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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Friday Wrap #127: Twitter’s Instant Timeline, fakery for a cause, and way too much Facebook news

Friday Wrap #127: Twitter’s Instant Timeline, fakery for a cause, and way too much Facebook news

Friday Wrap #127 (bacon-wrapped shrimp)Welcome to the Friday Wrap, my weekly summary of stuff I have found in the last seven days that didn’t grab the big headlines but is still important, interesting, and/or worthwhile for communicators and marketers. I collect these on my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow.

News

Instant Timeline will provide a Twitter feed to visitors who aren’t logged in—Up until now, if you don’t have a Twitter account and haven’t followed anybody, there’s nothing to see in your stream. Instant Timeline will change that, displaying a feed of tweets that provide an overview of what’s happening. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo says that 500 million people visit Twitter each month without logging in, and some 125 million visit without signing up. In addition to giving unlogged-in visitors something to see (and an opportunity to understand Twitter), it’s also a new opportunity for advertisers. Read more

Creating fake social profiles for a cause—Add social causes to the reasons people create fake accounts on social media sites. The hook-up site Tinder now features fake profiles created by an activist group seeking to outlaw sex work in Ireland. When first accessed, the profiles look ordinary, but swiping through reveals additional photos simulating injuries and other forms of abuse. The last two images in each profile features a message condemning sex trafficking and linking to a site, Turn Off The Red Light, which is seeking a total ban on all forms of sex work in Ireland. Read more

Marriott ups its content marketing game—Hotel company Marriott International is embarking on a content marketing effort focusing on a scripted, digital drama along with short travel-related films—all destined for YouTube—accompanied by the ability for users to send quick videos and photos to their friends via ephemeral messaging app Snapchat. No overt marketing will be included; just restaurant recommendations, videos of travel tips, and other entertainment programming. Read more

A search engine for communications podcasts—Jay Baer’s Convince and onvert has launched MarketingPodcasts.com, a discovery engine for marketing podcasts, with nearly 400 shows in the database (including mine). Read more

Trends

Domain laundering: One more thing to worry about—If your brand has taken a stand against fraud, you need to be aware of a new fraudulent tactic. Domain laundering is the practice in which ad networks make you think you’re buying space on a legitimate site, only to have your ads included instead on an ad exchange featuring pirated content and file sharing. Read more

Facebook

Sorry. There was too much Facebook news to try to stuff it all into the News section.

Younger audiences are not unfriending Facebook—Here we go again. Every time one study claims young people are abandoning Facebook in droves, another says it isn’t so. The latest numbers come from eMarketer, which finds 96% of those aged 12-17 and 92.7 of the 18-24 set are Facebook users. Read more

Facebook makes its privacy policy understandable—As online privacy becomes more important to more people, Facebook has revamped its data use policy to make it more easily understandable, including step-by-step guides to controlling who sees your updates and likes. Read more

Facebook taps into more personal data to deliver targeted ads—The rationale for a site explaining more simply how to control your privacy comes at the same time the social network is providing advertisers with access to users’ browsing activity outside of Facebook, in addition to characteristics like age, gender, location, and interests. Read more

Copyblogger kills its Facebook page—After attempting several tactics to increase the value its Facebook page provides to its audience, but determining that nothing attempted is beneficial, Copyblogger has killed its Facebook page. The primary reasoning: The site’s users just aren’t interested in connecting via Facebook, making it not worth the time and energy to maintain the page compared to other channels. Read more

Facebook lets you turn down annoying brands—Even as brands (like Copyblogger) struggle to retain organic reach, Facebook is providing greater control over which content users see in their News Feeds. The latest update allows users to see which of their friends or brands they follow made up the lion’s share of their News Feed for the week, then dial down the number of posts they see from any friend or brand without having to block them completely. Read more

Still, organic reach really isn’t dead on Facebook—Copyblogger is hardly the first company to abandon Facebook over its ability to reach its audience without having to pony up dollars for ads. But there’s new research that suggests organic reach still lives, with initial organic reach bolstered by a media spend. Despite record low overall organic reach, brands still reach 25% of their Facebook fan bases each month, according to a study from Socialbakers, suggesting there’s still value in those updates. Adding a media spend to the posts that do perform well can increase that value considerably. Read more

Messenger used monthly by half a billion people—There was an outcry when Facebook uncoupled its messaging feature from the social network’s mobile app, but more than 500 million people are using it at least monthly, the company revealed. Read more

Seeing numbers on Facebook changes your behavior—Seeing numbers (such as likes, comments, and shares) compels users to want more numbers, according to a study that let some users see their Facebook pages without any numbers included. (For instance, rather than see “56 people like this,” you would see only, “people liked this.”) Comparing behaviors of those using the tool (about 5,000 have adopted it) to those who aren’t revealed that seeing the numbers encourages competition, emotional manipulation, reaction, and homogenization. Read more

Research

Consumers fear their control over personal info is dead—A Pew Research Center study has found that 90% of Americans believe they have lost control over how companies collect and use their personal information, and 80% said they were concerned about how advertisers and other third parties access data they share via social media. Read more

Shoppers expect to be rewarded for viewing ads—Half of Americans will do anything in their power to avoid seeing ads online, even though most consumers in four countries see ads favorably when they get something in exchange for seeing them. 72% of Americans (and 92% of Brazilians) said it’s important for brands to reward them for their loyalty. Read more

Mobile and Wearables

Half the world will be on the mobile Internet by 2020—The proliferation of heap smartphones and tablets will lead to 3.8 billion people accessing the Net via some kind of mobile device by the beginning of the next decade, according to a forecast from GSMA Intelligence. That’s an increase from the current figure of 30% of the world’s population to about 50% a mere six years from now. That represents one of the biggest technological shifts in history. Read more

Jaguar introduces Google Glass app—Just when you thought you’d heard the last of Google Glass, luxury automaker Jaguar has introduced an app for the wearable designed to bring their print ads to life. Leveraging the “British Intelligence” campaign, the app lets you take an augmented reality tour of the home of the campaign’s latest villain via an image that, without the glasses, would remain static. Read more

Comments
  • 1.While I can't say I'm surprised to see a marketer use Google Glass to add an additional element to something *it* values, I was hoping that an automaker would use Google Glass for something the *customer* values, such as a heads-up display, a living users' manual, or even a guide to what's what under the hood (excuse me, Jaguar - bonnet).

    Scott Monty | November 2014

  • 2.Facebook struggles to become a payable social platform. And that I think will be the beginning of the end!

    Content Marketing | November 2014 | London

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