Google Play extends sharing with Family Library

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…we’re introducing Family Library, a way for up to six family members to share purchases on Google Play. When you buy an eligible app, game, movie, TV show, or book in the Play Store, you can now share it with your family—across devices—with no additional sign-up fee...

Netflix does it. Apple music does it. Google Play Music does it. And now Google extends sharing purchases with family members beyond music.

That’s a good thing and probably can be seen as table stakes in the online media  rental and purchase marketplace. As a father, I’ve taken advantage of family sharing for several years. It has  proven a good way for  both Apple and Google to get my family members hooked on their services, so that when they leave home they set up their own accounts.

If you haven’t got family sharing yet, you should see it in the next few days.

Source: Google Play Family Library: Share what you love with the ones you love

Hey Twitter, What’s Happening?

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…most [people] didn’t know or simply misunderstood what Twitter was for – many thought of Twitter primarily as a social network, a place to find and connect with friends and family members. Second, they thought if they wanted to use Twitter, they were “supposed to Tweet every day” and didn’t think they would have that much to say. We realized we had some explaining and clarifying to do!

Twitter has problems. Growth has stalled, even shrinking. People who haven’t used it aren’t sure what it is. New users find it confusing and difficult to get started. Executives are jumping ship. And the Trolls keep popping up.

In the past year, the company has tried to handle these problems in a substantive way, introducing a raft of improvements, including better integration and display of videos, less restrictive character limits on tweets, an easier way for new users to find and connect with people,  longer and easier direct messaging, and a new timeline algorithm that shows you the top tweets that you missed when you were signed off. And in the past few weeks, it has added a raft of deals to live stream MLB and NHL games.

Now, the company is ready to reintroduce itself to the world – with a new video ad campaign headed up by the tag line, “What’s Happening.” The campaign emphasizes video of recognizable events, highlighting Twitter as a place not just to talk about what is happening, but to actually see what is happening.

I use Twitter constantly as a news feed. News about what my friends think is important. News about what is happening in the world.

I can’t imagine a world without Twitter. So, as an avid user. I wish them well. And hopefully, the last line in their blog post announcing the campaign will in fact prove to be true: “This is just the beginning!”

Fingers crossed for Twitter.

 

Source: See Whats Happening | Twitter Blogs

Post Ghost’s battle with Twitter raises issues that just won’t go away

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Post Ghost logoPost Ghost, a service that preserved deleted tweets, was told to cease doing this by Twitter. Post Ghost complied and shut down its service. But it did not go quietly. They published an Open Letter to Twitter, arguing that the deleted tweets of people with very large followings could have as much impact on public issues as the tweets of politicians. Citing deleted tweets about the Brexit vote by British celebrities with large followings, they say, “the ability to reach millions of followers instantly and leave no trace is a massive and growing power, and one that is currently completely unchecked and undocumented.”

The Post Ghost letter raises important issues that have been debated before and will continue to be debated. And that’s just what Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley do on this week’s Inside PR podcast.

You can listen to the entire episode on the Inside PR blog.

The most neglected device in the office

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Look around your office. What device has been on your desk longer than any other device? And what device has changed the least? The odds are, it’s your telephone.

Goodbye-Phone

Now ask yourself could you live without that telephone? A few years ago, the answer to that question would have been an emphatic “No.”Today, however, for most of us the answer probably is that we would just as soon do without this old-fashioned device.

The time has long passed that there was anything remarkable to noting that our communication had moved from voice telephone calls to email, to text, to Skype, to messaging, and to apps like Slack. If you’re like me, the phone may ring two or three times in a business day. And when it does ring, you look at the old-fashioned interface and wonder why it needs so many buttons for such a simple dumb task as a voice call.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that businesses are making the move to eliminate the desktop telephone.

My company, Thornley Fallis, is one of those businesses. A couple years ago,  we made the move from owning our own email servers to running our company through Microsoft Office 365 as a cloud-based subscription service. At that time, we retired our old-fashioned PBX and replaced it with a VOIP telephone system.

