Memorial Day Weekend is upon us here in the United States. I remember when holidays like this means most stores were closed, TV offered nothing but stale reruns and third-string news teams, and the world seemed to grind to a halt. The Web, however, never rests, and it seems everyone else tries frantically to keep up. Do yourself a favor. Take a deep breath and relax this weekend, and keep in mind what Memorial Day is about: taking the time to recall those who made the supreme sacrifice in defense of our freedom.

Now, on to the Friday Wrap.

TV ratings moving to mobile devices

The Nielsen ratings have for decades helped networks decide which shows to axe, which to move to new time slots and which to hail as a smash hit. As our media consumption habits shift to mobile, those ratings have grown less and less credible. Now, Comcast and Nielsen have come to terms on a test that will measure viewing on tablets and smartphones. The goal is to combine all Nielsen’s various metrics into “a single, unified currency,” according to Matthew Strauss, Comcast’s Senior VP of Digital and Emerging Platforms.

Mobile social marketing: Consumers reveal a say-do gap

The Direct Marketing Association’s Mobile Marketing Council asked 1,200 UK mobile consumers about social media marketing on their mobile devices. (After all, more than 60% of UK mobile owners access social media on their devices.) Thirty-five percent of the respondents believed brands should stay away from mobile altogether, and another 31% reported they actively disliked the notion of communicating with a brand over mobile social channels. Forty-four percent found mobile social media marketing too invasive, while 62% said they disliked reading updates or comments from brands. A measley 23% indicated they were okay with mobile social marketing. However, 43% actually do engage in those kinds of activities. The trick will be in providing content people who have already opted to follow a brand will want to consume.

There goes another excuse for not adopting social media

“I’d be using social media,” goes the argument, “but my CEO doesn’t support it. He just doesn’t get it.”

That excuse won’t fly much longer, according to a study from IBM, CEOs expect social media to become the second most important channel for customer interaction, surpassed only by face-to-face, with traditional media dropping to the bottom—behind websites, channel partners, call centers and advisory groups—within the next three-to-five years. CEOs also plan to apply more internal social media in their organizations.

NPR news apps will go beyond podcasting

National Public Radio has assembled a team—led by Brian Boyer of the Chicago Tribune—to build multimedia audo news apps. According to the Poynter Institute, the apps will complement rather than supplant NPR’s broadcast model. “We’re entering a world of multimedia audio…in which radio will be comlemented by other storytelling forms,” according to Kinsey Wilson, NPR’s chief content officer. Managing Editor Mark Stencel adds that audio “bring(s) complicated stories to life, make(s) them real, put(s) a human voice on things that may be dry and complilcated.” It also makes it difficult to visualize information that is best absorbed visually, such as numbers. “Adding this allows us to take reporting that often has been underneath that type of storytelling and surface it in a way that is also just as engaging and powerful.”

NPR isn’t the first news organization to assemble a team to develop multimedia apps. Others include The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and Pro Publica, according to the article.

YouTube uploads grow 50 percent

I remember when my kids were young and they’d complain that there was nothing to watch on TV. Today, I can search YouTube easily on my TV, and there’s plenty to watch there. The 8-gazillion-pound gorilla of video sharing sites experienced 50% growth in video uploads over the last 12 months, with users uploading 72 hours of video every 60 seconds. Only a year ago, that rate was 48 hours uploaded each minute.

How can print be dead if you can post to Pinterest from it?

The magazine House Beautiful has figured out how to let readers post photos from the print magazine to Pinterest. Using a smartphone app, readers can pin photos from the “Kitchen of the Month” feature. Scanning the barcode is all you need to do to share the image with your friends. The magazine will expand the functionality to other articles in upcoming issues, and Food Network magazine is also launching print-to-Pitnerest capabilities next month.

Yahoo! launches small business dashboard

Innovation isn’t the first word that comes to mind when you think of Yahoo! Consider how the company let high-potential properties like Delicious and Flickr languish while others came along and scooped up huge mindshare and market share with new offerings that Yahoo! could easily have built into these and other sites. But at least one innovation has come out of Yahoo! recently with the launch of its Small Business Marketing Dashboard, which assembles analytics, PPC data, e-commerce, social media monitoring, directory listings and other information into a single resource.

It’s free and I have a Yahoo! account, so I signed up. It takes a couple days to assemble data from the various sources it uses, but I now see a reputation tracker and local visibility (listings in local directories) along with opportunities to get listed in more. Adding email campaigns, SEO and PPC requires a sign-up and, in some cases, a fee, but at least it shows someone at Yahoo! is thinking about how to keep the company relevant. Find the dashboard here.