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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Friday Wrap #20: New photo app, 1 billion coming to mobile social, NASA’s Google+ success, and more

Friday Wrap #20: New photo app, 1 billion coming to mobile social, NASA’s Google+ success, and more

Friday Wrap #20

(c) Can Stock Photo
What a Friday! I’m taking the rest of the day off to run a bazillion errands in advance of my daughter’s wedding on Sunday. But that won’t stop me from posting the Wrap, my weekly review of tech news of interest to communicators. If you want to see (or subscribe to) the full listing of articles I collect during the course of the week—which I use for the Wrap, regular blogging, and my podcast—you can find it at linksfromshel.tumblr.com.

Photoset from Tumblr: mobile social visual storytelling

Last night, I took a boatload of pictures with my smartphone while at my daughter’s wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. Getting them into some kind of coherent collection, however, meant creating an album on Facebook, which I couldn’t get to until this morning. (At least my phone automagically transfers all my pictures to a DropBox folder I set up, so I didn’t have to hassle with cabling the phone to the computer.) Tumblr aims to solve that problem, at least for iPhone owners. (Note to Tumblr: This would be awesome for Android users, too.) The app is called Photoset, which will enable people to create and publish Tumblr-like photosets and send the shortcut link to Twitter, Facebook or other sites, or to distribute the link via email. of course, you can also publish the photoset directly to a Tumblr blog. Photosets are hugely popular on Tumblr, another sign of the growing popularity of social visual communication.

The service, separate from Tumblr itself, makes perfect sense, according to Natt Garun, writing for Digital Trends: “By offering the Photoset functionality to users outside of Tumblr, the app has the opportunity to become a new go-to source for photo uploading. Now, sharing viral things via Twitter no longer has to go through the proprietary Tumblr site or app if you don’t want it to, and can instead show up as a direct link in your feed.”

Gartner predicts 1 billion will access social networks via mobile by 2014

Tech analyst firm Gartner expects that within two short years, 1 billion people will access social networks via their mobile devices. In a TechCrunch report, Ingrid Lunden writes, “It’s not clear who will be the leaders, but it may not be who is on top today.” She quotes Gartner analysts Sandy Shen and Mike McGuire:  “The market is crowded and users can be mercurial, so expect volatility, keeping a particular eye on acquisitions and the inevitable disruptions (small and large).”

There’s no reason to abandon Facebook and Twitter, both of which are working hard to improve their relevance in an increasingly mobile world. But it’s also important to give a closer look at some of the “pure-play mobile social networks,” such as Foursquare, Path and Instagram, which are sure to gain ground.

Mobile app development moving in-house

Adweek reports that companies—particularly those in the consumer packaged goods space—are hiring mobile developers rather than continue their reliance on mobile-focused agencies. Christopher Heine writes, “Mobile money is starting to stay home, similar to the way brands brought web developers in-house a decade ago.” Heine quotes Catalina Marketing VP Patrick Moorehead, who wonders, “Why involve the [agency of record] in the conversation at all if we can save five points on the deal?” Kraft’s snack business, for example, plans to transition all of its mobile app development in-house before 2013.

New LinkedIn feature lets you target updates

After last Friday’s Wrap, a few readers noted that I didn’t cover any of LinkedIn’s news. The two announcements got so much coverage, I just didn’t think I needed to repeat them. After posting the Wrap, however, LinkedIn made another move with a redesign of company pages that makes it easier for companies to connect with their target audiences. “LinkedIn’s new featured update functionality gives brands the ability to more prominently display the updates they want to highlight above the fold in their update feed,” according to Matt Kapko, writing for ClickZ. “The free feature enables firms to promote news and updates for up to 48 hours.”

Note the “free” bit, since that’s a feature Facebook is now using as a revenue-generator. If your focus is on B2B or corporate/business content rather than consumer marketing, where LinkedIn has a distinct edge over Facebook, this is a feature you may want to consider, even if it means revisiting the effort you put into a LinkedIn company page.

The article quotes Clive Roach, social media strategist for Philips Healthcare, talking about a six-week trial run of the feature:“With social media, you want to tailor what your audiences see.  When someone decides to become a follower of our LinkedIn company page, it’s nice if we can target our messages so as not to take up their time with content that’s not interesting to them.”

NASA’s advice for launching a Google+ presence

At a recent dinner, a colleague who works in the tech world asked if I use Google+ much. I told her I keep it on my second monitor and glance frequently at what people are sharing, but I don’t post much. “Hangouts are awesome, though,” I added. When it comes to brand pages, I hardly ever hear a word about a company enjoying the kind of success on Google+ that you hear about routinely on Facebook. But on Fierce Government IT, Molly Bernhart Walker talks with NASA’s deputy social media manager, Jason Townsend, about how the space agency has gleaned value from its homestead on Google’s social network, which has been circled by 229,000 people.

“Townsend said NASA focuses on providing interesting content in longer, comprehensive updates, as opposed to the condensed format used on Twitter,” Walker writes. “The agency also includes a call to action—such as ‘watch this video’ or ‘get more information here’—and asks for feedback in order to start a conversation.” The agency has also figured out that some things are just better done on Twitter, such as major events that are better served by live-tweeting. On Google+, townsend focuses more on providing just a few, more comprehensive updates.

NASA also hosts Hangouts, which require less effort and cost than traditional video production and “is less stuffy than a traditional teleconference,” according to Townsend.

United Nations turns to games to promote health and other issues

I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. Big companies will employ game designers/developers on their staffs within the next few years. Games and gamification are going to be so important, having in-house resources will become a necessity. As evidence, look at the UN Foundation, which has launched the Global Good Challenge, “a new initiative to grab the Facebook generation’s attention,” according to CNN‘s Heather Kelly. “The online contest’s goal is to promote the United Nations Foundation’s missions and drum up support for international activism and the U.N. itself.”

The idea is to engage the online audience and gain support in developed countries for efforts designed to overcome disease and other problems in underdeveloped parts of the world. The games are drop-dead simple: one-question quizzes, social actions such as a retweet, or posting relevant content to your own Facebook timeline. “For every action youo take, you earn ‘tickets,” Kelly writes, “and for every three tickets you earn you are entered into the sweepstakes once.” Sweepstakes prizes are pretty compelling, such as backstage passes to meet Lady Gaga. “The neest prize, announced on Friday (October 5) morning, is the chance to ride along as a guest during an America’s Cup prctice run with champion yachtsman James Spithill.”

The efforts supported by the gamifiction effort include increasing vaccinations in developing countries, encouraging American girls to raise awareness of girl-related issues worldwide, and the Nothing but Neets program to raise money for mosquito nets to prevent the spread of malaria in Africa. The program was developed by the Global Entrpreneurs Council, “a group of successful under-40 entrepreneurs assembled to refresh the UN Foundation’s image and find new ways to promote its program by tapping into the social media set.”

 

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