Now it’s time to make the next move. We are introducing Skype for Business onto the computers and mobile devices of our team. As we do this, we are experiencing the convenience and increased efficiencies of being able to launch voice and video calls with two or more people people using the devices that we use most. We can share documents and have calls involving two or more people, put them in our schedule or start them spontaneously with the click. It just feels more contemporary.

So far, we’ve been doing this internal to our team. The next step: adding access to the public switched telephone network, including teleconferences through it. That’s not a huge final step. But it will be a tremendous step for the people I work with.

Once we make this move, calls will come directly to our computers, tablets, or phones. Each of us will have our own number and it won’t matter to anyone whether we are answering at our desks in the office, at our kitchen tables at home, or in a hotel room on the road. We’ll just be there. We’ll just be accessible. And will be able to work whenever, wherever, and on the terms that we dictate.

So shed a tear for the old-fashioned desktop telephone. It was our constant companion for decades. But no more.

Announcing an Application Process for Verified Accounts

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There goes the neighbourhood. Now we all can be sure that we are who we think we are. Twitter will verify it. 🙂

Verified accounts on Twitter allow people to identify key individuals and organizations on Twitter as authentic, and are denoted by a blue badge icon. An account may be verified if it is determined to be of public interest. Typically this includes accounts maintained by public figures and organizations in music, TV, film, fashion, government, politics, religion, journalism, media, sports, business, and other key interest areas.

Source: Announcing an Application Process for Verified Accounts

Introducing Shrink-Wrap: What communicators can learn from Pokemon Go

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I have been toying for a while with the idea of a short weekly video that goes into a little more detail on one of the hotter items I plan to include in my Friday Wrap, which I use to curate items of interest to communicators that have been published in the last week..

Each Friday afternoon, Shel Holtz publishes Friday Wrap, a quick-scan summary of the previous week’s articles and happenings in the world of communications and marketing that stood out for Shel.

Shel is well-known as one of the earliest and most prolific podcasters about public relations. He started the FIR podcast with Neville Hobson in 2005 and has been podcasting without break since then. Two years ago, he built on the success of FIR to create the FIR Podcast Network, which distributes a range of podcasts about topics of interest to communicators. (Disclosure: The podcast that I co-host with Gini Dietrich and Martin Waxman is an FIR podcast.)

Now, Shel is experimenting again. He has launched a weekly video podcast, Shrink Wrap. Think of it as a video version of Shrink-Wrap. The curation and judgment that goes into assembling the stories featured in the written version of Shrink Wrap, but with the ability to convey Shel’s personality. Yes, there’s a lot of additional information in an expression or tone of voice.

Take a look. Subscribe. I’m sure you’ll find it’s a worthwhile commitment of five minutes a week of your time.

 

Source: Introducing Shrink-Wrap: What communicators can learn from Pokemon Go

Snapchat Memories, Pokemon Go and App Attention on Inside PR 449

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Inside PR 449 Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Snapchat is more than ephemeral with Memories. Pokemon Go rules the world. And we pick up on Walt Mossberg’s discussion of our fragmented messaging environment. Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley tackle these topics and more on Inside PR 449.

#IPRMustKnow

Snapchat Memories for when ephemeral isn’t enough

Hard on the heels of news that Snapchat has surpassed Twitter in daily users, we say Snapchat switch from its ephemeral-always model to provide users with the ability to save their Snaps using a new feature, Snapchat Memories. Memories lets you save current and previous Snaps and then use them for future stories. So, now you never need to worry people missing that embarrassing photo of your best friend that you sent out 25 hours ago. You can reach into Memories, add the photo to a new story, and start the cycle all over again.

Pokemon Go Goes

Like virtually everyone else this past week, we have been entranced by Pokemon Go. For its privacy implications. And because it has brought the potential of augmented reality to the masses. It may be a fad. But it’s a fad that will have made a difference.

Here an App. There an App. Everywhere an App

It was simple in the days of email: Just settle on your client – Outlook, AOL… and then add all your email accounts to access them in one place. Today, as we spend more of our time on chat, with proprietary, non-interchangeable standards, we are again facing the need to switch constantly between apps – for social networks, for chat. Pain the butt? We riff on a theme recently explored by Walt Mossberg in a blog post, The Tyranny of Messaging and Notifications, and on his podcast, Ctrl-Walt-Delete.

