It’s a mega catch-up! This week’s Link Herd has discoveries dating back the past few weeks. Perhaps think of this post as a feeding frenzy of “we’re all publishers now” goodness as we examine trends in the marketing, media and publishing world.

• Disney’s Frozen Marketing And Online Singalongs
  Insight from UK’s Unruly Media on how Disney was able to generate interest and money by allowing Frozen and its iconic songs to flourish on YouTube.
• Publishers keep tabs on Google’s latest skirmish
  Newspaper publishers in Germany have found Google News won’t be showing their snippets any more. This is Google defending themselves from legal claims of copyright infringement. Is it a case of be careful of what your wish for?
• Love it? BuzzFeed Wants to Help You Buy It Too
  Buzzfeed adds a “click to buy” button. That would be standard for most sites but for Buzzfeed the implications are larger as retailers will find it much easier to determine whether the site’s readers are actually interested in buying items.
• The New York Times needs to rethink its strategy — untargeted mini paywalls aren’t the answer
  The NYT is laying off staff, closing one app and taking a hard look at another under-performing mobile strategy. In this piece Mathew Ingram argues that unfocused paywalls aren’t the answer; readers won’t pay premium for content slices. They will, however, pay for relationships so turn the branded journalists into something worth paying for.
• How to modernise a public relations agency or communication team
  How well is the PR industry adapting to a world in which we’re all publishers? Not well enough argues Stephen Waddington,President of the CIPR, argues that change has been talked about but not actually done. In this piece he walks the industry through some steps to achieve change.
• Stop Making Misleading Studies on News and Social (by @baekdal) #opinion
  Baekdal tears into a Newspapers vs Facebook report and in doing so makes a host of well argued points. The piece covers everything from what ‘direct traffic’ in analytics actually means through to the definition of news.
• Soledad O’Brien Brilliantly Explains How Brands Should Work With Elite Storytellers
  Modern media companies want brands to underwrite the stories they can’t necessarily afford to tell, and brands want to be a part of great stories. But very often, that partnership doesn’t work because brands are reluctant to do the things that go into truly great storytelling: namely, taking a leap of faith and relinquishing control.
• Here’s What 2.7 Billion Social Shares Say About Online Publishing
  A in-depth study into what sort of content and which publisher is statistically significant in nearly 3 billion shares. The answer? Very few publishers and no trends. Old press tends to be more negative than new press. Facebook dominates shares. Surprised?
• PewDiePie is sick of internet comments too, removes them from his YouTube videos
  King of YouTube the gamer PewDiePie is fed up of YouTube comments. It’s all spam or self promotion according to the vblogger. He’s going to turn them off from his channel and use Twitter or pehaps even Reddit instead. A challenge for Google?
• YouTube introduces fan funding to allow users to donate to their favourite vloggers
  YouTube is introducing a “tip” system to let fans donate small dollar values to their favourite vloggers. Google takes a 5% cut. The result will likely be a boom in magic middle vloggers who will be able to step up their game, or be more willing to, with the additional revenue.
• Who owns the rights to branded content: publishers or brands?
  An interesting question and one that’s taken a surprising time to surface – who owns branded content? Can brands pull content after they pay a platform to publish it? If they do then is the publisher due further compensation?
• Will travel blogging as we know it fade into the sunset?
  Drew Meyers, co-founder of Horizon, argues that travel blogging as we know it today is likely to become a thing of the past as habits change.
• 500 Publishers On Content Marketing Best Practices [Research]
  500 publishers, including some big names, contribute to a survey about being pitched too. Some of these publishers get dozens of pitches each and every day. Some of these publishers never respond to a pitch.
• Google Launching Ad-Free YouTube Music Key Subscription Service
  The advertising community may well be up in arms over this rumour – imagine if YouTube users could opt-out of ads. Imagine if that also came with a music subscription! Where would video ads go? It is just a rumour. I think it’s a good move from YouTube too.
• Brands should be collaborators, creators and curators – not just advertisers
  Very much in tone with ZEST’s “Creators, Curators and Community Moderators”, Georgia Arnold executive director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation argues that brands should be more than just advertisers.
• The LinkedIn challenge: acting like a publisher
  LinkedIn’s senior director of global marketing talking about the challenge the network faces – creating and growing a publishing arm within a platform company.
• We Have a Rape Gif Problem and Gawker Media Won’t Do Anything About It
  A horrible story from Gawker staff about Gawker Media. The Jezebel team are at their wits end having to deal with horrible gifs that get posted as spam. The company won’t block them. As a result poor Jezebel staff have to delete each by hand.
• Need more evidence that publishers and agencies are evolving on the same path? Mashable’s future is branded content and consultancy
  Mashable’s CRO describes the company as a “hybrid tech-media company” and wants the phrase native ads banned. Mashable is pushing further into branded content and consultancy.