Flickr photo courtesy of Jeff GoldenI hope your New Year’s celebrations were fun and safe. Now it’s time to get on with the promise of the new year by keeping up with the latest developments, news, research, and ideas culled from around the web, notably those items that didn’t get a lot of attention. I select the items from my link blog, where I collect whatever strikes me as interesting; the link blog—which you’re welcome to follow—is also the source for stories I cover on my podcast. As you might expect, it has been a slow week, but there were still some interesting reports.

News

Snapchat deceived customers, FTC says—The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) posted an advisory earlier this week revealing its final charges against Snapchat, claiming the app “deceived consumers with promises about the disappearing nature of messages sent through the service.” The advisory also charges “Snapchat also deceived consumers over the amount of personal data it collected and the security measures taken to protect that data from misuse and unauthorized disclosure.” Snapchat has agreed to revise its privacy policy and allow an independent privacy service to monitor its performance for the next 20 years. Read more

Pinterest shares prompted pin test results—On January 1, Pinterest started rolling out its promoted pins product to everybody and to promote the product, the company plans to unveil early results of the product’s performance. Among those taking part in the six-month paid test were companies including Expedia, The Gap, General Mills, Nestle, Old Navy, Target, and Ziploc. Users shared promoted pins an average of about 11 times, consistent with how they share non-promoted pins, which translates into a 30% earned media rate. Read more

Twitter starts recapping what you missed while you were away—“While You Were Away” is a recap of some of the more worthwhile tweets you missed since the last time you checked your timeline. Twitter unveiled the feature at its analyst day in November, and it has now apparently started appearing in some accounts. Read more

Twitter sells ad space in Following lists—If you follow William Shatner and glance at the list of people Shatner follows, you may see accounts he actually doesn’t follow; instead, someone paid Twitter for that account to be included. It’s part of an experiment to sell ad space in the Following list. Shatner doesn’t llke the idea, tweeting that it implies an endorsement. The practice also led MasterCard’s promoted account to show up in Visa’s Following list. Promoted accounts in Following lists have been showing up since early 2013, but only recently started attracting attention. Read more

Is Palm returning?—HP has apparently conveyed the rights to the Palm brand to Wide Progress Global Limited, and its website is promising that Palm is coming back. Some research found the site is from a company linked with Alcatel OneTouch, a maker of Android phones. Read more

Research

Email still dominates the workplace—We may have entered the era of social business, but email remains the most important communication tool for most workers, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center. 60% of those surveyed said email was “very important” to their jobs, with 35% calling land-line phones important. As for those social networking tools? Only 4% said they were “very important.” The survey of 1,000 employed adults found 46% worked in organizations that blocked some websites. The same number said their employers have rules about what they can post online. On the plus side, 92% of workers said the Internet has not hurt their productivity. Read more

B2B marketers aren’t monitoring social media—While only 5% of B2B marketers haven’t bothered to set up corporate social media accounts, only about half use those accounts actively and a mere 10% are able to “articulate the business value of social execution.” Even more curious, only 40% of respondents to a survey say they’re using any social media intelligence tools to monitor the space. Read more

Trends

Amex boosts Instagram engagement by turning account over to guests—American Express turned its Instagram account over to six guests who shared images showing how the service affects their businesses. Those #MyAmex posts produced 23% more engagement than the regular photos AmEx shares. During the period in November when the Instagrammers were able to post on the company’s account, AmEx doubled its average number of daily Instagram followers. The campaign resulted in more than 10 million impressions and 40,000 engagements. Read more

Retailers turn to content marketing to offer expertise—Retailers like a St. Louis-based seller of home appliances have taken to content marketing as a means of offering expertise to differentiate themselves from the competition. The move has helped the once-struggling company generate traffic to its site, producing 14% of its online sales, up from 8% before starting the content marketing effort. Read more

Mobile

Marriott clarifies its WiFi blocking wishes—Marriott doesn’t want to block personal WiFi hotspots guests use in their rooms after all. It’s just those in conference and meeting spaces, according to the company, which issued a statement trying to clarify its petition to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. Marriott is still asserting security concerns and not mentioning the thousands of dollars it charges for its WiFi services in these parts of its properties. Read more

McDonald’s mobile beacons drive sales—McDonald’s finally has some good news when it comes to sales. A four-week test of mobile beacons in several restaurants led 18,000 people to redeem coupons that appeared on their mobile devices as they walked in or near a McDonald’s location. Sales of McChicken and McNuggets rose about 8% from a month earlier, before the tests began. Read more

App developers can’t add user testimonials in app description—When choosing an app to install on your phone, it can be hard to tell whether testimonials included in the description are legit or just an attempt by app developers to add to the app’s appeal. (Ever see a negative review included in those descriptions?) To make it easier for people to find the best apps, Google has altered its terms and conditions for app developers, who are no longer allowed to include testimonials from users in the wording of the app’s description. Read more