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Got 5 Minutes?

The Society for New Communication Research (SNCR) -- part of The Conference Board and of which I am a Founding Fellow -- has undertaken an initiative to determine how people in the communication industry can help tackle the increasingly significant problem of fake news. (I'm part of the task force.) One of our early efforts is to get a handle on the intersection of fake news and communication through a survey. If you're a communicator with responsibility for managing advertising, paid content marketing, paid social, native and/or programmatic advertising, could you please take the survey? It will take only about 5 minutes. Read more

Hurricane Harvey

Text-to-911 has been a non-factor in Texas flooding -- Text-to-911, an alternative to making a voice call, has had hardly any activity during the days-long flooding resulting from Hurricane Harvey. Victims may not have wanted to take the time to tap out a message, but I suspect few people knew it was an option, particularly given the long hold times people were experiencing. Read more

Social media's role in the Harvey floods -- Texans in need of help posted their plight on Facebook and Twitter. They tweeted their addresses to emergency services. They coordinated rescues through Facebook pages. They posted photos that revealed how high the waters had risen. Because some cell phone towers were working, people could read notices from local officials and emergency services. While we're getting accustomed to seeing social media in emergency situations, the Harvey experiences are noteworthy because the last major hurricane to make landfall happened two years before Twitter was introduced. Read more

Snapchat's Snap Maps was in play during Harvey -- Snapchat only recently introduced Snap Map as a feature to differentiate it from Instagram. The tool is a way to see where your friends are when they share a snap to Our Story. Snapchat editors have also been featuring big news events. Harvey showed up on the Snap Map, taking users directly to snaps shared from the flood zone. Read more

Tragedy brings out the best in some companies -- Hurricane Harvey has sparked some noteworthy responses from businesses. Airbnb is connecting people who need places with those with room to spare, all fees waived. Duracell is handing out free batteries. United Airlines is giving bonus miles to rewards members who make donations. Verizon and AT&T are offering relief for customers who exceed their data limits. Walmart sent 795 truckloads of supplies. And that's just a small sampling. Read more

News

Facebook will ban advertising on Pages that share fake news -- In its latest move to crack down on fake news, Facebook announced the Facebook Pages that repeatedly share fake news will be banned from advertising on the site. If third-party fact-checkers find multiple instances of fake news coming from a Page, the Page owners will have to earn back the ability to pay to boost content. Boosting posts is one of the key ways publishers of fake news get it to spread. Read more

YouTube gives itself a makeover -- YouTube has rolled out a new logo, streamlined navigation, and a mobile-friendly redesign. The makeover even features a night mode. The changes are designed to encourage more consumption on the site as Facebook and other competitors encroach on the video space. Read more

WhatsApp is planning a business app -- I have been talking for a couple years about the shift to messaging as a preferred means of engagement with brands. Here's more evidence: WhatsApp is planning to introduce a standalone app that businesses will be able to use to chat with customers. In preparation, WhatsApp has been quietly verifying business accounts. Read more

Privacy is now a right in India -- India's Supreme Court has ruled that privacy is a fundamental right, singling out tech firms for the vast amount of data they collect on users. From the ruling: "This can have a stultifying effect on the expression of dissent and difference of opinion, which no democracy can afford. There is an unprecedented need for regulation regarding [how] such information can be stored, processed and used." Read more

Facebook Watch is rolling out -- Facebook's long-form video entertainment channel showed up on my computer the other day. (Have you noticed it, too?) Business Insider, Tastemade, Hearst, and Refinery 29 are behind some of the shows available behind the Watch tab, all part of the Facebook-subsidized shows initiative. The social network plans to offer hundreds of such shows. Read more

You'll be able to post and view Instagram Stories from the web -- You no longer need to open the Instagram app to share your stories. You should see Stories when you open Instagram in your web browser; you can also share photos and videos from the web. Read more

More good news for Snapchat -- While Snapchat has lost users to Instagram and its user base isn't growing as quickly as expected, those who use the messaging app are spending more and more time with it. Users spent an average of 32.8 minutes daily on the app in the second quarter of 2017, up from 30.3 in the first quarter and 27.5 minutes in last year's fourth quarter. Read more

