Flickr photo courtesy of Matt ReinboldHere’s your post-Christmas Friday Wrap, my weekly collection of news, reports, and posts that are useful for communicators even though they may not have been at the top of the week’s headlines. I collect items I find interesting on my link blog and select stories for the Wrap and my podcast from there. You’re welcome to subscribe. I hope you all have a fantastic New Year!

News

Snapchat was unaffected by hack—There were plenty of headlines and a lot of online chatter when some 200,000 private photos were leaked from Snapchat. A lot of the discussion focused on Snapchat’s clueless response, which blamed the user base for using third-party tools that stored images that are meant to vanish after they’ve been seen. The October event, known as the “Snappening,” has had no impact on the company’s fortunes, though, with only a slight dip in user’s opening the app immediately after the hack was revealed, followed by increases, with users currently opening the app some 90 times per week. Read more\

Facebook Pages channel YouTube in video makeover—In an effort to stop companies from linking to YouTube videos instead of its own offering, Facebook is piloting a change to the video section of Pages, allowing brands to select a video to spotlight in a large frame accompanied by a live comment feed. Videos also appear in a list rather than the familiar album interface, with clearly visible like and view counts. No word from Facebook on when (or if) the new format will be rolled out to everyone. Read more

Pantone’s color of the year: Marsala—Pantone, the company behind the proprietary Pantone Matching System for colors, announces the next year’s color of the year each December. For 2015, the color is Marsala, “a dusky burgundy” whose name derives from the Italian wines. Expect to see the color employed in a wide variety of marketing and advertising efforts. Read more

Laws and Regulations

Google joins fight against Marriott’s plan to block WiFi hotspots—The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is reviewing a request by Marriott and the American Hospitality & Lodging Association to let hotels use technology to block WiFi hotspots guests bring with them, whether it’s a dedicated device or a feature of a smartphone. The petition argues guests can use these devices to attack a hotel’s WiFi network or threaten the privacy of other guests; they also claim the devices interfere with hotel WiFi. More likely, they just want guests paying up to $20 per day to use the hotel’s service. Google and Microsoft have joined a coalition of businesses opposing the petition. Read more

Ireland tells US to back off in execution of a search warrant for an email user id—A drug investigation led US investigators to issue a search warrant for a customer’s email, which is stored on a Microsoft server in Ireland. Microsoft is resisting, asserting the US doesn’t have jurisdiction over servers in Ireland, and Ireland has added its voice, claiming in court that “Ireland has a genuine and legitimate interest in potential infringements by other states of its sovereign rights with respect to its jurisdiction over its territory.” The US argues that existing treaties could allow the countries to exchange the email in question. Read more

TripAdvisor fined in Italy—Antitrust officials in Italy has levied a 500,000-euro fine for unfair trade activity and “misleading consumers” against TripAdvisor, which responding by calling the Italian Competition Authority out of touch. The regulator asserts that readers can’t distinguish between genuine and fake reviews and demanded payment within 30 days. TripAdvisor plans to appeal. Read more

Trends

Coca-Cola dumps voicemail—Coca-Cola has shut down voicemail for its employees, directing them to use texting as a more efficient method of contacting a colleague. The company will save a paltry $100,000 annually by ditching voicemail, but the decision was made in order to improve efficiency, not save money. Coca-Cola is not the first company to bid farewell to voicemail, an increasingly archaic and inefficient mode of communication that is used by fewer and fewer people who have access to better technologies. Read more

Black Twitter results in boycott of reality show—African Americans use Twitter more than other ethnic groups, and young users have established a cultural force dubbed Black Twitter. And recently, that force was brought to bear on a VH1 reality show, Sorority Sisters, which followed nine black sorority sisters. Black Twitter quickly deemed the show offensive and launched a boycott via Twitter, and advertisers paid attention, with some 29 promising to pull their ads from the series. Read more

Video viewing habits differ for tablets and smartphones—While PCs continue to be the hardware of choice for viewing videos, mobile does account for 30% of digital video views, which is nothing to sneeze at. In the third quarter, 39% of global Internet users visited YouTube using a mobile device, up 6 points from a year earlier. Data finds that mobile phones are used considerably more for short-form video, while tablets tend to be used for longer content. Combined with what we know about where and why people use phones versus tablets, this data can help guide the use of video to reach the right audience. Read more

Experiments demonstrate ads can generate donations, Facebook says—Results of two experiments with Democratic Senate campaigns showed that Facebook ads can result in political donations. Both campaigns reported success from targeting Facebook ads to people who had previously shared their email addresses with the campaigns. In fact, the ads produced more money than an email appeal. An academic who studies online campaigns noted that, “Though Facebook ads don’t directly generate a lot of revenue, they can have a spillover effect in other fundraising channels.” Read more

Research

Privacy study finds acceptance of a public online life—Respondents to a Pew Internet study on privacy found a majority (55%) doesn’t think an accepted privacy-rights regime and infrastructure will be a reality within the next 10 years, and most said they believe online life is inherently public. Read more

New study finds teens fleeing Facebook (again)—Every few months a study reveals teens are abandoning Facebook, followed by other studies that suggest it’s not so. The latest, from Frank N. Magid Associates, found that 88% of 13-to-17-year-old social media users were on Facebook, a 6% decline from 2013. Magid also found 48% of social media users in the same demographic were on twitter, up 2 points from a year earlier, suggesting those fleeing Facebook are adopting other services. Only 9% of teens surveyed described Facebook as “safe” or “trustworthy,” and 18% described it as “fun” (compared to 40% who said Pinterest is fun). Read more

A third of site visits can be traced to bad web bots—Bots—automated Web systems that monitor or attack sites—were responsible for almost 30% of all web traffic this year. A report from Web security firm Incapsula found about 22% of bad bot traffic came from automated impersonators which pretend to be legitimate web crawlers from companies like Google while collecting information. More than 3% of visits were from hacking tools scanning sites for vulnerabilities to exploit. Programs designed to scrape data from sites accounted for another 3%. Read more

Instagram gets nearly 50 times more engagement for brands than Twitter—Instagram significantly outperformed Twitter in a head-to-head comparison of the top 25 brands using both services, producing nearly 50 times more engagement per post and per profile interaction. Instagram’s 300 million monthly active users also outpace Twitter. Read more