The EU rebukes Google, we finally get to see the net neutrality rules, the troubling growth of ad blocking, Yahoo prepares a new product launch, statistics on teens and Facebook, Twitter's data grab, LinkedIn's largest acquisition yet, Snapchat sneakily lures Uber and Lyft engineers, the lawyer that wants to curtail the collaborative economy, a free webinar on Google Analytics for communicators, hiring data artists, BuzzFeed's origins in the 1920s and more, it's This Week in Digital.
A roundup of relevant links affecting our industry.
Each week, we 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. Please subscribe - either to our full feed or just to this newsletter to keep up to date on developments.
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Industry
- The Federal Register published the FCC's net neutrality rules, the first time the public has seen the rules in their entirety - two months after they were approved. (LA Times)
- As India debates the merits of net neutrality, Facebook's Internet.org is suffering as many media companies are pulling out of the initiative amid concerns about how online traffic is treated. (Quartz)
- The growth of ad blocking concerns publishers and the IAB as Internet users become more savvy and adopt new blocking tools. (WSJ CMO Today)
- Social network advertising spending continues to rise; in 2015, the global total is projected to be $23.68 billion - growing to nearly $36 billion by 2017. Canada and the United States are projected to increase their spending by 30% this year alone, with a per-user spend that is more than double that of Western Europe. (eMarketer)
Platforms
- The European Union is charging Google with antitrust violations stemming from its search practices that favor Google sites over non-Google sites. For a longer discussion about what Google stands for, see the final section below. (CNBC)
- Google is in talks to allow advertisers to target ads in search results at their existing customers, using email as the key identifier and giving it a leg up against Facebook's Custom Audiences feature.
- Yahoo
- Yahoo is preparing to launch its first product in 32 months - the first product that Marissa Mayer has overseen during her tenure there. The mobile app will "combine live and recorded video and text." (Business Insider)
- Microsoft and Yahoo renewed their search alliance, with an enhanced search experience across platforms and a change in sales staffs - Microsoft growing its and Yahoo shrinking its. (TechCrunch)
- Yahoo was rumored to be in talks to buy Foursquare - wait, no it wasn't. (TechCrunch and re/code)
- Branded videos on Facebook are prohibited unless supported by advertising. Some entities are skirting the rules by selling packages to marketers to guarantee views, but cutting Facebook advertising out of the process. With product placement becoming more prominent, this will become an increasingly gray area, difficult to determine where a primary or third party message begins and ends. (WSJ CMO Today)
- Remember the canard that teens are leaving Facebook? According to the Pew Research Center, Facebook is still the primary destination for 71% of teens. Coming in at #2 is Instagram - which happens to be owned by Facebook. (re/code)
- Twitter has updated its trends feature on mobile, showing descriptions with each trend. (Twitter)
- When unregistered users reach the Twitter homepage, they'll be greeted by sample tweets to boost their engagement, thanks to a new redsign. (re/code)
- Twitter has cut off Firehose access to DataSift (and other third party data resellers) as it steps up its own efforts to sell big data analytics services. (DataSift and TechCrunch)
- LinkedIn has always been the most professional social network, most commonly associated with hiring and recruiting. But now with its $1.5 billion acquisition of Lynda.com, LinkedIn is moving into the training and development area as well. (ZDNet)
- With the launch of Elevate, LinkedIn is helping companies empower employees by curating content and making sharing easier. (LinkedIn blog)
- Seems like an answer to Why No One Uses the Corporate Social Network. (HBR)
- Periscope / Meerkat
- After what has seemed an epochal wait, Meerkat has released an Android app. (The Next Web)
- Thinking of livestreaming Game of Thrones? That could result in your account being closed. (Mashable)
- Is Twitter pushing celebrities to use Periscope over Meerkat? (TechCrunch)
- Snapchat is no longer selling Brand Stories, its original ad unit, and is "fine tuning" its offerings. Could it be that too many brands found the non-negotiable $750,000 price tag too high? (re/code)
Collaborative Economy
- Uber's biggest rival in India, Ola, has raised $400M and will expand to 200 cities by the end of the year. Given public concern about Uber's safety in that country, Ola may have a good shot at dominating the market. (TechCrunch)
- Ride is a new ridesharing app that aims to make your commute cheaper, easier and better for the environment - and it was launched by Uber's former CTO. (Business Insider)
- Snapchat is creatively using its own app's geo-filters to poach engineers from Uber and Airbnb. Ads pop up only when users are near the companies' headquarters, with a message that reads "Is this place driving you mad?" (Forbes)
- A Boston lawyer specializing in worker misclassification lawsuits may be the collaborative economy's worst nightmare. At stake is whether drivers for Uber, Lyft and the like are employees or independent contractors. (Fusion
- Want to know how much Americans already rely on Uber? See it in this one chart. (Business Insider)
Content
- Evidence as to why real-time marketing won't work - aside from the fact that most brands simply don't know how to work in real time - and why responsive marketing is a better alternative. (Content Marketing Institute)
- If you're looking for a platform that gives you more flexibility with your content than the typical social networks, try Medium. Here's a great resource on How to Use Medium: A Complete Guide for Marketers. (Buffer)
- Did you ever wonder about the difference between social media and content marketing? It boils down to location (social network vs. website), length of content and objectives (brand awareness vs. demand generation), among other things. (Content Marketing Institute)
Have you got your ticket yet for Content Marketing World 2015 in September? Thousands attend this signature event for the content marketing industry - you can register here.
[Disclosure: affiliate link]
Audio
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation has claimed victory as the US Patent Office has invalidated the so-called "podcasting patent" held by Personal Audio, LLC - the company that famously sued Adam Carolla and other high-profile podcasters. (EFF)
- The relative inexpensive costs of podcasts may do to advertising what Uber has done to transportation. (Forbes)
- Spotify is close to raising $400M on an $8.4 billion valuation in its seventh round of funding. Currently 70% of its revenue is paid to artists in the form of royalties. (MarketWatch)
Metrics / Measurement / Data
- If you'd like to get up to speed on Google Analytics as an ally for earned media, my colleague Christopher Penn will be hosting a free webinar on Tuesday, April 21. (SHIFT Communications)
- With the heavy focus on data and analytics in communications and marketing, it's tempting to hire the brainiest analyst that you can find. However, insights are more valuable than data, and you should be looking for data artists rather than data scientists - individuals who can apply critical thinking to their analysis. (Ad Exchanger)
- Having a theory before you test it against data is how the scientific process works. But it doesn't work when you're unwilling to change your opinion in the face of facts. (SHIFT Communications)
Privacy / Security / Legal
- Facebook is facing a class action lawsuit in Austria regarding privacy and the tracking of personal data. (The Guardian)
- Amazon is cracking down on false reviews, filing a lawsuit against sites that have sold fake positive reviews. (GeekWire)
- Despite Facebook promoting the erosion of personal privacy, Mark Zuckerberg should protect his own privacy - and so should you, Dave Pell argues. (Quartz)
When You Have the Time: Essential Watching / Listening / Reading
- If you'd like to learn the secret of BuzzFeed, you have to go back about 90 years - to the founding of Time and Reader's Digest and the reformatting of Collier's, Liberty and others. Then as now, technological and cultural change was driving the way we find and consume news. The Eternal Return of BuzzFeed is a longform piece and is a fascinating history of the medium. (The Atlantic)
- Danny Sullivan originally wrote this piece over two years ago, but as the nature of the online world has shifted and content has become a central conversation piece, it's probably more relevant today than ever before: How Google Went From Search Engine to Content Destination. (Marketing Land)
Image credit: Dilbert
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