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The November episode of “The Hobson and Holtz Report” features Neville and Shel discussing these topics:

• MeWe and WT:Social are among the latest crop of social networks offering serious privacy in an attempt to dethrone Facebook
• A new tool lets brands remove negative comments from paid social media posts
• QR codes have made a comeback
• AI writer completes writing what you started
• Telcos hope RCS will inspire you to give up WhatsApp, Messenger, and other third-party tools
• Ping raises $13 million to make timekeeping easier for lawyers
• Dan York reports on NewsPack from WordPress, the Google Site Kit, PRX and Google podcasts, National Podcast Month, and the New York Times’ look at the internet’s future

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog.

The next episode of For Immediate Release will be posted on Monday, December 16.

Links from This Week’s Episode

• Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales launches Twitter and Facebook rival
• Privacy Social Network MeWe Reaches 4 Million Members
• Inside MeWe, Where Anti-Vaxxers and Conspiracy Theorists Thrive
• Facebook Alternatives 2019 – Social Networks That Won’t Sell Your Data
• These 5 alternative social networks are the cure for Facebook fatigue
• Brands Can Remove Negative Comments on Paid Social Posts With This New Tool
• Chick-fil-A boosts app downloads 14% with QR codes, analysis finds
• QR Codes and the Holiday Spirit
• Mysterious QR codes showing up on car windows help stop burglaries
• The Time of the AI Writer
• OpenAI Releases Fake Text AI Initially Deemed Too Dangerous Into the World
• Talk to Transformer
• AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile have finally agreed to replace SMS with a new RCS standard
• How to Check If You Have Access to Google’s RCS Messaging
• What is RCS messaging? Here’s all you need to know about the successor to SMS
• Lawyers hate timekeeping — Ping raises $13M to fix it with AI

Links from Dan York’s Report

• Our Early Review of the Newspack Project from Automattic
• Newspack Blog
• Newspack FAQ
• Chilean News Publication El Soberano First to Launch on Newspack
• Newspack announces second set of pilot newsrooms; first U.S. site relaunches on new platform
• Google Releases its Site Kit WordPress Plugin Out of Beta
• Site Kit is now available for all WordPress sites
• Podcasting 101
• Want to make a podcast? 5 tips to get you started
• Podcasting 101: An interview with Sean Rameswaram
• National Podcast Post Month
• So the internet didn’t turn out the way we hoped. Where do we go from here?

About Shel Holtz

Shel Holtz, ABC (Accredited Business Communicator), is director of Internal Communications at Webcor, a commercial general contractor headquartered in San Francisco. Before joining Webcor, Shel spent 21 years as principal of Holtz Communication + Technology. In addition to integrating technology into communications strategies, his expertise includes strategic communications planning, change management, organizational culture, business initiatives and communications research. Full bio