25% of American workers are getting screwed out of paid vacation
Want to take some time off? If you’re American, best of luck. About 1 in 4 U.S. workers receive no employer-funded vacation time. And the less money they earn, the less likely they are to snag even a single paid vacation day.
Premier League goes after its own fans because that worked so well for the music industry
This seems awfully dumb and shortsighted. It seems that people really love sharing GIFs and Vines of goals in the Premier League, the biggest football league in the world. They really do! Hell, I've searched out particular goals on Vine before, especially during this summer's World Cup.
Why do people like making and sharing GIFs of Premier League goals so much? Because they effing love the Premier League. So, what should the Premier League do with all of these people from all over the world who love the Premier League so much?
They should develop tech to track them down and kill their buzz. Remember how well this worked out for the music industry back before people were socially connected and talking about all the stuff they love and all the stuff they hate?
Yeah.
But tracking down and harassing millions of your own most loyal fans must be much easier than, say, I don't know, maybe offering and branded and authorized alternative to some chump shooting a TV replay on his iPhone.
There just seems to be about a billion ways to solve this "problem" for the Premier League and they appear to have chosen the absolute worst one, the one that has already proven to be a stone-cold loser.
I think we've all grown accustomed to Twitter Inc being a company that seems to succeed despite itself. They seem to have this uncanny ability to just continue to do dumb stuff, rollout crappy products and still keep afloat somehow. UI across their different platforms don't match or even perform alike. They wholly invent language that is globally recognized and then flirt with dumping it. They buy up really promising and useful third party products and torture them to death. (I'll never forgive them for what they did to Tweetdeck) But, sometimes they do things well.
As we all come to grips with Facebook all but killing organic reach, Twitter is making a play to be the place where you can still actually reach your followers without paying too much for the privilege. This smart for a number of reasons.
And now they're sweetening the deal with some pretty sweet analytics.
For the first time, advertisers will be able to see how many times users have viewed and engaged with organic Tweets, so that they can more effectively optimize their content strategy. The Tweet activity dashboard is now available to all advertisers, Twitter Card publishers, and verified users around the world.
With the new dashboard, you can:
See how your Tweets are performing in real time.
Compare impressions (times a Tweet is viewed by anyone on Twitter web and Android or iOS apps, including logged-out users), total engagements and Retweets month over month.
Use the Tweet details page to see how many Retweets, replies, favorites, follows, link clicks and embedded media clicks each Tweet received.
Export your Tweet performance metrics into a CSV file, which now includes both organic and promoted data.
I've been using this new dashboard and I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's pretty great.
Honestly, I'm not sure why they waited so long. The "likes" were essentially worthless because they were coming from people who were coerced into liking a page and it was pretty much limited to desktop users in many ways. It was always a pretty shitty tool.
Adidas owns World Cup social because they spent a year planning to own World Cup social
There's a reason that Adidas has been so damn good at social during this World Cup. They're good because they planned on being good and spent almost a year mapping out their strategy and gathering content.
Spontaneity is one of the central features of social media, but many of the most successful brands on Twitter begin planning their posts months in advance.
...
Even with those details in mind, Adidas' planning for this year's World Cup is something to behold. A feature story published this morning by Ad Age's Julie Ruvolo revealed the sportswear brand had the entire tournament mapped out by December.
According to Ruvolo, Adidas created an hour-by-hour calendar of what might happen during the 32-day tournament. Meanwhile, Adidas' social-media agency, We Are Social, spent a year gathering 1,000 images and 160 videos that Adidas could post as reactions to what it thought might happen during the games.
We Are Social mapped possibilities and had tons of collateral content in the can so that they could hit the exact right note in near real time. That's how you do it.
And how did it pay off? It freaking pwned.
Ad Age reports that Adidas has been the most talked-about brand on Twitter this World Cup, generating 1.6 million tweets, retweets, and replies thus far.
Here's a nice overview of how and why people share information on twitter. Nothing groundbreaking to anyone who has been paying attention, but a worth your time. Some highlights:
Retweets have morphed into much more than just “here’s what I like”—which is a good thing for users and for Twitter.
In the first part of my analysis of the importance of seeing social sharing in a historic context, I reviewed how online sharing tools are an underestimated act that satisfies an insatiable human need to share information better and faster. Modern communication networks must offer tools for sharing the same way Gutenberg’s printing press started first with texts approved by governments and religions, but later gave way to sharing all kinds of printed texts and materials.
Social sharing isn’t just our modern way of printing books: it’s also a popular but controversial way to measure the value of information itself.
....
“Take retweets as seriously as you take writing your own tweets. Make sure the links work and that the content adds value to both your feed and followers.”
1) Retweets as sharing people and specific accounts
Retweeting specific people, such as a celebrity or person you work with or know, is just as important as what the tweet includes in terms of pictures, text, and links. It’s the social aspect of retweeting:
Elana Zak, social media editor, the Wall Street Journal (@elanazak): “If there’s breaking news, we may only retweet reporters and WSJ accounts on that topic.”