A new podcast directory opens -- Podchaser is open for business. The new podcast directory lets registered users rate and review podcasts (like the iTunes directory). New features are scheduled. A Categories subsection is already active, making it easier to see what's trending across genres and topics. Coming are a People section (a who's who of podcasting), shareable lists (like on Spotify), "an IMDb-esque discussion board," user-driven category ranking, advanced filtering, and more. Podcasters will also be able to claim their podcasts (mine are already showing up in the search). Read more

Illinois brings blockchain to birth certificates -- The state of Illinois is partnering with blockchain identity startup Evernym to digitize new birth certificates. Once it's launched the tools would let "parents and doctors present at the time of birth to officially log the birth on a permissioned blockchain." Read more

Trends

Adaptation, part 1 -- One trend to watch is organizations adapting to change instead of resisting it. Comcast is a good example. With a continuing drop in the number of cable subscribers, the company is branching into new business lines that leverage its networks. Comcast is moving into the "smart home" business with remote-controlled door locks and cameras. Read more

Adaptation, part 2 -- Newspaper publisher Gannett has left local events to local publishers up until now, but in an effort to attract new readers, the company has doubled the size of its events strategy group and plans to throw 500 events this year with first-time advertisers. Events -- part of the experience economy -- can help make up lost advertising revenue and introduce a younger audience to its publications. Read more

Adaptation, part 3 -- Retailers aren't adapting to a changing world well. The retail industry believes it needs help figuring out how to handle customer inquiries via social media, and the numbers bear out that belief: Retailers respond to only 19% of customer inquiries in social platforms. By the way, that's the best of any industry; the average is 11%. Read more

Fake photos have become a part of every disaster -- The photo of a shark on a submerged Houston freeway originally surfaced years ago, showing up in Hurricanes Sandy and Irene. The submerged planes at George Bush International Airport? It's a photoshopped picture of LaGuardia. Barack Obama serving meals to evacuees? From a 2015 Thanksgiving meal at a homeless shelter. Disasters motivate people to share these kinds of images for a number of reasons; they also prompt people to fall for them. The photos are a category of fake news, the meaning of which has been lost: "a very specific kind of misinformation, that's entirely fabricated and designed to look like standard journalism." Read more

Emotion governs interaction with health brands -- Since consumers rely on health brands for their wellness and to launch life-saving products, when they cross a line, the consumer impulse to shame them is strong. The tendency is not limited to health care: "A recent study by WE Communications, Brands in Motion, tracking the behavior of more than 13,000 consumers and 3,000 B2B decision makers across eight industries revealed that a surprising 90% of people would gladly shame a brand that they love if it misbehaves." Read more

The truth about teens -- The 20-year-old founder of a research startup has some views on teen media behaviors that contradict conventional wisdom. They don't have short attention spans but the novelty of apps wears off quickly, for instance; they stick with Instagram and Snapchat because new features are rolled out regularly that keep them interested. They're ditching Facebook because it's too big a mix of everything; they know just what they'll get on Snapchat and Instagram, though they do still use Facebook Messenger and Groups. Read more

Apps drive more subscriptions than the web -- The New York Times' mobile app is driving 60% more subscriptions than the web; app users are also more loyal and engaged. If you have a serious content marketing program, this might be data worth pondering, although it's also worth remembering that most people spend half of their time with digital media on just five apps. A national news source could be one of them. A company's content app? That had better contain some pretty amazing content. Read more

Research

Facebook Page reach has declined 20% so far this year -- The average number of interactions with posts by brands and publishers to their Facebook Pages had plummeted 20% in 2017, according to research from BuzzSumo. Read more

Maybe there are some differences between generations -- Last week I shared a Hay study that found generational differences had more to do with career stage than characteristics unique to a particular generation. Now comes a Harvard Business Review report on a survey of 18,000 professionals and students from three generations in 19 countries that disagrees. All three generations (Gen Y, Gen Z, and Gen X) aspire to become leaders but geography accounted for some differences. People in Nordic countries are significantly less likely to covet leadership roles than those in Mexico, for example. There was also fairly equal interest in becoming an entrepreneur. But Gen Z was more enthusiastic about new technologies, like Virtual Reality, though the enthusiasm -- high in Mexico and Singapore -- was low in India. Gen Y sees VR as having a huge impact on their work. "Companies may want to consider virtual reality as a tool for recruiting those cohorts." Gen X didn't see the same potential for VR at work. Differences also stood out in preferences for work training and concern over whether they would fit in where the work. I would weigh all of these studies and make some conclusions based on the aggregate of data rather than rely on a single study since they all seem to reach different conclusions. Read more

