The Friday Wrap is my weekly collection of news stories, posts, studies, and reports designed to help organizational communicators stay current on the trends and technology that affect their jobs. These may be items that flew under the radar while other stories grabbed big headlines. As always, I collect material from which I select Wrap stories (as well as stories to report on the For Immediate Release podcast, along with stuff I just want to remember to read) on my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow. If you want to make sure you never miss an edition of the Wrap, subscribe to my weekly email newsletter.

News

Google’s April Fool’s prank goes bad—Today is April 1. There is not one prank item in this update. It’s all true, including the story of one of Google’s April Fool’s pranks. The company allowed Gmail users to reply to emails with “Send+Mic Drop,” which added a GIF of an animated minion’s mic drop to the message. A lot of Gmail users weren’t happy when they instinctively clicked a button that did something else, only to send clients, customers, and other business contacts the animated GIF. Some claimed they actually lost business, which prompted Google to withdraw the feature. The takeaway: Be careful what you do on April Fool’s Day (which I also heard referred to as “Shitheads’ Christmas.”) Coming up with great pranks has become a standard practice, particularly in the tech world, but you have to think through the potential consequences. Read more

Weber Shandwick rolls out Facebook at Work to staff—After a pilot, PR agency Weber Shandwick has introduced Facebook at Work as an enterprise-wide collaboration platform for its worldwide staff of 3500. The pilot “improved our ability to collaborate and connect our employees around the world,” Chief Digital Officer Chris Perry told Adweek. Weber Shandwick has also shared with Facebook ideas for improving the platform. Interestingly, the tool isn’t seen as a replacement for Slack or Outlook, but rather a complementary platform. The takeaway: I expect impressive adoption of Facebook at Work. Because most employees already know Facebook, adopting the same platform at work (and being able to move seamlessly between Facebook and the enterprise version) will make a lot more sense than implementing a system employees have to learn. Read more

Instagram ups video to 60 seconds—The 15-second limit is no more. Instagram users can now record and share videos a full minute long, the same length the company made available to advertisers two months ago. Videos produce better engagement on Instagram, with the time users spend watching rising 40% in the last six months. iOS users can also stitch multiple videos together to create a single video, a feature that had been removed from an earlier version. The takeaway: Instagram and its parent, Facebook, are investing a lot of energy in video, and they’re not alone. Sixty seconds is still a short video, but the tolerance has clearly exceeded the 15-second threshold. Read more

Facebook unveils video metric—Video publishers have a new metric available: They can see how many minutes a video was viewed on any day, the total number of video views for a single day, and how many times a video was viewed for 10 seconds on any given day. That’s in addition to data now available about the number if views, number of unique viewers, and how long a video was viewed. The takeaway: Studying this kind of data can improve your decision-making, leading to better results. The more data, the better. Read more

Twitter introduces customer feedback tool—“Customer Feedback,” a tool available so far to global brands, lets a company solicit feedback from customers privately. The tool lets companies request participation in surveys that employ the Net Promoter Score and Customer Satisfaction formats, and brands can store the data from customer service responses and send customized replies. It’s expected the tool will be available to everybody soon. The takeaway: The tool sounds great. Whether companies will make good use of it is questionable, since customer satisfaction with social media inquiries for customer service purposes has been dropping. Read more

Snapchat rolls out a big update—The latest update to Snapchat, dubbed Chat 2.0, includes Snapchat Stories that auto-advance, more than 200 stickers available in private chat, GIF-like video “Notes” that let you record and second a 10-second message (consider using them so you can react to a friend’s snap with a grimace or a smile), Audio Notes (the same as Video Notes, but, well, audio), Video and Audio Calls (look out, Skype), the ability to send multiple photos all at once, the ability to switch on the fly between features, and a lot more. The takeaway: Snapchat is responding to user wishes with most of these features, which can only bolster its claim to being one of the fastest-growing messaging tools available. Read more

Tay’s second appearance was brief—Tay is Microsoft’s AI-powered Twitter chatbot that was taken offline when it learned how to be an offensive racist jerk. It came back briefly with thousands of replies to tweets directed at it, some of which demonstrated it can still be taught bad things by people anxious to screw with it. It was still offline as I assemble this update. The takeaway: These are early days. Chatbots that can learn, when the wrinkles are ironed out, will talk just like a real person and open new vistas for communication between organizations and individuals. Read more

Bots are the new app, Nadella says—Tay’s failings are really nothing more than learning opportunities for the bot’s developers, but make no mistake, Microsoft is going all-in with chatbots. At the company’s Build developer’s conference, CEO Satya Nadella told the audience, “Bots are the new apps. People-to-people conversations, people-to-digital assistants, people-to-bots and even digital assistants-to-bots. That’s the world you’re going to get to see in the years to come.” The takeaway: I am in wholehearted agreement. Further, communicators should be front-and-center in the application of bots. Read more

