November 21, 2016 archive

For Immediate Release #62: A Real Episode About Fake News

First-time panelist Liz Scherer joined Howard Greenstein and David Spark for a deep dive into fake news.

  • “Post-truth” was the Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year. (One of the finalists was “alt-right.”)
  • Fake news is more viral than real news.
  • Jeff Jarvis has recommended some ways to address fake news.
  • Fake news is coming for companies; in fact, PepsiCo and its CEO, Indra Nooyi, are experiencing it right now.
  • Does the rise of fake news and the balkanization of news mean the end of mass persuasion for PR?
  • What is Facebook’s role and responsibility in addressing fake news that spreads on its site?
  • Mark Zuckerburg says he wants to banish fake news from Facebook, but it’s hard
  • Did a fear of conservative backlash stymie Facebook’s efforts to curtain fake news during the election?
  • A group of renegade Facebook employees has met in secret to come up with solutions to present to management.
  • Dan York reports on the recent meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force, Facebook Live’s apparent roll-out of its two-person streaming capability to non-verified users, and Twitter’s adoption of QR codes.
  • In the wake of the election, what’s the future of data and polling?
  • Two “State of Social Media Reports” have been released: one from Pew Research, the other from Buffer.

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @howardgr, @lizscherer, and @dspark.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

About today’s panel:

howardHoward Greenstein is a marketing technology strategist, working with companies to form strategies for online communities, social networking, blogs, and other media. He helped found the Social Media Club, which he served as CEO and executive director. Currently, Howard is chief operating officer at DomainSkate, which helps companies protect themselves from brand fraud and cybercrimes. And he is an adjunct lecturer at Columbia University.

Liz SchererLiz Scherer is a digital communications strategist specializing in health & wellness, nonprofits, regulated industry and agriculture. A pioneer in the social web healthcare movement, Liz has been involved in moving the envelope in terms of health and gender equity and is a former social media advisory board member for Health Justice CT. She is especially interested in how novel & emerging players are ultimately impacting agility marketing and in the disruption of content/communication-driven customer experiences. In addition to her extensive experience as a strategist, Liz has worked as a journalist, medical writer, copywriter and blogger and maintains active memberships in the National Association of Science Writers, the Association of Health Care Journalists and Journalism and Women’s Symposium. Currently, she is a curator of Emerging Infectious Diseases for univadis.com’s Clinical Essentials, and recently took a role to direct strategic communications for a mHealth publisher. Liz sits on the Advisory Board for the Center for Health, Media & Policy, Hunter College, NYC. In her spare time, she mentors health start-ups at GA/1776 DC and Village Capital, and is active in the D.C. Tech Community.

sparkDavid Spark is a veteran tech journalist and founder the brand journalism firm Spark Media Solutions. Spark has worked with brands such as IBM, Microsoft, HP, and Indycar Racing. He’s reported on the tech scene for more than 18 years in more than 40 media outlets, and is the author of “THREE FEET FROM SEVEN FIGURES: One-on-One Engagement Techniques to Qualify More Leads at Trade Shows” available at ThreeFeetBook.com.

The post FIR #62: A Real Episode About Fake News appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Twitter Launches QR Codes on iOS App – But…. Why?

Apparently seeking to keep up with Snapchat's Snapcodes and Facebook's Messenger Codes, Twitter has launched QR codes in at least the iOS app. Here are two examples of how the codes look for me (it seems to change color each time you go into the menu option):

Twitter ios qr codes

I learned of this ironically from Krishna De over in a Google+ post. I can't find any mention on Twitter's blog or website.

You get to it by going into the iOS app, tapping on "Me" in the lower right corner and then on the gear icon in the top middle to get into your Settings. You then have "QR Code" as an option:

Twitter qr code

I did try the "QR Scanner" button on the "QR Code" page and it works pretty much exactly like the equivalent function in Snapchat and Facebook. When I pointed it at Krishna's QR code in her G+ post (as displayed on my Mac's screen), the app showed me her profile and let me know I was already following her:

Twitter qrcode 4

So it works.

But I share the same question Krishna has in her G+ post: WHY is Twitter doing this?

I'm not really sure why I would promote this as a way to have people connect to me. Twitter already has the "@" mentions such as "@danyork" that easily allows people to connect to my page. It's not entirely clear to my why this is needed.

Perhaps Twitter sees this as a way to help people more easily connect. From the "QR Code" page I have the ability to tweet the photo of "Share via..." and send it through other means.

But given that the QR Scanner is buried through several levels (Main page -> Me -> Settings -> QR Code -> QR Scanner) I don't see this really being any easier than simply typing in the person's user name in the app - or sending someone the URL for my Twitter profile.

I thought about the physical printing of one of these QR codes as a way for people to get to my account, but again, with the current level of steps you need to go through it seems to be more work than most people are going to want to do.

Perhaps this is just a case, as Krishna wonders, of Twitter wanting to keep up with Facebook and Snapchat. They all have codes, so Twitter needs a code.

Or maybe this a preview of features yet to come.

What do you think? What value (if any) do you see in these kind of QR codes? Would you use it?