Welcome to a new edition of Mash My Week!

We start the week with the most important news in social media advertising, the mobile application market and the latest from the social platforms.

To start off, we introduce you to Smart Argentina’s campaign on Twitter. Then, we tell you why Facebook bought Instagram and the reaction of users to the deal. Finally, we look at the redesign of Google+.

Read all about it here:

For many, Twitter’s 140 characters limit expression, nevertheless the microblogging website’s restrictions can also stimulate creativity.

This is the case of car manufacturers Smart, who decided to promote the launch of their new product in Argentina by using Twitter in a very original way:

The commercial consists of 300 tweets published on the @SmartArg Timeline.

To animate the film, scroll down or keep the letter J pressed down. The system is the same as that used in old animated cartoons. 

Undoubtedly, it’s a different idea, striking and well thought out given that the campaign adapts to the utility of the product: “It fits everywhere, even in 140 characters.”

What do you think of the commercial? Do you know of any other similar campaigns?

Last week Instagram was in the news due to the launch of its version for Android (you can see the story here). The application is back in the news again this week for a different reason. It seems that Facebook, the social media giant, has decided to buy Instagram for a billion dollars.

How did Instagram become such a phenomenon? The company was born in October 2010, when two photography lovers rolled out onto the market a sophisticated piece of photo editing software for the iOS operating system. With time, the number of users grew notably to reach the current figure of 30 million. At the same time improvements were added to the application and, as mentioned earlier, it became available for Android.

Although the future seems to indicate continued growth for Instagram, its founders still haven’t found a way to make profits from the use of the app, given that it’s a free download.

Faced with the lack of short term economic benefits, it’s logical to ask why Facebook decided to pay such a high sum for the company. According to technology experts, Instagram should complement the social network and help its expansion into mobile devices.

The purchase of Instagram by Facebook provoked various reactions from users of the application. There are those who love Instagram and hate Facebook, with the result that many demonstrated their opposition to the deal and abandoned the software to use other appliocations. Other options on the mobile device photo-editing market are Picplz, Molome, PixTrix and Mobile Adobe Workshop.

The search engine’s social network last week revealed its new image. With a revamped look, Google+ announced that it now has more than 170 million users and promises improvements to the social network.

Google+ users were surprised by an attractive, functional and flexible redesign. Among the changes is a reorganization of functions and applications on the site. There is now a whole new navigation system. The navigation ribbon is now on the left and the application buttons can now be dragged up or down. Bigger photos and videos can also be published, and there are now stream of conversation ‘cards‘. On the right, the ‘Chat box’ and the ‘Invitations to hang out’ button are still in the same place, as well as the ‘Who to follow’ service.

The user profile has also been modified, now it has a cover photo in the Facebook Timeline style and the personal image appears on the right.

According to an official statement by Google, the new design “is focused much more on conversation, on the creation of relations with people and not just content, as it was before.”

To inform users of the changes, Google has published a promotional video on YouTube.

Tell us, what do you think of the new design?

I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s edition of Mash My Week!

See you next Monday!