△ MENU/TOP △

Holtz Communications + Technology

Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
SearchClose Icon

Friday Wrap #130: ABC’s 1-minute Facebook newscast, easy CAPTCHA, Google for kids, who views videos

Friday Wrap #130: ABC’s 1-minute Facebook newscast, easy CAPTCHA, Google for kids, who views videos

Wrapped Copters-Friday Wrap #130
Photo (c) United States Navy (photo by Photographer’s Mate
3rd Class Gregory E. Badger)
Here’s today’s Friday Wrap, my selection of articles and posts from the past week that are important or useful for communicators, but that didn’t necessarily get a lot of attention. I curate these items from my link blog, where I save everything I find interesting from a communications perspective; it’s also what I use to choose the stories I’ll cover on the For Immediate Release podcast.

News

ABC creates 1-minute newscast for Facebook—David Muir, host of ABC’s flagship newscast, is now hosting a video newscast created exclusively for the network’s Facebook page. “Facecast: The One Thing” is a one-minute video produced daily to cover a roundup of the day’s top stories and trending topics. The video is being shot behind the scenes in ABC News’ New York headquarters. In the first two hours the inaugural episode was available, it was viewed 50,000 times, and that’s before most people even knew about it. So much for relying on organic reach to get value out of Facebook. Read more

Verizon kills brand journalism attempt—SugarString came in for a lot of criticism as soon as it was launched, and now—less than two months later—Verizon has ended the experiment. The site was supposed to be a new source of tech news that all but hid its Verizon affiliation and banned the publication of news on topics that weren’t consistent with Verizon’s business plan (like NSA surveillance and net neutrality). The surge of criticism led Verizon to suspend updates; for weeks, the same headlines appeared on the home page. Verizon told DSL Reports, “As you know, we’ve always said this was a pilot project; and as with any pilot project, we evaluate, take our learnings, improve our execution and move forward. That’s what we’ve decided to do here.” Read more

Google reinvents CAPTCHA—Nobody likes having to type those annoying codes into a form in order to prove they’re human, and Google feels your pain. In an attempt to get the benefits out of CAPTCHA without the pain, Google has introduced NoCAPTCHA and ReCAPTCHA, which will simply ask you if you’re human or a bot. By clicking on the right box, you’ll be able to confirm that you are, in fact, human. It may sound simple, but the technology behind it actually impressively sophisticated. Read more

JetBlue bans social media celebrity after threatening tweets—So the customer is always right. Right? Not so, according to JetBlue. Matthew Lush, whose LGBT-focused presence in the social space has attracted 150,000 Twitter followers and half a million YouTube followers, is no longer welcome on JetBlue flights. Lush demanded a refund on a non-refundable ticket, and his online actions after he didn’t get it—including calling out a customer service rep by name—led to the ban. Read more

Wire reimagines digital communication—Skype co-founder Janis Friis has launched Wire, a new tool designed to compete directly with Skype (along with Google Hangout). Wire is earning a lot of early praise for its elegant and simple design Friis calls Wire “a complete from-the-ground-up reimagination of what communication should be.” Wire focuses on conversations, whether they’re one-on-one or in groups, and integrate photos, YouTube videos, and SoundCloud audio clips, along with text and remarkably high-quality audio. So far, it’s available for the Mac, iOS, and Android. An HTML5 version is coming, but no Windows plans have been revealed. Read more

Accenture acquires ad agency, and it’s not the first IT company to set its sights on marketing—IT consulting firm Accenture is in the process of acquiring an Australian ad agency, Reactive. Dell, IBM, and Deloitte have made similar moves, suggesting there’s a genuine trend toward IT-focused organizations moving into marketing (and potentially competing with you). According to Accenture Interactive senior managing director Brian Whipple, “Brands are recognizing that being relevant to customers has never depended more on how they engage with customers digitally.” Read more

