Organizational silos don't need busting. They need ventilating.

This week on FIR

• On episode 746, we look at Getty Images opening some 35 million images for free non-commercial sharing, the infiltration of social visual tools in the enterprise, 02's innovative use of Twitter for customer service, how 30 volunteer communicators are getting Ukraine's message out, Omnicom's deal to inject images-as-ads into Instagram, Greenpeace's campaign against P&G, the Church of England's adaptation of Sweden's approach to Twitter, and why one communicator thinks Digg is a better bet for communicators than Reddit. We also have our usual reports from Michael Netzley on Asia and Dan York on Tech. Listen here
• FIR co-host Neville Hobson spent time with correspondent Dan York while Dan was in London for the Internet Engineering Task Force meeting. You can hear their conversation here.
• On Thought Leadership, Mitchell and Michael talk with Jay McKeever, director of Worldwide marketing for Cincom. Listen here
• Host Chuck Hester chats with FIR B2B co-host Paul Gillin about LinkedIn's usefulness for B2B marketers on the latest episode of Linked Conversations. Listen here
• On AMP Up Your Social Media, host Glenn Gaudet talks with Craig Jamieson, owner of Adaptive Business Services, about social selling. Listen here
• Joe and Gini talk about MasterCard's reaction to Twitter backlash for its efforts to tie coverage of MasterCard to access to the Brit Awards, Facebook's mobile moves, and the new Klout on Inside PR. Listen here

Around the Web is my weekly review of news items and posts that caught my attention. It's not a look at the big digital and social news of the week; I figure you've already seen that stuff elsewhere. As I see these items, I save them to my Tumblr link blog; on Friday morning, I choose from the collection the items that appear here. Please feel free to follow the blog to stay on top of all these items I believe are useful for communicators to know.

Above the fold

Wikipedia is considering changes to the policies that prohibit paid representatives from correcting articles. The proposed rules have been posted for comment through March 21. Under the suggested rules, a paid representative (like a PR person) would be required to disclose his affiliation with a statement on his user page, a statement on the talk page, or a statement in the edit summary. So far, the comments aren't very supportive. The Marketing magazine article includes a quote or two from your humble correspondent.

Influencer marketing may be a buzzword, but it's one that most marketers are putting into practice. A study from Augure -- reported by eMarketer -- find 76% of marketing professionals were likely to collaborate with influencers when launching products, and 57% reached out to influencers when distributing content. 44% use the tactic during a crisis. As for the influencers, what they want is content and information, "not tangible items." Demonstrating that they're not far different from media outlets, 28% said they wanted exclusive material from brands.

The most recent numbers indicate the reach of those posts to your brand Facebook page has fallen to 6%, according to an AdAge report. The reasons aren't all based on a dynical move by Facebook to force you to use its paid ads. AdAge argues the increasing number of friends people have is also a factor. "More friends means more status updates eligible for feeds," the report says. People are also following more brands, meaning brands now compete with each other for "the slice of space that remains to them in the news feed." Facebook users are also reading more news thanks to an algorithm adjustment, reducing the space available for brand posts. And finally, the ads appearing in the news feed are working: The number of ads in the feed grew to 5% of all posts, but click-through rates remained stable.

The decline in reach for brands on Facebook isn't deterring food giant Mondelez International, which unveiled a strategic partnership with Facebook, according to The Drum. Clearly, Mondelez doesn't see Facebook as a free venue for content, but does see value in return for investing ad dollars on the social network. According to Bonin bough, Mondelez's VP of global media and consumer engagement, "For the first time, we'll be able to incorporate Facebook at the core of our media investment plans. This isn't just about having a social media strategy. it's about digitizing our entire approach to communications."

Below the fold

Does your crisis plan include specific actions for Twitter-based issues? Dominos Pizza has such a plan and it paid off recently when a Twitter troll "claimed that he burned his nether-regions while doing something unsavory to his presuambly hot pizza." Dominos made some minor tweaks to its plan in addressing the problem. "First, they had a script," reports MediaBistro. "The employee in charge of the account had tried-tested-and-true tweets to send to customers experiencing difficulty, offering contact information for the home office." They also had instructions for dealing with trolls and irate customers, backed by training. When the troll kept up his assault, the employee handling the account improvised, defusing the situation and earning kudos for the company. MediaBistro also notes that "it...showed that the company trusted its employees enough to let them handle situations like this based on their judgment."

They say it's the journey, not the destination, but that's apparently not true for news readers. Those who go directly to a U.S.news website are more likely to get engaged with the site than those who follow a link from a Facebook post, according to research from the Pew Research Center. A Reuters story found that users who come directly to a news site stay three times longer if they come directly, almost five minutes compared to two minutes for those who came from Facebook. Those whose visits originated on Facebook also tend to be younger.

