My Top Five weekly round up of must-know social media news! It includes Facebook for publishers, Google Data Studio, auto tweeting, Youtube aspect ratios and a discussion of tech industry ethics in targeting children. Enjoy!

1. How Facebook handles breaking news and its life cycle

Facebook is working with news publishers to develop a new way to capture breaking stories and track them through the longer news cycle. About a hundred news organizations around the world are using the breaking news tool. The Thai Cave Rescue story is tailor made for testing it. Undertanding how Facebook handles news content is a priority for communications professionals.

2. Google launches three new ways to tell data stories

Three new features in Google’s Data Studio make analysis and reporting easier. Explorer cuts time in poring over data. Blending gathers and visualizes data from multiple sources. Report Gallery provides easy-to-use templates for informative reports. This is good news for non-geek marketers. Getting easy access to data can improve marketing performance.

3.  The end of auto-post tweets and retweets to Facebook

You can no longer automatically post tweets or retweets to connected Facebook accounts thanks to Facebook’s recent cut in publish actions permissions from its API. There are other options to share Twitter content on Facebook, but they’re not as easy. Automation can be a boon for marketers, but did auto-posting from Twitter to Facebook ever actually work?

4.  YouTube now adapts video player to video aspect ratio

YouTube has changed its video player so that it now adapts to match the aspect ratio of content. The adjustment is automatic and is retroactive to all uploaded video. It changes the presentation of many YouTube site features, and there is no way to disable this change. As marketers, we too need to adapt constantly to leverage video content.

5.  Is the tech industry using psychology to hook kids?

A group of top US psychologists, researchers and child advocates seek to condemn the tech industry’s use of psychology to hook kids. They say research links excessive use of social media and video games with depression and academic troubles. They feel it’s unethical for psychologists to develop tech that risks harming children. It’s an issue that communications pros need to track as younger demographics drive media consumption trends.

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