This article is cross-posted on the Inside PR podcast blog.

Inside PR 448: Twitter Engage, YouTube Livestreaming and Integrated Marketing Communications

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Standard Podcast Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Twitter brings easy analytics to your mobile device. YouTube plays catch up in livestreaming video. And we ask why, after all these years, integrated marketing communications isn’t the norm. Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley tackle these topics and more in this week’s Inside PR podcast.

#IPRMustKnow

Twitter Engage brings Twitter analytics to the masses

Twitter just made it a whole lot easier to track analytics like follows, @mentions, retweets, and video views, with the launch of Twitter Engage, a new iOS app. Real-time monitoring in your hand. The app launched on iOS in the US-only. You can hear the collective sigh of disappointment from Twitter addicts in the rest of the world.

YouTube Livestreams from your mobile

Livestreaming videos to YouTube from your mobile is about to be possible. YouTube announced at VidCon that it is testing livestreaming with select publishers. Available to the rest of us soon. With YouTube’s huge catalogue of videos that we already have uploaded, it’s going to be competitive with both Facebook Live Videos and Periscope. Does that mean that I have to buy a third phone to livestream events to all three services?

Integrated Marketing Communications: Many are called. Not all answer.

Gini Dietrich wrote in a blog post that, with the proliferation of platforms and the need to integrate ephemeral and chat channels, integrated marketing communications is more important than ever. We’re all heard the term integrated marketing communications for over a decade. Independent agencies seem to have embraced integration. PR agencies in particular have moved to the PESO – Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned – model. So, why isn’t integrated marketing communications practised each and every day? We talk about the impact of tight communications budgets and the persistence of silos within corporate marketing and communications functions. We also look at the legacy of separate profit centres in holding company agencies. The need to maximize returns for individual centres may work at odds with making integrated marketing communications a daily way of life for people working in holding company networks.

This article is cross-posted at the Inside PR podcast blog.

Inside PR 447: Sponsored Content in Facebook Instant News and the Future of Social report

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Inside PR 443 Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Major media outlets launch sponsored content with their Facebook Instant Articles and Jason Keath takes us through the highlights of Social Fresh’s Future of Social research report. Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley tackle these topics and more in this week’s Inside PR podcast.

#IPRMustKnow

Sponsored Content on Facebook Instant Articles

Screenshot 2016-07-03 10.33.45Neiman Labs reports that two heavyweight traditional news outlets, the Washington Post and The Atlantic, have begun running sponsored content in their Facebook Instant Articles. Happily, the illustration in the Nieman Labs story suggests that the content will be clearly labelled as “Sponsor Content.” I tried to verify that by reviewing my own newsfeed. However, I couldn’t find a single sponsored article from either the Washington Post or The Atlantic. That makes me think that either this sponsored content is so far very rare or Facebook is geotargeting the ads and my Canadian IP address puts me outside of the target area for them.

Jason Keath, Founder of Social Fresh

Jason Keath is the CEO of Social Fresh, which recently released The Future of Social, a report based on research involving over 500 social media managers and executives. Gini tracked him down and interviewed him about the report and the lessons we can take from it. Among the highlights:

  • Companies that invest in social media tools achieve a greater return than those who don’t.
  • 95% of respondents using social media software report a positive ROI on their social media activities vs. 63% who are not investing in tools.
  • Social media is best at connecting with existing audiences, customers, strongest leads, fans and stakeholders. Building awareness through social media can be an expensive proposition.
  • To increase leads and sales, focus more time on fewer pieces of content. For example, Social Fresh invests heavily both in their research and the conference. This enables them to stand out by being deeper and offering more unique insights.
  • Take your audience up the commitment curve. Ask little of them at the beginning. Reading a post. Downloading a paper. Registering. Then work them up the curve to larger commitments.
  • Instagram is on the verge of leapfrogging LinkedIn and Twitter to become the second largest ad platform.
  • Marketers report satisfaction with the results they are achieving with video content and they plan to increase their commitment to it in the coming year.

This article is cross-posted on the Inside Pr podcast blog.