Google will create versions of its products for the 12-and-younger set—Recognizing that a lot of people accessing YouTube and other Google products are children, the company plans to introduce versions of these products that target those 12 years old and younger. According to engineering VP Pavni Diwanji, “We expect this to be controversial, but the simple truth is kids already have the technology in schools and at home. So the better approach is to simply see to it that the tech is used in a better way.” Read more

Trends

Welcome to the Internet of Things—We’ve been hearing about the Internet of Things (IoT) for a few years now. Expect 2015 to be the year it becomes truly significant. There are two dimensions of the IoT that matter to communicators: the massive number of connected products and services that consumers and companies will buy, and the data that can be collected from these devices that decode how people use them. Read more

Digital agency accepts RFPs through Snapchat—MRY, a digital creative agency, has established a process that allows prospective clients to submit an abbreviated 15-second RFP that covers the target audience, challenge, and goals. MRY will reply via Snapchat with an answer that might include a logo or positioning statement. The outcome could be a full-blown RFP. Read more

Parallax websites are hot, but may be hurting your SEO—A new design trend is establishing itself across the web, from product sites to PR agencies. Called “parallax” design, these are single-page sites require considerable scrolling, but the way images and text are revealed is compelling and appealing. However, SEO is damaged considerably, since it’s not easy to optimize a single page for more than just a few keywords. Read more

Pizza Hut introduces eye-tracking to its menu—It’s called the Subconscious Menu, a web-based menu that determines how long you’ve been looking at an item in order to generate an order that reflects what you really want. If your conscious self has other ideas, you can change the order. Read more

Content needs to go beyond marketing—In a new report titled, “The Culture of Content,” the Altimeter Group argues that “content beyond marketing” will drive success across the various functions of a business, “from marketing and sales, to employee advocacy, customer service, audience engagement, to thought leadership and hiring, content touches all aspects of a business and all areas of a business can contribute to the content function,” writes TopRank’s Lee Odden. Altimeter identifies four components of a culture of content: inspiration, people, process, and content. Read more

Research

Who watches videos?—At least once a day an article finds its way into my news feeds extolling the virtue of online video. But do these videos have a defined audience? It turns out some consumers are inclined to watch online videos and some just plain won’t. Only about 35% of people who find themselves on a page with a video will press the play button. Among those who do, they don’t want every video. In fact, 90% of those who watch videos watch only a couple each week. However, the top 0.5% of video watchers (on desktops) watch 20 or more per week, accounting for 17% of all video consumption across all devices. Those who watch 20 videos on their desktops each week will click the play button on 80% of the videos they encounter. In general, “desktops are used during the workday, tablets have strong peaks during at-home hours in the morning and evening, and phone usage is roughly constant throughout the day (with a brief dip during late-night hours).” Read more

“Dark social” accounts for a lot of online sharing—If you think you have a handle on who’s sharing your content and where, guess again. A new study reveals that nearly one-third of people who share content with others online use channels like email, messaging services, and peer-to-peer platforms instead of the easily monitored public social sites like Facebook and Twitter (aka “light social”). Actual content sharing is close to 70% dark, according to the RadiumOne study, and represents the majority of sharing in nearly 20 categories that use social media heavily, including travel, personal finance, technology, and automotive. Read more

Personalization is vital for online marketing success—If you don’t think you need to personalize your communications, you’re not officially in the minority. A study conducted by eConsultancy and Adobe found that six out of 10 marketers agree that personalizing content is core to their online marketing’s effectiveness. Just over half—54%—are committed to providing a more personalized online experience. Read more

It’s time to move beyond sentiment analysis—Sentiment analysis lumps everything into one of three categories: negative, neutral, and positive. If you’ve ever done a sentiment analysis, you know that the vast majority of content falls into the neutral category. How helpful is that? Assessing the nuances of social media requires conversion-centric social analytics, “tracking each consumer’s behavior from social all the way through to the downstream conversion—and back to social.” Read more

Comment Form

« Back