Quick Takes: 5/20/13

Brian Steinberg hits a home run in his first column for Variety (which desperately needs to fix its RSS feed) as he talks about how the media, whose business models depend on viewers’ full attention, have been simultaneously making it clear that the viewers’ full attention is not necessarily. They’ve been doing this by including ads in the programming (and programming in their ads sometimes) and through encouraging people to have social media conversations at the same time they’re supposed to be watching a show.

There’s so much in this story about how LinkedIn has added to its original or curated editorial mix that can be learned from if you run or participate in some sort of publishing program it’s a bit overwhelming. Just a treasure trove of moments that had me bouncing over to Evernote to jot down an idea, question or action item.

Likewise this “thinking out loud” post from Paul Smalera about how content editors can’t be blind to the analytics, technical requirements and other factors that can influence what content is published, how it appears and more.

Fan activation is something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently and the WSJ has a story that looks at how a couple of fashion brands have begun sourcing photos from everyday folks – albeit still often young and attractive ones – and incorporating them into their online marketing. This is actually exemplified in a separate but similar story about how one particular company tapped popular Tumblr publishers to model their clothes, photos which were then aggregated on the company’s own Tumblr profile.

If ever there was a story that exemplified how some companies see social networks simply as content engines it’s this one about National CineMedia working in various ways to leverage Twitter and Foursquare information. Not only will NCM produce original content based on Twitter trends but it will ultimately sell ads against that data while also selling local business-oriented ads based on Foursquare check-in data. And most all of this is also being utilized across web and mobile platforms operated not just by NCM but also theater partner Regal Entertainment. Super interesting example of four or five different convergence points happening at the same time across platforms.

The hashtag has evolved beyond Twitter

At a recent event a Twitter VP made the case for that platform still being the primary home of the hashtag, despite the fact that it’s also in use on other networks like Instagram and Google+. And Facebook just non-announced it is looking to bring hashtags to that platform in an effort to bring some immediacy there.

While my own thinking on the use of hashtags on status networks has evolved over the years from “never, ever, ever” to “I get where they’re useful for specific things, though most people still don’t understand them and therefore have a tendency toward overuse” it’s obvious that they are becoming more and more mainstream. A plethora of companies, whether they’re consumer-packaged goods manufacturers, movie studios, TV networks or just about anything else have seen their value as rallying points for audience conversations. So you see them in Super Bowl ads, in movie trailers, as additional “bugs” in the corner of your screen as you’re watching “New Girl” and elsewhere.

But what’s lacking is a consisten experience, and the widespread adoption of hashtags by multiple platforms could actually do more to dissuade companies from making them part of their marketing efforts. After all, if it’s not clear what experience I as a marketer am asking the audience to participate in then I’m less likely to make that ask. Let’s think this out:

I, watching TV, see a moment on X show that I’d like to discuss with my friend. Since the producers have helpfully suggested a hashtag to use in that discussion I go over to Twitter and do so. But while there is other conversation happening I don’t see any of my friends doing so. That’s because they’re over on Facebook talking about it. I missed out on an opportunity because the hashtag is now universal currency and in this case the call to action didn’t include “Discuss on Y platform” specificity.

I’ll admit that’s a bit of a straw man argument. But I don’t think that makes it any less likely. There are two ways to avoid this fate that come to mind:

1) An open hashtag standard. Yes, this might sound ridiculous. But the best possible user experience is that for clicking on a linked hashtag to take them to a central repository of updates on that topic that is platform-agnostic, pulling from everywhere to present the entire conversation regardless of where it’s taking place. This…is not likely.

2) An emphasis toward on-domain aggregation. So as a follow-up to the initial call to action to use a particular hashtag in the first place there’s another one telling people to head to moviestudio.com/#hashtag to view the entire conversation. This is more likely, though considering the advertising-centric motives behind hashtag adoption by status networks it’s not going to be their favorite option.

Interestingly, a service like Storify could be well positioned to take advantage of either scenario. It’s great at aggregation across networks and the “Stories” that are created are easily embedded elsewhere on the web. And, with what would admittedly be a lot of work, it could leverage its position as a platform-agnostic aggregator to pioneer some form of open standard.

Hashtags seem to have caught on, despite the protests of those who feel they’re an ugly and annoying intrusion onto the user experience. If more platforms are going to start using them then that user experience needs to become much better and more intuitive or this will be just another social media fad whose time comes and goes.

