Monday, November 21, 2016

Episode 19: Facebookpedia


This week, a look at the detrimental effects of fake news and what kinds of technical and communal solutions it might take to establish order, provide assurances, and help restore thoughtful dialog.



Links

Be sure to check out other major stories from the November 21st edition of the newsletter:
A new study from WE Communications and YouGov covering China, the U.S. and the UK reveals that earned media placements are regarded as the most influential sources of news and information when it comes to driving consumer opinions about brands and products and when driving sharing across social media and other platforms.
How do businesses prioritize their digital transformation efforts? One key area is picking the right individual to lead the process
Increased technology usage in cars has contributed to distractions that resulted in a 10.4% rise in traffic fatalities this year, after three decades of falling rates. Death? Yeah, there's an app for that.

 

Credits

Theme song: "The Liberty Bell," by John Philip Sousa, performed by the United States Marine Band and shared under a Creative Commons 3.0 license.
Incidental music: "One More Stripper" by APAMusic, royalty-free license from Pond5.com.
Voice over: Toni Deckers
Subscribe on iTunes - and leave us a review. Also on Google PlayStitcherSpreaker or SoundCloud.
We'd appreciate your support on Patreon.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

The Full Monty — November 21, 2016

What, me worry? All the news that fits, we print. 


The Full Monty exposes you to the business intelligence that matters at the top of every week. Please sign up for our email updates to make sure you don't miss a thing. And please share this with your colleagues if you find it valuable.

It's a very real week for fake news; earned media is influential for consumer opinions; prioritizing digital transformation efforts; Twitter gets serious about trolls; Facebook is getting serious about measurement; the sharing economy may be stagnating; more Americans stay at shared homes than share theirs; AI is everything at Google right now; big brands get into podcasting (kind of); mobile interactions in-store should not be undervalued; how hackers will exploit the IoT; traffic deaths are up for the first time in decades; and more in this week's edition of The Full Monty. Trivia and the poem of the week are now exclusively on The Full Monty podcast.

Virtually everything you need in business intelligence. If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links — and those that didn't make the cut for publication — by subscribing to The Full Monty Magazine at smonty.co/fullmontymag.

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

Programming note:

There will be no newsletter and podcast on November 29, due to the Thanksgiving holiday.

Industry



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Some of the results are going to really surprise you.

Platforms

TWITTER / PERISCOPE / VINE

  • Twitter is rolling out anti-harassment tools. At a pivotal moment, the company is introducing a mute filter, muted conversation threads, and user report infrastructure in an effort to win back its platform from the trolls. It's about time. And it may help to resuscitate Twitter's reputation in this area.
  • And then Twitter suspended a number of alt-right accounts. That didn't take long
  • Twitter added QR codes to its iOS and Android apps. Because pressing a "Follow" button was so much work. Just when you thought Twitter was getting smarter...

FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP

ALPHABET / GOOGLE

SNAP

Collaborative / Autonomous Economy

  • The sharing economy appears to be stagnating. Fewer people are taking gigs with companies like Uber and Airbnb, and those who do are making less money. 
  • What motivates workers in the gig economy? For part-time drivers, the primary motivation to work is often social; for others, driving offers a solution to a lack of other job opportunities.


Source: https://www.theatlas.com/charts/BkG8b3PZe 


LODGING

TRANSPORTATION

  • Lyft takes aim at Uber in its new advertising, casting them as evil corporate men from Ride Corp who are trying to slow down the diverse, fun ride-sharing startup.
  • A Danish high court issued a blow to Uber when it ruled that a driver was operating an illegal taxi service.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / BOTS / BLOCKCHAIN

  • AI is the ultimate moonshot for Google. It seems to be everywhere Google's CEO Sundar Pichai is. You know what they say: you can't spell Pichai without AI."
  • Siri vs. Cortana vs. Alexa vs. Assistant: the AI battle is on. Still waiting for the moment when someone utters "Alexa, kill Siri."
  • Don't worry - AI won't replace CEOs. An MBA’s instinct is increasingly vital in the age of information overload. Job security FTW!