Push notifications drive purchases -- Push notifications increase user purchases by 9.6 times, according to research from Leanplum. They also increased the amount users spent on their purchases. Still, the company says the strength of push notifications is bolstered when it's part of a multi-channel strategy. After all, only 40% of users opt in to push notifications. Read more

Five apps account for half of users' online time -- In case you were wondering about the stat I cited earlier, here's the source: According to ComScore's 2017 US Mobile App Report, five apps account for more than half the time people spend with digital media. And half of that time is spent in just one app. "This suggests that unless a brand's or business' app is the first or second most used (most likely Facebook- or Google-owned), it's unlikely to get any meaningful share of users' attention." The report also notes that app downloads are regaining momentum. Read more

Design matters to Millennials -- ComScore's annual mobile report (cited in the previous item) also found that "logos matter and apps will be deleted if Millennials don't like how it looks on their screen." Some 21% deleted apps this year over poor design, while only 2% of Gen X dropped apps with unappealing designs. More data from the report: Snapchat and Instagram are neck-and-neck in mobile penetration among adults 18 to 55. Eight of the top 10 most used apps are from Facebook and Google (the outliers are Snapchat and Pandora). Facebook is still the most-used app, followed by Google. Read more

Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality

Google rolls out ARKit competitor -- Apple has been getting a ton of attention for the upcoming flood of AR apps expected to accompany the release of its newest mobile operating system. Now Google has released a developer preview of ARCore, designed to deliver AR to Android smartphones well beyond what the company's three-year-old Project Tango initiative was ever able to achieve. Read more

Brands are readying AR apps for iOS 11 -- When Apple releases iOS 11 in a few weeks, a billion iPhones will suddenly be AR-capable. Ikea and Food Network are among the brands that will have apps ready, built using Apple's ARKit developer platform. Read more

Artificial Intelligence, Chatbots, and Smart Audio

AI can write believable fake reviews -- People rely on review sites like Amazon and Yelp, but the credibility of these services could be threatened in a big way. Researchers have determined that AI can produce fake reviews that are undetectable that readers would find reliable. After reading thousands of real reviews, a recurrent neural network (RNN) produced synthesized reviews that were "effectively indistinguishable" from genuine reviews. Read more

Alexa and Cortana will communicate with each other -- Microsoft's Cortana and Amazon's Alexa, competing voice-driven AI assistants, will soon play nice together. The agreement between the two companies will allow the users of one assistant to take advantage of the other's capabilities. Don't expect Apple's Siri to join the fun anytime soon, though Samsung's Bixby could be another story. Read more

Marketers need to embrace image recognition -- With people sharing 3.25 billion photos every day, marketers must tap into the combined power of AI and image recognition to identify images that would lead them to engage with the person who shared the photo (and their followers). That engagement could be tapping into an opportunity or jumping in to solve a problem. Read more

United Airlines introduces a new Alexa-based travel service -- United Airlines customers who own an Amazon Alexa smart speaker may find travel a little easier. The service will let travelers use an Echo or other device to check in for flights, check flight status, and ask about flight amenities (like WiFi). Read more

Sonos could introduce a smart speaker -- Known for their wireless connected speakers, Sonos is rumored to be readying a smart speaker that could respond to voice commands issued from anywhere in the room. A filing with the FCC said the speaker will support "multiple voice platforms and music services." Read more

Google voice chat coming to home devices -- So far, Google's voice chat digital assistant has been available only some Android phones and the Google Home smart speaker. That universe will expand rapidly, with Google announcing the service is now compatible with a broad range of home devices, from speakers to refrigerators and even sprinklers and vacuum cleaners. Read more

Levi's chatbot will help you pick your jeans -- The Virtual Stylist chats with online shoppers to make jean recommendations "based on style preferences and fit, similar to the way a human stylist would help customers at a store." You can chat with the stylist on the Levi's website or via Facebook Messenger. Read more

IBM, Salesforce offer joint solutions -- IBM Weather Insights for Salesforce lets Salesforce users integrate IBM weather data into their applications so they can develop promotional campaigns that take local weather into account. The IBM Cloud Integration for Salesforce uses IBM's AI functionality, including Watson Tone Analyzer and Natural Language Classifier, to produce more actionable insights for marketers. Read more

