Every two weeks, Vanguard distills hundreds of digital media headlines into the best “byte”- sized pieces of useful information. Each edition has news ranging from the latest Facebook algorithm changes to best practices for email marketing. Share Digital Bytes with your organization to keep your digital strategies ahead of the pack.

Digital Bytes

In timing that would make even non-PR folks roll their eyes, Facebook announced on the eve of the U.S. midterm elections that an independent assessment of its impact on human right abuses in Myanmar found that “we weren’t doing enough to help prevent our platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence. We agree that we can and should do more.” This is in agreement with U.N. reporting.

In other news …

• Vine lovers rejoice! The platform’s founder announced a successor called Byte, which will launch in spring 2019.
• Instagram has created a new ad type called “Promote” for Stories that makes it much easier to advertise within Stories. I’ve personally been seeing a lot more ads within Instagram Stories, so here’s to hoping an ad influx doesn’t decrease the feature’s popularity.
• After a mass employee walkout at Google, the company is changing its policy around sexual harassment reporting and removing forced arbitration rules.
• During a conference in Portugal, Twitter co-founder Ev Williams discussed the health of Twitter and ruminated that showing public follower counts is “not necessarily healthy.”
• Uber announced it will cover 100% of tuition at Arizona State University’s (ASU) online program for its Uber Pro drivers. I’m honestly really torn about this.

Fun Resources

• How do you implement digital transformations at an organizational level? It starts at the top, needs an internal champion and must include thoughtful key performance indicators, says Adobe’s Kaveri Misra.
• When I think of websites that shape how I think about the modern Internet, Buzzfeed comes to mind immediately, with its mix of ad- and click-driven headlines and recent foray into more serious news reporting. Gizmodo lists “100 Websites That Shaped the Internet as We Know It,” which includes some gems – from I Can Has Cheezburger to Wikipedia.

Finally …

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