Virtual Reality / Audio

VR/AR

AUDIO

  • Some big brands are beginning to produce their own podcasts as a point of differentiation. But "branded" podcast in some cases may be nothing more than slapping the brand's name on a show, like Texaco Theater of TV in the 1950s. As usual, your mileage will vary
  • Spotify launched Playlist Potluck, a pre-scheduled collaborative playlist for parties. After the election, this may be the only thing that some families agree on at Thanksgiving Dinner this week.
  • Program of the Week. In keeping with the fake news theme this week, we selected Paul Kelly's recommendation Revisionist History Author Malcolm Gladwell looks back to debunk closely held beliefs about history. Superb, smart storytelling. Do you have a program to recommend? Add yours to our Google Sheet: smonty.co/yourpodcasts
  • And don't forget to subscribe to ours via email or oniTunesGoogle PlayStitcherSpreaker or  SoundCloud.

Content / Customer Experience / Influencer Marketing

Privacy / Security / Legal

Measurement / Metrics / Data


Essential Watching / Listening / Reading



Do you like what you see here? Please subscribe to have trends on digital communications, marketing, technology and business delivered to your inbox each Monday. Between this and the podcast, it's a lot of work. And it's not a team sport, either. If you join us as a patron, it will show how much you value this kind of content.


I speak to groups and advise brands and agencies to help them embrace the fundamentals of human communication in the digital age. You can join these other top-notch clients by reaching out if you'd like to put my experience to work.

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Monday, November 14, 2016

The Full Monty — November 14, 2016

Credit: Raquel Baranow (Flickr)

The Full Monty exposes you to the business intelligence that matters at the top of every week. Please sign up for our email updates to make sure you don't miss a thing. And please share this with your colleagues if you find it valuable.

What polling data missed and social media analytics picked up; Facebook grapples with its role regarding fake news; video advertising stats and moves; Twitter is worth saving; being caught dead on Facebook; why major banks aren't supporting Uber's IPO; the role of AI in HR; VR grapples with trolls; another week, another two data breaches; the Podcasting 2016 study; how to make your marketing organization more agile; five blogging trends to watch; the helpful role of anger and more in this week's edition of The Full Monty. Get trivia and the poem of the week exclusively on The Full Monty podcast.

Virtually everything you need in business intelligence. If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links — and those that didn't make the cut for publication — by subscribing to The Full Monty Magazine at smonty.co/fullmontymag.

Upcoming Speaking Engagements


Industry

  • The election of Donald Trump as the 45 president of the United States shocked many. It became a digital version of 'Dewey Defeats Truman.' How did the media miss it? "The misfire on Tuesday night was about a lot more than a failure in polling. It was a failure to capture the boiling anger of a large portion of the American electorate that feels left behind by a selective recovery, betrayed by trade deals that they see as threats to their jobs and disrespected by establishment Washington, Wall Street and the mainstream media."
  • After all of that effort, it turns out that social media can lead some users to rethink political positions. 20% of social media users say they’ve modified their stance on a social or political issue because of material they saw on social media, and 17% say social media has helped to change their views about a specific political candidate. Just don't bother with the Trump-supporting trolls on Twitter.
  • AT&T, even before its proposed purchase of Time Warner, may be in violation of net neutrality rules with its DirecTV division. The FCC says that AT&T's "zero rating" of DirecTV streaming content without counting against mobile data caps may not be acceptable while AT&T is simultaneously charging other companies for the same privilege.
  • It's difficult for journalists and brands to forge their way into the cozy environments of Snapchat, WhatsApp and others. The appeal of these messaging apps, for many, is that they allow people to have private group chats with a trusted network or family and friends. These private chats aren’t searchable, and new members have to be invited in. Enter the digital fixer. And see the Facebook Messenger item below.
  • Adobe is buying video ad company TubeMogul for $540 million. The deal will give Adobe a larger footprint in video programmatic advertising on multiple screens and allow it to combine it with its marketing, content, and analytics services. Advertisers will have access to a demand-side platform to plan, buy, and measure video ads using an automated system.
  • Meanwhile, Videology has a report on TV and digital advertising insights. Two big shifts in linear TV advertising: 1) marketers want to use more data to further segment their audiences beyond age/gender and 2) suppliers want to increase yield by packaging data with inventory.
  • Here are seven trends in social media for 2017, which are mostly about the evolution of existing trends, including a demand for more vicarious experiences (hello, 360 video and VR!), imagination and inspiration will be rewarded, and the diversification of existing platforms.

SPONSOR

Get the scoop on what 500 marketers (budgets up to $10 million) believe and how those beliefs influence their behaviors when it comes to hiring and firing agencies just like yours.
Download this FREE 16 page report, full of information, insight and guidance on how to best approach prospects based on the findings.
Some of the results are going to really surprise you.

