YouTube 'creators' fret over impact of new child protection rules

SAN FRANCISCO, United States— Samuel Rader quit his job three years ago to work full time on his YouTube channel, "Sam and Nia," featuring videos of his family life.

The channel created by the Texas-based couple -- with videos of their Hawaii vacation, setting up their backyard pool and other content about "Christian family life" -- has become one of the stars of the Google-owned video service with some 2.5 million subscribers.

But the future is now uncertain for "Sam and Nia" and other YouTube "creators" as a result of a settlement with US regulators that will make it harder to get ad revenues from videos and channels directed at children.


"I went into a minor panic attack when I heard," said Rader, whose channel has taken in a reported $2 million from ads placed along the videos.

"I thought we would have to find a new source of revenues."

YouTube earlier this month agreed to pay a fine of $170 million and change how it handles collected data from children under a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission.

YouTube will treat data from anyone watching children's content on YouTube as coming from a child. It will also stop serving personalized ads on this content entirely, and bar features such as comments and notifications.

The new rules, set to go into effect in four months, have stoked fears in the YouTube community of creators and "vloggers" like the Raders, who live off the advertising revenue.

Shock, grief, fear 

"There's a lot of shock, grief and fear. For many creators, this is their only source of income," said Melissa Hunter of the Family Video Network, a consultancy which also operates a group of channels on YouTube.

"They are people making content in their houses, not huge companies; they're small homemade businesses."

Many questions remain as to how YouTube will define children's content -- intended for kids up to age 12 -- which will be subject to the new rules.

Rader said he has been advised that "we are a low-risk channel because our content is not targeting children."

YouTube is believed to have millions of content creators on its network, who share in the service's ad revenues, estimated to be more than $10 billion annually, though it is unclear how much of YouTube's content is directed at children.

In announcing the new policy, YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki acknowledged that "these changes will have a significant business impact on family and kids creators who have been building both wonderful content and thriving businesses, so we've worked to give impacted creators four months to adjust before changes take effect."

Wojcicki added that YouTube is "committed to working with them through this transition, and providing resources to help them better understand these changes," and would also establish a $100 million fund "dedicated to the creation of thoughtful, original children's content."

Critics of the internet giant said YouTube marketed itself as a destination for children and benefitted by selling advertising to toymakers and others.

FTC chairman Joe Simons said the settlement "prevents YouTube and Google from turning a blind eye to the existence of kids-directed content" on its platform.

Hunter said the creators of family content may collect anywhere from $30 to $100,000 per month, but that "those families are going to make almost nothing on January 1" when the new rules come into effect.

Ending targeting? 

YouTube and creators may still be able to generate revenue from video ads as long as they are not targeted based on data collected from children, although these are far less lucrative.

"Advertisers do spend more for trackable, measurable placements," said Nicole Perrin, an analyst at the research firm eMarketer.

"I'm not sure there is a way to comply with this for kids without limiting some of the revenues on that side."

Shaun McKnight, whose Dallas-based M-Star Media has created several popular YouTube channels which have attracted millions of subscribers, said he and his wife anticipated changes were coming.

"My wife and I thought it was too risky so we pulled back," he said.

source: philstar.com

Facebook discovers cost of factory-farming users

NEW YORK — Mark Zuckerberg is discovering the cost of factory-farming Facebook’s users. The $550 billion social network’s success harvesting advertising dollars through mass-appeal content has made it very profitable. The snag is that users are increasingly unhappy. The founder and chief executive’s return to focusing more on their welfare may limit short-run earnings but should improve sustainability.

The Facebook farm has become increasingly unwholesome. The company is at the center of a storm over the promotion of false news stories, some potentially placed with the intention of interfering with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Time spent per user on the core site has been falling, albeit from a high base, according to Pivotal Research. Zuckerberg’s stated goals for 2018 are fixing the site, cleaning up abuse, limiting interference by nation states, and “making sure time spent on Facebook is time well spent.”

Now Facebook is changing its algorithms, according to a post on Thursday, to prioritize news-feed items that users’ friends share and interact with and reduce the amount of third-party non-advertising content.

Multiple studies link time spent on social networks with unhappiness, and watching mass-produced videos and reading clickbait articles on a screen surely don’t help. Facebook hopes higher-quality feeds will work better. “We feel a responsibility to make sure our services aren’t just fun to use, but also good for people’s well-being,” Zuckerberg wrote.

This along with possible changes like favoring reputable news sources over more sensational ones, as Facebook is considering according to the Wall Street Journal, will probably hurt the company financially over the short run. Time spent on the site by users will probably fall, and that means advertising will grow more slowly.

That helps explain the 4 percent decline in the company’s shares by early afternoon on Friday. It’s worth it over the long term, however, if it keeps users sufficiently content to remain on the Facebook farm.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook tests splitting its News Feed into two

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook Inc said on Monday it was testing the idea of dividing its News Feed in two, separating commercial posts from personal news in a move that could lead some businesses to increase advertising.

The Facebook News Feed, the centerpiece of the world’s largest social network service, is a streaming series of posts such as photos from friends, updates from family members, advertisements and material from celebrities or other pages that a user has liked.

The test, which is occurring in six smaller countries, now offers two user feeds, according to a statement from the company: one feed focused on friends and family and a second dedicated to the pages that the customer has liked.

The change could force those who run pages, everyone from news outlets to musicians to sports teams, to pay to run advertisements if they want to be seen in the feed that is for friends and family.

The test is taking place in Bolivia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Serbia, Slovakia and Sri Lanka, and it will likely go on for months, Adam Mosseri, the Facebook executive in charge of the News Feed, said in a blog post.

Mosseri said the company has no plans for a global test of the two separate feeds for its 2 billion users.

Facebook also does not currently plan to force commercial pages “to pay for all their distribution,” he said.

Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California, frequently tests changes big and small as it tries to maximize the time people spend scrolling and browsing the network. Sometimes it makes changes permanent, and other times not.

Depending on how people respond, two news feeds could mean that they see fewer links to news stories. News has proved to be a tricky area for Facebook, as hoaxes and false news stories have sometimes spread easily on the network.

The test has already affected website traffic for smaller media outlets in recent days, Slovakian journalist Filip Struhárik wrote over the weekend in a post on Medium.

Publishers might need to buy more Facebook ads to be seen, he wrote: “If you want your Facebook page posts to be seen in old newsfeed, you have to pay.”

source: interaksyon.com

Social media ads to hit $50 billion by 2019 — Zenith

The amount of money spent on advertising on social media is set to catch up with newspaper ad revenues by 2020, a leading forecaster said on Monday.

