HC+T Update: October 3, 2014

From: "HC+T Update" <shel@holtz.com>

Subject: HC+T Update: October 3, 2014

Date: October 3rd 2014

October 3, 2014
Want to unsubscribe from this newsletter? Click here.

Welcome to the Holtz Communication + Technology Update, my weekly summary of stuff Iâve found in the last seven days that didnât grab the big headlines but is still important, interesting, and/or worthwhile for communicators and marketers. I collect these on my link blog, which you're welcome to follow.

Join me for a day on internal social media in Copenhagen

On October 21, I'll teach a full-day workshop for IntraTeam titled, "Create Engagement through Internal Communications." The class will be held at DuPont's offices in Copenhagen, and registration is open. It'll be a great day filled with insights you can apply right away to your internal communications. Learn more and register

News

Social media front and center in Hong Kong protests -- China's leaders weren't worried about much of the 2003 Hong Kong protests spilling into international media coverage, but social media has changed the game during the current demonstrations. The rate of government-imposed censorship on Weibo is reportedly double that of the 25th anniversary of the Tianenmen Square crackdown. China is also blocking Instagram. Still, material is finding its way out of Hong Kong, sometimes with savvy users finding routes around the blocks while others simply adopt alternative services the government isn't wise to yet. Social media is also playing an important role in sustaining the protests, with friends texting each other via WhatsApp with messages that aren't overtly related to the activities, such as, "Hey, I am going, are you?" Another app, Firechat (see item below) is a mobile phone peer-to-peer app that doesn't use the Internet. Read more

FireChat lets you chat without a cell or Interent connection -- As online privacy becomes more important to more people, a new app called FireChat has attracted a lot of attention. In Hong Kong, it has become a key tool of the pro-democracy protests, downloaded 100,000 times in Hong Kong alone. Available for iOS and Android, FireChat bills itself as "off the grid," since neither an Internet connection nor cell service are required, though in "everyone" mode, it does facilitate chat via the Net. Without a connection, in "nearby" mode, the app uses Bluetooth to connect phones in your vicinity that also have the app installed. These connected phones then form a distributed network, allowing messages to be passed from phone to phone, connecting users farther away. However, a Citizen Lab report called it "highly insecure for sensitive communications," because the chats are not encrypted and are stored on each user's device. Some believe it would be an ideal tool for use in a natural disaster when Internet and phone systems are down.Read more

Microsoft introduces Sway for creating shareable online content -- Just as it was earning heaps of praise for finally "getting it" with the upcoming Windows 10, Microsoft announced Sway, a service that will make it drag-and-drop easy to create interactive, attractive, shareable Web content. The company describes Sway as a "Web-based canvas" on which users add content from OneDrive, connected devices, and social networks. The Sway site offers a video explanation and some real-world examples of content created with the service, which I can't wait to try. Read more

Facebook will ease real-name policy -- When Facebook suspended accounts of transgender performers using their performance names rather than their real names, a mass migration to the new social network Ello followed. While it's doubtful Facebook is terribly worried about upstart Ello, the company did recognize the transgender community had a legitimate beef with the policy. The company met with the Transgender Law Center, after which it announced it would modify its policy and reinstate the suspended accounts. While Facebook maintains there's a good reason to require real names -- to protect people from bullying, trolling, and other threats -- there are also reasons to allow people to use other names. Finding the balance will be the goal of the new policy, according to Facebook, which apologized to the LGBTQ community. Read more

Facebook to rethink user studies -- In the wake of the controversy over its experiment to see how users would respond to news feeds with more or fewer negative updates, Facebook has said future research of its users will be subjected to "greater internal scrutiny from top managers, particularly if it focused on 'deeply personal topics' or specific groups of people." The company will also train all of its engineers in the accepted ethical practices of such research. Read more

Medium introduces "Responses" to connect stories -- Blogging/publishing platform Medium has introduced "Responses," a new and intriguing take on traditional blog comments. At the bottom of every Medium story, you'll find a "Responses" button, which you can use to write your own story in response to the one you just read. The response will be formatted just like any other Medium content, but will also be linked permanently to the story that inspired the response. Read more

Derek Jeter launches digital startup for pro athletes -- Fresh off his retirement from the New York Yankees, Derek Jeter is joining forces with movie studio Legendary Entertainment to introduce a startup he's characterizing as a home for professional athletes to share "their unfiltered, honest, and unique perspectives, bringing fans closer to the games they love." Dubbed The Players' Tribune, the service will allow athletes to create content including first-person posts, podcasts, photo galleries, and polls, among other things. You have to wonder who will come up with something similar for actors and musicians. Read more

MIT and Twitter partner on social media project -- A $10 million project is underway to better understand social networks and identify new ways they can provide benefits to users. The five-year partnership between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Twitter will provide MIT with access to the fire hose of all tweets, as well as an archive of every tweet ever sent. MIT's Laboratory for Social Machines will "experiment in areas of public communication and social organization where humans and machines collaborate on problems that can't be solved manually or through automation alone," according to an MIT representative. The goal is to understand how people think and use social media as well as how we might use networks to increase accountability and transparency and assess public opinion. Read more

Trends

Wearable shipments set to triple -- IDC predicts wearable device shipments to triple this year, and to reach 111.9 billion in 2018 (compared to about 19.2 billion this year). Despite caution from some quarters, it will be an important category given a market anxious for the next big innovation. According to an eMarketer report, the best interactions with wearables will be a one-finger, yes-no gesture rather than the familiar two-thumb approach for mobile devices. Thus, many believe messages sent to wearables should drive interaction on other devices, giving users "just enough information...to make a decision whether or not they want to take that next action -- getting out the phone." Read more