Trends

Trademark that hashtag!—I should have seen this coming. In an effort to keep competitors from riding the coattails of a hashtag (or spoiling the party), companies are filing trademark applications for their marketing- and advertising-related hashtags. Nearly 1,400 of such filings were made last year. The takeaway: While this will let companies take legal action after the fact, it won’t do a thing to prevent abuse of hashtags when they’re introduced. It will also be hard to defend if companies don’t go after individuals who violate trademark in addition to businesses. A waste of time and money, says I. Read more

Is Publishing Platform Specialist your next job title?—I have been harping on the reduced role home pages play online, at least as far as media is concerned. It’s a trend that affects not just media companies, but any company publishing content, especially those using brand portals. Increasingly, people find their news in their feeds, not on websites. Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post are among many media companies focusing more on publishing content natively to multiple channels (like Facebook, where Buzzfeed has over 90 interest-themed channels). Importantly, they make sure everything they publish is optimized for each channel. That’s leading to a new job title: Platform Relationships Manager. Publisher Conde Nast recently posted an opening for just such a position, “designed to coordinate and deepen relationships with social media and video platforms, messaging apps and even hardware manufacturers,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Vox Media already has a Director of Partner Platforms. The takeaway: Content marketers are in the same boat as media companies. PR and marketing agencies and larger brands (think Unilever) will most likely be among the first to hire their own platform specialists. In five years, there may even be an association to serve the needs of these specialists. Think about how a platform specialist could improve your content efforts. Read more

GE has found uses for live streaming video—GE is backing away from consumer products and finds itself needing to tell its B2B story. Live streaming video is part of the equation, according to Sydney Williams, Digital Marketing Manager. The appeal, she says, is that “it gives a very authentic and human perspective for brands…and, I think, that gives us a feeling of authenticity and realness. The takeaway: In the early days of blogging, authenticity and realness were a goal. Blogs have become part of a larger content marketing environment, so brands looking to convey authenticity have live streaming video as a new option, one worth exploring. Read more

Whatever became of beacons?—Beacons were supposed to be a big deal. You walk into a store outfitted with these Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices installed, and your phone delivers information about you (if you have the store’s app) and your movements that enable the store to deliver content back to you (or even allow an employee to greet you personally). Some companies have taken advantage of them, but it’s a complex technology that can be cumbersome to implement, the technology is still nascent (which means it has flaws), and effectiveness requires customer opt-in at levels that’s unlikely to attract many users. The takeaway: Like most technologies, as beacons become more widely used, prices will drop and ease of use will increase. As customers realize the benefits of connecting with companies when visiting their brick-and-mortar locations, opt-in will be easier to get. After all, the technology is only 3 years old! Of course, a newer, better technology that accomplishes the same objectives could come along. You never know what somebody is cooking up in their garage. Read more

Mobile and Wearables

How do Millennials use Snapchat?—A survey shows 44% of Millennial-aged users who viewed the Live Stories and/or the Discover were daily users of those features; among all users, 23% take a look at Live Stories and/or Discover every day. The top feature? It’s still the most basic: messaging friends. Among the brands with a presence on the Discover Channel, Buzzfeed is viewed by 54% of users every day. Older brands outperform new ones. The three most popular features: creating personal stories, video chatting, and knowing that the snaps you send disappear. The takeaway: Snapchat’s growth is continuing without any sign of slowing down. While measurement isn’t as sophisticated as it is for, say, a website, the audience is definable enough that you can make good use of Snapchat if you take the time to learn its intricacies and pay attention to best practices. God knows, there are enough articles flooding online media these days dedicated to Snapchat. Read more

Filters are da bomb—Do people still say “da bomb”? Anyway, Millennials love Snapchat filters, even if they can’t explain why. If your company has the money to use branded filters—they ran a cool half-a-million dollars during a weekday for a single filter—they’re likely to get a lot of use assuming the concept is appealing. At least, that’s the experience of companies like Fox Studios, Gatorade, and IHOP. If you’re worried about spending that kind of money on content that vanishes in 24 hours, you can always collect the photos and videos that used your filter and create a compilation video. The takeaway: Most of us don’t work for companies that have budgets for $500,000 Snapchat filters, but knowing how insanely popular they are can spark some other ideas. If (like me) you’re going to get up to speed on the app, knowing how to add filters can at least help you understand their popularity. Read more