The rapid expansion of social media platforms on mobile devices, as well as faster internet connectivity and more sophisticated technology, has triggered a huge shift in the way many people get their news.

Advertising agency Zenith Optimedia, owned by France’s Publicis, predicts global advertising expenditure on social media will account for 20 percent of all internet advertising in 2019, hitting $50 billion (39 billion pounds) and coming in just one percent smaller than newspaper ads. It expects social media to overtake newspapers comfortably by 2020.

“Social media and online video are driving continued growth in global ad spend, despite political threats to the economy,” Jonathan Barnard, head of forecasting at Zenith, said.

The media industry has been convulsed by the rapid shift in advertising trends in recent years, with firms moving their ad budgets from traditional sources such as newspapers to websites found on computers and mobile phones.

Marketers are increasingly directing their spending to social media sites where ads blend into users’ newsfeeds on platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat proving more effective than interruptive banner formats.

Zenith’s report forecasts that global advertising expenditure will grow 4.4 percent in 2017, the same rate as in 2016, which it said would be a strong performance given that big events like the Olympic Games, Britain’s EU referendum and the U.S. presidential election boosted advertising this year.

Online video advertising is also rapidly growing and set to total $35.4 billion across the world by 2019, fractionally ahead of the amount spent on radio advertising but still far less than television.

Global spending on advertising has been stable since 2010 the report showed, although growth has declined in the Middle East and North Africa. It was expected to continue to grow strongly in China and much of Asia.

source: interaksyon.com

Twitter hires new exec in bid to win China advertisers

SAN FRANCISCO, California — Twitter introduced a new head of operations Friday for what it calls Greater China despite still being banned in the mainland, as it attempts to boost already booming advertising.

While San Francisco-based Twitter is not allowed to operate in mainland China under the country’s strict Internet censorship, it does have an office in Hong Kong that courts advertisers over the border.

Twitter chief Jack Dorsey fired off a tweet from his @jack account welcoming former Microsoft and Cisco general manager Kathy Chen as managing director of Twitter’s Greater China operations.

“I’m really excited to find more ways to create value for our advertisers, enterprises, creators, influencers and our developers, and partners as well,” Chen said in a video snippet posted in a tweet from @TwitterGCN.

Twitter shared a link to a story in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post that reported the company has seen advertising triple in Greater China since it opened an office in Hong Kong in March last year.

Twitter has been banned in mainland China since 2009, but the service is a way for businesses there to get advertising messages to potential customers in other parts of the world.

“We’ve seen success with Greater China export advertisers and publishers using Twitter to reach global audiences,” Twitter chief operating officer Adam Bain said in a tweet welcoming Chen to her new job.

Twitter last week added a PepsiCo executive and a British entrepreneur to its board as Dorsey continues an effort to shake up the stagnating one-to-many messaging service.

Twitter marked its 10th birthday last month, having become a powerful communication tool but still struggling to win users and reach profitability.

Since making a star-quality entrance a decade ago, Twitter has become a must-have tool for journalists, activists and celebrities but has struggled to show it can expand beyond its devoted “twitterati” to become a mainstream hit.

Twitter’s woes include a slump in its stock price to all-time lows this year — down nearly half from its 2013 stock market debut — and ongoing losses, even as its revenue grows.

Twitter’s base of monthly active users remained stuck at 320 million at the end of 2015. While that is a big accomplishment, Twitter has failed to keep pace with fast-growing rivals and to expand beyond its base.

Dorsey said Twitter priorities for this year include making it more intuitive to use; live-streaming video, and making it safer for people to freely express themselves on the platform.

source: interaksyon.com

How #AlDub is a game-changer in Philippine television, advertising, social media

Since mid-July, the AlDub segment on noontime show “Eat Bulaga” has been growing into a pop-culture storm that is revolutionizing Philippine television, advertising, and social media.

The game-changing “kalyeserye” (a portmanteau combining the Tagalog words for “street” and “series”) repeats the so-called Pacquiao effect: it keeps people glued to their TV sets, it is on newspaper front pages, and it stops traffic and work.

Last Saturday, after 55,000 lined up to get inside the country’s largest indoor stadium, the five-hour “Sa Tamang Panahon” show was aired without commercials, “a very powerful move from ‘Eat Bulaga’, one that speaks of its commanding and enduring presence on Philippine television,” said Elmer Gatchalian, a writer who worked for GMA Network for 10 years before moving in 2010 to TV5, where he is head writer for “LolaBasyang.com” and “#ParangNormalActivity”.

But how was “Eat Bulaga” able to do that?

The 36-year-old noontime show has always been a big force, “a prized real estate” on Philippine television, according to advertising executive Vincent Pozon.

“Eat Bulaga” producers always have their ears to the ground. When he’s had to approach the show for commercial segments that advertising clients want to do in the show, Pozon said its producers would refuse to accept a proposal in toto, insisting on “making it work, tweaking” the concept, turning it into “paid or branded content.”

The boy-next-door charm of Alden Richards and the wholesome quirkiness of Maine “YayaDub” Mendoza — relatable, positive traits which advertisers want to be associated with — also helped push “Eat Bulaga” to have, what Gatchalian called, the ability to “dictate the ‘no commercial break’ rule during the entire airing of ‘Sa Tamang Panahon’.”

“Bukod sa may natural kilig yung tandem nila, higit sa lahat, maganda ang image nila. Alden and Maine are ‘mukhang mabait’ at ‘likas na mabuting anak, kapatid, at katrabaho.’ Wala pa tayong nababalitaan na naging rude sila sa fans. Halos lahat ng nababasa kong tweets, nagkukuwento kung gaano kabait si Maine sa fans niya and how she reached out to one of them in particular,” he said.

(“Aside from the natural high that their tandem creates, most of all, their image is good. Alden and Maine ‘look good’ and look like ‘naturally good children, siblings, and co-workers.’ We’ve had no news of them being rude to their fans. Most of the tweets I’ve read tell of how good Maine is to her fans and in particular, how she reached out to one of them.”)

“That story about a 60-year-old lolo who lined up for six hours just to buy ‘Sa Tamang Panahon’ tickets is one of the most touching fan-idol interactions. Even si Alden, all praises sa kanya ang mga katrabaho nya. Bonus na lang na pareho silang good-looking (his co-workers are all praises for him. That they’re both good-looking is a bonus),” he added.

In contrast, other young stars have been caught in social media acting like brats. Enrique Gil, for one, allegedly had a video of getting drunk inside a plane and James Reid, a picture of giving the dirty finger.

