It was a social earnings bonanza this week, no Apple Pay for CVS and Rite Aid customers, a data breach for alternative payment system CurrenC, when real-time isn't really real, personnel changes at Twitter, a major overhaul for Flipboard, the disruptive and economic impact of the sharing economy, your analytics lesson of the week, taking brand publishers seriously, optimism and ignorance, getting others to listen to you and more, it's This Week in Digital.
A roundup of relevant links affecting our industry.
Each week, I compose a newsletter that includes a series of links about current events and trends in the worlds of technology, business, digital communications and marketing in order to keep leaders up to date on changes, newsworthy items and content that might be useful in your job. And now you have the option of just subscribing to this newsletter if you wish.
If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links by subscribing to the all-new This Week in Digital Magazine.
Industry
- While Apple Pay launched last week, CVS and Rite Aid wasted no time in opting out of the system. (USA Today)
- It turns out that they and a number of other retailers were prohibited from accepting Apple Pay because of their long-standing contract with the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) and its QR code-based system called CurrentC. (Fast Company) [QR codes? That should work out swell.]
- And then CurrentC was hacked, with email addresses of its members acquired by third-party hackers. (Business Insider)
- Taco Bell decided to go dark on social media this week in an effort to promote its new mobile app. It was wildly successful, as it hit the top 25 most downloaded apps on Tuesday. (Marketing Land)
- Audio continues its rise as Deezer buys Stitcher, adding some 35,000 radio talk shows and podcasts to its network. (TechCrunch)
- Harvard Business Review has been highly successful with social, often beating larger rivals. It's proof that social can be a strong tool for a targeted publication. (Digiday)
- Keep watching, as HBR.org has launched a rebranded site. (HBR)
- It's funny. As brands continue to focus on real-time marketing (and here are some tips on rethinking real-time from Think with Google), they're missing the opportunity to engage, such as JetBlue helping a customer like locate a lost book (Ann Handley). With social messages to brands increasing by 77%, some five out of 6 messages go unanswered. (AllTwitter)
- Kind of ironic, with so many brands focusing on real-time, isn't it?
Platforms
- On its quarterly earnings call, the social giant declared its most successful quarter to date, with $3.2 billion in revenue, including a 64% increase in advertising revenue. Mobile also played an important role, with mobile daily active users seeing an increase of 39% and mobile ad revenue accounting for 66% of the overall ad revenue. (Inside Facebook) [IMAGE]
- Shares fell in after-hours trading because of something Facebook said: "We plan on 2015 being a significant investment year." (Quartz)
- According to Shareaholic, in Q3 Facebook drove the most traffic to sites, accounting for 22.36% of overall traffic referrals. (AllFacebook)
- Facebook is increasingly becoming to the news business what Amazon is to publishing. And rather than sending traffic to news outlets, Facebook might be looking to host the news on its own site, with a revenue split with the publishers. (New York Times)
- Twitter reported Q3 earnings, showing a 114% increase in revenue to $361 million against a subscriber growth of 23%. (Twitter)
- Despite meeting Wall Street's expectations, the market still wants more. (MSN Money)
- As one might expect, there were some management changes to affect that: Jeremy Gordon, Twitter’s head of product engineering, and Adam Kinney, head of the analytics group have left; and VP of Product Daniel Graf has been demoted after 6 months on the job. (re/code)
- IBM and Twitter are teaming up to incorporate Twitter data into IBM tools, solutions and consulting services to help businesses make more informed decisions. (Twitter blog)
- Twitter launched business.twitter.com to help brands grow on the platform. (AllTwitter)
- The TwitPic saga is over, as the mother bird has brought them back into the nest. (Business Insider)
- LinkedIn reported Q3 earnings, showing a growth of 45% in revenue, 28% user growth, and integration of B2B advertising platform Bizo. (AdExchanger)
- Instagram is increasingly important to marketers - their video ads debuted this week, with entries from Disney, Activision, Lancome and Banana Republic. For added measure, here are 14 facts every marketer should know about Instagram. (AdWeek)
- Tumblr - no stranger to looping animated gifs - is taking a page from Facebook and has rolled out video ads that autoplay. (Read Write Web)
- This is huge: Flipboard has launched the third generation of its popular digital magazine app, with over 34,000 topics and a 7 a.m. curated update called The Daily Edition. (Inside Flipboard)
- Related: follow me on Flipboard or subscribe to my magazines.
Collaborative Economy
- Uber, Airbnb, Lyft are names that are now mainstream. How did we get here? A look at the timeline of the collaborative economy. (Web Strategy)
- The challenge for traditional companies is that people don't want as much "stuff" around anymore. (Wired)
- Amazon has opened Kindle Scout, a crowdsourced publishing program. (The Next Web)
- The Internet of Things may seem like a fanciful world of talking toasters and smart refrigerators, but there are sectors where the Internet of Things really matters. (Harvard Business Review)
- The technologies and mobile apps of the social media and digital world that make up the collaborative economy are slowly but surely disrupting traditional revenue. Here are the data. (Jeremiah Owyang)
Metrics / Measurement / Big Data
- Content powerhouse BuzzFeed is beefing up its already strong data team with the acquisition of Tornado Labs, founded by the co-founder and former CTO of Bit.ly. (GigaOm)
- There's a whole world of downstream engagement with your content that isn't being measured. It's known as dark social. (Digiday)
- Your analytics must-read of the week: understanding position, velocity and acceleration. The three will allow you to turn data into insights. (SHIFT Communications)
Legal / HR
- AT&T is being sued by the U.S. government for reducing the data speeds of certain customers with unlimited data. (Huffington Post)
- Here's one HR leader's thoughts on why people leave your company. (Quartz)
- If that's the case, you might want to look at the list of the 100 most desirable employers. (Business Insider)
Content
- Thought leadership is important. But there's no need to be pedantic. So how do you write thought-leadership pieces that get published and don't make editors want to cry? (Fast Company)
- Brand publishing doesn't get the attention it deserves from the journalism industry. The Columbia Journalism Review argues that it's time to start taking brand publishers seriously. (Contently)
When You Have Time: Essential Reading / Listening / Watching
- In a bout of serendipity with the Apple Pay launch, Tom Webster and Tim Hayden have released their book The Mobile Commerce Revolution (Amazon). It's an incredibly insightful dive into the behaviors and societal changes that led us to where we are. (Brand Savant)
- And in case you'd like more hard data, here are the numbers behind the world of mobile. Most interesting is the time spent across devices, as seen below. (re/code) [IMAGE]
- Marc Andreessen on the power of optimism. (New York Magazine)
- But don't let that optimism turn into ignorance. According to psychologists, the trouble with ignorance is that is feels so much like expertise. (Pacific & Standard)
- Julian Treasure is a five-time TED speaker and is well versed in the art of speaking and sound. In this 10-minute talk, he has simple tips to help you talk so that people want to listen. (TED)
Photo credit: Scott Swigart (Flickr)
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