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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Friday Wrap #107: Farewell to blog ranking system, teens return to Facebook, there’s more to Yo

Friday Wrap #107: Farewell to blog ranking system, teens return to Facebook, there’s more to Yo

Firday Wrap image courtesy of SNappa2006
Flickr image courtesy of SNappa2006
The Friday Wrap is a curated rundown of news, reports and posts from the past week that, while they didn’t go viral or attract much attention, are still interesting and useful for communications professionals. I select Wrap items from my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow.

News

Technorati kills its blog ranking system—Technorati was once the go-to resource for searching the blogosphere—including posts with specific tags—as well as identifying the most influential bloggers. Over the last several years there has been fewer and fewer references to Technorati, and last month, with virtually no announcement, the site relaunched without its blog ranking system. Buried in a blog post about the relaunch, the company noted the technology behind the ranking system is being updated specifically to help publishers get discovered by advertisers. While the site hasn’t been top of mind lately, it’s loss, since there aren’t many alternatives available. Read more

Facebook adds weight to video views—Facebook’s News Feed algorithm is giving more weight to video as video views on the social network doubled in the last six months. As a result, Facebook will deliver more video to users who have signaled an interest in video content and reduce the number of videos it shows to those who haven’t demonstrated an interest. Read more

New York Times shutting down half its blogs—The Lede is among the blogs shutting down at The New York Times, then 10th the Grey Lady has ended, and more are on the chopping block. According to a spokesperson, the Times has been “moving away from blogs over the past year and a half,” although Assistant Managing Editor Ian Fisher insists, “We’re going to continue to provide bloggy content with a more conversational tone. We’re just not going to do them as much in standard reverse-chronological blogs.” Maybe the blogs-are-dead meme is worth another look. Read more

Washington Post removes ageist job ad—A wanted ad for the Washington Post sought some with “the ability to explain to those twice your age what Reddit or Snapchat or Whisper or Fark is.” The ad gave bonus points “if you’ve convinced them to use any of these platforms.” According to the Post’s communications director, the want ad was a “draft.” Since I turn 60 in August, maybe the person they hire can explain it to me. Read more

Trends

Is attention the new pageview?—The amount of time people spend on content is the best indicator of content quality, not the number of people who saw it. At least, that’s the idea publishers are starting to push as the traditional metrics of pageviews and monthly uniques increasingly represent content people have been lured to via link-bait and other techniques designed to make you look. It’s called “engaged time,” and publishers—including the Financial Times and Medium—are touting it to advertisers and readers. Read more

“Takedown abuse” is on the rise—If you get a copyright takedown notice, there’s a good chance it’s not on the up-and-up. According to Electronic Frontier Foundation copyright activist Parker Higgins, takedown abuse is on the rise. Copyfraud is one form of takedown abuse, in which individuals or businesses claim they own content that’s in the public domain. “It’s a dangerous myth,” Higgins writes, “that we should all need permission any time we’re getting value out of a piece of culture.” Read more

Leap.It introduces visual search engine based on user collaboration—Leap.It is a new search engine that produces Pinterest-like visual results that are curated through user collaboration. Users create “Perspectives,” lists for topics containing what they think represent the top search results. As users add items to their lists and agree with their relevance, the results are elevated. I’m not sure whether it’ll draw significant numbers of users from Google, but it’s kind of addictive. Read more

Mobile

Yo’s push notification raises eyebrows—The jokes have flown fast and furious over the app Yo, but it turns out there’s more to it than meets the eye. The idea that has intrigued app developers and tech journalists is the simplified means by which you can easily subscribe and unsubscribe from push notifications. Some speculate eventually, You could let you know your table is ready at a restaurant, that your flight is boarding, or that a flash flood is headed your way. As for now, this capability exists only for the FIFA World Cup: You can get a “yo” whenever a goal is scored. The company’s founder says he’s taking a lot of meetings with people who are interested in You as a new way of getting notifications. Read more here and here

Native ads get attention on mobile devices—eMarketer calls it “branded editorial media content,” but it’s native advertising, and it seems to be effective when discovered and consumed on mobile devices. According to data from Sharethrough, native ads earned 2.2% engagement levels, which is high. Companies are also increasing their spending on mobile native ads. Read more

Mobile devices account for most time spent with digital—The Internet is mainly a mobile medium, according to a new comScore report that estimates 51% of digital media time was spent on mobile apps and 60% of digital time was spent on mobile devices, up 50% from the same period last year. Read more

BYOD is a movement, not an initiative—Sixty-two percent of employees who use their own mobile devices at work don’t have a corporate IT policy governing their behavior, according to research from Ovum. According to the report, employees are finding ways to use their own devices whether IT knows about it or not. Read more

Google adds enterprise management to Android—Among the announcements flooding out of Google this week is the addition of “Enterprise Mobility Management”—the new term for “Mobile Device Management”—to Android. The APIs will allow companies to provide companies with control over devices and applications running Google’s mobile operating system, which could lead more companies to adopt Android over alternatives—Blackberry and Applie—that already provide EMM functionality. Read more

Research

Teens are returning to Facebook—Facebook was the top preferred social network among teens in a recent Forrester Research survey. Nearly half the sample of 12-to-17-year-olds said they were using Facebook more than they were a year ago. The report authors suggest that younger teens will embrace Facebook as they get older. Read more

Consumers expect companies to offer customer service via social media—Eighty-two percent of consumers use Facebook to talk to customer service representatives and 72% want to interact with brands only when they comment on their social media channels. A survey from Accent Marketing found that Facebook is the primary place to talk about customer service and, according to the company, can’t just be place to drive likes. Read more

Pharmas tap social media data to learn why patients switch prescriptions—While pharmaceutical companies lag most other industries in the adoption of social media, companies are beginning to analyze social media data to figure out why a given drug is surging or slumping in the market. A study from the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development studied 12 pharmas and found that only three are actively gathering adverse event (AE) reports from social media sites, but nine use social media to passively monitor AEs and seven monitor social media to learn about marketed drugs. Nine of the top 50 US pharmas pay a fee to get social media data analysis from Treato, an Israeli health social media company that aggregates more than 1.5 billion caregiver and patient conversations. Read more

Digital is the product research tool of choice—Consumers prefer to do their product research and purchasing via digital channels, according to a study from UPS, comScore and the e-tailing group. Sixty-one percent prefer to research products from multichannel retailers on their desktop or laptop computers, while 11% prefer a tablet and 10% favor a smartphone. Only 13% said they’d rather do their research in a brick-and-mortar store. Fifty-five percent of respondents prefer to do their buying on a digital device, compared to 41% who’d rather be in the physical store. Read more

Critics take issue with Gallup social media report—Gallup’s report on the State of the American Consumer noted that nearly half of millennial shoppers are not influenced by social media. Criticism of the report has piled up. First, the data are old, collected between December 2012 and January 2013, when mobile was less of a factor than it is now. Altimeter Group’s Rebecca Leib also notes that consumers will always say they’re not influenced by marketing and advertising when asked, which is why advertisers and marketers use other calculations to determine the effectiveness of advertising. The study also polled only English-speaking consumers. Read more

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