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This week: Facebook goes for a land grab; why the future of the news belongs to social; texting during movies; Tinder for journalists; Twitter is more influential than traffic indicates; the continued importance of email and newsletters; Snapchat may not be for you; Lyft ups its game; a diagnosis for what ails the radio industry (if they'll take their medicine); why customer service mostly sucks; tech doesn't get marketing; even real-time data is too slow; the need for the return of the Perfect Squelch; grammarians are misunderstood; the Zignal Labs chart of the week, our weekly trivia challenge, podcast pick and more.
This week: Facebook goes for a land grab; why the future of the news belongs to social; texting during movies; Tinder for journalists; Twitter is more influential than traffic indicates; the continued importance of email and newsletters; Snapchat may not be for you; Lyft ups its game; a diagnosis for what ails the radio industry (if they'll take their medicine); why customer service mostly sucks; tech doesn't get marketing; even real-time data is too slow; the need for the return of the Perfect Squelch; grammarians are misunderstood; the Zignal Labs chart of the week, our weekly trivia challenge, podcast pick and more.
Virtually everything you need in business intelligence. If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links — and additional ones — by subscribing to The Full Monty Magazine at smonty.co/fullmontymag.
If you're around at 9:30 pm ET on Sunday evenings, you can get a preview of a couple of topics from the week's via the live video on Facebook. If not, you can always catch the replay here:
Join me
- Big announcement coming tomorrow about Scott Monty Strategies that you may want to stay tuned for.
- I'll be giving a keynote address at CeBIT Australia in Sydney on May 3, 2016. If you're Down Under on the days around this time, let me know — maybe we can meet up.
Industry
- Google, Facebook and other tech companies say they aren’t news organizations, but the claim is becoming increasingly implausible. Social media companies are becoming a primary source of news for many people across the globe. Four in 10 Americans get their news from Facebook and one in 10 get their news from Twitter; with Millennials, it's significantly higher. It's pretty clear that they should just subscribe to this newsletter.
- Related from Wired: Facebook Has Seized the Media, and That's Bad News for Everyone But Facebook.
- Four large U.S. newspaper groups are joining forces to create a national advertising network focusing on emerging digital platforms. Gannett, Tribune Publishing, McClatchy and Hearst are creating Nucleus Marketing Solutions in an effort to pool resources for innovation in digital strategy and print ads. Print ads? There's some self-preservation if we've ever seen it. This has been tried before, but the 'innovation' just wasn't happening quickly enough. Will it stick this time?
- An executive at AMC Theaters said he'd be open to experimenting with theaters in which texting was allowed. While Gen Z attendees might be thrilled, he clarified that it would not be a blanket change. It's a good thing, because doing so would have given Sean Parker's new venture The Screening Room — a streaming rental startup that would give viewers access to new movies at home for $50 — a head start.
- It's time to admit it: we have no idea what's being said when we see emoji.
- At least the new Facebook Reactions have given us a better sense of judging sentiment online.
- Companies need directors with broad and deep technological expertise, so get ready. Your next board director should be a geek. We suppose nerds, dweebs and dorks need not apply though.
- UPitch is a new app that's being billed as Tinder for journalists. We forget: are you supposed to swipe left or swipe right?
- Most companies are operating without a reasonable expectation that a crisis may harm their brand. The Edison Research study found that while most executives are comfortable with building a reputation, the true cost of reputational damage is often underestimated because it doesn’t always consider the full extent of the corrections that are needed.
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Some of the results are going to really surprise you.
Platforms
- Facebook — this is the second in as many weeks in which we've had a flurry of announcements from Facebook. Stay with us.
- Facebook is much more than a social network. Now responsible for 22% of the the internet time Americans spend on mobile devices, it is the 6th most valuable public company and is a technology company that is incessantly embedding itself into people's daily lives.
- Part of Facebook's strategy to dominate the internet is to simply give away technology. From APIs to hardware, combined with its incredible scale, will put Facebook in the driver's seat.
- Everything that was announced at f8:
- Live video coming to drones and TV broadcast feeds and live streaming cameras via API support.
