Flickr image courtesy of Tim GreenWelcome to the Friday Wrap, my weekly summary of stuff I have found in the last seven days that didn’t grab the big headlines but is still important, interesting, and/or worthwhile for communicators and marketers. I collect these on my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow.

News

Privacy advocates will hate Sensiya—A new tool, Sensiya, will tap smartphone sensors to let marketers know whether the user is walking, running, or sitting down, enabling the delivery of just the right kind of message. In addition, according to the company’s CEO, “we’re able to conclude who you probably are, the apps your using, your texting patterns, how many characters your typing and also if you’re a woman or a man.” Read more

Dove takes its self-esteem campaign to Snapchat—Brands are marketing on ephemeral messaging service Snapchat, but not many. Based on an early reputation for teen “sexting,” Snapchat has frightened off a lot of brands that haven’t realized the app’s popularity is based on its real-life-emulating conversations that aren’t comparable to other social services. But Dove, which for several years has promoted self-esteem among women, has started sending snaps as part of its Self-Esteem Weekend, which began yesterday. “Our goal was to leverage the ephemeral nature of Snapchat to establish genuine personal connections in a space that feels safe to girls and women,” says Unilever Marketing Director Jennifer Bremmer. “Dove has invited them to share their insecurities via Snaps, and as these Snaps disappear, they can make room for positive thoughts.” Read more

Facebook working on privacy app—In what is possibly a response to criticism over its cavalier attitude toward user privacy, Facebook is reportedly developing a mobile app that “allows users to interact inside of it without having to use their real names.” Read more

New from Feedly: Collection sharing, public aliases, and profiles—Paving the way for more social features planned for next year, Feedly has introduced the ability to create and share collections of feeds grouped around specific topics. Limited only to “thought leaders” now, the feature will roll out in the first quarter of 2015. Users will share their collections (only if they want to) via their profiles, which look a lot like Twitter profiles. Read more

New from LinkedIn: Why did someone view your profile?—You’ve known for years, thanks to notifications, that your LinkedIn profile has been viewed. Now, a new feature lets you know why. You’ll see the actions that led someone to your profile. According to LinkedIn, “For example, if you are trying to attract new clients or business leads, you can see how many potential partners looked at your profile after you joined an important industry group. Or, if you’re looking for a new job, you can look at your insights graph to see whether adding a skill to your profile or endorsing a peer gave you a bigger bump in views by recruiters.” Read more

UK digital advertising focuses on native, mobile, and social—Native advertising accounted for more than a fifth of all the digital display ad spend in the UK during the first half of the year. At the same time, social media in the UK is growing at 73%, and half of that is being spent on mobile social media. What can we conclude from this? That digital ads that wrap around content are on their way out while actually being the content is gaining prominence. Read more

The PC lives again—The death of the desktop PC has been assumed for a few years now, but the latest figures from Gartner indicate the decline in shipments of PCs in the last quarter of 2014 was a mere 0.5%, while in the US, shipments were actually up 4.2% and in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, the increase was 9.1%. Companies updating computers that run newer Windows versions than the no-longer-supported Windows XP may have something to do with the surge in sales. Read more

Reddit ends remote work—If Reddit can’t succeed with remote workers, who can? The anti-establishment company that is often said to serve as the front page of the Internet recently got a $50 million investment, then told remote workers they had to relocate to the company’s San Francisco headquarters or find another job. Read more

City of Ferguson fires PR rep—The beleaguered city of Ferguson, Missouri, hired Devin James to help improve its image following the fatal police shooting of an unarmed teen. However, the revelation that James had shot and killed a man himself, and may have fabricated the resume that got him the job to begin with, has resulted in his firing, though he is still working with the city on a pro bono basis. Read more

