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Shel Holtz
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Friday Wrap #145: FTC slams Google, the end of IE, social media at work, unhappy journalists

Friday Wrap #145: FTC slams Google, the end of IE, social media at work, unhappy journalists

Friday Wrap #145
Flickr image courtesy of Erik Fitzpatrick
The Friday Wrap is a review of news, posts, reports, and other items appearing in the last week that will help you stay on top of the forces shaping communication in this fast-paced, ever-changing environment. These are stories that may have been lost in the flood of headline news stories. I collect the items from which I choose the Wrap stories in my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow.


News

FTC report accuses Google of skewing search results—“Don’t be evil,” Google proclaims. Yet U.S. Federal Trade Commission staffers accused Google of manipulating search results to elevate its own services higher in search results than competitors, even when the competitor offerings were more relevant. Among the kinds of searches the FTC says Google manipulated are shopping, travel, and local business. The previously unreleased report says Google altered its ranking criteria, scraped content from other sites, and deliberately demoted rivals. Google responded to the news by insisting that “There was no need to take action on how we rank and display search results.” Read more

Bid farewell to Internet Explorer—First it was the browser that brought the masses to the World Wide Web. Then it was the butt of jokes from those who used alternatives like Firefox and Chrome. Now Microsoft is consigning Internet Explorer to the dustbin of history. With the launch of Windows 10, Microsoft will debut a new, lightweight browser tentatively called Spartan; the company is researching other names. Read more

Public radio plans an upfront for podcasts—Fueled by the success of the runaway hit “Serial,” NPR, WNYC, and WBEZ are planning a podcast-focused upfront pitch to advertisers, much like the upfronts TV producers put on every year. Read more

IBM’s new offering is fueled by Twitter—The first tool to emerge from the partnership between IBM and Twitter announced last year will be a set of developer tools and cloud-based data analysis services that extract information from the Twitter firehose. IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence technology will run the service, along with an IBM implementation of Hadoop, the open-source software for analyzing big data. Developers will be able to write their own applications to take advantage of the data. Read more

Google is now a content producer—Google has introduced “Behind the Scenes,” a YouTube video series profiling the making of last year’s Google-produced Clean & Clear “See the Real Me” YouTube campaign. The goal of the new series is to “show brands and their agencies how to create more compelling video content,” according to The Wall Street Journal. I wonder how those videos will rank in Google’s search engine. Read more

Brands no longer welcome on BuzzFeed’s community platform—BuzzFeed’s community publishing platform was paying off in a big way for brands like HarperCollins, which had posted 72 items, one of which earned more than a million views; posts generally earned more than 100,000 views. But last week, BuzzFeed suspended the accounts of brand publishers. BuzzFeed said it wants the forum clean of anyone trying to see anything, but it’s also a clear attempt to force brands to buy advertising on the site rather than take advantage of free opportunities. Read more

Facebook simplifies its Community Standards—An update to Facebook’s Community Standards was meant to make it easier for users to understand what’s allowed and what’s not when it comes to what users share. The revised guidelines simplify policies on bullying, threats of violence, self-harm, and hate speech, among other topics. Read more

Media powerhouses join forces to battle Google and Facebook for ad dollars—As more and more advertisers direct their dollars to global digital platforms like Facebook and Google, four legacy media companies have decided to combine their online advertising inventory in order to better compete. The Guardian, CNN International, the Financial Times, and Reuters have formed the Pangaea Alliance, a digital advertising offering “that will use programmatic technology to give brands access to their combined audience, which they claim totals 110 million users,” according to AdAge. Other media companies, including Hearts UK, the Economist, and Time Inc. are providing access to their ad inventories. Read more

Samsung introduces Internet of Things business—Samsung Business is a new umbrella brand that will focus on developing an ecosystem for the growing Internet of Things (IoT). The new company is looking at six “experimental” zones: retail, education, hospitality, healthcare, and transport. Read more

Don’t post those drone videos to YouTube—The Federal Aviation Administration has told one drone hobbyist that the video he posted from his drone violate regulations because they were posted on YouTube, which adds advertising to videos. The FAA says it’s investigating the warning the hobbyist received, though the issue was clearly YouTube and not the aerial footage itself. Read more

Mobile and Wearables

Google launches Android for Work—Apple holds the lead in the mobile enterprise, but Google is poised to grab some of that market share with the launch of the long-anticipated Android for Work, designed to help manage devices in the workplace. It provides security, the ability for companies to provision devices they distribute or those employees bring to work, administrative control over work-related policies, apps, and data, and the ability to deploy and manage apps across all users running the software. Read more

TAG Heuer, Intel, Google collaborate on smartwatch—With no indication that the category will succeed—the highly anticipated Apple Watch isn’t available for sale until next month—Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer is teaming up with Intel and Google to create its own high-end entry. Expect a very sporty, high-fashion device with the usual Android Wear features. Read more

Airlines will introduce Apple Watch apps—United and Delta have joined American with plans for Apple Watch apps. American was one of Apple’s launch partners. The Delta app will notify wearers of upcoming flights and provide access to the digital boarding pass stored on the user’s phone. It will also display flight numbers, gate numbers, flight times, and other pertinent data. United’s app is similar, and will also let the user view a reservation before the day of travel. Read more

