Flickr photo of sinister wrapped statues courtesy of Henry Burrows

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) on my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow.

News

A big blow to wire service credibility—It’s actually a pretty smart (if dasterdly) scheme: Hack into wire service servers, read client press releases containing material information before they’re distributed, then make trades based on this stolen insider information. Authorities say 32 hackers and traders made over $100 million. Charges have been filed against two Ukranian men who allegedly hacked into newswire services to steal press releases before they were distributed; 30 others used the information for trading purposes. While this crew has been caught, how confident are the press release distribution services that other hacks aren’t happening, or couldn’t happen in the future? Given Reg FD requirements that make press release distribution a near requirement, this could present organizations with a real dilemma when it comes to being compliant in sharing financially material news. Read more

Agency recalls Kim Kardashian Instagram post—If you pay Instagram celebrities to pitch your products, pay attention: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion has ordered Duchesnay USA to remove a Kim Kardashian post of the celebrity with a bottle of DICLEGIS proclaiming its efficacy at dealing with morning sickness. The FDA called the post “false or misleading in that it presents efficacy claims for DICLEGIS, but fails to communicate any risk information.” It’s vitally important to understand the rules, and make sure influencers you work with comply with them, too. Read more

Take as many characters as you need in Twitter DMs—Twitter has ditched the 140-character limit for Direct Messages in the iOS, Android, Mac apps, as well as in Tweetdeck and Twitter.com. The new 10,000-character limit isn’t available yet on third-party apps like Hootsuite, but should be coming. The move lets Twitter’s DM feature compete on a more level playing field with Messenger, WhatsApp, and Google Hangouts. Read more

Marketers get access to every tweet ever tweeted—Twitter is making its complete archive of tweets available to marketers through its new Full-Archive Search API. This doesn’t mean the complete Twitter archive is publicly available; rather, the API is designed for integration into marketing solutions. According to Twitter, it should help brands quickly review the full data set in order to analyze patterns over the course of multiple years. Read more

Facebook app will send breaking news alerts to your phone—Facebook is building an app to send breaking news alerts directly to your phone, which should build its case that Facebook (not Twitter) is the best source for news. Reports indicate the app will ask users to select publication from which they want to get notifications, along with specific topics that interest them. The notifications will contain 100 characters or less and link to the website of the publication from which the news originated. Read more

Reputation Institute introduces new service—Reputation Tracker, a new service of the Reputation Institute, provides companies with continuous measurement and quarterly reports on their reputations. The organization claims the U.S. service (the first to launch; it will ultimately be available globally) is the largest continuous reputation measurement service ever. The quarterly reports include benchmarks against the 10 most reputation American companies and three competitors. Read more

Trends

LOL is, like, so 15 minutes ago—Facebook reports that “haha” accounted for 51.4% of mirth expressed in comments and poses, the laughter emoji was used 33.7%, and “hehe” was applied 13.1% of the time. As for the longtime standard LOL? Only 1.9% of the anonymized comments and posts in the sample Facebook studied used it. Expect your kids to roll their eyes and tell their friends, “My parents still use LOL. How lame is that?” Read more

Importance of visual communication grows—Almost two-thirds of senior marketers report that visual assets are core to communicating their brand story; most think visuals will get more important. According to a CMO Council survey, photography and video are the most important visuals (infographics were critical to only 19%, though 57% said they were important; the tally was just 15% for the criticality of illustrations, versus 54% who called them important). Thirty-five percent of respondents had no process in place to aggregate, catalog, and manage visual assets across their organizations. Read more

Podcast upfront showcases networks—A podcast upfront is in the works from the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The bigger podcast networks (AdLarge, Midroll, NPR, Panoply, Podtrac, and WNYC) will have 20 minutes each to pitch an audience of advertisers. The fall event is designed to test the market, which has grown incrementally and received a ton of attention in the wake of the success of Serial, which made a household name out of advertiser MailChimp. Upfronts have been a staple of the TV industry for years. Read more

Mobile and Wearables

Periscope’s popularity grows—Periscope, the Twitter-owned live video streaming app, has reached 10 million total accounts. Users watch 40 years worth of video daily via the app. The numbers are growing, according to co-founder and CEO Kayvon Beykpour. Read more