Visuals increase Twitter engagement rates

Not surprising that putting a photo or other image in a Twitter update increases engagement with that update significantly. It’s the same logic that applies on Facebook and is the reason Pinterest and Instagram have such high engagement rates: Visuals pop.

The consistent display of multimedia updates has been one of the driving factors behind Twitter’s clamping down on the ecosystem of apps in the last six months or so. It wants photos and videos to display in a uniform way for readers since it knows that people like visuals and it wants to encourage that as it looks to attract more media company attention.

Quick Takes: 2/13/13

Universities are using Tumblr as a way to reach and communicate with prospective and current students. It’s an interesting example of not just using the right platform to go out and meet your target audience but also using the right content mix to appeal to them in their own way.

I’m intrigued by this Shareholder Letter from betaworks, the company behind the revamped digg, more for its form and structure than for its actual contents. I love the way the material is presented either in one big helping or in smaller chunks for easier navigation and being able to surf to what’s most relevant to you personally.

YouTube is reported to be exploring introducing paid subscriptions for select content partners. This could be an interesting experiment as we see what producers are able to make micro-payments (the reported price for a subscription would be $1-5 a month, which would then be split with YouTube) work on a sustainable level. I’m not sure this is the right model but it does show YouTube is getting more and more serious about being a home for professional-grade video material.

While I instinctively don’t like the idea of short-term social media executions that have end dates at which point they’re abandoned, the story of why the NYT launched an app that specifically for the 2012 elections and which is now defunct is an interesting one and I actually can’t fault their logic.

I’m not surprised by the finding that more people follow brands’ social media updates than actively visit the social profiles of those brands. After all, it’s so much easier to scan whatever shows up in news feeds than it is to actually visit the profile unless the reader feels like they’re missing out on too much. So, as is almost always the case, it’s up to the brand publisher to optimize for that news feed in whatever way they can.

A good overview of the current state of the social enterprise solutions over at RWW that makes it clear there’s still a long way to go to get social media baked into the organizational communication structure. As it states, directives don’t really work and there will likely be some belligerent hold-outs. It has to happen organically. We’ve been hearing for years now that as young people enter the work world they’ll bring the social tools they have grown up using with them. But that’s still a ways off as they can’t just come in and change right off the bat but instead find themselves stifled by existing infrastructures.

Regional definitions of hate speech are just one of the issues Twitter (and Facebook, and YouTube and all the other companies who would like to pretend they operate as dumb networks people can do with as they will while the company turns a blind eye) is going to have to deal with in the very near future.

If you ask me the very premise behind this particular bit of advice is flawed: It’s not that you need to start thinking about your social media postings in the same way that you think about longer, more substantive content. It’s that if you’re not already doing so you’re in a lot of trouble.That story also says you should respond to every question that comes in via Twitter or Facebook or blog comments within 24 hours. That’s great advice if you’re not talking about any sort of scale or if you have a team of a dozen or more members who can do so.

There’s a fantastic story at PBS MediaShift that I’ve been pouring over, extracting one good insight after another, about copyright law as it applies to images published to social media platforms and how that law does, on occasion, come into conflict with the terms of service of those platforms themselves. David Holmes at PandoDaily points out, though, that nature of how people share images not just on one platform but across many – Tumblr posts that are then linked to on Twitter and so on – the conflicting terms of service have the potential to make issues of copyright even messier.

Young people and old people are going to see movies in theaters pretty regularly but those in the middle, aged 25-54, aren’t doing so as often according to a recent Nielsen study of American’s movie-going habits. Gender differences aren’t all that pronounced but there are some interesting numbers in the study on race and ethnicity.

Foursquare has become the latest social media service/platform to launch an app that’s specifically designed for business usage. It joins Facebook (there are likely others but I can’t think of them) as a social network that allows business owners or managers to access a completely unique experience that’s separate from what the end user sees. This, I think, is going to only become more common as more apps/networks realize that the corporate managers they are trying to attract the attention of – especially when it comes to managing some sort of paid promotion or ad.

I think the most shocking thing to me about the closing of Everyblock by MSNBC is the suddenness of it. There was no one month, week or day notice that this was coming, something that smacks of the kind of corporate decision making that is antithetical to community-focused ventures.

There’s a lot of hay being made about a study that seems to show Facebook’s grip on the population and their free time is starting to slip. Personally I don’t think this is as much a leading indicator as much as I think it’s a reflection of the desire to see Facebook slip from its current pedestal. That’s not to say some of the behavior and thinking cited in the study isn’t real – Tumblr and some other platforms are definitely taking its audience – but I don’t think the “need to take a break” emotion is one that needs to be overly analyzed.