Trends

More employees using social media for work—More than a quarter of respondents to a Tipbit survey say they use social media as part of their business workflow, with Facebook the number one tool they use for doing their jobs. Facebook is used by 72% of survey respondents, followed by LinkedIn (56%) and twitter (45%). The ways workers use social media for business vary, but a full 61% of those using social media for work purposes review an individual’s social media profile before a meeting. Employees are also searching for work-related information on Facebook (61%) and LinkedIn (51%). Read more

Reporters aren’t happy with press materials—An overwhelming number of journalists and media professionals are dissatisfied with how PR people approach them. They complain the kinds of materials they get lead to longer hours and increased frustration. According to a survey from ISEBOX.com, PR professionals aren’t meeting their needs, which are driven by working harder to produce more content. Nearly 70% of journalists feel their jobs have gotten harder. Among the demands they must meet is more multimedia, but of the more than 20 pitches made to journalists each week (on average), most contain no multimedia content, leaving reporters to track it down for themselves. Read more

Instagram passes Facebook for volume of brand posts—Brands are posting 9.3 times each week to Instagram, up from 7.5 posts a year earlier, while brand posts to Facebook have dropped in the same period from 11.1 to 8.8. Photos perform better than videos, with users engaging 1.03% of the time with photos compared to 0.79% engagement with videos. The Hyperlapse tool—hot when it was launched—has fallen out of favor, with only 2.4% of brands using it. Read more

Redesign leads to more images posted to LinkedIn—LinkedIn’s homepage redesign was meant to lead to more image-sharing. The “upload a photo” button has paid off with a significant increase in the number of images shared and viewed. Images could help LinkedIn increase its mobile user base, which has already grown as desktop usage has declined. Read more

Are you ready to move beyond the PDF?—Academia is leading the charge for adoption of the RG format, which creates the opportunity for real-time engagement within a document. RG uses two columns of information display, ensuring comments, concerns, or related citations and graphs are always synchronized with the information retrieved. The format is from Researchgate, a social networking site for researchers. The network’s CEo said, “We wanted to create something that turns publications into a conversation starter.” Clearly, there is more utility here than just for academic researchers when it comes to document sharing. Read more

Mobile devices keep young adults engaged with global news—Young adults want news but don’t always go looking for it. The discovery of news on the feeds they follow via mobile devices satisfy their desire for news every day. According to a survey from Associated Press, NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, and the American Press Institute, two-thirds of Americans ages 18 to 34 consume news online regularly, and frequently on social networking sites. Of those, 40% are getting their news every day. The trend is creeping up into older generations. Read more

AR gaming experience gets an upgrade from Magic Leap—Magic Leap caused a stir when it was the recipient of some mind-blowing investments from the likes of Google. It’s making waves again with a video showing off a steampunk-like look for video game Augmented reality. The video is from a studio that worked on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, so the video may be nothing more than a simulation, but if it translates into a real product, Magic Leap may prove itself worth the levels of investment it attracted while elevating the idea of AR game play. Read more

Social payments get a boost from Facebook—Facebook Messenger users will soon be able to send payments through the app. A small dollar sign above the keyboard will lead users to a payments interface where they can enter the amount they want to send and tap pay to send it. The move is another signal that fast, social, mobile payments will become more commonplace. Read more

Research

Facebook video ads have an impact even if you don’t watch them—If you give a Facebook video ad just one second, it will still make an impression. Those are the results of a Nielsen study that showed, “From the moment a video ad was viewed (even before one second), lift happened across ad recall, brand awareness and purchase consideration,” Facebook said in announcing the results. Read more

Agency raises bar on data-driven PR—SHIFT, a mid-sized communications agency, has become a Google Analytics Certified Partner as part of an agreement with Google. SHIFT’s goal is “to advance the cause of data-driven PR with our clients and industry, to help understand the value of public relations, and to use that data to make PR as impactful as possible,” according to SHIFT CEO Todd Defren. Clients will benefit from improved analytics, while the industry can “expect to learn more on our blog, in our public talks, and in our resources…As an industry, public relations has so many opportunities for better, more meaningful measurement and metrics,” Defren said. I haven’t been able to find any other agencies that have achieved the Google partner status. Read more

Opinion leaders want accountability from business leaders during crises—Influencers expect corporate leaders to be accountable and honest during crises; they also expect leaders to deliver on the promises they make. Thirty-seven percent of “those who are highly informed and regularly participate in influential behaviors in both traditional and non-traditional media” see large company leadership as weaker today than it was five years ago, an increase of 14 points from a year ago. Fifty-six percent see senior leadership as more focused on short-term goals than five years ago (18 points more than the general population’s view) and only 9% said leadership is focused on long-term goals. The data comes from a Harris Poll study. Read more

Data reveals best practices for email campaigns—A deep dive into data from email service Constant Contact has identified the ideal number of images and lines of text (20) small for emails distributed by small businesses in order to get more click-throughs. Keys include clarity, as few words as possible to deliver your message, accuracy, and courteous language. The study also found substantial differences between for-profit and non-profit emails. Read more

Comments
  • 1.EU shaped the way, other will follow. If Google won't change their policy of manipulating the search results in order to achieve a "better experience", they will make some big rivals.

    Social Media Agency | April 2015 | London

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