News

Facebook will reduce the spread of hoaxes -- Facebook is cracking down on the hoaxes that are spread over the social network. Explaining that users want less fake news in their feeds, the company plans to hold back stories that have been flagged by users as "false news stories." On the page where these stories are posted, the items will feature a message noting that a lot of people have reported that the story contains false information. The company has reassured users that satire and parody sites like The Onion shouldn't be affected, but not everyone is happy about Facebook's approach to the problem. Digiday reporter Josh McDermott worries that asking the people who spread the hoaxes to police Facebook for them could be problematic, and the lack of details about how the algorithm will work just makes the issue even murkier. Read more

YouTube challenger launches with some heavyweight advertisers -- Vessel is streaming now, and the YouTube competitor from a couple Hulu execs has attracted some substantial brands for the pre-rolls on its first videos. Chevy, Corona Extra, Unilever's Axe, Dove, and St. Ive's are among the first companies to give the service a shot. The Vessel twist is that users can pay $2.99 a month to watch videos without ads, or access the content free with the ads. Pre-rolls are one of two approaches advertisers can take; the other is an interstitial. Read more

Google has no plans to epxand "right to be forgotten" -- Even though Europe's data protection authorities want Google to remove "right to be forgotten" links from its.com sites, the search giant has dug in its heels. We've made removals Europe-wide but not beyond," said Google's chief legal officer David Drummond, according to a Reuter's report. Google has evaluated more than 733,000 URLs based on 202,000 individual requests and has removed 60% of them from its European sites. Read more

Trends

When does real-time marketing cross the line into exploitation? -- Brace yourself. The Super Bowl is coming, and with it the torrent of pointless, irrelevant tweets and other efforts by brands who seem to think being clever is the same as engaging customers. But before Super Bowl Sunday, we had Martin Luther King's birthday, with a lot of brands used as an opportunity to try to inject themselves in the conversation. Even those that weren't overtly promotional -- instead offering tributes -- leave a lot of people thinking the brands are pitching product on the civil rights icon's back. Among the worse: The Super Bowl-bound Seattle Seahawks, which had to tweet an apology after sending out the message, "We shall overcome." Read more

Slack's founder has no idea why it's taking off -- Slack -- the app for employees to network with one another -- is a real success story, with a $1 billion valuation, tons of downloads, and adoption rates that must make Yammer execs wonder where they've gone wrong. CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield isn't sure what's driving the app's popularity, but he is laser-focused on improving it while not worrying about the competition (including the recently laun"ched Facebook at Work). Users are delighted with Slack's user-friendly features, which Butterfield says is the result of actually caring about employees' needs. Read more

Bots are evolving, learning to emulate our online behavior -- If the bots that follow your social media accounts pollute your stream with crap (and you're not inclined to spend the time to purge your account of those followers), you may grow less inclined to use that channel. The creators of bots are dealing with that by mimicking the way real people behave online so they won't be detected. These bots employ flattery. As a result, users are more likely to stick with the service and continue engaging with the bot, many of which are now able to learn from our interactions. Read more

Mobile and Wearables

Promoted Items coming to Flipboard -- Flipboard, the magazine app, was an early adopter of native advertising. The company announced a new addition to the program, Promoted Items. They'll work just like Facebook's promoted posts and Twitter's Promoted Tweets. Companies will pay to have their items appear in users' personalized feeds, labeled "Sponsored." Read more

Google may have ended Glass sales, but marketers stick with it -- Marketers for companies like Fidelity that developed apps for Google's Glass wearable plan to continue to support their apps even though Google has withdrawn the product for purchase. Read more

If Slack doesn't float your boat, how about Memo? -- Slack may be burning up the enterprise networking world, but that hasn't stopped the introduction of Memo, an an anonymous messaging app for the enterprise that "wants to elevate water-cooler talk so that good ideas and criticism of company practices are accessible to everyone." Read more

Research

Forrester thinks Pinterest is a big fail for marketers -- Most brands are struggling to produce results on Pinterest, according to a new Forrester report, which points to Coca-Cola, which has experienced wild success elsewhere in social media but has attracted only about 5,000 Pinterest followers. Another problem: The new advertising platform doesn't provide marketers with adequate targeting data. (Never mind that participants in the Promoted Pins beta saw a 300% increase in the number of users who repinned a pin to their own boards. The Forrester report agrees that Pinterest holds huge potential for marketers, and believes it could trump most other social sites by next year. As for now, though, he says most marketers just find it frustrating. Read more

Agencies talk a big game, but do they deliver? -- Marketers asked to list the most troubling trends among marketing agencies were all over the board in their responses, but there was one thing on which they seemed to agree: When it comes to tech, data, and social media, they make a lot of noise but don't deliver deep insights. Meanwhile, agency respondents said clients may want data, but they aren't willing to pay for it. The friction is more pronounced these days for a few reasons, including the fact that "nobody is really sure exactly how to work their way through this maze of change that's going on," says the president of the company that conducted the survey. Read more

Millennials are loyal to brands that earn their loyalty -- Despite being hard-hit by the economic downturn of recent years, Millennials are ready to spend on things like technology and cars (not so much homes), and they're very loyal to brands that have delivered product quality and a great customer experience, and have demonstrated genuine corporate social responsibility. Product quality is more important than price, and 75% said it's either fairly or very important to consider the company's contribution to society, according to a survey from Elite Daily and Millennial Branding. Sixty-two percent said they're more likely to become a loyal customer of a brand that engages them on social media. Read more

This week on FIR

• On episode 791 of The Hobson and Holtz Report, Neville and I report on moves by LinkedIn and Facebook to offer their services to the enterprise, the rise of WhatsApp as a force to contend with (along with its competitors), the maturing of social media in B2B marketing, and whether the dominance of apps threatens the mobile Web. We also discuss an investigation that revealed lobbying plays second fiddle to PR and advertising when it comes to influence legislation and regulation, the future focus on business for Google Glass, stats that reveal who used what social media channels in 2014 and what they'll use this year, and the growing popularity of drones. We also have a tech report from Dan York, and much more. Read more
• Julia and Kristen explore four trends young PR pros should pay attention to, including tracking the impact of social media, owning owned media, online advertising, and wearable technology. It's all on the latest episode of Young PR Pros. Listen
• Kelley Steven-Weiss joins Mitchell Levy as guest co-host for the month on Thought Leader Life. In this episode, they chat with JP Laqueuer and Sally Thornton about the future of work and talent, among other topics. Listen
• In another Thought Leader Life, Mitchell and Kelley talk with Michael Grove, founder and CEO of CollabWorks, a software and professional services firm. Read more

• In late January, I'll be in Las Vegas conducting focus groups as part of an intranet audit for a client.
• In February, I'll join Ann Wylie in Santa Fe, NM, for a two-day writing workshop.
• In March, I'll speak at Ragan's Digital Employee Communications Conference in Las Vegas.
• I'll speak at a Ragan conference devoted to visual communications and infographics in Chicago on March 2 and in Portland, Oregon on April 23.
• Ann Wylie and I are bringing our two-day writing workshop to Thrivent Financial in Minnesota in April.

Spend two days in Santa Fe with Ann Wylie and me

Visit us at Holtz.com.