- Businesses will be able to conduct a variety of activities through chatbots in the Messenger platform, which is now open to developers. Facebook has even given them a guide on how to build bots for Messenger. Here are all of the bots currently known. I, for one, welcome our new bot overlords.
- They'll also be teaching bots what to say by using AI.
- Instant Articles are now available to any publisher. This means you can publish updates directly on Facebook, eliminating the need to visit your website.
- A 'Save to Facebook' button that will work across the web to support the feature that's already been used by 250 million users a month.
- A button for sharing quotes directly in the News Feed from any site. Between this and the three previous entries above, you can see how Facebook and the internet are becoming increasingly blurred.
- Messenger will also get video chat and Dropbox support.
- In hardware, Facebook introduced a 360-degree video camera with 17 different cameras. Its video will be viewable on Gear VR, Oculus, and inside the Facebook app. It is making the hardware available via open source on Github this summer.
- Finally, Facebook announced antennas for improving internet access in urban and rural areas.
- Ticketmaster and Eventbrite will begin selling tickets through Facebook.
- Here's one for the customer service fans: with everyone having access to live video, it has the power to become the new angry Twitter.
- Yahoo
- The Daily Mail is considering bidding for Yahoo's core business. Interesting. We've had a telco like Verizon and now we've got a publisher. There's no telling where this may end.
- As we know, Twitter is inextricably tied to the news industry; however, it doesn't drive much traffic to news sites. Maybe the editors are too good at writing headlines?
- If you want to grow your email list, you can use Twitter cards.
- Periscope now lets you draw on top of your live video.
- An absolutely fascinating use of Twitter: to live-tweet the events of the historic voyage and sinking of the Titanic. However, this wasn't the first time.
- Snapchat
- Snapchat now has 3D stickers that can be pinned to objects in a video and move with the object.
- Don't believe the hype. Snapchat isn't for everyone.
- But just in case it's for you, my username is wsmonty. I'm still getting the hang of it and need to post more frequently, but give it a shot.
- If you're ignoring LinkedIn, you may be hurting your career.
- Ev Williams says that Twitter and Facebook serve up "junk food" content to users. The answer? Why the wholesome and nutritious content on Medium, of course.
- Remember the anonymish apps like Secret and Whisper? The inherent problem with them is that for an entertainment product to survive a hype cycle it has to provide unique utility, evolve with its customers, and foster communities.
Trivia question: New legislation in New York will subject drivers to a test for what? *
Collaborative / Autonomous Economy
- The collaborative economy is growing, and not just for the young and the wealthy. The largest category of on-demand spending is online marketplaces, with spending now at $36 billion annually.
- Transportation
- US-ride-hailing service Lyft is gaining on Uber, its biggest rival. How are they doing it? By spending uber amounts of money.
- Lyft and Chinese service Didi Kuaidi launched the beta of its cross-border partnership in what will soon be a network of connected country-by-country services. The partnership allows Chinese customers of Did Kuaidi to use Lyft when they're in the US.
- San Francisco will require Lyft and Uber drivers to get a $91 business license if they spend more than seven days driving in the city.
- Lodging
- Airbnb has acquired a team of bitcoin and blockchain experts. Identity can become immutable, meaning more trusted transactions.
Audio
- Tom Webster breaks down the diagnosis for the radio industry. In brief, it has a spot load problem; what it does to address it is another thing.
- You may know the name Norm Pattiz from the legendary Westwood One radio network. Now Norm is running PodcastOne, the world's largest podcast network.
- Tom returns with a perspective on Audible's growing podcast business and why it may mean the end of podcasts.
- Program of the Week. This week's recommendation is from Nicole Bullock: WNYC's Death, Sex and Money. Do you have a program to recommend? Add yours to our Google Sheet: smonty.co/yourpodcasts
Content / Customer Experience
- Everything the tech world says about marketing is wrong. The biggest problem in marketing in the tech world today is that too many marketers do not know the first thing about marketing. We don't agree with everything in this article, but there are many points worth pondering — particularly about understanding what each marketing or communications tactic can do.
