(c) Can Stock PhotoThe Friday Wrap is a curated rundown of news, reports and posts from the past week that, while they didn’t go viral or attract much attention, are still interesting and useful for communications professionals. I select Wrap items from my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow.

News

FCC takes first step to ending net neutrality—The Wrap is usually reserved for items you may not have heard about anywhere else, but this one is too important to skip. The U.S. telecommunications regulator advanced a proposal on Thursday that would let Internet providers (like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T) charge content companies for faster and more reliable delivery of their traffic to users. While the proposal claims that it would ban providers from slowing down access for anyone else, you can’t have a fast lane without also having a slow lane. Consumer prices for these services are also likely to rise as content companies (like Netflix) pass the costs along to their customers. Protests against this assault on net neutrality continue, let by content providers like Google and Amazon. The comment period includes opportunities for the public to weigh in. Read more: http://reut.rs/1hRtJlb

Target CMO gets transparent after Gawker publishes employee rant—Using LinkedIn as a platform, Target CMO Jeff Jones responded to an employee rant about the company published by Gawker. The employee blasted the retailer’s leadership and called for the dismissal of the entire executive team. “While we would have preferred to have a conversation like this with the team member directly, speaking openly and honestly, and challenging norms is exactly what we need to be doing today and every day going forward,” Jones wrote. “In the cmoing days and weeks we will embrace the critques of Target—whether it’s from outsiders or our own team—like an atheltics team puts the negative press onthe wall in the locker room…Our job now is to create a new truth and that is exactly what we are doing.” Reaction has been mixed. Read more: http://bzfd.it/1n4BQ1e

Ad injection scheme hits big sites—You wouldn’t expect to see a Target ad in the middle of Walmart’s website, but there it was, plain as day. No, Walmart didn’t sell the space to its competitor. It’s a ploy that uses browser extensions “to place ads on the websites of some of the biggest advertisers in the world.” The ads are “forcefully injected” onto the sites by third parties who sell the ads without obtaining the site owner’s permission. Those behind the scheme call themselves 215 Apps and sometimes Engaging Apps. “This is an industry-wide problem that needs attention from all advertisers and definitive action from suppliers,” according to Amy Furman, Geico’s marketing director. Read more: http://bit.ly/RZMUmJ

Research

Using social media coverage as social proof can backfire—Sharing media coverage and publicity as social proof can backfire, according to a survey by Marcia Yudkin, since people don’t all react positively. Yudkin wanted to know whether seeing in the media that a local financial adviser had received publicity in national media outlets would lead respondents to be interested in hiring him. “A sizable minority rejplied that the media coverage made them less interested in hiring the adviser,” Yudkin writes. “This surprised me.” Comments left by respondents offered three explanations: that the adviser’s rates would be higher, that he might not be available, and that he might have an inflated ego that would make him hard to work with. “With no additional information, people jumped to conclusions about fees, availability and personality from the mere fact of media coverage,” Yudkin writes. This is information you could use in planning your own publicity. Read more: http://publicityhound.com/blog/3-surprising-drawbacks-to-publicity-and-how-to-tamp-down-their-impact

People read more posts on the weekends—You write and publish a blog post mid-week—right when your target audience is working and not likely reading blog posts. TrackMaven’s study suggests 87% of blog posts are published during the week, but the 76.1 million blog readers in the U.S. do most of their reading and sharing on the weekend. Content published on the weekend was share more than on any weekday, “indicating that marketers posting to blogs could get a bigger bang for their buck pby publishing posts when readers have more time to read and share—on the weekends.” Read more: http://bit.ly/1lqvIiL

Americans want original content from brands—Sixty-two percent of Americans want to see content directly from their favorite brands, according to a WP Engine study conducted by TNS. Their next most desired content feature tips on using a brand’s products (44%) customer testimonials (34%) and “anything that does not blatantly ‘sell’ a company’s products,” according to a press release. Hardly any customers (only 4%) are interested in how celebrities use a product. Almost half of respondents (46%) read their favorite brands’ blogs. These consumers say frequent posting to a brand blogs lets them stay up-to-date, gives them a more personal connection to the company, and gives the brand a voice. Conversely, brands that don’t post frequently enough lose their connection with customers and appear lazy. Read more: http://bit.ly/1vfnCjE

CEOs get optimistic—The Trust Agenda, a PwC survey, finds CEOs believing trust in their industries is on the rise. The reasons include greater emphasis on positive growth with a longer-term orientation that is more sustainable and socially responsible. Perhaps those CEOs should take a gander at the Edelman Trust Barometer in order to realign their thinking with reality. Read more: http://bit.ly/RZTnya

Millennials expect brands to use their data—Privacy concerns get a lot of coverage these days, but a survey of 1,800 millennials by SDL found that those in the U.S. are more likely to respond to brands when those brands use data specific to the customer to create a contextualized and personal customer experience. Read more: http://bit.ly/1nSdAmI

Mobile

Snapchat is now the messaging app champ—Snapchat is the top third-party messaging app in North America by volume, producing more traffic daily than competing apps like WhatsApp, the popular messaging app Facebook acquired. According to network traffic specialist Sandvine, Snapchat’s ascent reinforces the importance of video and other media services. Snapchat is “constructed around data heavy features like picture (and now) video messaging, which gives it a major volume impact.” Read more: http://tcrn.ch/1j2OOwZ

Instagram matches Twitter for US users—Instagram has surpassed 200 million users, bringing it parallel to Twitter in user and engagement levels among a strikingly similar user base. And the younger end of that user base prefers Instagram, according to a Piper Jaffray study on teen preferences. Another study finds Twitter has the greatest growth potential. Which should get most of your attention? It depends on whom you’re trying to reach and what you want to talk them about. Read more: http://bit.ly/1oXnzVr

Law and regulation

In Europe, courts expect Google to erase links—In Spain, Mario Costeja Gonzalez had some debt problems in the 1990s. Apparently, he’s put those problems behind him, and now wants Google to eradicate links to content that relates to that part of his life. My first thought was, “That’s absurd.” Google’s role is to index everything on the web without regard to its nature. But in a landmark ruling against Google, the court found that European data protection laws mean Google must erase those links. One hopes there are avenues of appeal, since this is, frankly, ridiculous on a number of levels. At the top of my list: How many bad guys will use the law to erase links to information we really need in order to avoid doing business with bad guys? Read more: http://on.mash.to/1iT3KcC and http://bit.ly/1lwC1jt

Great ideas

Microsoft welcomes Nokia employees with printed history—Here’s another one for those “print is dead” believers. Microsoft gave each Nokia employee who joined the company through the recent merger with a 128-page illustrated commemorative book. The “Day One” book “celebrates the two tech titans’ history of innovation and the possibilities their new partnership holds,” according to TCOLondon. Read more: http://cnet.co/1hRvRJJ

Ritz-Carlton wants your six-word wows—When an Internet meme gains traction, it’s worth considering whether there’s a way to adapt it to your brand’s marketing efforts. That’s what Ritz-Carlton did with the popular six-word memoirs and six-word stories sweeping the web. Six-word “wows” are being shared externally with the #RCMemories hashtag. Internally, staff are encouraged to tell their own six-word “wow” stories during daily 15-minute meetings. Read more: http://nyti.ms/1jQBE6V