The Full Monty — January 3, 2017

We're back for 2017, and here to catch you up on some topics you may have missed over the holiday. 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.

Key reports to bookmark; the ad industry needs a new reputation; the Post is investing in journalism; Twitter as a public service; Facebook excels at copying other platforms; Airbnb gets more air; Uber's stunning Q3 loss; understanding autonomous vehicles; everything you need to start a podcast; privacy issues at Google, in the air and at the NYPD; being data-driven vs. data-informed; how to become a creature of habit 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.

Program Note

I'll be off next week, due to personal and business travel. Feel free to browse past issues or check out the Flipboard magazine in my absence.

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

I'll be keynoting at Social Media Marketing World 2017 in San Diego, March 22-24, 2017. See you there.
Also keynoting at the CEO Communications Summit at Concordia University's John Molson School of Business in Montreal, June 13-14, 2017.

Industry

Last year came fast and furious, so you may have missed some key reports, trends and studies. We have a summary of the ones that matter.
Emarketer has updated its estimates for industry ad spending, and increases in spending on video and social media and especially mobile advertising pushed estimates higher for all the industries covered in the report.
The ad industry is in dire need of reputation management. When it comes to trusted professions, advertising practitioners rank near the bottom. Move over, members of Congress and car salesmen, you've got company!

Good journalism requires resources. And The Washington Post is investing in them, as it adds five dozen journalists amidst its profitability.
Pakistan's defense minister made a nuclear threat to Israel after reading a news item which he didn't realize was fake. Fake news claims another victim. Let's just hope it doesn't claim an entire country.
Fact-checking is all the rage, and there's no site like Snopes to serve as a resource, as it is doing for Facebook. An essential asset in a post-factual world.

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

You might be surprised by these five unexpected statistics about social media in 2016, such as:

Twitter has an ardent user base in Japan.
Social commerce makes up 30% of digital sales in Southeast Asia
More than a quarter of the world's population will use messaging apps by 2019.

Here are five updates to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest that you need to know about.

TWITTER / PERISCOPE / VINE

Yes, yes. Twitter is failing — you've heard it before. But rather than looking at the company as a quarterly dividend-maker, how about viewing it as a public service if we really want to save it?
Twitter half-time CEO Jack Dorsey asked users for help with improving Twitter. Here's a short version for how to make it happen: Ship new features consistently, handle abuse, eliminate meaningless metrics, provide tools for every kind of user, and show developers you care about them. When asked about the editing feature, and mimicking Facebook's successful implentation, Jack said "copying others is not what I aspire us to be. We will learn from others. And do it in our own way." Because why copy a successful company (even though he admittedly copied Brian Chesky's ask-users-for-help gambit)? Investors must love the original mediocrity.
Twitter's metrics were inflated by up to 35% due to a bug in the app. They managed to copy Facebook pretty well in the inflated metrics arena, though.
Anthony Messenger, Twitter's chief technical officer is leaving the company, along with VP of product Josh McFarland.
The company is experimenting with breaking news notifications. This could be a powerful tool, and makes the case for Twitter as a public service.
Twitter introduced 360-degree live streaming video. Anyone on Twitter and Periscope can watch 360-degree live video, though currently only select partners can go live in 360 via Periscope.
Vine is still alive, albeit in a pared-down version of itself.

FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP

You've probably already noticed, but Facebook is experimenting with color text-based status updates. None of the engineers there is probably old enough to remember the horror of MySpace. But just as we all figured that video was the best way to get attention, Facebook moved the goalposts again.

No, it really isn't.

Mark Zuckerberg finally admitted that Facebook is in fact a media company — just not a "traditional" media company. See, that wasn't so hard, was it?
Messenger launched a new six-screen group video chat function with selfie masks. Hmm...sounds familiar.
Facebook's imitation game is a game-changer for some competitors, whom it forces out of business or into a new business model. In society, imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but in the digital world, imitation may be the highest form of competitive advantage.

In case you weren't keeping track, here are all of the ways that Facebook tried to stop the growth of Snapchat in 2016.

