The weekend read

Been picking berries all week with nothing to show for it, communicators? Come fill your basket with my finds of the week, shared via @dontgetcaught on Twitter and curated here just for you.

• First pick: Using a metric that used to be applied only to highly addicted cigarette smokers, a new survey suggests that, for most of us, social media are the first apps you use each day.
• Late to the patch? Twitter's interim CEO announced some ways he may shake up the social network, including changing the reverse-chronological order of tweets you see. His metric for success? "If we meet these expectations, Twitter will become the first thing people check every morning to start their day." 
• Berry crumble: Ugh. Facebook is looking at adding one of LinkedIn's most abused feature: letting members add tags to others' profiles. If this is going to be like people endorsing me for things I don't do (like press releases) on LinkedIn, I'm out.
• Berries on the menu: Wondering whether that restaurant is too busy right now? Google will now tell you.
• Mom's berry pie: One analyst's take on what Twitter needs to do? "The bottom line for TWTR is that after nine years of its existence, my mother still doesn’t understand what it means to 'hashtag' something, but she does understand what it means to 'like' something."
• Berry unfair: LinkedIn got rid of the option to immediately download your contacts' emails...then restored it, thanks to an uproar from customers. I'd celebrate by downloading them now, if I were you.
• Better berries: Here's a useful rundown on getting better quality out of your video chats. 
• A workaround over the fence: Evernote's going to limit use of the function that lets you send emails into your notes, unless you have Premium service. A good workaround uses IFTTT to make this happen. While you're there, check out the scores of newly added services that work with IFTTT and automate your world a little bit more.
• Genuine berries? It's easy to fake an embedded tweet. Read this whether you intend fakery or fact-checking.
• Don't miss this patch over here: This week, I posted on making communications training worth your experts' time--a popular post aimed at comms pros--and the Moderating Panels blog pinpointed 9 times you should turn down an offer to moderate a panel. You know you should.

Put some whipped cream on those berries: Buy my new ebook, The Eloquent Woman's Guide to Moderating Panels; sign up for my free monthly newsletter, or let me know how we can work together in 2015 with an email to eloquentwoman at gmail dot com.