Scott Monty and Laura Pevehouse joined host Shel Holtz for conversations about the uses to which social media’s is being put by victims of flooding from Hurricane Harvey, candy companies are trying to find ways to make up for lost impulse sales as the number of cash registers declines; we’ve heard it before, but eMarketer insists it’s for real this time: Teens are abandoning Facebook for Snapchat and Instagram (and maybe iMessage); Sonos, the Internet-of-Things speaker company, says existing customers won’t get the option to opt out of a new privacy policy — if you don’t agree, your sound systems could stop working; we’re visual creatures, so audio search may not take off the way some think it will; are all those differences between generations just so much nonsense (and is there really any such thing as a “digital native”)? Dan York reports on  a creepy side of Facebook, a concerning case where the US Dept of Justice is requesting significant user info from Dreamhost, a website hosting provider, in China, anonymity is basically dead as of October 1, and efforts underway from Mozilla and Google to build open datasets of voice samples that can be used to develop new voice applications.
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The post FIR #102: Does VR Candy Taste As Good? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Nora Ganim Barnes and Michael Harry Klein joined host Shel Holtz for conversations about how one brand mishandled responding to a consumer’s observation on Facebook; business was front-and-center in last week’s political news; how Twitter manages to keep surviving; Amazon has launched a shoppable social network with limited availability; and Instagram got gamed, leading two companies to pay fees and give product to fake accounts. Dan York reports on the latest evolution of the Facebook News Feed, recording podcasts using Wire, the end of typing, and the ethics of CloudFlare kicking a white supremacist website off the Internet.
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The post FIR #101: Is Amazon Spark the Missing Social Media Link? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

The August Hobson & Holtz Report (and episode 100 of FIR) features conversation about a SNCR initiative to address fake news, an AI bot that detects plagiarism, a little-known Twitter feature that’s helping Trump supporters amplify their messages, a new crop of agencies targeted Generation Z, and a Buffalo hotel adding Amazon Echoes to every room. Dan York’s Tech Report covers Soundcloud and new features in Instagram and Facebook.
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The post FIR #100: Locked and Loaded appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Sherrilynne Starkie and Christopher Barger joined host Shel Holtz for conversations a federal district judge who ruled that a Loudon County, Virginia public official cannot block social media users from accessing the posts on her Facebook Page, which she set up to share information from her government role and to solicit feedback; a passenger ultimately called 911 after spending six hours on the tarmac with no air conditioning during one of the hottest days of the year (do these publicized passenger service crises have any real consequences for the airlines?); 70% of Americans say they would not apply for a job at a company that is getting bad press; a couple who trashed a wedding photographer online — and encouraged followers to do the same — was ordered to pay $1 million in damages (when does legitimate criticism cross the line?); the Pokémon Go Fest was a disaster, leading some event-goers to file a lawsuit and Niantic to postpone upcoming events in Europe; the short tenure of Anthony Scaramucci as the White House Director of Communications underscores a real problem in the business world: people hired to manage communications who have no communications experience; in his Tech Report, Dan York discusses the news out of Facebook that site loading speed will be a ranking factor for the NewsFeed.
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The post FIR #99: Let’s Invite the Regulators In appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Jen Phillips and Doug Haslam joined host Shel Holtz for conversations about Twitter’s plan to introduce a $99 monthly subscription service as it loses 1 million American users, Procter & Gamble dropping millions of dollars in digital ad spending and not detecting any difference in sales, Volkswagen’s approach to rebuilding employee confidence after its emissions scandal, a study from MWWPR that finds one-third of Americans are brand activists, and Augmented Reality’s potential to change the way we make decisions. In his Tech Report, Dan York covers Flash’s demise, Russia’s ban on VPNs, and more.
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The post FIR #98: We Really Hate Those Toilet Paper Bears appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Shonali Burke and Olivier Blanchard joined host Shel Holtz for conversations about Gillette’s inadvertent mailing of razors to women and older meant when they’re meant for young men reaching their 18th birthday; the rise of chatbots as a marketing tool; unconscious bias in the workplace and its consequences and cures; oil companies looking to hire Millennials who have made the environment their top issue; and Delta’s response to an attack from political commentator Ann Coulter.
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The post FIR #97: Welcome to Manhood, Ma’am appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In the July installment of The Hobson & Holtz Report, Neville and Shel talked about a 15-year-old participating in a Work Experience program who took over the Twitter account of the beleaguered Southern Rail in the U.K; an experiment by the online publication Quartz to add display-type ads in the text of stories that let users ask an Artificial Intelligence-based chatbot named Hugo for more information about just the stuff they’re interested in; whether Artificial Intelligence eventually take over the creative side of content marketing; Takata’s air bag crisis, which is now in its second decade; workarounds and system-gaming by brands and publishers frustrated that they can’t get the results they want on the social media channels they’re using, and the true cost of cybercrime to afflicted companies (there’s a communication angle.) Dan York’s Tech Report looks at Microsoft’s new LinkedIn app for Windows 10, issues with the Skype app rollouts for iOS and Android and the changes those issues prompted, and why some publishers are abandoning Snapchat for Instagram.
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The post FIR #96: The Crisis That Keeps On Giving appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.