“Ang layo di ba (So different, right)?” Gatchalian said. “Alden and Maine are redefining what it means to be ‘artista’,” he added.

If they used to be “elusive, unreachable, and snobbish,” the AlDub protagonists are seeing fans go crazy for “kinder, more approachable, more sincere, and morally upright citizens.”

“So for some stars perceived to be negative or not ‘mabait’ (good), we might be seeing the end of their careers as artistas or product endorsers,” Gatchalian said.

PERFECT MATCH, PERFECT TIMING
Usually, television programs that rate high “need to crawl in the gutter, use the vulgar and the vile, skin and slapstick,” said advertising guru Pozon.

In contrast, AlDub was “born and (is) staged in the street, with two live audiences, street and studio, (with) very loose storyline led by unscripted events. No bad values,” he added.

Gatchalian said it another way: “Kaya rin pumatok ang AlDub kasi (AlDub is a hit because) I think they are the complete antithesis of manufactured stars and love teams. Their unexpected and innately potent chemistry is a breath of fresh air in local showbiz that is so used to manufacturing kilig.”

Riding on traditional media, both the segment and the show have tapped into the social media principles of freshness and boldness, and the enduring qualities of authenticity and expectation.

“The whole thing was born when the whole world watched a girl blush on television,” said Pozon.

“Eat Bulaga” saw the audience reaction and ran away with it building on this first blush with standard teleserye plots, which Gatchalian listed as: ampon (foundling), long-lost daughter, diary, hostage-taking, lola as kontrabida (villain), against-all-odds love story of Yaya and Alden, etc.

AlDub is so phenomenal it is making the rest of television passe.

“It is so new, the world will study this phenomenon,” said Pozon.

“Aldub’s persistent and pervasive relevance has the tendency to make all other celebs, love teams, and TV shows irrelevant…Niluluma niya ang lahat ng mga love team, artista at TV show sa ngayon. So producers of TV content have to really up the ante in terms of innovative storytelling and content production,” said Gatchalian.

The kalyeserye is also a parody, a lampoon, an exaggeration of soap conventions, Gatchalian said. And this would have an impact on the future of teleseryes.

On top of this self-mockery, the yeast that’s making AlDub grow like no other may be respect — for the protagonists (perhaps because Maine is from a well-off family) and most especially for the audience.

“The magic comes from the conditions from which it sprang: respect for what is organic, an ear to the ground on what is working, a respect for the audience,” said Pozon.

AlDub occupies the still-undefined space in television and pop culture, balancing reality and make-believe, giving respectful distance to whatever relationship is developing between Maine and Alden (if any), between reality and make-believe, between romantic-comedy and suspense-drama.

“Somebody in there (‘Eat Bulaga’) is thinking, ‘We’re not going with what worked in the past, we’re not going with experience or what is world-class. We’re going to keep a respectful distance and watch this blossom and we will water and take care of it,’” said Pozon.

“I am sure there is a tug-o-war between scriptwriting it and giving it space,” he added.

The timing was also perfect. “They are the love team of this millennial and social media-obsessed generation. And I think ‘Eat Bulaga’ has found an enduring brand with AlDub — and they were found by a new audience too,” said Gatchalian.

So what is next for Alden and Maine? “I can’t imagine how their legions of fans would react if they are denied of a real-life happy ending for AlDub,” said Gatchalian.

source: interaksyon.com

Twitter Ads expands to over 200 countries, territories

MANILA, Philippines -– Twitter expanded its self-service ads platform from 33 countries to over 200 countries and territories.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) from Honduras to Hong Kong can now effectively reach target audiences on it social media platfom in 15 languages according to a Twitter statement.

Furthermore, Twitter said that Asia Pacific is the fastest growing region worldwide and the platform expansion provides additional support for SMBs in Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, and the Philippines. In a recent research study from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), 98 percent accounts for SMB enterprises in Asia.

“Small and medium-sized businesses face the most challenges and are least resourced to promote the good work they do,” said Emily Huo, SMB lead for Asia Pacific at Twitter. “With the expansion of the Twitter self-service ads platform, we are excited to help SMBs level the playing field with digital advertising.”

Twitter launched Twitter Ads for SMBs over two years ago. There are now approximately 100,000 active advertisers on Twitter, including SMBs.

source: interaksyon.com

Microsoft hands display ads to AOL, maps to Uber

SEATTLE — Microsoft Corp said on Monday it will hand over its display advertising business to AOL Inc and sell some map-generating technology to ride-hailing app company Uber, as it slims down its money-losing online operations.

The moves mean Microsoft will focus on its growing search advertising business based on its Bing search engine, and displaying maps on its Windows devices rather than generating the maps themselves.

Microsoft, which employs hundreds of people in its display ad business around the world, said those employees would be offered the chance to transfer to AOL and that it was not making any layoffs.

The world’s largest software company no longer breaks out results for its online operations, chiefly its MSN web portal and Bing, but they have lost more than $10 billion over the past five years. Chief Executive Satya Nadella has said Bing will turn a profit next fiscal year.

“Today’s news is evidence of Microsoft’s increased focus on our strengths: in this case, search and search advertising and building great content and consumer services,” said Microsoft in a statement.

Under a 10-year deal struck with AOL, now a unit of Verizon Communications Inc, AOL will sell display ads on MSN, Outlook.com, Xbox, Skype and in some apps in major countries. As part of the deal, Bing will become the search engine behind web searches on AOL starting next year.

Microsoft also struck a multi-year extension to its existing deal with AppNexus, which provides the tech platform for buyers to purchase online ads.

Microsoft and Uber did not disclose financial terms of their deal, under which Uber will take over the part of Microsoft’s mapping unit that works on imagery acquisition and map data processing. Uber will offer jobs to the 100 or so Microsoft employees working in that area, according to a source familiar with the deal.

Fast-growing Uber, which is shaking up established taxi services worldwide, already uses a combination of map services from Google Inc, Apple Inc and China’s Baidu and the source said it will continue to do so.

Although Microsoft will no longer collect mapping imagery itself, Microsoft said it will continue to work with imagery providers for underlying data on its own maps. Microsoft already gets much of its map data from Finland’s Nokia.

source: interaksyon.com

YouTube considers offering ad-free subscription

SAN FRANCISCO — YouTube viewers might get the option of paid subscriptions for ad-free access to the popular online video-sharing service.

Subscriptions and even a streaming music service are among new options that YouTube is considering offering its more than one billion users, YouTube chief Susan Wojcicki said at a technology conference in California late Monday.

