(c) Can Stock PhotoEdelman sparked a lot of conversation this week with its report on PR’s role—and the need for ethical behavior—in the growing field of native advertising. I’ll talk about that, and some contrary points of view, on Monday’s episode of For Immediate Release. In the meantime, a lot of other news and research was shared during the past week, some of the most interesting of which (to me, anyway) is listed in today’s Wrap. As always, you can find the bigger list of items from which I chose today’s Wrap material at my link blog, LinksFromShel.tumblr.com.

A deflating bubble doesn’t spell the demise of social media

BusinessWeek crunched the numbers, talked to the experts, and determined the social media bubble is deflating. “Social media companies drew only 2 percent of the venture capital headed to Internet-based enterprises last quarter, according to data published on Tuesday by CB Insights, a research firm that tracks venture-capital investment,” writes Joshua Brustein. At least the balloon is deflating and not popping, as it did in the late 1990s. (Remember pets.com and Webvan?) While a lot of the social startups are focused on driving mobile advertising clicks, there are new technologies attracting investment dollars, like cloud computing and big data. But just as ecommerce didn’t die—rather, it thrived—after the dot-com bust, social media isn’t going anywhere merely because it’s no longer the sexy new investment target. With well-established players doing quite well and niche participants (like EyeEm, covered below) attracting some attention, social media businesses will do just fine.

The latest Dartmouth report on Fortune 500 use of social media shows continued adoption

The biggest companies in the world are employing social media platforms more and more, with Twitter holding the top spot for corporate communications (growing from 73% last year to 77% this year), with Facebook nipping at Twitter’s heels, with 70% of companies using it for corporate messaging, up from 66% last year. The numbers come from the 2013 entry into The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research. Reported in MarketingCharts, the study also finds YouTube surging for corporate communications, up from 62% last year to 69%), and blogging is enjoying a resurgence, “up 6% points to 34% adoption, virtually tied with the newly-tracked Google+.” The study has also started tracking Pinterest and Foursquare as corporate communication channels. The study breaks down usage by industry. For example, telecommunications companies are the biggest users of blogs, with nine of the 17 Fortune 500 telecommunication companies (53%) using them.

The shift to mobile social continues apace

Significantly more people are accessing Facebook from their mobile phones both here in the U.S. and in the U.K., where 20% more people have joined the ranks, according to the social network. Facebook also reports advertising revenue for the mobile platform has gained momentum, according to a Reuters story.

Study suggests interaction is not indicative of Facebook message reach

Marketers and individuals alike gauge how much a Facebook update has been seen by measuring interaction with the update—likes, comments and shares, for example. Indeed, Facebook’s own EdgeRank algorithm depends on this data to determine which updates will appear in the news feeds of friends and people who have liked a brand page. But those numbers woefully underestimate the actual reach of an update, according to a Stanford University study, which found that users actually reach “35% of their friends with each post and 61% of their friends over the course of a month.” One explanation for the tendency to underestimate, according to the study (as quoted by Charlie Warzel in a Buzzfeed article): “...in order to reduce cognitive dissonance, users may lower their estimates for posts that receive few likes or comments. It might be more comfortable to believe that nobody saw it than to believe that many saw it but nobody liked it.” The report also suggests that “audience members might not want to admit they saw each piece of content, and sharers might be disappointed to know that many people saw the post but nobody commented or ‘Liked’ it.” In other words, fear of rejection could drive us to lower our estimates of how many people really did see our content. From a communications/marketing perspective, it’s easy to shrug off low numbers by blaming EdgeRank, when it’s just as likely that the content we produced was, in fact, seen; it just didn’t inspire any engagement.