Periscope’s copyright problem grows, too—Twitter’s live video streaming app has received 1,391 copyright takedown requests since it was introduced in late March. Takedowns are difficult, since the videos are streamed live and are most likely over by the time the notice is received. Still, Twitter is trying: the average rate of copyright compliance is 71% (compared to 68% for Vine and 67% for Twitter). You have to wonder, though, how many copyright violations are never seen or reported given the ephemeral nature of the content. Read more

Journalists get access to VR pop-up studio—The Center for Investigative Reporting and Google Laps have teamed up to create a VR pop-up studio that lets newsrooms collaborate and explore Virtual Reality as a tool for creating stories. Fader is the first tool created under the project, allowing journalists to extract relevant activities from social media in real time. A sort of VR dashboard (powered by a gaming engine), journalists can use keywords and filters to search for and aggregate snippets about bullying and shaming. The idea is to produce better analysis and identify key influencers. The immersive VR experience could encourage empathy. Read more

Vertical video gains acceptance—The resistance to vertical video—increasingly common thanks to smartphones—may be vocal, but we collectively spend about 30% of our screen time with devices that are best held vertically, and vertical videos look and work better than the more traditional landscape-oriented videos. Read more

New Samsung phones feature Periscope competitor—Samsung announced a new line of its high-end phones, each of which includes Live Broadcast, which lets users broadcast a live video stream directly to YouTube. The feature is built into the phones’ native camera app (that is, it’s not a separate app, like Periscope and Meerkat). You can schedule streams or push them live right away. One big drawback comparied to Periscope and Meerkat, though: There’s no social interaction—no comments or likes. Still, this could lead other phone manufacturers to add a similar feature, which could accelerate the adoption of live streaming video. Read more

Research

Communications are just as siloed as you thought they were—We keep hearing about multichannel marketing, but 46% of senior marketers say campaigns run in isolation and nearly 30% say their campaigns weren’t designed for multichannel. The Hotwire study revealed biases toward “preferred” channels in every industry studied, while new channels produce some fear of the unknown. Online advertising is included in only 52% of marketing budgets, and only 25% include social media in their budgets. Eighty percent of senior marketing decision makers don’t include any SEO in their budgets, despite the fact that one out of every six people use Google. Read more

Marketers effectively embracing Internet of Things—The Internet of Things (IoT) is proving useful to marketers, who are using it to track and reach the “cross-everywhere consumer” (those whose activities cover a blend of smartphones, wearables, biometrics, and the IoT). The most popular use of IoT data is understanding customer preferences. About 25% used IoT data to power campaigns and promotions; 15% used it to power customer-facing digital apps. Most, however, used all three. Marketers are also expressing satisfaction with the value of the data. Read more

Twitter report highlights its customer service role—Twitter issued a report, “Customer Service on Twitter Playbook,” that finds 47% of social media users have sought out customer service on Twitter (as well as other social platforms), and the trend is on the rise among all age groups. More than 95% of consumers report being influenced by what other people say about brands in social channels. Read more

Lego tops customer engagement—Lego’s content-rich social channels earned 189 million engagements (184 million of those on just one channel, YouTube), making it the most engaged-with brand of the second quarter, according to the ListenFirst Digital Engagement Ratings. Read more

Innovations

A really, really local network—FlashChat is an anonymous chatroom that lets you connect with people using the same WiFi network. An an airport, in a coffee shop, anywhere you can get online, you select a username and begin a conversation with others connected through the same WiFi. Some scenarios for such a network: In an airport, find someone who will let you use her phone charger; at work, establish a network that creates instant connections and eliminates the need for email; on vacation, get sightseeing tips from locals at the coffee shop. Read more

Case Studies

Instagram campaign boosts recall for Capital One—Aiming to leverage its “What’s in your wallet?” campaign, Capital One turned its Instagram account over to three popular users of the photo sharing app, who shared pictures of interesting things they keep in their wallets: love letters, pictures, and tickets, for instance. Nine of these images were turned into Instagram ads, boostinig ad recall 16% (and even more among older users). Read more