The Friday Wrap is your weekly source of curated news, research, reports and posts that may have slipped by unnoticed, but that could prove useful to communicators and marketers. I collect items that I consider including in the Wrap (as well as my podcast) at my link blog, Links From Shel, which you’re welcome to follow.

Breaking News

Twitter makes photos more social—Twitter has introduced two new mobile features designed to make photos on the platform more social, according to the Twitter blog. Taking a page from Facebook, Twitter has enabled tagging, letting you tag up to 10 people in an image without affecting your 140-character count. And you can now share up to four photos in a single tweet. Read more

It’ll be easier to watch videos in tweets—In addition to the photo enhancements to Twitter’s mobile platform, the company is also launching a new feature to make it easier to watch videos in tweets. In-line videos will begin to play automatically in the timeline; to view them fullscreen, you’ll click on the play button superimposed on top of the video. Read more

USC to teach Google Glass journalism—The University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Journalism will offer Glass Journalism in the fall. The class will create apps for Google’s wearable device designed to help journalists do their jobs more effectively. According to digital journalism professor Robert Hernandez, “The class will consist of teams (Journalist, Designer, Developer) working together to research and develop different types of news apps designed specifically for the Glass platform.” The class will also examine how Glass could disrupt the journalism profession and explore what the wearable could mean for the articles in the future. Read more

Wells Fargo the latest to open a social media command center—Wells Fargo has set up a social media monitoring center to keep track of conversation about the bank. The office is based in San Francisco with a back-up center in Charlotte, N.C. Some 30 staff members monitor social media mentions; they are also able to step in to assist customers who raise specific problems via social channels. Read more

Research

Most old-school marketers don’t get digital—It’s not that they don’t want to go digital, according to an Adobe study of more than 1,000 marketing professionals; they just don’t know how. They’re also n ot getting the help they need, with 30% of respondents saying no training was available for the competencies they need. Another 30% said their companies weren’t adapting to new technology. Read more

Expert content beats user reviews—A Nielsen content marketing study found that third-party expert content is more influential than user reviews for consumers making purchase decisions. The study, “The Role of Content,” found that product reviews and articles from experts posting to third-party websites and blogs was 83% more effective at guiding consumer decisions than user reviews and 38% more effective than branded content. Read more

Brands still uncertain of Twitter’s value—Marketers are pretty sure using Twitter pays off. They’re just not sure how. A survey conducted by Social Media Marketing University found 45.1% of brands are challenged by the need to measure the ROI and other results they get from Twitter. Building an audience and engagement are the second- and third-place conundrums. “Overall, more than 64.9% of brands agree that Twitter is an effective marketing tool, while 30.6% remain undecided,” according to a Holmes Report article. Read more

Millennials gotta have their Instagram—Social media is essential for Millennials and for women, it’s a social-purchasing path that enhances the shopping process. According to a Teen Vogue survey, Instagram is the platform to watch, most cited as the one “everyone will be talking about next year” and the clear must-have app for 2014. The “Seeing Social” survey found young women take a three-step path before transacting. First,  they see an item on Instagram. Next, they search YouTube for videos about the product. Finally, before buying they do comparison shopping on social platforms, including Pinterest, YouTube and Facebook. Read more

Employee engagement on the decline—A new study on employee engagement, based on analysis of 5,000 full-time U.S. employees, has found lower numbers of moderately or highly engaged employees than a year earlier. Still, the 55% reported by Temkin Group is higher than the number Gallup found last year. The largest decline was in workers between 18 and 24 years old. More interesting is the value engaged employees produce. Compared to not-engaged employees, highly engaged workers are more than three times as likely to do something good for their employer, almost three times as likely to make a recommendation about an improvement at work, more than 2.5 times as likely to stay late to finish work that needs to be done, and more than two times as likely to help someone else at work. Read more

Trends

Are consumers losing their love of brands? An Adweek infographic reveals that consumers are bypassing the work of marketers and opting for other information sources when making a buyuing decision. At the same time, generics are gaining on name brands. And several brands are seeing levels of brand awareness and customer relevance declining. Read more

Fundraising campaign worked because the beneficiary wasn’t behind it—A campaign that leveraged selfies and a hashtag via mobile devices raised 8 million pounds for Cancer Research UK. That would make a lot of charitable organizations envious, but one reason the campaign went viral is that the organization itself had nothing to do with it. Cancer Research says the money was “totally unexpected.” The #nomakeupselfie campaign started with a tweet by a novelist that had nothing to do with cancer. Days later, cancer was coupled with the “no makeup” theme, which resonated on an emotional level. “At its peak, tens of thousands of tweets were posted with the hashtag.” Its success was based on leveraging “selfie,” the word of the year in 2013, and participating made people feel good about themselves. It was also easy to join in and easy to make a contribution via a mobile device. Read more

Hating Klout doesn’t mean you should ignore it—Yes, Klout made some big mistakes, according to advertising publisher Adotas, but that doesn’t mean you should shrug them off. Klout has “four serious benefits that make it worthwhile for marketers:” targeted perks, Klout’s use of which is getting more sophisticated; collection of user demographics that let brands “tap into an incredible amount of demographic data” (that can be used to target perks and offers); user data from other social media platforms; and insight into which users on social media are most influential on topics related to a brand’s campaign. Read more

Velveeta shortage helped Kraft identify its superfans—A shortage of Velveeta cheese products just before this year’s Super Bowl turned out to be a boon for Kraft Foods. Fans of the product dubbed the shortage the “cheesepocalypse,” spreading the message via hashtag. Analyzing the messages fans shared during the shortage added new insights into the intensity of the brand’s fans. Read more

People magazine to publish celebrity tweets—Since its inception, People magazine has celebrated the cult of the celebrity, but the online version of the publication is about to take the idea to a new extreme. In partnership with startup WhoSay, People will allow celebrities to publish their tweets directly to a special section of People.com dubbed “Celebrities Unfiltered.” Read more

Please stop

Ill-advised real-time marketing—I’ve never heard of Katie Wagner Social Media, but the firm is getting a lot of the wrong kind of attention, especially for a company that touts its ability to help clients engage online. The tweet generating all the buzz from earlier this week: “If #MH370 passengers used #socialmedia to geotag their location, we wouldn’t be in such a frenzy looking for them #powerofsocialmedia #truth” The pressure to engage in newsjacking doesn’t justify the insensitivity of this tweet, but at least the firm is apologizing. Dozens of tweets express regret, many of them directed personally to individuals who have blasted the message. “It should never have been conceived, much less sent,” many of the responses read. “We truly apologize.” The firm proclaims itself a “unique social media agency made up of journalists.” Read reactions and take a look at Twitter chatter the post has generated.

KFC sees sales opportunity in a crying child—When Stanford beat Kansas in the NCAA men’s basketball championships, one child in the crowd was so upset he began crying. Why someone at KFC thought that image was an opportunity to sell chicken is a mystery, but the fast-food chain distributed the image via Twitter, suggesting that when you’re having a rough day, you should buy some KFC chicken. The company removed the tweet just a few minutes later and opted to pretend it had never been posted in the first place. Read more