yahoo! websites.
The Philippines ranks second for total users of the app next to U.S. Also, Makati and Quezon City are the top cities that use Social Bar globally.
