Content Aware is GPP's weekly update of the new, interesting, or essential in media. Pass it on, or send interesting morsels our way.
Trash talking
In something surely not at all ironic to anyone, Facebook has been spied paying a major US political lobbying firm to sow the seeds of opposition to TikTok for such things as, err... harmfulness to children and society. Do they want to leave TikTok Reeling?https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/
‘Press the panic button
We had to debate the use of the word “whopping” when analysing a sample of just how many publishing businesses are running on out of date or insecure WordPress versions. Check the results of our regular quarterly sector scan.
https://www.gpp.io/news/wordpress-security-vulnerability-scan-sample-shows-increase-over-six-month-period-ayQQt9C0n8F8
Corbidge comments…
You won't believe what Corbidge is commenting on in [insert your town] here! Click to find out! Big Clickbait hates him!
https://www.gpp.io/news/youll-never-guess-what-we-found-when-we-clicked-on-clickbait-a1pRY8K0O8QE
Peruse in Perugia
The International Journalism Festival runs from April 6th next week in the heart of Umbria in Italy. Entry to the multiplicity of its events is free, so you just need to wind your way to historic Perugia and find somewhere to stay. We'll be sending some authentic local Baci!
https://www.journalismfestival.com/programme/2022
GAmageddon: Tag 'em, bag 'em
Any knowledge on GA4 is useful right now as the mammoth change to site analytics practices and methodology barrels unavoidably down the tracks towards websites worldwide. SEJ helps out with some Google Tag Manager advice.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-tag-manager-ga4-guide/396169/
Sight as seen
Have you pitched resource into designing content for your possible inclusion in Google Visual Stories search results? It has now ended a testing period on mobile and is feeding into mobile search results proper, so the potential audience for it has just ballooned. It's limited to the US market for now, but if it works well there, expect it to expand globally.
https://brodieclark.com/visual-stories-unit-web-stories/
Intervention powers
The Professional Publishers Association has joined a UK industry-wide chorus for the Digital Markets Unit of the Competition and Markets Authority to be granted statutory powers as soon as possible - i.e. legal teeth and law-making muscle - so it can properly undertake enforcement action against misbehaving Big Tech platforms.
https://www.ppa.co.uk/article/the-ppa-has-added-its-voice-to-unprecedented-media-coalition-calling-on-the-prime-minister-to-act-swiftly-to-save-media-from-harmful-impacts-of-tech-platforms-what-does-this-mean-for-publishers
Deep dive archive
A fabulous interview with Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and master of the Way Back Machine - collector of some 670 billion web pages and counting.
https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/03/after-25-years-brewster-kahle-and-the-internet-archive-are-still-working-to-democratize-knowledge/
'Authentic' social media
Lucas Gelfond gives insight into BeReal, a sort of reverse Instagram social media app that demands you post an honest image of yourself daily in order to gain access. Our skincare and make-up routine isn't all it could be, maybe this is Instagram for the slothful? Or will careful curation simply dominate like elsewhere?
https://dirt.substack.com/p/dirt-bereal?s=r
Flagging interest?
Unicode won't be adding any more flags to the emoji menu. Here's why.
https://jenniferdaniel.substack.com/p/the-past-and-future-of-flag-emoji?s=r
Thanks as always for your tips and recommendations!