New to Google paid search results: consumer rating annotations for advertisers. The new feature launched Monday, adding the results of surveys run by the AdWords team for businesses that participate in the program. So far, several hundred US, UK and Canadian businesses have ratings available. An example shared by TechCrunch for an auto insurer reads: "Ratings: Customer service 9.5/10 - Claims handling 9/10 - Discounts 8/10"

The biggest challenge among a dozen Deloitte uncovered in its 2014 Human capital Trends Study is "the overwhelmed employee" who copes with a flood of information, text messages, tweets, emails, meetings, and conference calls. The study found that workers check their smartphones almost 150 times a day, creating "distraction, stress, and general reduction in productivity." Business professionals can focus for only 7 minutes at a time, "after which we change windows or check Facebook!" According to a LinkedIn post by Delitte's Josh Bersin, this is "a wake-up call for us as individuals as well as for business and HR leaders. We need to change the way we live and change the way our organizations work."

Most new apps that hit the marketplace inspire immediate assessments of its viability for brands. Whisper -- which lets people share secrets in complete anonymity, yet still engage in conversation with other users -- was one that was dismissed by brands. Yet Hulu, the streaming video service, is launching an original series with a campaign on Whisper. Adweek reports that users are starting to see images from the show, which "users can use...as the background for messages they post to the network." The images bear the show logo. The fact is, many of the apps shrugged off by brands could have a place in the marketing mix, given some creative thinking.

Your internal social media could be a powerful recruiting tool if used right. Mashable reports that the enterprise social network can become a cornerstone of an employee referral program. I've been arguing for years that internal social media can bolster recruiting. The Mashable piece recommends incorporating gamification, since rewards and achievements are already built into most employee referral programs.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) isn't kidding when it says it's cracking down on paid endorsements disguised as independent recommendations. The agency has charged home security company ADT "with misrepresenting paid endorsements as independent reviews." The charges stem from a paid endorser who went by the moniker "Safety Mom," appearing on NPC's Today show. AdAge says ADT set up media interviews for its endorses through a PR firm and paid more than $300,000 to the endorsers to promote ADT's Pulse product.

Having a thought leader, executive or subject matter expert conduct an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit can be great, except for the fact that so few people know what Reddit is. To the rescue comes Flawk, a one-to-many tool that uses Twitter to host IAMA-like events. "Old Twitter feeds, inactive AMAs and interviews posted on YouTube don't offer true engagement," according to Mashable. "Nothing beats being in the same room as a celebrity and getting a real, human connection, but that's highly inconvenient both fiscally and physically. Q&A platforms...need to simulate that experience in better ways." Flawk puts both sides of the event in the same virtual place. "Users access Flask through their Twitter accounts and choose a sheep avatar in the spirit of self-expression. From there, you can chat, ask and vote on questions."

Most of the Bitcoin news has been bad lately, but don't count the cryptocurrency out yet. Overstock.com is one of the companies that accepts Bitcoin for purchases, and the company announced it has sold more than $1 million worth of goods, processing Bitcoin slaes (through Bitcoin processor Coinbase) in the average range of $20 to $30,000 per day. That's small potatoes for a company that racks up more than $3.5 million in sales every day, according to TechCrunch, but these are early days for the currency.

The Web's not done, says its inventor. Speaking on the Web's 25th anniversary on Wednesday, Tim Berners-Lee told C|Net he wants to see the Net stay open and deep packet inspection equipment ("which lets network equipment examine network data as it's routed on its way") removed. "I have the right to use the Web without worrying about being spied upon," he said. The interview is wide-ranging and worth a read.

Meanwhile, Berners-Lee has also called for an online bill of rights, according to an interview with the Guardian (reported by ZDNet). He calls on web users everywhere to draft an "Internet Bill of Rights for your country, for your region or for all." He told the Guardian, "I want to use the 25th anniversary for us all to...take the web back into our own hands and define the web we want for the next 25 years."

• I'm conducting a webinar in April for PeopleFluent. Details to come.
• Later this month, I'm off to Grand Rapids, Michigan to lead a digital planning session for Spectrum Health.
• On April 2, I'll do two sessions at the Ragan Communications conference at Walt Disney World.
• I'll be speaking multiple times at IABC's World Conference in Toronto, June 8-11.
• I return to Sao Paulo, Brazil, in August for three days of teaching at the national communications association, ABERJE.
• In October, I'll head to Warsaw, Poland to speak at an internal communication conference.

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