Image courtesy of JoyosityThe 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

Top PR agencies commit to Wikipedia’s community standards—A group of the world’s biggest PR agencies has affirmed a commitment to abide by Wikipedia principles, and to ensure their employees and clients do, as well. The companies signing on to the affirmation include Edelman, Ogilvy & Mather, Burson-Marstellar, FleishmanHillard, Ketchum, PNConnect, Peppercom, and Allison+ Partners. “This is the start of an industry-wide commitment,” Edelman’s Phil Gomes writes. “I hope that the PR industry and Wikipedians take this effort in the right spirit.” Read more

Google, Facebook battle for SMBs—Google has introduced a tool for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to update information, add photos, connect with customers and manage their profiles, all from their smartphones or tablets. ZD|Net reports the move “highlights how Web giants are increasingly looking toward SMBs to maintain growth and cultivate long-term advertising customers.” Facebook has previously rolled out tools for SMBs, and Amazon is working on a marketplace for local services. Read more

Advanced socialbots have infiltrated Twitter—Some of the people you follow on Twitter may not be people at all. Carlos Freitas at the Federal University of Minas Geerais in Brazil created socialbots that “not only infiltrated social groups on twitter but became influential among them as well. What’s more, Freitas and co have identified the characteristics that make socialbots most likely to succeed.” Freitas warns Twitter—which already has some 20 million fake accounts—that the company will need to improve its defense mechanisms and can use the work of his team to make the task easier. Read more

Apple’s app rule could kill off in-game advertising—It’s against Apple’s rules to manipulate the App Store Rankings, but a new interpretation of that rule suggests that advertising for a game within another game is a way to game the system, which could lead to a prohibition of in-game videos promoting other apps. Using that advertising space to promote other things—like a soft drink—won’t run afoul of the reinterpretation of the rules. Read more

Going, going, gone: No more IPv4—The Ars Technica headline proclaims “The Internet is full.” What it comes down to is this: Only the Internet registry handling Africa has IPv4 addresses to give to network operators, and those are running out. The registries for Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and North America have reached their limits. The very technical reasons for the depletion of IP addresses are explained well here. The bottom line, though, is that the Internet Service Providers who have ignored the migration to IPv6 are “going to be bitten by the IPv4 address exhaustion.” Read more

RebelMouse is not a publishing platform configured for virality—RebelMouse was originally designed to let people aggregate elements of their social presence in one place, but the site has been reintroduced as a complete publishing platform “designed to give both media companies and advertisers control over every aspect of the real-time social ecosystem as it relates to their content,” writes Mathew Ingram. The Dodo is one site publishing on the platform; it has increased its social reach and traffic considerably thanks to the site’s viral-content features. Read more

Research

Consumer attitudes toward brands is shifting—In the latest iteration of FleishmanHillard’s Authenticity Report, consumers report that less than half of what shapes their perceptions and beliefs about a company is related to its products and services. 52% comes from management behavior and how the organization interacts with society. The report also concludes the idea of a global brand is a myth—the most authentic brands manage to expectations that vary by market. It may seem simplistic, but the report’s conclusion is that, to create authentic engagement, you must “be as you wish to be seen.” Read more

Young Americans are less emotionally engaged with brands—People in first-world countries are less emotionally attached to the brands they follow than their counterparts in the third-world, according to research from marketing agency Momentum Worldwide. Younger audiences in particular are less connected, and overexposure to brand promo messages could be the root cause. Read more

Newspapers are dying, but it’s not the Internet’s fault—Conventional wisdom suggests newspapers are losing the battle to the Net, but a new study argues other factors are truly to blame for the decline of the newspaper business. University of Chicago Booth school of Business Professor Matthew Gentzkow says we have made three false assumptions: first, the fallacy that online advertising revenues are naturally lower than print’s, so traditional media must adopt a less profitable business model that can’t support editorial operations. Second, the web has made the advertising market more competitive, driving down rates and, consequently, revenues. And third is that the Internet is responsible for the demise of the newspaper industry. The problem, Gentzkow says, is that it’s an apples-and-oranges comparison: Online ad rates are based on monthly unique visitors while newspaper ad rates are based on circulation. “The price of attention for similar consumers is actually higher online,” his report concludes. Read more

Trends and Ideas

Get followers, get rich—Brands are increasingly turning to talented content creators who have amassed large followings to help promote their offerings via Vine, Instagram, and other tools. A New York Times article points to Robby Ayala as an example. He dropped out of law school to create Vine videos, growing his audience to 2.6 million, which led to paying work from brands who wanted to tap his creativity and his pre-existing audience. Read more

Facebook inadvertently reveals new mobile app—Facebook briefly revealed a new mobile app called Slingshot in the iTunes Store, then withdrew it, but it was there long enough for people to get an idea of how it will work. You can share your moments with your friends via photo or video and “sling” it to a group. “They won’t be able to see your shot until they sling something back.” Slingshot aims to attract users of ephemeral apps like Snapchat—images vanish once you “swipe them away.” Read more

The real reason Snapchat is so addicting—Ask people why Snapchat has taken off and you’re likely to hear it’s because anything you share that might cause a problem later evaporates, letting you send questionable images with impunity. However, the real appeal is that Snapchat forces users to focus. Knowing we’ll lose the photos after we’ve opened them, we tend to pay more attention to them, unlike other services where distractions inhibit that kind of focus, according to research from new York University. Read more

Algorithm change gives marketers a new way to get updates into Facebook News Feeds—Explicit shares from a third-party app now carries more weight in Facebook’s News Feed, introducing a new challenge to marketeers: getting a Facebook user to willingly share brand content with friends. One option: Bribe them. Extole’s Marketing VP Chris Duskin says the company’s clients “have seen a lot of success with referral marketing, motivating fans and customers to share content and have the message spread across Facebook.” Read more

Listening to customers produces new product for 7-Eleven—Analysis of market data indicated consumers were drinking more lemonade. That was enough to lead 7-Eleven to dig deeper, finding that consumers were blending flavors. Working with Dr. Pepper Snapple, the company created an exclusive limited-time all-nature drink, Lemon Daze Snapple, mixing three lemonade flavors. The summer drink went sale last year on June 24, and was bolstered through the distribution mobile coupons, leading to the give-away of 18,000 bottles in less than half a day. Social media also boosted awareness. It’s an example of how mining the data can lead an organization to offer new products in response to customer preferences. Read more