Morning Update: Miss Universe blunder a publicity stunt?; Facebook’s ‘duty of care’; Mashable for sale; Star Wars running routes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmqAjr0xs04
AdWeek: Was Steve Harvey’s Miss Universe Flub Staged? If Not, It Should Have Been
Steve Harvey and Miss Universe—two people you likely weren’t thinking about Sunday afternoon—abruptly became the Internet’s top topics Sunday evening.
Harvey spectacularly botched the announcement of the winner, accidentally giving Miss Colombia the crown. Then, at the most awkward moment possible (the new Miss Universe’s celebratory wave to the crowd), he whipped the audience into a hooting frenzy with the words “I have to apologize,” noting that the real winner was Miss Philippines.
The whole scenario, frankly, felt like a twist from WWE’s WrestleMania rather than from a hyperproduced global pageant.
Politico Media: Mashable for sale?
Mashable, the 10-year-old digital tech news phenomenon, looks like the next big digital news organization to test the waters for a sale.
The company is being shopped to potential buyers, confidential sources tell me. Deutsche Bank is doing the shopping, looking for a deal as big as $300 to $350 million, I’ve learned.
Time Warner, sources tell me, has been a potential acquirer — the company led a funding round for Mashable at the beginning of 2015 — but its interest may have cooled since the third quarter of this year.
Digiday: News UK CMO: Facebook has a ‘duty of care’ to publishers
News UK’s chief marketing officer Chris Duncan wasn’t previously a fan of publishing directly to platforms like Facebook. In previous interviews with media, he called Facebook’s launch of Instant Articles, and the general trajectory of the Facebook-publisher relationship, an “audience and navigation tax” and vowed that neither The Times nor The Sun would succumb.
A lot has changed since then, and now Duncan is singing a different tune. For one thing, The Sun scrapped its paywall Dec. 1 in a quest for bigger audience growth.
Guardian: Facebook ditches Flash video in latest blow to maligned plugin
Has Facebook finally struck the fatal blow in the long, slow demise of Flash by switching to HMTL5 video by default?
The social network has switched to HTML5 for all Facebook web video, meaning videos you upload or publish on your profile or fly through on your news feed will no longer require Flash. The experience will mirror that seen on mobile devices and the Facebook apps.
Digiday: This agency staffer is running ‘Star Wars’-shaped routes in Portland
There are better (and healthier) ways to celebrate the new “Star Wars” movie than sitting on your couch re-watching the whole franchise. R/GA UX designer Gene Lu is tracing out iconic “Star Wars” imagery in his runs around Portland, by taking routes in the shapes of Stormtroopers, TIE Fighter, Darth Vader and At-At Walkers.
R/GA, Lu’s agency, is the shop behind Nike+ itself — it created the platform for longtime client Nike in 2006 as a way for runners to record and track running data. It was also the agency behind the now-defunct Fuelband, for which it won a bunch of advertising awards in 2012.
