social media news

The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Spotify have teamed for a long-term, reciprocal content partnership deal.
This is the first such digital content deal from Spotify, where it's allowing a partner to develop a content hub. The music-streaming service has created an Ellen Show hub that will live on the platform, which DeGeneres will curate.
"It’s long been important for us to engage audiences everywhere they are across all platforms," said Ellen Show executive producer Ed Glavin. "The opport

Today’s brands are expected to do more than just provide goods and services. Consumers demand to know a brand’s core values. They also expect brands to prove that their goal is to achieve more than building their bottom line. 
And many brands have delivered. From Warby Parker’s charity-based business model to brands such as Chipotle and Sweetgreen wearing their purpose on their sleeves (and on their menu boards), more and more brands are showing consumers that they believe

Two big-market sports franchises are teaming up to grow their fan bases overseas.
The Brooklyn Nets of the National Basketball Association are hosting Juventus Night today (7 December) in partnership with Italian soccer club Juventus. The cross-sport event at Barclays Center started with a watch party of the Inter Milan and Juventus match and will flow into the night's Nets game against the visiting Toronto Raptors.
Michael Zavodsky, chief revenue officer for the Nets and BSE Glob

Epic Rap Battles of History just came back triumphant after almost two years of silence, and the opponents in the latest battle are none other than the most infamous CEOs of the year: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg versus Tesla’s Elon Musk. The choice of rivals is not a huge surprise — I’ve been seeing this match-up requested in comments for at least the last year. Series creators “NicePeter” Shukoff (who plays Zuckerberg) and “EpicLloyd” Ahlquist (wh

When it comes to getting a quality education, a robot could do far worse than a program at Yale. Machine learning researchers at the Ivy-League university recently started teaching robots about the nuances of social interaction. And there’s no better place to start than with possessions. One of the earliest social constructs that humans learn is the idea of ownership. That’s my bottle. Gimme that teddy bear. I want that candy bar and I will make your life a living hell if you don&rs

Rapper 2 Milly yesterday revealed he was suing Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite, for copying his dance, the Milly Rock, in one of their emotes. The problem, he says, is not just that he’s not being fairly credited and compensated — it’s that he’s just one of several artists who’ve been treated this way by the game company. (Mis)Appropriation In the complaint filed by 2 Milly’s (real name: Terrence Ferguson) lawyers in a California cour

Working the night shift can be lonely enough, but on Christmas Eve, when everybody is with family, those who work past regular business hours can feel left out. So, UberEats and Coca-Cola have teamed to deliver home-cooked meals for free to those who have to work on 24 December.
Created by Parisian agency Romance for the Coca-Cola European Partners and UberEats application partnership, the operation, ‘When Christmas Feels Like Home,’ speaks to everyone who has to work Christmas Eve a

Dove Men+Care is giving the gift of free washes and haircuts to men and the children in their lives to help families spend more time together during the holidays. On December 8, the brand will launch #HolidayShear by taking over 22 locations of Bishops Cuts/Color, a national chain that is predominately minority-owned.
"Every holiday season my son and I are left scrambling at the last minute to make it to the barbershop," said Tyler McElhaney, father and founder of Tynology, a men's lif

Goodstuff Communications has been named the Automobile Association's (AA) media agency of record, closing its second media review in as many years.
The appointment ends the AA's relationship with Dentsu-owned Carat, which has been working with the brand for two years since picking up the account from Starcom in 2016.  Carat is not believed to have repitched for the business. 
This change comes at a time where the AA (which is thought to spend around £14m on media)

Here at Plugged we cover gadgets differently. Rather than giving products an arbitrary rating (five out of seven! Nine stars!), we conclude our reviews by describing the person that an item would be perfect for. We wanted to take this same approach to our gift guides. So instead of doing a normal list, we’ve split the items into personality types. Specifically, the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, a system that orders people into 16 specific groups. This chart sums it up succinctly

It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for. The trailer for Avengers 4 has finally arrived, along with an official name. Get ready for Avengers: Endgame. It’s certainly… moody. Understandable, after half the universe has been wiped out, I suppose. If you want to go into the movie fresh, don’t worry; this trailer won’t do much to spoil things for you, as it’s also surprisingly light on plot and character appearances. Of course, there will inevitably b

Taste of Home, a top food media brand, is celebrating its fifth annual Gingerbread Boulevard alongside longtime sponsor, Folgers. The two are bringing a handcrafted gingerbread cityscape to New York's Madison Square Park for everyone to enjoy. This time, the culinary platform is upping its game by allowing people to enter to win a contest that could find them being served dinner at the gingerbread table.
Inspired by NYC’s iconic holiday window displays, Taste of Ho