- From his spectacular book Hug Your Haters, Jay Baer brings us 23 statistics that show why customer service mostly sucks.
- Branded content in Facebook must be disclosed by influencers. Here are six ways it changes the influencer marketing game.
- The newsletter: it's the most important part of content marketing.
- Don't forget to check out this video of how to grow your email list with Twitter cards.
- Email is a significant source for Facebook advertising data.
Privacy / Security / Legal
- Microsoft is suing the US government for the right to tell its customers when a federal agency is looking at their emails.
- In its transparency report, Uber says that it shared 14 million users' data with the government. The goal is to show that the government is overreaching in its efforts.
- There may be a bigger story behind short URLs. Brute force hacking by researchers gained access to Google and Microsoft short URLs to spy on people.
Measurement / Metrics / Data
- If you're a SurveyMonkey customer, good news: they've added mobile analytics to their expertise, meaning that they'll be able to provide large-scale samples about how consumers use their mobile devices.
- The best way to predict gentrification may be through social media. Censuses give a poor impression of the socioeconomic standing of a neighborhood. Meanwhile, Twitter and Foursquare checkins create a more realistic sense of diversity.
- Real-time data isn't fast enough any more. Tim Hayden gets into the ins and outs of analytics and marketing, and where it's all headed.
- Try Facebook's Audience Overlap for improved targeting and a smarter spend of your Facebook advertising dollars.
- US healthcare executives love to measure traffic (aka 'hits'). More than they care about patient feedback. And they're dealing with the triple threat of measurement woes: lack of budget, lack of integration and measuring content effectiveness. As Katie Paine has often said, it should be H.I.T.S. — How Idiots Track Success.
Chart of the Week
Brought to you by Zignal Labs, a realtime, cross media analytics platform (also a client of Scott Monty Strategies).
You might follow professional sports. If so, you may have heard something of the Golden State Warriors, as they closed the regular NBA season with a record number of wins. Part of their success can be tied to point guard Steph Curry, who leads the NBA in 3-point shooting seasons. And naturally, when he gets interviewed after the final game and his wife manages to get into the shot, the online conversation reflects it. Here's a word cloud for the Warriors over the last three days:
* Answer to the trivia question above:
- We're all familiar with the Breathalyzer. Now, New York is proposing legislation for the Textalyzer — meaning that drivers pulled over for erratic driving must turn over their phones to be tested for activity during the time of the infraction.
When You Have the Time: Essential Watching / Listening / Reading
- Here's a good question: if work is becoming increasingly digital, why do we still go to the office? It's gotta be the free coffee, right?
- Meanwhile Ford Motor Company is doubling down on spending time at the office as it is redesigning its Dearborn campus for a high tech feel commensurate with "a mobility and automotive company" as it now bills itself.
- If you've ever wondered what it takes to be a writer, Kurt Vonnegut himself will walk you through it via an animated version of his NYU lecture.
- Do you have a bad habit you'd like to break? You'll find some inspiration in one of these TED talks on breaking bad habits and forming better ones.
- As part of a series on the rising global phenomenon of online harassment, the Guardian commissioned research into the 70 million comments left on its site since 2006 and discovered that eight of the 10 most abused writers are women. This is a must-read, if not only for the facts, then for the amazing presentation of the data.
- In this day and age of trolling, SHOUTING and otherwise embarrassing behavior online, it makes one long for the gentility of the Perfect Squelch, when insults were hurled not like bricks, but with creativity and aplomb, making the recipient wonder if he had even been insulted.
- A study shows that people who correct grammar aren't as nice as everyone else. Grammar Nazis have earned their reputation. But no one likes being corrected; even Winston Churchill, who was taken to task for ending a sentence with a preposition, said "that is the sort of errant pedantry up with which I will not put."
- However, it seems as if the copy editor of The New Yorker — aka 'The Comma Queen — is a perfectly pleasant person.
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I speak to groups and advise brands and agencies to help them embrace the fundamentals of human communication in the digital age. Please get in touch if you'd like to put my experience and digital smarts to work on a project, to consult with your group, or to address an audience at your next corporate or industry event.
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