TWEAKS AND UPDATES
Europeana Sounds has launched a music player. “Europeana Sounds, a project that connects digital sound archives across Europe, has just launched an interactive radio player. Now you can enjoy listening to 200,000 music tracks, and while listening, add labels to help other listeners to find recordings.”
The Max Planck Digital Library and the Taylor & Francis Group have made an agreement. “The Max Planck Digital Library and Taylor & Francis Group have signed an agreement which enables researchers based in Max Planck institutes to publish open access in 2,390 journals, under a centrally funded arrangement. This applies to peer-reviewed papers in full and hybrid Taylor & Francis Group journals, including Routledge and Cogent OA titles. Max Planck Institutes will also have shared access to a set of Taylor & Francis subscription journals and can swap and add individual titles up to an agreed limit to meet reader demand.”
TechCrunch: Twitter’s latest feature prompts you to tweet your updated profile picture. “Twitter is rolling out a new feature designed to increase the amount of visual content in users’ timelines and encourage more tweets and replies: it’s prompting users who have just updated their profile picture to post a hashtagged tweet about the change. The tweet will be appended with #NewProfilePic, which can then be seen by all the users’ Twitter followers.” I cannot imagine how my Twitter followers could care any less about my Twitter profile picture.
Is Facebook going to stop paying publishers for Live videos? “Facebook spent more than $50 million last year paying publishers and celebrities to create live video on the social network. Now numerous publishers tell Recode that Facebook is de-emphasizing live video when it talks to them. And none of the publishers we’ve spoken with expect Facebook to renew the paid livestreaming deals it signed last spring to get live video off the ground.”
USEFUL STUFF
Social Media Examiner: How to Use Social Media Emoji to Humanize Your Business. “Emojis can feel like an alien language, especially if you’re not in the habit of greeting good news with a cartoon smiley face or celebrating Oktoberfest with a pixelated beer stein. And to the cynic, using small pictures instead of text is a fad that’s doomed to fizzle out. But even if you aren’t using emojis, your customers and your competitors are. Appboy’s latest study found that marketing campaigns with emojis have increased 777% year-over-year and continue to rise by 20% every month.” I wasn’t going to link to this because the headline made me cynical. But it is a good article, and might help if you’re one of those people who’s supposed to be doing social media for your organization but emoji make you feel weird.
MakeUseOf: 5 Ways to Make Facebook Productive and Stop Distractions. I need Ghost for Chat.
Bustle’s got an overview of how to use Snapchat’s new search feature.
TheNextWeb: Milanote is the Evernote for creatives. “Like Google Keep, Milanote lets you arrange your notes in a bulletin board sort of approach. Where it differs, however, is in allowing the user to move notes to any location within the board — including off the screen. Pin an item here, add a text note there, drop in a link, a YouTube video, and connect them in whatever way you see fit using lines, arrows, or whitespace.” This sounds pretty terrific.
AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
Yow, really bad for local businesses. From Stuff.co.nz: Kaikoura open for visitors despite routes being deleted by Google Maps. “Kaikoura may have been accessible since December via the Inland Road but a quick search on Google Maps tells another story. All routes to Kaikoura, as well as between addresses within the district, seem to have fallen off the face of Google Maps and would-be travellers are only given walking times and distances. The glitch is causing concern among accommodation providers and other businesses reliant on visitors who are already worried about the drop in numbers.”
Engadget: Why do Instagram and Twitter want me to buy fake Yeezys? “It’s not rare for me to come across ads for counterfeit goods, particularly as I’m browsing Instagram or Twitter. And although I don’t have a Facebook account, I live with someone who does and know that’s an issue there as well. Targeted advertising, the kind that knows exactly what brand of sneakers and streetwear I’m into, is the least of my worries here. My problem is the fact that Twitter and Facebook (which owns Instagram) are approving sponsored posts from retailers selling counterfeits. I know better, but there are many who may fall victim to these sorts of scams.”
RESEARCH AND OPINION
Very good stuff from Sean Blanda: Medium, and The Reason You Can’t Stand the News Anymore. “Companies from Medium to The Washington Post to Mashable to Buzzfeed all eventually run into the same unthinkable truth: The methods used to fund modern journalism simultaneously undermine trust in the news outlets. Editors, writers, and executives at today’s news outlets are all in a no-win situation where they are forced to contribute to the causes of their own demise to survive.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Google and the Misinformed Public. “Digital media platforms like Google and Facebook may disavow responsibility for the results of their algorithms, but they can have tremendous — and disturbing — social effects. Racist and sexist bias, misinformation, and profiling are frequently unnoticed byproducts of those algorithms. And unlike public institutions (like the library), Google and Facebook have no transparent curation process by which the public can judge the credibility or legitimacy of the information they propagate.” Good morning, Internet…
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