There are only five days left until Hard Fork Decentralized, our blockchain and cryptocurrency event in London, UK. If you’re interested in discussing the future of payments with industry leaders, we’ve selected some events you shouldn’t miss: Decentralized finance (University College London) The UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies focuses on the impact of this tech on our socio-economic systems, as well as the promotion of a safe and organic development and adoption of blo

Guinness is to become the new title sponsor of the Six Nations Championship. The brewer will replace NatWest, which took on a one-year agreement for 2018 following the termination of a 14-year sponsorship by parent Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).
The Diageo-owned Irish brewer has secured the sponsorship for six years at a reduced rate. The Royal Bank of Scotland bowed out in 2016, unwilling to foot the £11m per year fee after it admitted that it is "not the global bank we

Just as the US Department of Homeland Security announced plans to develop forensic techniques to deanonymize cryptocurrency transactions, MasterCard has thrown a spanner in the works with plans for the exact opposite. According to a recent patent application, the payment infrastructure provider wants to anonymize “electronic transactions via blockchain.” The patent explains how the system would obscure the origin and amount of funds involved in a given transaction. MasterCard‘

ConsenSys, the blockchain behemoth powering a swathe of Ethereum-related software, is letting 13 percent of its staff go in a bid to retain a sense of viability. The company confirmed what many believed would be inevitable: the exponential growth enjoyed by Joseph Lubin’s decentralized business experiment can’t, and won’t, go on forever. A press release optimistically dubbed the new, 13-percent-lighter company as “ConsenSys 2.0,” presumably an attempt to spin the s

Digital production studio, Neu and creative comms agency Wire have launched a digital button that makes it easier for the voting public to petition their local MP to put a stop to prime minister Theresa May's proposed Brexit deal.
The tool was designed to make it as easy as possible for constituents to influence the Brexit deal vote on Tuesday 11 December at the House of Commons, by flooding the inbox of MPs. Due to the vote's recent announcement, the teams told The Drum there was a ra

After doubling its cryptocurrency lineup this year, it seems popular exchange service Coinbase has no intention of slowing down its expansion into altcoin trading. The company has revealed it’s exploring a large list of cryptocurrencies that could soon be added to its flagship desktop and mobile app, Coinbase.com. Among others, Coinbase singled out Ripple‘s XRP, Cardano’s ADA, EOS, as well as the embattled Tezos (XTZ). Indeed, the exchange claims it’s currently consideri

A report released by accountancy firm The Wow Company reveals almost three-quarters of UK agency owners (74%)  have felt "uncontrollable worry" about their company over the last month.
The Mental Resilience of Business Owners report by The Wow Company surveyed 300+ agency owners. According to the report, 31% cited finance-related issues such as having enough money in the bank, paying wages, chasing overdue payments or HMRC, as the main factor that keeps them awake at night, followed by clie

KnowTechie is one of my favorite blogs. Earlier this week, it published a post about a super-cheap ‘smart’ RGB bias light from Chinese tech brand MINGER. Yes, you read that right. MINGER. It’s unfortunate the branding team at MINGER didn’t stop to Google it first, as MINGER is a rather cruel British insult. Here’s how Urban Dictionary defines it: “Someone who was not just touched by the ugly stick at birth but was battered severely with it. Anyone who does no

Blockchain promised us freedom and liberation from centralized authorities like governments, but in the latest report from the EU Blockchain Forum (EUBF), the technology is starting to sound more like 1984 than ever before. The EUBF’s latest report details that for blockchain to realize its potential within government institutions, they must focus on using the technology to build two things: digital identity systems, and digital versions of their national currencies. “Digital identi

Here at Plugged we cover gadgets differently. Rather than giving products an arbitrary rating (five out of seven! Nine stars!), we conclude our reviews by describing the person that an item would be perfect for. We wanted to take this same approach to our gift guides. So instead of doing a normal list, we’ve split the items into personality types. Specifically, the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, a system that orders people into 16 specific groups. This chart sums it up succinctly

A medium for London's youth community, grime artist Stormzy, is collaborating with Adidas Originals to celebrate the big smoke's creative community.
To harness talent for an immersive live performance, the campaign presented four curated lectures in community centres, before youths were tasked with reinterpreting one of Stormzy's songs. 
Renowned for his bars that capture the reality of growing up as a black Londoner in a council estate – although Stormzy has

Show me entity :: 20930
Welcome to YouTube Re:View, a weekly listing of the most talked-about YouTube videos in the UK, brought to you by The Drum. This week Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas' walk down the aisle; Joe Sugg dazzles in his technicolour dreamcoat; Rita Ora takes to the stage with the Victoria’s Secret models; the trailer for The Lion King live action remake tugs the heartstrings; and Victoria Beckham aka Posh Spice makes an exclusive

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that it would discontinue the EdgeHTML browser engine. Future versions of Edge would use Google’s Chromium rendering engine, which powers a swathe of browsers, including Chrome and Opera. Edge was never a popular browser, and at the time of writing commands just 4.34 percent of the market, according to NetMarketShare. However, the increasing homogenization of the browser space doesn’t sit well with many. Mozilla, the non-profit behind