Twitter introduces image alt-text to make it more accessible—People with visual impairments are able to experience the web thanks, in part, to the alt-text HTML tag, which assigns a text description to visual images. Twitter has now done the same, letting app users to add descriptions of up to 420 characters to images they add to their tweets. the takeaway: The addition of text descriptions will also improve Twitter’s searchability. Watch for some interest use cases emerging from the introduction of alt-text. Read more

Periscope hosts 200 million broadcasts by its first birthday—Twitter’s live-streaming app Periscope turned one last weekend having racked up more than 200 million broadcasts. Users viewed more than 100 years’ worth of live video during that 12-month period. Periscope hasn’t yet accounted for 1 million hours of video viewed per day. Compared to YouTube’s hundreds of millions of hours, Periscope doesn’t make much of a dent, but it signals a consumer appetite for live video. With Facebook Live and Google’s impending entry into the space, expect live streaming video’s growth to continue. Think of it as disruptive to TV the same way podcasts were to radio: People who never would have been given a shot by a TV network can now produce their own shows with little cost or technical expertise required. The cable gossip network E! is airing a 20-minute program on Facebook Live using only an iPhone 6. Do any of your audiences represent a live streaming video opportunity? Read more

Virtual and Augmented Reality

Stubhub’s genius VR play—Ticket reseller Stubhub has come up with a brilliant use of Virtual Reality. Use your headset to see what the view will look like from the seats you’re considering purchasing. The takeaway: This is sheer genius, removing the unknown from a ticket purchase. Sure, you’ve been able to look at the seating diagram, but this shows you exactly how the stage or playing field will look from the seat. I’ll use it. Read more

Will you get your news via your Oculus Rift?—Not anytime soon, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab. The issue, though, is the Rift itself, which sells for $599 and requires a high-performance PC (not a Mac) that most people don’t own, putting it out of reach for the average news consumer. Oculus’ technology is available on far less expensive devices that require you to use a smartphone. Despite the surging popularity of VR and the production of VR journalism by some news outlets, most are taking a wait-and-see approach. The takeaway: VR journalism (more accurately called immersive journalism, since most cases involve 360-degree video and not programmed VR) is inevitable, but don’t let the delay stop you in providing a deeper experience for your audiences as part of your content marketing efforts. Read more

Google enables 360-degree VR video embedding—Google has introduced VR View, which enables embedding of 360-degree videos and photos into apps and websites so you can view them in VR headsets (and, of course, Google Cardboard) or use the draggable capabilities on a computer screen. The takeaway: 360-degree videos are going to become commonplace. We may hit a point where the absence of 360-degree videos may make you look behind the times. Read more

Developers get their first look at Microsoft’s HoloLens—VR gets all the buzz these days because headsets are available and more sophisticated ones are already shipping, but Augmented Reality will ultimately be the more widely adopted of the two technologies. Microsoft developers and commercial customers who shelled out $3,000 for an early version have the first release of the HoloLens in hand. Early reviews are mixed, but the technology isn’t ready yet for prime time. The ability to overlay digital onto the real world—sometimes called “mixed reality”—will have wide-ranging applications. The takeaway: If you’re worried this is yet another technology to be squeezed into the ever-broadening set of communication tools, you’re right. But there’s no need to spend too much time with it until consumers are able to buy a reasonably-priced model. Read more

Research

Celebrities are less effective influencers—There may be fewer celebrity endorsement deals if this trend keeps up. A survey of 14,000 U.S. adults found 30% of respondents were more inclined to buy a product endorsed by a non-celebrity blogger. The numbers grew bigger as ages descended, with 70% of 18-34-year-olds saying they preferred an endorsement from a “peer” or a non-celebrity blogger. Only 3% of consumers would consider buying a retail product that was endorsed by a celebrity. The takeaway: Better to find a subject matter expert, technical expert, or thought leader for endorsements. They’re cheaper anyway. Read more

New study supports email’s resurrection—Millennials are making purchases based on emails from brands. In fact, 43% of them (versus 32% of other shoppers) said they have been reading more retailer emails in the last six months. The takeaway: We’ve seen other studies that found growing interest in email, and one teen-focused lifestyle brand recently launched with just an email newsletter—no website at all. There’s life in email yet. Read more

Social adds fuel Millennial purchases—Speaking of Millennials, half of them have bought something because a social media ad influenced them. The study, from Deloitte, found that recommendations from family and friends held the most sway, and social media ads had the greatest influence. The takeaway: Good social media advertising can be very effective in any age group, but most of what I see doesn’t qualify as “good.” Millennials are a highly desirable demographic (which is why we talk about them so much). If they’re part of your target market, social advertising should be on your radar, if not already in your toolkit. Read more

This week’s Wrap photo—of Betty Boop statues wrapped in plastic—is courtesy of Bradley Gordon’s Flickr account