“YouTube right now is ad-supported, which is really great in the sense that it has enabled us to scale to a billion users; anyone can access the content,” Wojcicki said in an online video clip of her on-stage conference chat.

“But there are going to be cases where people will say, ‘I don’t want to see the ads,’ or, ‘I want to have a different experience.’”

Wojcicki also confirmed rumors that YouTube is working on a streaming music and video service that could compete with the likes of Pandora and Spotify.

She did not provide many details, but Wojcicki said she is optimistic the music service will debut soon.

“We are thinking about how to give users options,” Wojcicki said.

source: interaksyon.com

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop names new CEO, plans e-commerce push

Goop, the lifestyle blog and online shopping site founded by actress Gwyneth Paltrow in 2008, named a new chief executive officer on Monday to spearhead an e-commerce expansion that includes Goop-branded apparel.

Lisa Gersh, who was previously CEO and president of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and co-founder of Oxygen Media, will expand the site’s tie-ups with fashion designers including Stella McCartney and Diane von Furstenberg next year.

“We have a brand. Now it’s time to build the business to that level,” Gersh said in an interview.

For the next 18 months, Goop will focus on being a U.S.-based site that ships globally. Goop will also build its own advertising team to tap into the site’s loyal fan base, said Gersh, who also sits on the board of toymaker Hasbro Inc.

Eventually, Goop will launch its own label, stretching into apparel — starting with basic wardrobe staples — beauty and home, Gersh added. “We’ve seen the mistakes out there,” she said. “We’ll take small steps.”

Gersh resigned from Martha Stewart Living in December 2012 after a rocky tenure that saw her in the CEO job for less than six months. While at the company, she led the restructuring of the company’s publishing unit.

After leaving the company, Gersh began advising fitness guru Tracy Anderson, who introduced her to longtime client Paltrow, Gersh said. In June, Paltrow moved Goop to Los Angeles from London.

Goop’s expansion comes at a time when other celebrity-backed e-commerce companies are doing the same. The Honest Company, a startup co-founded by actress Jessica Alba that sells organic and environmentally friendly family products, is looking to expand in China and is planning to eventually go public.

The bulk of U.S. retail sales still happens in brick-and-mortar stores, but e-commerce is growing much faster than retail sales overall. U.S. ecommerce sales will jump 15.5 percent in 2014 to $304.1 billion, according to data from eMarketer, compared to 3.7 percent for non-e-commerce sales.

source: interaksyon.com

YouTube weighs funding efforts to boost premium content – sources

LOS ANGELES — YouTube has embarked on a new round of discussions with Hollywood and independent producers to fund premium content, two sources with knowledge of the talks told Reuters, a move that could bolster a three-year-old multimillion-dollar effort that has had mixed success so far.

The talks underscore Google Inc’s desire to complete YouTube’s transition from a repository for grainy home videos to a site sporting the more polished content crucial to securing higher-priced advertising.

Over the past two months, YouTube executives have begun making the rounds, talking to Hollywood producers to explore the kinds of support it could offer its content creators and produce more must-see programming, according to the two people.

Executives did not lay out exactly how a program would be structured. One of the two people said the site may offer between $1 million and $3 million to produce a series of programs, and might contribute marketing funds as well.

The second person said the site was interested in videos shorter than the 30-minute, TV network-quality Web shows that Amazon.com Inc and other online sites have recently funded.

“We are always exploring various content and marketing ideas to support and accelerate our creators,” a YouTube representative said in an email. The site declined to comment on the meetings.

The latest round of discussions is in its initial phases and actual measures may never materialize, the sources said.

YouTube is by far the world’s most popular location for video streaming, with more than 1 billion unique visitors a month, far surpassing Netflix Inc and Amazon. But it is trying to lure more marketers for premium video advertising, boosting margins as overall prices for Google’s advertising declines.

YouTube set aside an estimated $100 million in late 2011 to bankroll some 100 channels, though it never confirmed amounts spent or other details. Beneficiaries of that largesse included Madonna and ESPN, as well as lesser-known creators. Reuters was one of the companies that received funds for a channel.

But few of those have garnered much mainstream attention.

“Over 115 of the channels launched as part of that initiative are now in the top 2 percent most-subscribed to channels on the platform,” a company representative said in an email.

YouTube has continued to provide backing for its content creators. It provides production facilities for creators, offers tips on how best to create content, and provides small amounts of funds for creators to test ideas.

The site also provides marketing support for online celebrities, including paying for billboards and TV ads for the likes of beauty blogger Michelle Phan and baker Rosanna Pansino.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook rolls out video ads, aims to capture part of TV-marketing budgets

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook Inc will allow more marketers to run video advertisements on its website, provided the world’s No.1 social network deem them to be of high-enough quality.

Facebook and social media rivals like Twitter are increasingly trying to grab a slice of lucrative TV-marketing budgets as they try to sustain rapid growth. That market is considered crucial to supporting Facebook’s growing market valuation and poses a potential long-term threat to traditional TV networks.

Facebook has moved cautiously to avoid annoying users. Social media players like Twitter are typically careful not to clutter up their users’ pages with unwanted material.

The 15-second video ads, which appear in newsfeeds and will play automatically with sound muted, will become available to a limited number of marketers over the next few months, Facebook said on its official blog on Thursday.

It first tested video ads with a single advertiser in December. Facebook said Thursday that video ads will be available to a “a select group of advertisers,” without details.

The price that marketers pay to run a video ad on Facebook will be determined by the size of the audience as measured by measurement firm Nielsen, Facebook added. Marketers will be able to choose specific times of day for their spots and will be able to target ads according to age and gender.

However, Facebook said it would review the creative quality of any video spots that appear on its website, assessing ads for criteria such as watchability, meaningfulness and “emotional resonance.” Such reviews will be done in partnership with video analytics firm Ace Metrix.

“We’re taking this step in order to maintain high-quality ads on Facebook and to help advertisers understand what’s working to maximize their return on investment,” Facebook said in the post.

source: interaksyon.com

'Diana' film poster taken down from Paris crash site

PARIS—The French distributor of the film "Diana" has removed an advertising poster that sparked outrage for being placed at the site where the Princess of Wales died in 1997.

Distributor Le Pacte told AFP it had the poster for "Diana" removed from near the entrance to the Pont de l'Alma tunnel on Monday, ahead of the film's French premiere on Wednesday.

"We asked for the removal of this poster after controversy in the British media," a source at Le Pacte said, adding that the poster was only one of about 1,000 put up in Paris to promote the film.

Diana, her boyfriend Dodi Fayed and their driver were killed after their car smashed into a pillar in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel while being pursued by photographers.