Platforms

TWITTER / PERISCOPE / VINE

  • Twitter has been through a lot lately. But Ben Thompson makes the case for Why Twitter Must Be Saved. “It is Twitter that has reaffirmed itself as the most powerful antidote to Facebook’s algorithm: misinformation certainly spreads via a tweet, but truth follows unusually quickly; thanks to the power of retweets and quoted tweets, both are far more inescapable than they are on Facebook.” 
  • With the significant layoff that are affecting Twitter — particularly in the sales organization — it should be no surprise that Twitter COO Adam Bain is leaving. Bain was a long-term employee at Twitter, weathering the revolving door of leadership there, and helping to build a strong ad platform for the company.
  • Some welcome changes to Persiscope: users can broadcast to specific groups, ranks their most-dedicated watchers, and lets viewers login on Periscope.tv to make comments and search.

FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP


SNAP

Collaborative/ Autonomous Economy

TRANSPORTATION

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / BOTS / BLOCKCHAIN

Virtual Reality / Audio

VR/AR

  • Take a virtual reality walk on the moon, thanks to the imagery provided by NASA. A creative use of archival material with VR.
  • Another platform, another outlet for trolls. Virtual reality isn't ready to handle abusive trolls. When we can't handle them in Twitter, what makes us think we can handle them as we're wandering around with goofy goggles strapped to our heads?
  • This ends in the only way it could: a man and a woman were playing with VR in a parking lot (that's right — with the goggles obscuring their view of the real world) when they got hit by a car. No word on whether the driver was also wearing them.

AUDIO

  • Here are seven new podcast facts and statistics for 2016, including how many Americans know about podcasting, how often they listen, and the effect on website traffic. All of these figures are from the 2016 Podcast Advertising Study (download the PDF) from the IAB and Edison Research.  
  • Program of the Week. This week, our recommendation LifeAfter. From GE Podcast Theater and Panoply comes this 10 episode series that follows Ross, a low level employee at the FBI, who spends his days conversing online with his wife Charlie — who died eight months ago. Which begs the question, if you live online, where do you spend eternity? Tune in every Sunday beginning November 13 to find out.” Do you have a program to recommend? Add yours to our Google Sheet: smonty.co/yourpodcasts
  • And don't forget to subscribe to ours via email or oniTunesGoogle PlayStitcherSpreaker or  SoundCloud.

Content / Customer Experience / Influencer Marketing





Privacy / Security / Legal

Measurement / Metrics / Data

  • McKinsey has a step-by-step guide of making your marketing organization more agile. Agile, in the marketing context, means using data and analytics to continuously source promising opportunities or solutions to problems in real time, deploying tests quickly, evaluating the results, and rapidly iterating. The money quote: "Simply put: if you’re not agile all the way, then you’re not agile."
  • Social media analysis predicted a Trump win, according to data collected by BrandsEye.. Looking at the right data is key, and the company based its predictions on "accurately listening to over 27 million social media conversations by almost 3 million authors".

Essential Watching / Listening / Reading


Do you like what you see here? Please subscribe to have trends on digital communications, marketing, technology and business delivered to your inbox each Monday. Between this and the podcast, it's a lot of work. And it's not a team sport, either. If you join us as a patron, it will show how much you value this kind of content.


I speak to groups and advise brands and agencies to help them embrace the fundamentals of human communication in the digital age. You can join these other top-notch clients by reaching out if you'd like to put my experience to work.

Photo credit: Shock by Raquel Baranow (Flickr)

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Episode 18: John Henry Versus the Steam-Powered Robowriters


There are modern-day lessons that craft-driven content marketers can learn from John Henry - an essay by Erik Deckers.

And should we still be relying on polls to predict the outcome of elections in a post-digital world?



Links

Be sure to check out other major stories from the November 14th edition of the newsletter:
  • Twitter has been through a lot lately. But Ben Thompson makes the case for Why Twitter Must Be Saved. “It is Twitter that has reaffirmed itself as the most powerful antidote to Facebook’s algorithm: misinformation certainly spreads via a tweet, but truth follows unusually quickly; thanks to the power of retweets and quoted tweets, both are far more inescapable than they are on Facebook.” 
  • MIT and Uber are teaming up to address the future of urban ride-sharing. The Institute’s Senseable City Lab and the San Francisco-based company recently announced a research collaboration in which they'll explore how ride-sharing networks could impact urban transportation further down the road.
  • This ends in the only way it could: a man and a woman were playing with VR in a parking lot (that's right — with the goggles obscuring their view of the real world) when they got hit by a carNo word on whether the driver was wearing VR goggles too.