AI, a "canvas for creativity and brand storytelling" -- Thanks to AI and related technologies, "we have to start thinking about brands not as these objects but more as humans and entities that you interact with and have conversations with," says Winston Birch, chief digital officer at advertising agency Deutsch North America, winner of 41 Cannes Lions awards and one of Adweek's 2016 "Most Indispensable Executives in Media, Marketing, and Tech." This interview is a worthwhile read for grasping the enormity of AI's future as a brand and communication tool. Read more

Cool stuff

Timeline of platform developments since 2000 -- Ever wondered when Google News launched or when Facebook introduced its first mobile site? Now it's easy to find out, thanks to an interactive timeline from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Read more

Blockchain demo -- For some time, I have been letting communicators know that blockchain is coming their way. Blockchain will affect the businesses on whose behalf communicators communicate, which means we'll be explaining big changes in the way those companies operate. Blockchain will also have some impact on communications itself, from the way ad networks function to new forms of social networks. What I haven't talked about much is the nuts and bolts of blockchain. This interactive demo guides you through each component of a blockchain, step-by-step. It's very geeky, but the explanations are written in plain English, so sticking with it can help you understand what's under the hood. Read more

September 1, 2017 Want to unsubscribe from this newsletter? Click here.

Practicess: Part 11 in My Series on a New Model for Employee Communication Having a strong vision statement, mission, purpose, and values won't be worth a damn if they are not baked into the company's practices. In fact, if your organization's practices don’t reflect the vision, mission, and values that have been posted on walls and touted at town hall meetings, they will be the target of some pretty withering sarcasm and a catalyst for lower employee engagement, a diminished employer brand, and deterioration of the customer experience. Read more The latest from the FIR Podcast Network Scott Monty and Laura Pevehouse joined me for conversations about the uses to which social media’s is being put by victims of flooding from Hurricane Harvey, candy companies are trying to find ways to make up for lost impulse sales as the number of cash registers declines; we’ve heard it before, but eMarketer insists it’s for real this time: Teens are abandoning Facebook for Snapchat and Instagram (and maybe iMessage); Sonos, the Internet-of-Things speaker company, says existing customers won’t get the option to opt out of a new privacy policy — if you don’t agree, your sound systems could stop working; we’re visual creatures, so audio search may not take off the way some think it will; are all those differences between generations just so much nonsense (and is there really any such thing as a "digital native")? Dan York reports on a creepy side of Facebook, a concerning case where the US Dept of Justice is requesting significant user info from Dreamhost, a website hosting provider, in China, anonymity is basically dead as of October 1, and efforts underway from Mozilla and Google to build open datasets of voice samples that can be used to develop new voice applications. Listen On the latest FIR B2B, Paul and David talk to Crowded Ocean’s partners Carol Broadbent and Tom Hogan. The two have written The Ultimate Startup Guide, the foundation of which is their work with 47 different startups over the past 10 years. Ten of those companies have had successful exits, and only two went out of business, so our guests have credibility. The pair were were invited onto the show after Paul and David read their piece in VentureBeat about "marketing-as-a-service." Listen The latest Digital India episode looks a new ways to create mockups for advertisements, share them with anyone and experience the work as if it's live. Listen On the August edition of Circle of Fellows, IABC Fellows Priya Bates, John Gerstner, and Mary Hills joined me to talk about how to foster a socially responsible organization. Listen On the Calendar On September 17, I'll give a talk at the Association of Women Communicators national conference in Dallas. I'm speaking at an Igloo Software user's conference in Nashville on September 20. I'm giving multiple presentations at the Professional Speechwriter's Association on how speechwriters can use social and digital media. It's set for Washington, D.C. on October 16. I'm speaking at the Social Media #Mashup at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, which will be held October 23-25. On November 1, I'll present a preconference session on the four key focus areas from my new employee communication model at the Great Places to Work conference at Genentech in South San Francisco. On November 16, I'll present the opening keynote address as well as a breakout session at the Library Marketing and Communication Conference in Dallas. On December 4, I'll be in Cambridge, MA, speaking at an Intranet Best Practices conferences at IBM's offices.

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