Meanwhile, there's no stopping Instagram, which now has over 600 million users. That's 100 million new users in just six months.
Over on Instagram, you can now save posts that you'd like to revisit later.
A leaked internal document outlined Facebook's confusing guidelines on hate speech.

Collaborative/ Autonomous Economy

LODGING

Airbnb wants to be your full travel partner as it builds a flight booking tool. Then will it be AirnAirbnb?

TRANSPORTATION

China's Huochebang, an Uber for trucks, is now valued at $1 billion. The global transportation market is hot.
Uber lost $800 million on $1.7 billion in revenue in Q3 2016. The total loss for the year may reach $3 billion. Wrap your head around that. And if you're an investor, wonder how you'll make your return. And be sure to check out the four-part series Can Uber Deliver?:

AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

The White House issued a report in which it determined that 80% of truck, taxi and delivery driver jobs will be automated. The report did not offer a timeline. Our estimate would be within 20 years.
As we approach CES, which has become something of a mini car show, here's a beginners' guide for autonomous vehicles in 2017 and beyond.

Virtual Reality / Audio

VR/AR

VR finally became reality in 2016, and like any birth, it was both messy and magical. Expect more refinement, adoption and applications in 2017.
When you've been immersed in virtual worlds, it can be difficult to return to reality.

AUDIO

As podcast audiences continue to grow, many new listeners will arrive seeking refuge from Facebook’s fake news buffet and Twitter’s ideologue clutter, while expecting the speed of news they’ve became accustomed to from over-the-air radio and television. Enter breaking news analysis on podcasts.
While live video got all of the attention, Facebook has cut out the most difficult part and now we have Live Audio on Facebook which will soon be available to publishers and users. It launched with BBC Radio.
Here's everything you need to know to start a podcast.
Program of the Week: This week, Philip Zannini recommends History According to Bob in which Professor Bob loves to tell stories of the real people behind the often sterile descriptions found in history texts. His conversational style, filled with anecdotes, quips, and humor, bring to life the characters of history. 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 on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spreaker or SoundCloud.

Privacy / Security / Legal

The NYPD raided the wrong family's house (bad) and then posted it on Snapchat (worse). Kind of makes you wonder just how bad all of the stuff is that they don't post.
Travel booking systems are notoriously lax in their security requirements, and thus the codes printed on boarding passes and luggage tags for 90% of flights lets hackers access travelers' personal data. Happy flying!
Social media use is growing, with 80% of Americans using it daily. But 96% of them don't trust social networks with their data.
It's not surprising then that Consumer Watchdog and Privacy Rights Clearinghouse have called Google a "serial privacy violator."
When it took over WhatsApp, Facebook told EU regulators it wouldn't be able to match users' profiles to their phone numbers with WhatsApp's data. It turns out this wasn't true, and the EU may be levying a fine against Facebook.
Germany may pass a law fining social networks for publishing fake news. There's still no word on what lying politicians should have to pay, however.

Measurement / Metrics / Data

A good metric changes the way you behave. Or, the difference between data-driven and data-informed.
The Media Rating Council is in talks with Facebook to audit its metrics following a series of high-profile admissions that Facebook had gotten a number of ad-related metrics wrong.

Essential Watching / Listening / Reading

The case for ensuring your managers are digitally fluent: "A C-Level person in the 1970s who had never watched television, or a manager in the 1940s who had not used a telephone, or a business leader in the 1990s who had never purchased a product online would have a difficult time understanding how these technologies affected their business."
If you want to start down the path of rebuilding trust for your industry or your organization and you want better self-governance, try this: start with a pause. Slowing down, taking the time to reflect, and assessing the consequences of your actions may help you.
And while we're reflecting at the beginning of the year, it's a great time to build new habits, and both Aristotle and William James knew that humans are creatures of habit.
Speaking of habits, why not shrug off the habit of denigrating Millennials or falling for the same old untruths? Here are Six Things That Weren't True About Millennials in 2016 and Will Probably Continue Being Untrue in 2017.

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. Won't you consider supporting us?

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:
--

Tuesday, January 3, 2017