The selfie as ad format -- Opera Mediaworks and Celtra have introduce a new ad format that lets users insert photos of themselves into display ads they can then share with friends on Facebook and Twitter. The Selfie ad format features layered drawings, filters, and picture-in-picture effects. Among early users of the platform is Lufthansa as part of its "Nonstop You" campaign focusing on customer service and leisure travel. Passengers can "picture themselves" at alluring travel destinations and then distribute the airline-branded selfies to their online communities. Read more

Facebook Messenger is a success -- Based on all the hate expressed online when Facebook split its Messenger service out of the main app and into a discrete tool, you'd think nobody would use it. In fact, the strategy is paying off. It has been the most popular app in iPhone's US App Store most days since it was launched. It's the top iPhone app in eight countries and is in the top 10 in 126 countries. The Android version is drawing similar downloads. In April, the app had more than 200 million monthly active users, according to Facebook, a number that has undoubtedly surged since then. comScore says the US user base has grown 75% since April. Read more

ABC app concedes that spoilers are just the way things are -- The changing TV landscape has made it impossible to avoid hearing about what happened on your favorite show that you haven't seen yet, and The Walt Disney Company seems to figure that's just the new normal. Its four-year-old Watch ABC app allows smartphone and tablet users to post messages or read comments on Twitter and Facebook while watching a show on the same screen, but now it also lets users post pre-edited clips from the show using a tool called FastShare. One observer said there will be more tools like this, with "much more social media and traditional media meshed together. Now it will be harder than ever to avoid finding out what happened on your favorite shows -- at least, those on ABC. Read more

Research

Strategy is absent among most B-to-B content marketing efforts -- While 86% of B-to-B marketers are employing content marketing, 48% claim to have a strategy that isn't documented while only 35% have a documented strategy. The fifth annual "B2B Content marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends" from the Content Marketing Institude finds there's a payoff to having a documented strategy. Those who have one tend to rate their content marketing efforts highly, compared to 32% who operate under a verbal strategy. Either way, 70% are creating more content than they did a year ago, and 55% plan to increase their budgets in the next year. Read more

Newspapers are dead? Not in rural America -- If you live in rural America, you probably don't buy into the belief that newspapers have outlived their usefulness. According to an Oklahoma study, newspapers are the top source of information in rural areas, with 42.2% of people preferring to get their information from a paper (online or print). Social media weighs in at second place with 19.8%, followed by radio and email tying for third at 14.7%, and non-newspaper websites trailing the pack at 8.6%. Among those whose first choice is a newspaper, the printed version is preferred by 46% while 38.5% go online. Read more

Have a friend at work? You're more committed to your employer -- I've never cared for the question in the Gallup employee engagement survey that asks if you have a best friend at work, but a new study of worker relationships found that having friends at work leads employees to significantly higher levels of commitment to the company. Seventy-one percent of people with 25 or more friends said they "love" working for their company, while less than a quarter of those without work friends felt that way. Employees with work friends are also twice as likely to trust company leadership. Seventy-nine percent of those with no work friends are open to another job offer, while only 58% of those with 25 or more friends would leave for another company. Study authors suggest companies need to do more to foster at-work friendships. Read more

Brands set up shop on Ello

Ello has been getting a ton of attention as people swarm to try out the new ad-free social network. With all those people on the site, it didn't take long for some brands to decide they needed to be there, too. Read more

Overcome content shock by marketing to an audience of one

Most companies don't think of customer service interactions as potential content objects, but Warby Parker, NatWest, and some others have figured out that content conveying great customer experiences can produce amazing results. Sharing the one-on-one transactions between a customer and a customer service rep can be content gold. Read more

This week on FIR

On episode 775 of the Hobson & Holtz Report, Neville and I dig deep into Ello and talk about the reputation fallout from Apple's iOS debacle. We also cover research that shows we're more likely to remember content with images and video, Yahoo's shutdown of the Yahoo Web directory, KitKat's BendGate tweet that has eclipsed the Oreo Super Bowl tweet, and a new service that is basically Vine for audio. We also have reports from Dan York on tech and Michael Netzley on Asia. Listen
Jen Phillips joins host Chip Griffin to tackle three timely topics on the Media Bullseye Roundtable: different ways to measure PR success, the merits of owned versus shared content, and ethics in PR and public affairs. Listen
In an FIR B2B "extra," Paul Gillin chats with Jay Hallberg, COO and co-founder of Spicworks, which gives away its systems management software while making money through its community of IT professionals. Listen
The inaugural episode of Chats with Chip features host Chip Griffin in a conversation with Jonathan Bernstein of Bernstein Crisis Management. They discuss Bernstein's journey to becoming a crisis expert. Listen
Inside PR #385 looks at wearable technology. Listen
Mitchell and Michael talk with James Feldman about what it means to be successful in the midst of conflict. Listen

In October, I'll head to Warsaw, Poland to speak at an internal communication conference.
I'll also be conducting a workshop in October for Intrateam, the Denmark-based intranet organization.
In October, I'll speak at the Global Intranet Forum in New York.
I'll conduct a two-day workshop for the International School of Communications in London during October.
While I'm in England, I'll take a day trip to Bath and speak to communicators there on October 27.
I'll present a pre-conference workshop on social visual communications at a Ragan conference at SAS headquarters in early November.
I will also present at Ragan's PR conference in Chicago in early December.
And, for good measure, I'll speak at a Ragan conference devoted to the issue of visuals and infographics in April 2015 in Denver.

Attention Europeans!

I'm teaching a two-day workshop on digital and social media designed to bring you up to speed and help you get beyond the bandwagon tactics that just don't produce meaningful results. Get information about the workshop and register here.