Unlike, say, reshoeing a horse or sculpting a topiary dolphin, professional creativity is a task without obvious end.
As such, a great many creatives have trouble determining the right time to put the pencil down. Too early, and your metaphorical hedge animal is ragged and indistinct. Too late and you've inadvertently lopped off a flipper.
It's a matter of 'enough', or rather knowing the distinction between an enough that still awaits you and one you have already scuttled past.
As creative chall

Trademarking a noise takes years of patience, documentation and Hollywood testimonies, at least if Zippo’s recent experience is anything to go by.
The company has officially trademarked the sound of its lighter being flicked open and sparked in the US. It is planning to to file for similar intellectual property protection in the European Union, Canada, China and India.
The aural status, which is often referred to as a ‘soundmark’, has only been granted to a select few brands. I

Welcome to our weekly column, in which YouTuber NimbleThor brings you a short list of the best new mobile games for your Android device. Whether you’re into casual time wasters or hardcore shooters, you’ll find something in here to exercise your thumbs with. Facebook has been on a downward spiral for months now, as we’ve come to realize there’s no reason to spend hours on a platform that does not care about our privacy, and that seems to be going out of st

As part of the ongoing Agency Growth Stories series, Alex Sibille of The Future Factory speaks to Tom Tapper, co-founder of full-service creative agency Nice and Serious, to learn more about what they’re doing to bring increased ethics to the marketing world.Tom Tapper, co-founder, Nice and Serious.
 
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Alex Sibille: I’ve heard you’re a very democratic agency when it comes to deciding which briefs to take on.
Tom Tapper: That’s right! We

A Google training exercise has gone disastrously wrong after a trainee was able to inadvertently place a dummy ad on a ‘huge number’ of websites and apps.
The oversight occurred on 4 December when the unnamed individual replaced large volumes of genuine adverts with a blank yellow rectangle across the US and Australia.
The error persisted for a full 45 minutes before administrators were able to restore settings, but the issue raises significant questions about the efficacy of the sea

DriveTribe, the car-community media brand founded by The Grand Tour trio Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May in 2016, is gaining momentum by developing a unique business model that informs the marketing campaigns of the world’s biggest auto brands.
The media brand's website looks like a cross between an auto publication, Facebook and Reddit. It has arranged its content around ‘Tribes’ like Motorsports, Rally, Celebrity and more, all administered by a team of aro

Till now, we were trying to develop an AI which can beat Human players at respective board games. But the race has now shifted to beating other top AI players at their own games. Alphabet Inc.’s AI division, DeepMind, has developed an AI named AlphaZero, which can learn and master games like chess, Go, and shogi without any human intervention. In a paper published in The Journal Science, the DeepMind team notes that AlphaZero is an improved version of its famous AlphaGo engine. After feed

Launched in 2009, this year marked the 10-year anniversary for Singles’ Day shopping festival created by Alibaba. The event that eclipses Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Amazon’s Prime Day entirely in China. This year made history with $30.9 bn in sales over 24 hours.
To understand the sheer value of the event, here are some numbers to consider:
$1bn in sales in 85 seconds.
15 hours, 49 minutes to cross 2017's $25.3bn sales figure.
$30.8bn in sales in total across 230 countr

Global digital agency Isobar part of Dentsu Aegis Network has appointed Prashant Mehta to senior vice president, global head of delivery.
Reporting to Mike Mulligan, Isobar's global chief operating officer, Mehta will be the agency’s lead architect to design cross-border delivery models across technology, creative and commerce, partnering with Vikalp Tandon, Isobar's global technology officer, Ronald Ng, chief creative officer and Shawn Mishra, SVP and global

If you had any hopes that a Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) would be coming in early 2019, to bring Bitcoin to Wall Street, it’s time to put them aside – again. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday released an update stating it is pushing its decision on the VanEck Bitcoin ETF back to February 27, 2019. According to the update, the SEC has received over 1,600 comments on the proposed rule change which would enable the launch of the Bitcoin ETF. Clearly, the SEC

Virtual reality (VR) has made massive bounds in recent years. We’re now seeing VR as an innovative and creative experience catered to customers. To find out about the creative ways entrepreneurs are using VR — and which methods have true applicability — I asked a panel of entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council the following question: What’s the most creative use of VR you’ve seen, and how has it inspired your own business efforts? Their best answers are

UK creative industries minister Margot James has unveiled a £20m package of investment designed to broaden diversity, support the videogames industry and nurture regional businesses across England.
Recognising that the field now contributes over £100bn to the UK economy, James has allocated £14m towards an industry-led creative careers programme to raise awareness among young people of the opportunities presented by the sector.
A further £4m component will be reserved for