Satisfied customers don’t necessarily become advocates

Most of the reach marketing campaigns earn comes from advocates spreading the word through their social networks. For brands that aren’t able to get its customers and others to amplify the campaign, the lack of reach means the company will have to spend more cash to get the message in front of more people. Consequently, brands need to make advvocacy a brand priority, according a Social@Advocacy, which has studied the issue. “Brands are failing at driving satisfied customers to share in social media,” Social@Ogilvy’s global head of Data+Analytics and Products said in a press release (reported in Bulldog Reporter’s Daily Dog). “Our study suggests that the vast majority of satisfied customers are not publicly advocating for brands on social platforms. Brands have not provided the technology, incentives or content that both inspire and enable customers to speak out positively.” The answers include knowing and focusing on fan’s true advocacy inspirations by using tools that help identify “clusters” of discussion. By taking this approach, “We notice that Holiday Inn’s breakfast tends to drive more advocacy than its peers’; in comparison, Kimpton’s bars are more often cited that those of other brands.” The brands can use this data to develop strategies that inspire customers to spread related content. The study determined that features were the top driver of advocacy in every country studied; mentions of ads and commercials produced the fewest mentions.

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) drives increased mobile phone adoption

The fear of missing out on key events, news, new images and status updates ddrives more than half of U.S. adults to check their smartphones more and more often, according to a study from MyLife.com. Reported by John Glenday in The Drum, the study also found that “a quarter of people…would rather quit smoking or another addiction than their social media habit and a similar number…reach straight for their Twitter of Facebook account upon waking.” Fear of Missing Out, which has earned the acronym FOMO, “is defined as a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent,” says Dr. Andrew Przbylski, a University of Essex psychology lecturer. “FOMO is characterized by the desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing. Our research indicates it can be thought of as a psychological state that arises from deprivation of basic psychological needs for competence, automony and relatedness. It also accounts for a significant amount of motivation for social media engagement.” And is definitely knowledge that can help communicators and marketers plan strategies and campaigns customers wouldn’t want to miss.

There’s a new source of industry surveys in town, thanks to Google

For some data that might be useful in your research, you may no longer have to fork over bundles of money to marketing research organizations. Google’s Databoard might have what you’re looking for, writes GigaOm‘s Derrick Harris. “Google has done a bunch of research into how people are using mobile devices, and…has created a service where you can easily find the key data points from those studies and then share them or turn them into infographics.” Harris notes that the site reinforces Google’s efforts to change “the visual experience of reading reports” while making it simple to reuse the company’s data for your own purposes—and it’s all free. You can find Databoard here.

Social visual trend moves into the stock photo realm

Instagram and Pinterest may have kicked the social visual communication trend into high gear, but they have their limitations. For example, you can’t make a buck or two from someone who wants to use the shot you shared in their blog or marketing campaign. For that, look at EyeEm, which is gaining a million new users a month and has closed a $5 million Series A round, says Natalie Robehmed in Forbes. Rather than pursue advertising for income, EyeEm wants to become “the go-to for mobile crowd-sourced images.” The app organizes images shared by users based on keywords, along with time and location metadata, making them easier to search. By letting users sell the rights to their photos in the EyeEm Marketplace, those “looking for a type of image can place a request.” The company is working with some early partners like Red Bull and Lufthansa “to offer EyeEm users revenue share in exchange for the licensing of their image.” Photographers will be given the opportunity to grant permission before any users can buy their photos.

New venture from Last.fm founders is like Facebook Social Graph on steroids

Using the Facebook Social Graph search, you can find things like people from the U.K. who like pubs, the founds of Internet radio site Last.fm want to take the concept to a whole other level. Their new Web discovery tool, Lumi, sifts through your browing history to recommend to others stuff to watch, read and buy. “Just as Last.fm and Pandora can pivot from your love of Arcade Fire to Radiohead based on your listening preferences, Lumi uses your online browsing habits—noting your interests, from travel to Apple to environmentalism—to serve up related Web pages from sources both prominent and arcane,” writes Huffington Post‘s Timothy Stenovec. The sites Lumi recommends is based on sites other members visit, finding pages “that are trending among Lumi members, delivering the results in an elegant, graphically rich tiled layout.” The founders shrug off privacy concerns, claiming “people are savvy enough to dabble in their service and still keep some activities private by using browser modes like Chrome’s Icognito or Safari’s private browsing option.” Personally, I’d be willing to bet a random street poll would reveal that most people have never heard of Igcognito, but it still sounds like an intriguing site. If it takes off, you may be hearing about content LEO—Lumi Engine Optimization.