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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Friday Wrap #135: Ethics-challenged PR, 360-degree videos, tracking “Dark Social,” Zuck goes Oprah

Friday Wrap #135: Ethics-challenged PR, 360-degree videos, tracking “Dark Social,” Zuck goes Oprah

Friday Wrap 135
Flickr photo of Cristo art at the Reichstag in Berlin in 1995
courtesy of Zug55
The Friday Wrap is my weekly review of news items, blog posts, reports, and studies from the last week that could be useful to communicators but weren’t the stories that got the big headlines. I collect items from which I draw the Friday Wrap’s selections in my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow.

News

TV anchor suspended over PR activities—Another case of challenged ethics has emerged with the suspension of Global Television news anchor Leslie Roberts. A Toronto Star investigation found that Roberts secretly has been a part owner of a small PR firm, and its clients appeared on his show. Roberts never disclosed his affiliation with the firm, even as he helped conduct media training for guests, tweeted positive comments about clients appearing on his show, and even encouraged viewers to check out one of his clients. Read more

360-degree videos coming to YouTube—Owners of new class of cameras that shoot 360-degree videos will now have a place to share them. YouTube has confirmed that it plans to add native support for videos taken with cameras like the Ricoh Theta, Kodak SP360, and others. There’s no word on when the support will be available, though a spokesperson did suggest it’s in “the coming weeks.” Communicators would do well to start considering the circumstances under which producing and sharing 360-degree videos would serve them well. Read more

No action as FTC ends Yelp investigation—The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has ended its investigation into Yelp’s business practices without taking action. In a blog post, Yelp said the FTC “looked into our recommendation software, what we say to businesses about it, what our salespeople say about our advertising programs, and how we ensure our employees are not able to manipulate the ratings and reviews that we display on our platform.” The fact that the FTC took no action led Yelp to believe that the complaints leading to the investigation “appeared to be from businesses that simply weren’t happy with their ratings or reviews on Yelp.” Read more

Anti-Google group claims search bias—A coalition of Google critics and competitors has unveiled a downloadable Chrome extension that purports to demonstrate how Google “manipulates” search results in order to favor its own content and reviews from Google+ at the expense of other more relevant content. Group members include Yelp and TripAdvisor. Read more

Nielsen Normal unveils best intranets of 2015—The Nielsen Norman Group has released its top 10 intranets of 2015. (Keep in mind that the winners are chosen from among those that submit their intranets to the competition, so it’s a limited base from which the agency selects the 10 best.) Among the winners are Adobe, ConocoPhilips, Sprint, and Verizon Communications. Trends identified include streamlined processes for upgrading their intranets, the adoption of responsive design (to make intranets more compatible with mobile devices), faceted search (allowing for refined search results), hover effects, flat design (the disappearance of bevels, shadows, and elaborate framing effects), the introduction of carousels, and the inclusion of company performance metrics on the home page. Read more

Is Mark Zuckerbuerg the new Oprah?—Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has launched a book group on the social network, introducing a book for participants to read and discuss every two weeks. The first book on the list—Moises Naim’s The End of Power, sold out at Amazon.com shortly after it was announced. Could Zuck’s influence on books match that which used to accrue to Oprah Winfrey. Read more

Trends

Influencer marketing needs disclosure standards—The rules around influencer marketing can “become cloudy around the edges” in the digital age, with failure to disclose relationships between influencers and brands paying them becoming more routine. Various agencies have been establishing their own proprietary protocols for labeling paid-for content, making it difficult for consumers to spot a YouTube video or blog post for which an influencer has been paid. The desire to avoid disclosure when there is a gray area to exploit “generally stems from brands trying to be ‘authentic.’” Read more

Dark Social could be the next big thing—Data in multiple studies has confirmed that most social traffic, including content sharing, comes from email, messaging apps, and some mobile applications, all of which have been impossible to track. One study finds dark social traffic to be three times larger than “light social” traffic (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.). The quality of much dark social traffic is also presumed to be better, considering so much of it is one-to-one. And now, techniques and technologies are emerging that are letting marketers better track dark social. Though these are early days, “brands at the cutting edge of dark social are already gaining an edge in their respective markets.” Read more

Online video is surging—Facebook users are posting 75% more videos than they did a year ago, according to the company; in the U.S. people are sharing 95% more videos to Facebook. As a result, videos are occupying more and more of users’ News Feeds, where the number of videos has risen by 360% compared to a year earlier. “As Facebook transformed itself into a mobile-first company over the past few years, it is now being converted into a video-first property.” Brands hoping to reach audiences on Facebook need to consider redoubling their video efforts. Read more

More support for attention metrics—The Financial Times was among the first media properties to tout the amount of time readers spend with their content as a metric, fueling the argument that attention is a more useful means of measurement than page views or visits. Now, Twitter co-founder Ev Wiliams has called evaluation of digital-media companies by unique visitors “dumb.” For his publishing site Medium, Williams said, “We pay more attention to time spent reading than number of visitors…because, in a world of infinite content…it’s meaningful when someone is actually spending time.” Read more

Social HR is becoming a reality—Employees increasingly expect their employers to provide the same kinds of experiences they have when they use digital and mobile services, according to author, speaker, and consultant Jeanne Meister. 57% of workers consider “social business sophistication” to be an important factor in deciding where to work; it’s not just young workers, either, with employees up to age 52 in the group that has this expectation. HR departments are under pressure to deliver personal and business applications through mobile devices. Read more

Mobile

WhatsApp creeps toward 1 billion users—Despite fears that its acquisition by Facebook would damage its prospects, the popularity of the WhatsApp messaging service continues to grow. The company revealed it has 700 million monthly active users, up from 600 million in August, making it one of the world’s largest social networks. Most brands still aren’t paying attention to mobile messaging services, though. Read more

Snapchat ads are okay with users—A survey commissioned by Snapchat has found that most users liked watching the first cohort of ads distributed through the ephemeral messaging app, though some of the videos were more popular than others. The degree to which users liked the ads is well above the average for smartphone ads. Read more

Oculus Rift will create “a whole new universe of marketing”—The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset will have an impact on marketing sooner than most observers expected, with gaming serving as the gateway to wide adoption of VR that can then be applied to other purposes. In-game sponsorship is one avenue for marketers, but Marriott is considering adding the device to its hotels (to give guests 3D views of activities in their cities) and other travel-oriented organizations are giving it a serious look. Read more

Research

Most execs expect resources for corporate citizenship—A majority of executives anticipate resources for all aspects of corporate citizenship will grow over the next three years. A study from the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship found that most executives across all types of businesses and industries believe that corporate citizenship “helps them successfully achieve strategic goals, ultimately improving performance,” according to The Holmes Report. Read more

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