Let’s be clear that the reason Twitter is buying Bluefin is that the status update platform is in desperate need of an analytics package and obviously decided to buy their way into one rather than build one out itself. As it looks to rely more and more on its ad and other promoted products to power financial growth it’s going to need to provide numbers that people can bank on. Even outside of paid promotions if Twitter wants to attract more and more attention from major media companies it’s going to need to show those companies what the value of that attention has been and is going to be.

Interesting that about.me has severed ties with Aol and is once again an independent company. I love it when a company likes this gets back to its roots. Not that corporate ownership can’t be a good thing in a lot of ways but it sometimes can stifle innovation and distract  a company from its core goal, which is to make a good product that people find useful.

Filmakers use social tools to build buzz for their movies

I don’t have a ton to add to it, but this story about how independent filmmakers are turning to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in order to build buzz for their movies is a good one, with lots of good nuggets of advice and thinking. Definitely worth reading.

Twitter makes the case for more media company attention and dollars

A curious post on Twitter’s advertising blog extols the value of “amplifiers,” power publishers who, according to Twitter, are heavily reliant on mobile, enjoy consuming, curating and creating visual-heavy material and who are just chomping at the bit to hear from and interact with brands on the platform.

The post seems specifically geared not just to attract advertisers but to attract TV networks to participate in the conversation. A chunk of the post is devoted to talking about how much of the conversation about TV shows takes place on Twitter, how these “amplifiers” are doing a lot of that talking and more. This is very much in line with Twitter’s emphasis in the last several months on attracting networks and other media companies to more actively publish and interact, turning Twitter into more of a consumption platform.

There’s also a chart in the post that shows, once again, how people are following brand updates primarily for something special, be it exclusive deals or insider access to what a company will be doing in the near future. A shockingly low 30% turn to Twitter for customer service purposes.

Twitter Pretty Much Just Spamming Via Email Now

In the last few days I’ve gotten multiple emails from Twitter about what someone did there. These aren’t the “These three people have Tweets waiting for you…” or notifications of someone Favoriting an update, most of which I’ve already turned off. At least most of those were in some way relevant to the account in question, which made them annoying but not terrible.

No, these new ones are email notifications of something random someone I follow did that is in no way connected to my account. They tell me that X account shared a photo or retweeted someone else or something along those lines.

Now I get that these are supposed to show an update that I may or may not have missed. But that doesn’t change the fact that realizing I’m missing stuff is part of the Twitter experience. It’s a feature, not a bug that when you’re not paying attention to the stream there are updates that pass you by. Twitter is about being in the moment.

These new emails are geared toward the new publisher on Twitter, not the experienced person who knows that, as is happening as I type this, there’s activity happening that I’m not seeing. They’re designed, I imagine, to surface something that’s relevant to an individual’s interests based on who they’re following and what they’ve published. They scream “Go look at this right now, engage with it and make sure you don’t miss more moments like this.” Which is not a message a more seasoned reader needs.

This is, of course, all ancillary to the fact that it’s yet another email blast that I was not given the opportunity to opt in or out of before they started arriving and which I now have to adjust my settings as a result of. Again, that’s not the worst thing in the world but I certainly don’t need to do more of it. And I don’t need services deciding to get whimsical with their email databases. That happens often enough and my perception of the companies that do so is impacted negatively every time.

More Media in Twitter

I’ve noticed this of late and this blog post makes it official: Twitter is adding more media previews to its publishing.

When you click a Tweet that contains a link to a partner site, the Tweet will expand, and you’ll be able to see more content directly within it.

So you’ll be able to see a preview of an Amazon.com product page, a photo thumbnail or video from a CNN.com story and so on. Right now this is just available to partner sites, but we’ve seen other such features eventually be rolled out to all users so I’d expect it at some point in the near future.

This is another example of a feature that’s really only possible if, as it’s increasingly doing, Twitter controls most (if not all) the tools on which Tweets are displayed.

