Everyone wants their content to be first on Google, Facebook or anywhere online. But Facebook posts will now focus on personal, not commercial, info. What does that mean for you? What does that mean for your organization?

Good morning. It’s Monday, December 18th. Big holidays are coming up. This will be the last issue of Spotlight until January 8th. Unless something important happens like Facebook acknowledging that passively using social media can negatively affect mental health. Or if Google changes its search engine guidelines.

Or maybe the FCC will vote to let Internet providers decide how fast websites and services can appear on your devices.

Since the FCC, Google, and Facebook already did those things last week, we’re not anticipating any more huge events. But it was a heckuva week! Google makes far fewer pronouncements about search than you might imagine. Comments they do make are treated as commandments.So when Google announces that they’ve combined two how-to search resources into one search guidelines document and added new sections, every online marketer immediately starts reading.

Google is not kidding about mobile. That should have been clear by now, but your website’s prominence will suffer if your website does not perform as well on mobile as it does on desktop computers. And don’t use a tablet to check. Google says they consider those more of a desktop experience.

Other important changes cover items like “structured data”–which enables Google to parse facts from a web page and display them in search engine results.

The other shocking news from Google was a round of changes to Google for Nonprofits and the Google Grants advertising program that provides charities with up to $10,000 every month in free advertising credit. The changes were big enough for us to immediately start talking with our nonprofit clients after Wednesday’s announcement. One caveat: maintaining a grant will be beyond the scope of most non-marketers after the minimum click rate quintupled.

Official word from Google: New SEO Guide, Nonprofit Community forums

We told you in November about Sean Parker, Facebook’s first president, saying at a conference that Facebook leverages a psychological feedback loop to its users to help fuel growth. Parker said that he would be a “conscientious objector” to social media.

News came out this week about Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook’s former VP of User Growth, doubling down on that sentiment while speaking at Stanford in November. “I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,” he said. Palihapitiya also says he uses Facebook as little as possible, and his children are not allowed to use it at all.

Facebook immediately countered the 1-2 punch, but by Thursday, the social media giant was acknowledging that “..when people spend a lot of time passively consuming information — reading but not interacting with people — they report feeling worse afterward.” 

There is a lot to unpack in Facebook’s posted defense, from multiple videos to footnotes with links and a lot of words. Get the details at the official post.

Spotlighted

More than Disney-Fox: Softbank is investing $300 million in Wag, a professional dog-walkers app. Target is spending $550 million on Shipt, a same day grocery delivery service.

Veterans, check this out.  LinkedIn is offering vets and active duty military one year of free LinkedIn Premium. The company says it’s a great way to connect for a change in career. Details here.

Google is adding price-tracking features to its travel data. Users will be notified when prices are “higher than normal” based on Google’s tracking of that information.

Three new Facebook functions:
Snooze – 30 days of not seeing someone
Take a Break – blocks exes from view
Account Switcher – for families sharing a computer.

We wish all of you happy, safe, and healthy celebrations. Spending 2017 with you each Monday morning has been fantastic, and we’re honored to be part of your world. 

We’ll see you early on Monday morning, January 8, 2018. Imagine, we’ll be closer in time to the year 2033 than to the year 2002.

An FCC vote on Thursday is expected to eliminate net neutrality regulations that require companies to treat another company’s Internet content the same way they treat their own.

Experts expect that Internet connection prices will rise and be treated like cable television–one price for email, another for social media, another for streaming videos. This CBS News story explains the issue well.

Please call your members of Congress and tell them you oppose this action. Congress can write legislation to restore net neutrality. Dial the Capitol switchboard at 202.224.3121 to be connected to your reps.

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

Highlights

• It’s a busy week with holiday shopping online events. Anyone selling things to consumers is busy. Plan accordingly. 
• Internet giants are snapping up content to compete with each other in 2018. 
• And they’re fighting with each other again. Amazon-Google and Verizon-Mozilla are two big battles.

YouTube launched their TV service earlier this year at barely breakeven rates. Industry watcher Fierce Cable said that the company was spending slightly more in content costs than the subscription price. Big tech companies do things like that. And some analysts are expecting the number of YouTube TV subscribers to reach 2 million next year.

With that successful launch, YouTube is emboldened to again go after the world of streaming music. The company’s Remix music service launches in March. Warner, one of the big three music companies, is already signed. Apple and Spotify are continuing to grow. Spotify’s worldwide user base doubled to 60 million people this year and Apple’s disruption of the music business with the iPod is the stuff of business legend.

Meanwhile Apple announced this week that it would pay $400 million for Shazam, a popular app that identifies music, movies, and television shows from audio clips. Shazam has new technology that hasn’t launched yet, but also generates up to 10% of outside referrals to Apple’s iTunes service. 

Facebook isn’t going to be left out of these content purchases either. The company shocked many by bidding $600 million to livestream cricket. Now, Facebook will be giving a new executive hire a budget of “a few billion dollars” to acquire sports rights, according to Recode.

Could all of this activity be coincidence or preparations for the ability to sell separate services after the FCC’s net neutrality vote?

Consider a new live trivia game called HQ that is attracting a lot of attention. Venture capitalists have told media sources that the company will be valued at up to $100 million after being in business for 6 weeks. More than 300,000 people played in a single game last week. And the app isn’t even available yet for the 50% of its potential audience that uses Android.

And don’t forget that Verizon’s recent purchases of AOL and Yahoo are now bundled in a company called Oath while AT&T sues the government for permission to buy Time Warner.

These battles are going to cause ill will and hyper-competive issues between the major Internet players. Just as Google and Apple healed another of their many rifts, Google announced that YouTube will not be available on Amazon television products. We also learned that the Yahoo unit of Oath is suing Firefox browser maker Mozilla because the company’s search engine was dropped in favor of Google’s.

Expect all of these border clashes and competing services to get worse without net neutrality. As this is being written, there are seven major streaming video services operating in the U.S.–all with different pricing and none with partnership deals.

Learn More: YouTube Remix coverage at Bloomberg, Apple-Shazam coverage at The Verge

A fun link: Digital Music News has created lists of the top songs people used Shazam to identify in 2017.

Ready to get your own free copy of Spotlight on Monday mornings?  Click here–unsubscribe anytime