Several British newspapers criticised French promoters for putting up the poster at the site, with the Daily Mail quoting a friend of the princess, Rosa Monckton, blasting the move as "despicable and crass".

The Daily Star described the placement of the poster as "Di-abolical" and "heartless".

"Diana", starring Naomi Watts, received a critical drubbing when it premiered in London last month. The film purports to tell the story of Diana's romance with UK-based Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan.

Since Diana's death, the area around the Pont de l'Alma has become an unofficial monument to the princess, with messages by her admirers scrawled on the bridge over the tunnel.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook to show users less unwanted ads in newsfeed

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook newsfeeds will contain fewer ads for products or services that users are not interested in, Facebook Inc said on Friday, announcing changes in advertising policy.

It was the Web company’s latest effort to refine the newsfeed ads that have become more important to its business.

“When deciding which ad to show to which groups of people, we are placing more emphasis on feedback we receive from people about ads, including how often people report or hide an ad,” Facebook said.

“If someone always hides ads for electronics, we will reduce the number of those types of ads that we show to them,” the company said.

Facebook has been trying to make ads more prominent without triggering a backlash among its 1.15 billion users.

The world’s No.1 online social network, which generates roughly 85 percent of its revenue from advertising, now injects one paid ad into every 20 “stories” users see in their newsfeeds, the company said in July.

While big brands such as Toyota and AT&T advertise on Facebook, the company also makes money from marketers of weight-loss and teeth-whitening products. Analysts say some users may not welcome these less-glamorous pitches in their newsfeed.

Forrester Research analyst Nate Elliott said Facebook needs to take steps to keep the latter category of ads in the less intrusive, right-hand side of the Web page, while reserving the space within users’ newsfeed for higher-quality ads.

“If Facebook allows unappealing advertising to invade that space then they’re in trouble. That harms the user experience, and reduces the value of that inventory for high-quality marketers,” Elliott said.

Facebook said some marketers “may see some variation in the distribution of their ads” in coming weeks. The company did not elaborate.

Shares of Facebook finished Friday’s regular trading session up 1.7 percent at $51.24, the highest closing level since the company went public in May 2012.

source: interaksyon.com

Fake iOS 7 ‘waterproof advertisement’ fools iPhone users

In a report posted on the Telegraph, a spoof advertisement saying that Apple’s latest mobile operating system can make their iPhones and iPads “waterproof” have fooled some users, and in the process breaking their Apple gadgets.

The fake commercial was said to be identical to an Apple advertising poster complete with image of an Apple mobile device and similar fonts, with a message that says “Update to iOS 7 and become waterproof”.

The poster also also suggested: “In an emergency, a smart-switch will shut off the phone’s power supply and corresponding components to prevent any damage to your iPhone’s delicate circuitry.” And at the bottom, it said: “waterproofing [is] covered by Apple’s warranty policy”.

The U.K.’s Telegraph also reported that “after being shared on social media sites by users encouraging people to try the new feature soon angry complaints appeared from those fooled by the joke.”

According to the report, the prank was started by controversial forum 4Chan, which already had a history of hosting faked material.

Apple iOS 7 is the newest operating system for Apple mobile devices that include the latest iPhone 5S and 5C. iOS 7 will also work with earlier version of the iPads (from iPad version 2) and iPhones (from iPhone 4).

iOS 7 is Apple’s biggest upgrade to the operating system since the mobile device software debuted six years ago, providing major changes in the look, feel, and settings on the hardware.

The iPhone 5s and 5c, already preloaded with iOS 7, went on sale on Friday, September 20, and on Monday, Apple reported selling more than nine million iPhones in its opening weekend.

source: interaksyon.com

Doing good and getting caught

In today’s integrated communication practice effective public relations no longer performs a supporting role. It now plays the principal character. It is essential in strategic planning, and is seen to be very important to your competitive success  more than advertising or marketing. It may sound like wishful thinking, but PR is leading the way these days, while traditional advertising appears to have lost its glitter.

Companies and individuals have successfully used PR to achieve great things or to repair damaged institutions and people. Thus, learning to use this powerful force for good is an imperative. Declaring “PR is the most commanding authority in modern society” is not an empty boast given the many success stories from big companies, influential personalities, threatened corporate reputations and PR crises and disasters, where PR plays a significant responsibility. And since it is globally replacing advertising as the promotional strategy of choice for individuals and organizations, it’s undoubtedly important to understand how PR works, and how you can harness its muscle.

In the book Rethinking Reputation: How PR Trumps Marketing And Advertising In The New Media World, Fraser P. Seitel and John Doorley examine why they think advertising has lost its advantage. The authors remark, “It used to be that a company, candidate or bank president could ‘purchase’ their way to prestige and positivity through advertising or marketing. No longer.” In this age, where images are established through 24/7/365 mobile, Internet, cable TV, radio commentary and non-stop social media conversations, reputations can no longer be built through top-down, paid media.

One’s reputation depends largely on honorable deeds communicated candidly and consistently through a steady stream of free media — releases and speeches, media appearances and charitable contributions, and Facebook and Twitter postings. Stated simply, a smart organization or individual today will acknowledge that in rethinking its reputation, PR must lie at the center of its strategy. The tome makes you realize the growing magnitude of word-of-mouth interactions and free publicity. Seitel and Doorley position their substantial familiarity to work in helping put together a blueprint for boosting what is potentially your most valuable asset — your reputation. Here are major takeaways from the book:

• All PR messages must be clear and consistent. The authors share the case of Jean-Claude Trichet to demonstrate how messaging can go awry if not managed well. Nobody especially cared for Trichet, the French civil servant who ran the European Central Bank (ECB) until November 2012. He was aloof and spoke in platitudes as Greece and Spain and Italy spiraled steadily downward. Trichet’s successor, Mario Draghi, was a welcome change. He was a banker, spoke with conviction and inspired global confidence — especially when he declared in London in July 2012 that the ECB would do “whatever it takes” to support the euro. But recently, when he seemed to backtrack on his earlier declaration, the euro and his own credibility took a hit. Such is the price one pays for inconsistent communication in the 21st century.

• Reputation depends on good behavior and honest communications. At the center must be what academics call “identity,” or what President Abraham Lincoln labeled “character” — what one stands for. To elucidate this point, the authors narrate the story of the torturous trail of Mevacor, the enormously successful drug that lowers cholesterol. After initial promising trials, Dr. Roy Vagelos, then CEO of Merck, heard about the news on cancer in dogs caused by a similar compound being tested in Japan. As such, he ordered the Mevacor trials stopped. This, however, didn’t make Vagelos lose heart. He had the guts to make the product available in securely controlled trials to patients with genetically high levels of cholesterol that threatened death at age 40. It proved efficacious and non-toxic, leading to full-scale trials and huge success in the market. “Vagelos believed in transparency before it became a buzzword.”