Sasha Koren, deputy editor of interactive news, the New York Times(@SashaK): “From @nytimes we retweet other New York Times accounts run by desks (@nytmetro, @nytimesarts, etc) as well as individual journalists, to both augment our handwritten tweets and give followers a picture of the breadth of our coverage and our staff’s activity on Twitter. … What we don’t retweet from New York Times–branded accounts is non-NYT sources or commentary. We do encourage staff to do so on their personal feeds, though.”
Brian Ries, live news editor, Mashable (@moneyries): “I retweet the best tweets sent by our reporters. I retweet the most notable tweets sent by politicians, celebrities, or other brands … sometimes I’ll retweet notable users who are sharing our stuff. All of this is meant to signal-boost.”
1a) The “signal-boost” retweet
Signal-boosting is usually a reference to increasing the number of people who see a tweet, but in this specific sense, it can be applied to either a person’s account or information in the tweet.
A similar sentiment was echoed by Samir Mezrahi, senior editor, BuzzFeed (@samir): “When there is news I retweet to move the convo forward.”
Daniel Victor, social media staff editor, the New York Times(@bydanielvictor): Retweeting is “somewhat of a carrot for our reporters and desks to tweet well, since everyone loves all the attention you get from being RTed by the main account.”
2) Retweets as sharing information
Twitter originally specified this was the primary reason why they introduced the function. Since this falls under the “what is good to tweet?” topic, I spent less time on the well-covered issue. Here are some tips, though:
Zak: “You’ll win points with me if the tweets are well-written and make sense to a reader new to the information. No typos or tons of text-speak. The tweet should either share a piece of information or make me want to click on the link to read more. In terms of what @WSJ retweets, it varies greatly depending on what’s happening, news-wise.”
Victor: “Sometimes the personal way individuals can write is a better on-ramp to the story anyway, like this one sent the night of the Boston Marathon bombings.” Screenshot:
3) Retweets as sharing jokes or humorous content
To avoid confusion, news organizations tend to stay away from using the retweet function to laugh at a person or to “troll” someone. However, retweeting for the sake of irony is quite popular among the Weird Twitterand power user set, although it tends to express itself mostly as favorites. An example of when favorites replace retweets (tweet by @abrahamjoseph):
Brand accounts that are not responsible for reporting verified information are much more likely to use the function as long as it fits in with other brand attributes, but this is more for the purposes of customer engagement or marketing.
Before we move on, here’s my all-time favorite example of retweeting for the sake of humor:
Mezrahi noted on his personal Twitter style that he “mostly” retweets jokes, and I personally tend to retweet jokes, too.
4) Retweets to build and engage in an online community
Retweets as a community engagement tool seems to be separated into two aspects: retweets of another user’s account in order to funnel responses to that user or retweets of replies as a function of sharing information (which would broadly fall under 2).
Zak focused on using Twitter to build engagement with readers: “We will supplement RTs without links [from WSJ reporters] by sending out a tweet before or after from @WSJ that will include a link to a live blog or article about what the reporter is live-tweeting. We also do reader call-outs where we retweet reader responses to our query. Those typically don’t include links, since their point is to increase engagement and community.”
Mezrahi, on what types of tweets can be considered for retweeting: “If someone replies to a question I have for others to see their response/the answer to the question.”
Ries:
“Forget RT ≠ endorsement. I’m a believer in RT ≠ confirmed during breaking news.”
4a) Retweets are usually endorsements, which is why news organizations tend to review them carefully on brand accounts.
WSJ, Mashable, the New York Times, Associated Press, as well as my former employer Reuters do not practice retweeting of non-employees who reply with information that is not independently reported on by that organization. However, culturally focused sites such as BuzzFeed are known for a highly engaging Twitter accounts which, from time to time, collect and retweet reader reactions to events and stories, which is not the same thing as using replies to assume verified information is being shared. The matter of verifying social content is tangentially related to the question of retweeting for engagement and signal-boosting.
Which retweet is best?
Before deciding which retweet is best for you, make sure you understand that there are different types of retweet formats as well as reasons for using them, including the RT @manual retweet, the retweet which does not include the “RT” in front of a user handle, and the MT: retweets which are an edited version of a manual retweet, and usually includes additional commentary. Manual retweets have caused their own storm of controversy in recent years since critics have said they break the cycle of sharing information.
Mezrahi:
“Anyone can do (mostly) whatever they want, and there aren’t really any rules for Twitter. Everyone’s account does its own thing and that is OK.”
Most news organizations tend to avoid the manual and modified retweets, but manual retweets are still popular among power users, though manual retweets are less necessary thanks to changes in Twitter’s apps and TweetDeck functions.
…
What do I recommend, as a power user of the retweet?
First, think about who your followers are and what they want to read. Spend time looking and reading the profiles of your most engaged followers—the people who retweet you and comment on your tweets the most. You’ll learn more about yourself in the process.
