I extract items for the Wrap from my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow. To make sure you never miss an issue, subscribe to my weekly email briefing.

Data Journalism for Communicators

Data journalism is more than just a trend in the publishing world. Its momentum is crazy big with media outlets investing more and more into the practice of telling stories with numbers. The PR world has not caught on. There is potential in pitching data stories as well as producing our own data journalism to elevate our content marketing efforts. I’ll get you up to speed on data journalism in my July 27 webinar. Register

By the way, I recorded a short video offering some insight into data journalism. Watch

A Briefer-Than-Usual Wrap

I had planned to put the Wrap together on the four-hour flight from San Francisco to Chicago, but United’s WiFi wouldn’t cooperate. I’ll be at a conference all day on Friday, so I’m throwing together some of the interesting links I’ve found in the last week without commentary. I’ll be back to the usual rundown next week.

News

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority will introduce new guidelines on gender stereotyping in ads. Read more

Facebook will test subscription paywalls for Instant Articles, letting publishers sell subscriptions directly through Facebook. Read more

Panoply Media—one of the big podcast networks—is now using Nielsen data to target audiences with ads inserted into its podcasts. Read more

Apple has revealed new emojis coming this year, including zombies, a genie, and T-Rex. Read more

Facebook has made it possible for any Page to create a Group, reflecting the company’s new emphasis on Groups. Read more

A WordPress update lets you schedule tweets, Facebook posts or LinkedIn updates in WordPress.com’s admin interface. WordPress.com also introduced a brand new sharing section below each post in the WordPress.com admin interface. Read more

Almost two dozen engineers from Google’s Android team held a Reddit AMA to talk about features planned for the next release. They were well-prepared and answered the questions from the geek crowd and Android faithful, demonstrating one way to do a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” well. Read more

Google Analytics is getting a whole lot easier. Rather than have to study the multiple layers of data Analytics users are accustomed to, now you can just ask a question, like “How many users came to our site from Europe last month?” “Why” questions aren’t supported yet, but they’re coming. Read more

Amazon has introduced Spark, a shoppable feed of stories that will remind you of Pinterest to some extent and Instagram to another degree. Read more

Apple has started blocking ad blockers from its app store. Read more

Trends

Advertisers are dumping hashtags in TV commercials, opting for links to their websites, which have improved. Read more

Fear of downloadable guns is becoming a reality. Read more

Blockchain is finding its way into the media and advertising industries. Uses include monetizing content, fraud detection, white-listing, and more. Read more

When ccnnecting with influencers, consider how many of their followers might be fake. (One study put CNN’s fake follower count on Twitter at 12 million.) Read more

Amazon’s Video Direct—open to content producers of all sizes—is taking on YouTube and Facebook. Read more

Research

Gen-Z is now the largest segment of the population, representing 26% of the marketplace. Combined, Millennials and Gen-Z account for 48% of the population. Read more

People who get their news via social media and search don’t remember the original source of the news. Read more

Instagram tops cyber-bullying study; it’ the vehicle for the meanest comments, with 7% of young users saying they’ve been bullied on the app. Read more

Longer videos drive higher engagement. “Mid-form and long-form videos, which are at least 15 minutes long, drive over half of all video engagement despite encompassing just 8 percent of all video.” Read more

The perception of bias in the workplace produces less innovation and productivity as well as high costs associated with frequent turnover and burnout when employees perceived bias. Read more

Job candidates need a social media profile. A national survey found that more than 57% of employers are less likely to interview a candidate they can’t find online. Read more

Local television news programming has lost viewers in recent years, but still attracts more viewers on average than cable and network news programs. Read more

Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots

Lenovo positions AI as the “connective thread” like a vest with 10 sensors and ECG to monitor heart conditions Read more

Freelance job site Fiverr has added chatbot development as a category, with simple bots as inexpensive as $5 and “genius bots” for $500. Read more

Samsung has finally released the Bixby voice assistant for its Galaxy 8 phones, representing new competition for Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortana. Read more

Marketers are embracing chatbots which, when done well, “can deliver deep functionality and, if they do it well, they can deliver it in a highly branded way.” Consider Rose, a chatbot from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, which is both a concierge and a housekeeping aide. One guest called Rose “a sultry siren.” Read more

A couple of Google Machine Perception researchers have trained a deep-learning system to identify objectively fine landscape panorama photos from Google Street View, and then artistically crop and edit them like a human photographer would. Read more

Smart Audio

Mozilla is crowdsourcing 100,000 hours of audio to create databases of audio that will be freely available to developers eager to develop speech-to-text systems. Read more

BuzzFeed had launched a new audio morning briefing for the Amazon Alexa. Read more

The Values-Driven Marketplace

The environment and sustainability are Millennials’ top issue, but oil companies need to hire them. The industry has undertaken advertising to try to attract them, but they’ll have to do more to be viewed as “conscious capitalists.” Read more

SodaStream marketing targets bottled water as a social issue, bluntly shaming companies in that industry with off-beat commercials featuring themes like “Game of Thrones.”

Mobile and Wearables

Years ago, I said wearables would gain their first serious foothold in the enterprise. Now, Google has reintroduced Google Glass with a clear focus on its utility at work. It’s even called Google Glass Enterprise Edition. Read more

Audio will be on as a default for autoplay videos on Facebook’s mobile app. The social network is spinning the change as positive change to make watching videos more enjoyable. Read more

An update to WhatsApp expands the kind of file you can share from just PDFs to just about anything. Read more

Google has updated its search app with a “smart feed” that “makes it easier for users to follow topics of interest and discover new content without necessarily typing out a search query.” Read more

Facebook camera now has built-in GIF creator. Read more

In an effort to offer features not available on Instagram, Snapchat has made it possible to create six consecutive 10-second videos. Read more

NBC News is producing “Stay Tuned,” a daily show for Snapchat that will focus on issues like political and international news. Read more

Amazon is floating a messaging app called Anytime for smartphones, tablets, PCs and smart watches. Anytime would let people chat with text and video, share photos with filters, play games, and (of course) engage with other Amazon services like music and food ordering (and other shopping), and interact with businesses. Read more
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Today’s Wrap image is courtesy of Terri Bateman’s Flickr account.