• PR gets through to consumers because of its power to engage. Tom Leatherbarrow, head of B2B at Willoughby Public Relations, says that within the business-to-business sector, PR is surely turning into an equal and complimentary partner to advertising — if not more dominant. He declares, “While advertising has a clear call to action, many clients are wanting to put over much more complex messages which do not necessarily demand an immediate ‘buy’ response.” Indeed, many are wanting to go beyond what is called “product pushing” to try and engage customers by using more sophisticated messages about added value and whole life costs to justify premium pricing strategies and customer benefits rather than merely product attributes. Here, PR is increasingly being seen as more empathetic to customer need.

• It’s best if you can have both accuracy and speed. Seitel and Doorley run through Georgia prosecutor Nancy Grace for being swift and floppy with the facts, and making misleading declarations. In the death of Whitney Houston, Grace reports, “Houston was found drowned in a Hollywood bathtub in 2012” and that “the LAPD has already reported that Houston’s death wasn’t the result of foul play or force or trauma to the body.”  In truth, Houston died in a Beverly Hills hotel and the investigating agency was the Beverly Hills Police Department, not the LAPD.  These details may not be material to Grace’s point, but the laxness is difficult to ignore. As an aftermath, Grace was rebuked by media for being more concerned with speed — first in breaking news — rather than with accuracy.

• You can’t possibly win with spin. If you listen to critics of the profession, “PR is spin.” Seitel and Doorley dispute such a claim and accentuate that “Spin is inappropriate and counterproductive.” They identify former US President Bill Clinton as the “first modern politician to use spin to alter political reality.” They aver, “It can be argued that the pervasive modern-day practice of ‘spinning’ — defined by the late William Safire as a ‘deliberate shading of news perception and an attempted control of political reaction’ — emerged in the wake of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal of 1998. PR people should avoid spin because it damages reputation, with long-term effects. As the authors highlight, “If you lie to the media once, they will never believe you again.” All you have as a spokesperson for a company, an organization or an issue, is your credibility. Once you lose it, you’ve lost everything. Never, ever lie is the cardinal rule of PR.

• Recapture credibility by blogging. The case of ExxonMobil exemplifies this principle. The company spent and continues to spend large amounts of time, money and human capital to face the communications challenge of a reputation still stained by the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. ExxonMobil aims to shift public sentiment to “an honest and constructive voice in public discourse, defined by principles and proper action, focused on solving problems.” The company’s journey, led by chief communicator Ken Cohen, began with determining what the problem is, and using its own research model to track its reputation. The corporate communications team sought to close the gap between the company’s negative perception and positive reality by taking part in the discussion. The team informally, and without an agenda, meets environmental and human rights NGOs two or three times a year. To this day, Cohen blogs regularly and ExxonMobil frequently uses its corporate Twitter handle to connect to people. Given its efforts, Seitel and Doorley opine, “The true test of an ExxonMobil reputation is whether the company is perceived by its publics the same way it perceives itself.”

• CEOs and public figures are vehemently warned against tweeting. To back up this recommendation, the authors use the example of Anthony Weiner, an up-and-coming Democratic star, and an odds-on favorite to win the 2013 mayoralty race in New York City. Weiner’s star dimmed when he issued a strange announcement that his Twitter account had been hacked and a sexually suggestive photo was sent in his name to a young woman in the Northwest. But persistent journalists found out later that he had lied in his declaration, and he was censured in a big way. The moral of the story: Social media are wonderful, but if you are a person with easy access to national media and a name recognition that’s getting brighter, don’t risk what you have by using Twitter recklessly.

An opposition to this view from other practitioners quickly surfaces, arguing, “If the CEO is the face of the brand and they like to tweet, why not let them? Understandably, tweets do go wrong, but a steadfast rule against tweeting is not always wise.  Brand capital gets left on the table when you are too restrictive with CEOs and how they can and can’t communicate. Many heads of companies display a level of genuineness that no one else in the company can bring to its stakeholders.” Four memorable lessons stand out in Weiner’s story: don’t lie; silence grants the point; in a crisis, take charge immediately; and the truth will out.

• PR is about developing discourse, engagement and relationships. Tom Watson, PR professor at Bournemouth University, says this eloquently. To him, traditional advertising is focused on display. As you become increasingly conversant in networked societies, the role of PR becomes more important as it creates value that advertising can’t.” In fact, PR workload picks up during belt-tightening periods. As editorial consultant Anne Massey states, “A squeezed budget buys precious little advertising but a lot of targeted, sales-driven, profile-raising PR coverage, and that’s what’s in demand during hard times.” It will be interesting to see whether PR budgets grow apace as the economy improves, or whether there’s a rush back into advertising once budgets swell enough to warrant it.”

• Any talk about PR taking over from advertising is overstated. This bold premise was delivered by Gavin Devine, CEO of MHP Communications Agency, who insists that there are many cases of stunning advertising campaigns that impact clients on needs: “Selling mass-market products, or achieving widespread behavioral change, is often best achieved through above-the-line activities,” he underscores. PR may claim the digital space, but Devine points out that advertising also has a role to play here. He adds, “Digital and social media campaigns prove that there is a place for both industries to coexist and collaborate, as these campaigns often have elements of both PR and advertising. What we’re seeing much more are joined-up campaigns, where PR builds on traditional advertising and vice versa, often through social media activation. Using PR and advertising together can help achieve message continuity across all media platforms, and to all audiences — consumers, employees, investors and stakeholders.”

Granted that what Devine said is true, it’s hard to disprove the claim of PR to a growing space at the heart of companies’ overall marketing strategy in the light of the evolving landscape of communications. After all, as the authors emphasize,  “When PR works well, it has greater credibility than advertising, whether it’s street cred or the more formal kind measured by big polling firms — because when someone else says something good about you, it’s worth infinitely more than when you say something good about yourself.”

Cutlip and Center, the authors of the first book I read on PR, claim, “Public relations is doing good and letting people know about it.” Harold Burson, the other half of Burson Marsteller, one of today’s largest PR agencies, updated the claim when he declared, “Public relations is doing good and getting caught.”

source: philstar.com

Facebook puts focus on photos in new look

MENLO PARK, California — Facebook Inc introduced the biggest change in years to its popular newsfeed on Thursday, with a new look and focus on photos that is expected to make the social network more ad-friendly and may entice users to spend more time on the website.