Inclusion, sincerity and how to genuinely engage your membership
It's no secret that the Working Families Party is seriously considering either endorsing a candidate to run against Andrew Cuomo or simply not endorsing Cuomo at all. I'm of the opinion that they should steer as clear as possible of Governor 1%. While there has been plenty of talk about this in the last few months, a recent Siena poll that showed how much this could really jack Cuomo (and his White House ambitions) up has really added fuel to the fire. With their convention rapidly approaching and with dissatisfaction with Cuomo among their membership reaching all time highs, the WFP did something really smart. They went to their membership and sincerely asked them what they should do.
This is smart on many levels. First, the idea that WFP should look for alternatives to Cuomo is one that just keeps gaining momentum among their natural constituency. Second, it's a great way to encourage people to both attend their convention as well as engage more meaningfully with the party itself. Thirdly, it says to their less engaged membership that they are indeed listening and share their concerns.
This is a textbook example of how to engage your entire membership in a meaningful way about a significant issue in a sincere way.
Well done, WFP.
Here's the blast they sent out this morning.
Phillip,
BIG NEWS: This week, Siena College released a new poll that tested what would happen if the Working Families Party backed our own progressive challenger for Governor.
The result? 24% of New Yorkers surveyed said they’d vote for the WFP gubernatorial candidate. And that’s without even naming a candidate.
Not bad for a “minor” party, right? Get this -- that was the same level of support the poll showed for Republican candidate Rob Astorino. And just 15 points behind Governor Cuomo.
There’s been a ton of speculation in the media these last few months over who our party will support for Governor. But our decision won’t get made until our State Convention in Albany at the end of May.
Before the WFP State Committee casts their votes, they need to hear from you. What do you think the Working Families Party should do?
Support Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Search for a progressive challenger to run on the Working Families Party ballot line.
Or something else.
Click here to tell us what you think.
(Note: this is a survey, not a formal endorsement vote. There’s lots of time for people to change their minds. But we will share the results of this survey with all 200 members of the WFP State Committee.)
The Siena poll result is a testament to the progressive community that you have helped build. Fully a quarter of New York voters see WFP as a trusted voice -- a group of people that tells the truth about what politicians are doing. A group that fights for a fair and decent economy, and a democracy in which every voice matters. That’s YOU. That's all of us.
This is one of the biggest decisions we have ever faced. That’s why we need your input now.
Click here to share your view: What should WFP do in this year’s race for Governor of New York?
Thanks for your support.
In Solidarity,
Karen Scharff
WFP Co-Chair
Executive Director, Citizen Action of New York
Javier H. Valdés
WFP Secretary
Co-Executive Director, Make the Road Action Fund
P.S. If you want to join us at our convention May 31st in Albany, click here to register!
I've long been convinced that twitter has succeeded so far (though they've never turned a profit) in spite of itself. None of their products work like the other ones. The browser version works nothing like their official desktop client which works differently than their mobile app. Some of these platforms have functionality that the others lack. They have a long history of buying up successful (and genuinely useful) third party tech and either murdering it in the crib or making them flat out suck. I'll never forgive them for what they did to Tweetdeck let alone Tweety. Twitter just can't stop doing dumb shit.
It seems that sometimes twitter just can't help itself and the stupid just comes spewing out. Take this for example.
Twitter is experimenting again, tries replacing 'retweet' with 'share' button
Um, WTF? Twitter did something that very, very few enterprises will ever be able to claim. They changed the language. They introduced new words to the world and the world embraced them in languages all over the world. There are people on this planet that may have never seen a microwave oven that know what you are talking about when you mention the term "retweet."
Someone inside twitter apparently said to someone else inside twitter "Hey! That thing that's core to not only our product but to our brand? Ya know, the retweet? Yeah, let's play around with killing that." And that other person apparently said in reply, "I like what I'm hearing. Let's run with it!"
Now, I'm sure someone on the inside at twitter, hell, maybe lots of folks on the inside at twitter, is wise enough to say "what the High Holy Fuck are you talking about? Knock this off pronto, idiots." But, the very fact that stupid crap like this keeps happening is disconcerting to say the least.
It's been really weird watching twitter fail upwards for so long.
The Pew Research Center's Journalism Project has just released the 2014 version of their State of the News Media report and, as usual, there's a ton of great data on how and where people are engaging with, sharing and consuming news via social media. I really can't recommend their 8 Key Takeaways about Social Media and News highly enough.
News has a place in social media – but on some sites more than others.
Half of Facebook and Twitter users get news on those sites as do 62% of reddit users. But only a minority of those on Instagram or Pinterest finds news there.
At this point, Facebook reaches far more Americans than any other social media site – and therefore allows for the most in-depth study. Overall, three in ten adults get at least some news while on Facebook.
Engagement with the news plays a key role in the social media news experience.
Not only are social network users sharing news stories, but, particularly with the growth in mobile devices, a certain portion is contributing to the reporting by taking photos or videos.
Audiences for news on each social platform differ.
LinkedIn news consumers stand out as being high earners and college educated while Twitter news consumers are significantly younger than news consumers on Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn. Facebook news consumers are more likely to be female than news consumers on YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn.
janainaart
ellievsbear
izzy806
vaporwave