 

Credits

Theme song: "The Liberty Bell," by John Philip Sousa, performed by the United States Marine Band and shared under a Creative Commons 3.0 license.
Incidental music: "One More Stripper" by APAMusic, royalty-free license from Pond5.com.
Voice over: Toni Deckers
Subscribe on iTunes - and leave us a review. Also on Google PlayStitcherSpreaker or SoundCloud.
We'd appreciate your support on Patreon.

 

Monday, November 7, 2016

Episode 17: Living in a Post-Factual, Post-Election World




Donald Trump is uber-dependent on the media. And vice versa. What does it mean for advertising?
And we're living in a world where facts don't seem to matter. Has Facebook irretrievably damaged discourse and democracy?




Links

Be sure to check out other major stories from the November 7th edition of the newsletter:

 

Credits

Theme song: "The Liberty Bell," by John Philip Sousa, performed by the United States Marine Band and shared under a Creative Commons 3.0 license.
Incidental music: "One More Stripper" by APAMusic, royalty-free license from Pond5.com.
Voice over: Toni Deckers
Subscribe on iTunes - and leave us a review. Also on Google PlayStitcherSpreaker or SoundCloud.
We'd appreciate your support on Patreon.

 

The Full Monty — November 7, 2016


The Full Monty exposes you to the business intelligence that matters at the top of every week. Please sign up for our email updates to make sure you don't miss a thing. And please share this with your colleagues if you find it valuable.

It's been a long run during the U.S. presidential election. To celebrate, it's the Election Edition of The Full Monty. How the White House is managing its digital transition; the difference between confidence and pride, as Descartes wrote; Facebook's responsibility for news consumption in a post-factual world; the a drop in desktop display ad revenue; why Gannett gave up on tronc and what it means for journalism; the changing role of the CMO; what you can expect to hear from leaders; the changing role of work and our place in it; the misplaced focus on customer acquisition; and more in this week's edition of The Full Monty. Trivia and the poem of the week can be found exclusively on The Full Monty podcast.

Virtually everything you need in business intelligence. If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links — and those that didn't make the cut for publication — by subscribing to The Full Monty Magazine at smonty.co/fullmontymag.

Upcoming Speaking Engagements


Industry



SPONSOR

Get the scoop on what 500 marketers (budgets up to $10 million) believe and how those beliefs influence their behaviors when it comes to hiring and firing agencies just like yours.
Download this FREE 16 page report, full of information, insight and guidance on how to best approach prospects based on the findings.
Some of the results are going to really surprise you.

Platforms

TWITTER / PERISCOPE / VINE

FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP

ALPHABET / GOOGLE

  • YouTube is upgrading its comments feature to give account owners more control. The idea with the new features is to give creators a better way to connect with their community on its service, while making interactions with fans feel more personal.

SNAP

  • In an age when automated technology is creating faster ways to buy, sell and create digital media content, Snapchat is making advertisers wait for its manual review process.
  • Snapchat is on a hiring spree as it prepares for an IPO, raiding everyone from Google and Facebook to old media for talent. If you send them your resume, just make sure it doesn't disappear after 10 seconds.

MICROSOFT / LINKEDIN


Collaborative/ Autonomous Economy

TRANSPORTATION

AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / BOTS / BLOCKCHAIN


Virtual Reality / Audio

VR/AR

AUDIO

  • A new startup, 60dB, named for the volume at which a human speaks and founded by a former Planet Money reporter and two others with backgrounds at Netflix, is being teased as a “service for high-quality, short-form stories.” Users open the app, and it take signals from what subjects and types of stories and even people they’ve indicated they like, and 60dB will refine that feed of stories over time.
  • Radio still accounts for half of music listening; streaming is on the rise, but that accounts for just 17% of time spent with music.

Content / Customer Experience / Influencer Marketing

Privacy / Security / Legal

Essential Watching / Listening / Reading


Do you like what you see here? Please subscribe to have trends on digital communications, marketing, technology and business delivered to your inbox each Monday. Between this and the podcast, it's a lot of work. And it's not a team sport, either. If you join us as a patron, it will show how much you value this kind of content.


I speak to groups and advise brands and agencies to help them embrace the fundamentals of human communication in the digital age. You can join these other top-notch clients by reaching out if you'd like to put my experience to work.

--

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