The changes to the newsfeed, whose look and feel had remained largely unchanged since Facebook’s inception, include a division into several sections, with separate areas for photographs and music.



The newsfeed is the ever-changing stream of photos, videos and comments uploaded from friends, and is the first page most users see upon logging in.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the makeover was part of an effort to position the social network as a “personalized newspaper,” complete with different sections for users to explore.

It comes with a revamped interface that gives more prominence to visual media, such as photos and videos.

The makeover comes roughly a month after Facebook introduced a new social search feature it dubbed “graph search” that makes it easier for the social network’s more than 1 billion users to discover more content on the social network.

The much-needed changes unveiled on Thursday, which standardize the network’s look across different types of desktop and mobile devices, bring Facebook up-to-date as Google+, the much younger social network started by Google Inc, begins to incorporate more video and images.

“This is just going to provide more opportunity for people to click around and stick around,” said Brian Blau, an analyst with industry research firm Gartner, about the revamped newsfeed.

“The newsfeed was kind of outdated. This sort of brings it up to maybe what’s comparable to…their competition, and partner sites that are focusing on media and richness.”

Facebook’s newsfeed is one of three “pillars” of the service, along with search and user profiles.

The updated newsfeed provides more space for the photos and videos that users share on the network, and provides a more consistent look and feel between the version for PCs and for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. The changes will begin rolling out in limited fashion from Thursday, Facebook said.

Facebook executives say the updates will help keep organized the increasing jumble of content available on the social network as its user base grows.

The last major update to the feature occurred in September 2011. Since then, the company has incorporated ads directly into the feed and has shifted its focus to creating “mobile-first experiences,” because more people now access the social network from smartphones than from desktop computers.

Facebook vs Google

Marketers will be able to fashion more compelling ads thanks to the increased real estate for photos, said Hussein Fazal, the chief executive of AdParlor, a firm that helps companies advertise on Facebook. “Larger images will result in higher click through-rates, a higher level of engagement and better performance,” Fazal wrote in an email.

Still, analysts say the company needs to tread carefully to avoid inundating users’ various feeds with advertising, as Facebook tries to sustain a rapid pace of growth that helped it debut on public markets at the highest-ever valuation for a technology company.

The world’s largest social network is moving to regain Wall Street’s confidence after its botched IPO last year, addressing concerns about its long-term prospects – many of which center on an industry-wide shift toward the use of mobile devices.

Facebook shares, which are still more than a quarter off their IPO price of $38, closed up 4 percent at $28.57 on Thursday on the Nasdaq.

Facebook and Google, which both got their start on desktop computers, are now managing a transition of their products onto smartphones and tablets, which typically yield less revenue than on PCs.

The two Internet mainstays are also waging a war for revenue in mobile advertising – a market that is still small compared with the traditional desktop but that is growing exponentially.

In terms of overall mobile advertising, Google commanded a 53.5 percent share in 2012, aided by its dominance in search-based ads. Facebook had just 8.4 percent, a distant runner-up, according to estimates from research house eMarketer.

But in terms of mobile display ad sales, Facebook narrowly edges out its rival with 18.4 percent of the market versus Google’s 17 percent, the research outfit estimated.

Pressure on the system

The makeover is partly prompted by complaints about increasing clutter on Facebook’s network.

As Facebook has grown to more than 1 billion users, the amount of content that users and companies post to the website has surged. Facebook users only see a small portion of that content, culled by Facebook’s proprietary algorithm.

In recent months, some companies and users, including entrepreneur Mark Cuban, have grumbled that their content was not getting enough exposure in the newsfeed, because Facebook gives paid ads priority in the newsfeed.

Facebook’s vice president of product, Chris Cox, acknowledged that there was “more pressure on the system” to feature the various content, as Facebook has grown in size.

The additional newsfeeds provide more opportunities for content to appear in front of users. A photos-only feed displays pictures shared by a user’s connections on Facebook as well as on Facebook-owned Instagram and other photo apps that are integrated with the social network.

A revamped version of an existing but little-used Music feed aggregates the songs that a user’s friends are listening to, and includes posts from bands and performers in which a user has expressed an interest.

Facebook also introduced a “Friends Only” feed that displays every message shared by a user’s friends in chronological order — rather than chosen by an algorithm — as well as a “Following” feed that gathers posts from news publishers, celebrities, sports teams and other groups or businesses that a user subscribes to.

“The basic idea is sometimes you want five minutes and you want to see the top stuff, sometimes you want to spend an hour and go through a lot of different stuff,” Cox said in an interview after the event.

The additional feeds could also provide Facebook with more space to offer ads on its newsfeed, though a spokeswoman said the additional news feeds would not initially feature ads.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook buys Microsoft ad technology platform

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook Inc said on Thursday it had agreed to buy advertising technology from Microsoft Corp that measures the effectiveness of ads on its website, which should help in its fight with Google Inc for online advertising revenue.

Under the long-rumored transaction, Facebook will purchase the Atlas Advertiser Suite, an ad management and measurement platform that Microsoft took on with its $6.3 billion acquisition of digital ad agency aQuantive in 2007. Facebook did not say how much it paid for the technology.


Unable to make it work for its own purposes, Microsoft wrote off $6.2 billion of the aQuantive deal’s value last year.

Facebook has long been dogged by doubts about the effectiveness of its ads and was embarrassed just days before its initial public offering in May when General Motors Co declared it was pulling the plug on all paid advertising on Facebook’s network.

Since then, Facebook has introduced a number of tools and partnerships to prove to marketers that advertising on its social network delivers enough bang for the buck.

Brian Boland, Facebook’s director of monetization product marketing, said the purchase of Atlas was not a step toward creating a much wider ad network beyond the Facebook site, but analysts believe that is Facebook’s ultimate goal.

“Although the statement announcing the deal focused on Atlas’ measurement tools rather than its ad targeting technology, we expect that Atlas will soon be using Facebook’s data to target sponsorships, in-stream ads, and other rich ad formats across the entire web, and that’s big news,” said Forrester analyst Nate Elliott.

“The question now is how quickly and successfully Facebook can integrate its data with Atlas’ tools, and whether they can avoid a privacy backlash as they do so. History suggests they’ll struggle on both counts,” he said.

Google leads the $15 billion U.S. market for online display ads with 15.4 percent share, according to researcher eMarketer, followed by Facebook with 14.4 percent.

source: interaksyon.com

As world of gadgets grows, online industry tunes in to video ads

SAN FRANCISCO — Internet video ads, long a sideshow in the online advertising market, are gaining in importance to marketers and Web publishers as they look to capitalize on consumers’ changing viewing habits and tap a $70 billion television market.