Research

Teens are over Facebook—again—Teens are abandoning Facebook. If that sounds familiar, studies have made the case multiple times, only to be proven wrong. This time, the assertion comes from Piper Jaffrey, which maintains teens are gone “once and for all,” according to a Washington Post report. Facebook use among teens (13-19) has fallen 33% from 75% last fall. That is, less than half of teenagers said they used Facebook. Keep several things in mind when considering this data. First, it’s U.S. only. Second, the last time teens abandoned Facebook, they were back within a year. Third, the fact that they say they’re not using it doesn’t mean they’ve abandoned their accounts, and could still drop in for updates (for instance) from family members who don’t use the tools to which they’ve turned. Read more

Marketers are missing the mark with Millennials—Marketers are using assumptions in their efforts to target Millennials, but missing the underlying values of this most heterogeneous and diverse generation. Studying 4 million Millennials, Exponential found the economy, globalization, and social media have been the key forces acting upon Millennials. Within each category are several subgroups defined by specific needs and preferences. Within the “economy” category, economic status is important, with subgroups like “brogrammers” and “bossbabes,” Millennials who push themselves to get ahead. “Nostalgics” are an example of a globalization subgroup, with interest like crafting and DIY projects. “Exuberants” belong to the social media category, as do “collectors” and “Millennial Marthas.” “While there is some overlap across categories, it’s important that marketers know which groups they want to target, and how to appeal to each one individually.” Read more

Mobile

App enables instant reporting of Ebola symptoms—Health workers in Nigeria have been using an Android app to report suspected cases, reducing the time it takes to add information to the database by half at first, then by75%, and finally achieving near real-time input. In addition, Google’s operation in Nigeria organized training sessions for journalists on using Google Trends to figure out what audiences wanted to know about the disease, while a group of volunteers called Ebola Alert educated Nigerians about Ebola via Facebook and Twitter. Read more

Apps are found via search—Where an app ranks in the results of an app store search matters more than where it resides on the charts, according to a study from TUNE, which says 47% of iOS users and 53% of Android users found the last app they installed by searching for it, not from perusing the app rankings. As a results, app store optimization (ASO) requires more attention than you may previously have thought. Read more

Analysis

You’re most likely not measuring social media right—Most measurement is based on the idea that one thing has a direct impact on another. For example (as I reported last week), having friends at work builds an emotional connection to the company. Social media, though is more complex, according to Gerald C. Kane, associate professor of information systems at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Kane’s research has identified four distinct characteristics of social environments. These include nonlinear effects, in which the benefits of an action become problems after they reach a certain point. Kane points to community retention rates: Too much turnover keeps the community from establishing a purpose or identity, while too little turnover leads to insulation. Incremental effects mean a small action somewhere can have big consequences elsewhere (a la the Butterfly Effect). Emergence refers to patterns of order emerging from simple organizational rules, as with schools of fish or flocks of birds. And dynamics addresses feedback loops, as in user-generated content communities: More content attracts more users, who produce more content, which attracts more users. Ultimately, Kane says, social media is more complex than most measurement accounts for. Read more

Can Ello—or anybody—take on Facebook?—Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader says upstart social network Ello will need to give its members something “amazing and compelling and makes you feel good all over” if it is to become anything more than another niche network. Most Facebook users won’t make a complete switch to Ello or any other service simply because it’s ad-free, especially if most of their friends, family, and other communities remain on Facebook. But that doesn’t mean Facebook’s primacy is unassailable. Read more

What should brands do in wake of Google’s abandonment of Authorship?—For brands that embraced Google’s Authorship, are there any steps to take in the wake of Google dropping the protocols to boost search results by including the author’s name and photo, along with other material, in search results? Even though Google announced the end of the effort in August, some results continued to appear, but that’s over now; it’s as though Authorship never existed. According to some experts, you should “stay the course,” and in particular, don’t abandon Google+, which will still appear in search results pages. “The biggest thing I’d urge you to do is not panic,” says Ginny Soskey at HubSpot. “If you’re focusing the majority of your time on building your marketing for your audience, and then making smaller changes as social networks, search engines, and distribution platforms change their algorithms, you’ll weather the storm just fine.” Read more