With Everyone On Twitter, the Role of the Press Has Changed

TV stars are just one portion of the celebrity block breaking news on Twitter with or without the blessing of official studio or network PR departments:

Simon Cowell sent the news of “The X Factor’s” renewal for a third season out to his nearly 4.5 million Twitter followers long before Fox issued an official press release. Stephen Amell, star of CW’s “Arrow,” tweeted the news of the Warner Bros. TV frosh drama’s back-nine order nearly an hour before CW issued a statement from network topper Mark Pedowitz. “Best way to start a Monday?” Amell wrote. “Getting picked up for your back nine episodes. Thwick.” Not to be left out, “Raising Hope” star Lucas Neff let loose with the news that his Fox laffer had been given an order for an additional two episodes this season.

*Disclosure: Arrow is related to some client work that I do, though I’m not involved in that portion on a daily basis.

The Variety story is focused on how it’s a scary new world for PR pros, who are often taken off guard when talent decides to go it alone and break big news on their own. But there’s more to the story of how the press has fed that behavior, what it means for the traditional definition of reporting and what value then the media gatekeepers have for an audience that can get the news straight from the horse’s mouth hours before a story is filed.

Believe it or not I’m not going to come out and say the idea of “the press” is passe in a world where stars, athletes and corporate executives can say whatever they want to say (on Twitter, a blog or anywhere else) whenever they want to. Quite the contrary, in fact: The press plays an even more vital role in that world since they’re the ones who can go beyond the “yay, us!” sentiment and spin and get to the real story. The press serves an essential role of checking the statements made by those parties against reality.

In other words, the job of the press has not changed.

What has changed for them is the idea that they have some sort of exclusive access to newsmakers of any stripe. When the public can get the news, gossip and opinions of people they find interesting directly then the role of the gatekeeper is very different. It’s not just that news outlets simply need to be monitoring Twitter feeds to see what people are saying so that they can throw the text into a graphic and display it over the left shoulder of a morning show anchorperson. Doing so shows that the news organization has nothing to add and positions them as being essentially irrelevant. They also need to add context behind the quote. Why did they say that thing, at that time, to those people in that venue? What’s the story behind those <140 characters? If that’s missing then, yes, there’s no reason for me to watch your news program or read your newspaper.

For PR professionals who are seeing these people go off the reservation and lay to waste their carefully assembled plans, the role *has* changed more substantively. In one scenario they can rail against it and tell everyone to STFU until after an embargoed press story has broken. In another they can co-opt this change, bringing a celebrity and their loyal Twitter followers into the plan and making it an essential component in a very formal and, let’s face it, stilted way. In a third scenario they can leave the celebrities, CEOs and others to do what they’re going to do and come up with a plan that doesn’t factor their behavior in at all.

Each scenario has its benefits and may be rightly applied in different situations. But unlike the press, the job of the PR professional has fundamentally changed. A stray tweet can mean life or death for a plan that’s been in the works for months and therefore needs to be accounted for in some manner.

This is an odd world we find ourselves in, where so much news is broken on platforms and channels that aren’t owned by some sort of organization. The appropriate response to the challenges and changes inherent in that new world isn’t fear, though. It’s adjustment.

Brand Amplification (and Audience Passivity) Up on Twitter

A recent study by Bazaarvoice suggests that more and more of people’s mentions of brands are not original from them but are retweets of updates from the brands themselves. That’s mixed-to-good news for brand publishers since it means that their pure, unadulterated message is being amplified more and people are weighing in with their messy opinions less. The reason I say “mixed” is that it means yeah, there’s probably less negatively but that comes with less positivity as well. If people aren’t feeling passionate enough in either direction then there’s a potential problem with the company that’s doing the publishing since attitudes may be veering toward the lukewarm.

Moving outside the view of what that means for brands who are doing the publishing it seems this also may say something about how the use of Twitter by the average person is changing. It’s hard for me to read this and not think it’s part of a shift toward Twitter becoming more of a passive platform for those in the “audience,” who are increasingly being asked to see it as a consumption took and not something for them to add original content to.

Twitter obviously wants more second tier engagement if the reports of the company testing out replacing the Favorite feature with a Like button. It’s a much lower bar to clear for someone to say they “Like” someone’s update than that it’s a “Favorite” and therefore has the potential to be much more widely used. It also mimics, obviously, behavior that’s already widespread on Facebook.

Back to the the study, it also shows that the number of followers the average person talking about a brand has is rising and that the number of updates about a brand that also include a link is dropping. So combined the picture shows that more people are amplifying a brand’s messaging (often without a link) in a much more passive way to a broader swath of people.

Again, there are upsides to this for brand managers and downsides as well. But the whole study is worth taking a look at as a picture of how corporate audience engagement is continuing to shift.