The ever-expanding array of gadgets that display online video, from tablets to Internet-connected TVs and DVD players, along with technology such as social media that facilitates distribution, has spurred new interest.

The growing trend means websites like Google Inc’s (GOOG.O) YouTube, Yahoo (YHOO.O), AOL (AOL.N) and Hulu have a better shot at tapping the mother lode of television advertising budgets, though video ads have a long way to go before they become as dominant a part of the marketing landscape as TV ads.

Research firm eMarketer says video is the fastest growing form of online advertising, with spending increasing 46 percent last year, and outpacing popular formats such as search ads and display ads.

Google does not break out financial results for its YouTube business, but CEO Larry Page said on Tuesday that spending among YouTube’s top 100 advertisers increased by more than 50 percent in 2012 compared with the year before.

There have been media reports that Facebook is developing a video ad service, and analysts will likely be looking for answers on that avenue when the social networking giant delivers its quarterly results on Wednesday.

At Yahoo, “one of our highest priorities was to create more online video experiences, because that’s where the demand is for advertising,” said Tim Morse, the former Yahoo finance chief who became CFO of video advertising technology company Adap.TV this month.

Advertisers are increasingly fond of video ads, Morse said, because of the similarities to TV.

“It’s the closest to what they’ve had offline. They’re looking for the same kind of medium where they can connect with consumers,” he told Reuters.

Turning point

Chevrolet has been running online video ads for several years, but significantly ramped up its activities and investment in 2012, said Carolin Probst-Iyer, the manager of digital consumer engagement for the General Motors (GM.N) division.

“Last year was a bit of a turning point,” she said, as Chevrolet put greater emphasis on creating original video ads and looking for new ways to distribute spots, rather than simply running existing TV ads on YouTube and TV network websites.

One recent ad for the buzz-worthy new Corvette Stingray was viewed more times on mobile devices than it was on PCs, she said.

For Web publishers, video ads are good business. While typical banner ad rates can generate a few dollars per thousand views, video ad rates can reach $20 per thousand views, said eMarketer’s David Hallerman.

“All of the Internet advertising to date has come from print sources,” such as newspapers, magazines and yellow pages, said RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney.

“We’re are at a point where television ad budgets are likely to come online.”

The explosion of new screens such as smartphones and tablets greatly increases the venues where consumers can watch video, whether they’re at their desks or on a bus. And social networking, which makes it easy for users to share favorite videos, has given marketers added incentive to produce video ads that can gain additional exposure by tapping into the social slipstream.

YouTube’s head of industry development, Suzie Reider, said marketers are increasingly developing ads that are tailored for specific audiences, making it more likely that Web surfers will actually watch them.

“We’re living in a day and age where nobody has to watch an ad that they don’t want to watch,” said Reider. “You can skip them on the Web, you can skip them on TV.”

To make its website more appealing to advertisers, YouTube has helped create hundreds of “premium channels” featuring professionally produced video as opposed to the amateur clips YouTube is famous for. And it’s developed a type of video ad that users can skip after five seconds – advertisers only pay if the ad is watched all the way through.

Price deflation?

Despite the growth in Web video ad spending, which eMarketer estimates reached $2.93 billion in the United States last year, the firm said the spending still represents only about 10 percent of the broader online advertising market.

And that is a mere drop in the bucket compared with the $68 billion that Kantar Media estimates was spent on television advertising in 2011.

One potential constraint is the way big brands and agencies organize their marketing budgets, says Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser. Online video ads are typically funded from Web ad budgets rather than a much larger pool set aside for TV.

Analysts also note that the rich rates websites collect for video ads will decrease as more Internet sites open to ads – something that’s already happening thanks to technology that automatically pairs ads with videos on websites.

Still, many analysts and industry executives are optimistic about what they see as the bigger picture.

“The number of people watching TV seems to be stagnating or declining, and the number of people turning to the Internet for entertainment is surging,” said RBC’s Mahaney. “It almost inevitably drives these TV budgets online”

source: interaksyon.com

Instagram backtracks after move to sell users' pics triggers online uproar

Instagram backed down Tuesday from a planned policy change that appeared to clear the way for the mobile photo sharing service to sell pictures without compensation, after users cried foul.

"The language we proposed also raised questions about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement," Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom said in a blog post.

"We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we're going to remove the language that raised the question," he continued. "To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos."

Changes to the Instagram privacy policy and terms of service set to take effect January 16 had included wording that appeared to allow people's pictures to be used by advertisers at Instagram or Facebook worldwide, royalty-free.

Twitter and Instagram forums were abuzz over the phrasing, as users debated whether to delete their accounts before the new rules kicked in.

"Bye-bye Instagram," tweeted Scott Ninness. "Who in their right mind will use a service that allows your images (to) be sold with no financial remuneration to you?"

"Everybody should continue using Instagram but just take blurry photos of sandwiches," suggested a Twitter user with the screen name Michele Catalano.

Systrom did not specify how the terms of service wording would be changed.

Originally proposed portions of the new policy that rankled users included "You hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the content that you post on or through the service."

The terms also stated that "a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos, and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you."

Instagram contended that it was not claiming ownership of people's pictures.

"Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we'd like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram," Systrom said.

"Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing."

Some people tweeted in defense of Instagram, arguing that it was a "mega-business" that needs to make money.

"I quit Instagram on principle," Twitter user Liz Heron said on the popular message service. "I'm tired of contributing to the commodification (sic) of my own existence."

Instagram said that the changes were part of a move to better share information with Facebook, which bought the company this year.

Internet rights activists at the Electronic Frontier Foundation had called on Instagram to reconsider the new policy, saying it violated "key principles" for social networking services.

Instagram, which has some 100 million users, is seeking to route photo viewers to its own website, where it has the potential to make money from ads or other mechanisms.

This month, the service made it impossible for Internet users to view its images in messages at Twitter.

Previously, Instagram pictures shared in messages tweeted from smartphones could be viewed unaltered at Twitter.

Twitter responded by adding Instagram-style photo sharing features of its own.

Yahoo! joined the fray last week by making it more enticing for iPhone users to use its Flickr photo service.

Instagram rose to stardom with the help of Twitter, but has distanced itself from the messaging service since Facebook completed its acquisition of Instagram in September.

The original price was pegged at $1 billion but the final value was less because of a decline in the social network's share price.

source: interaksyon.com