QUICK PR READS YOU CAN TACKLE BETWEEN BITES
Happy Wednesday, Lunch Breakers!
We’ve been busy watching all the sports this week with a brand-new hockey season, a seemingly endless amount of football games and, of course, all-important postseason baseball.
For now, let’s take a breather from sports and focus on the other stories we’re following this week.
Oh, Baby
In what feels like the biggest news of the century, Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, aka Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, announced on October 15 that they were expecting their first child. It’s been a busy week for Queen Elizabeth with Princess Eugenie’s wedding and the news of another royal great-grandchild.
While fans of the power couple and international media rejoiced, others thought that Kensington Palace should’ve put a bit more thought into the announcement. Turns out that October 15th is International Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. It appears that the palace held the pregnancy announcement until after the royal wedding, but should they have waited another day as to avoid conflicting with a very serious day?
Big Reputation
Taylor Swift is notoriously apolitical, so it came as a surprise when she touted her support for Democratic candidates Phil Bredesen and Jim Cooper in her home state of Tennessee and encouraged her 112 million Instagram followers to show up to the polls. Because of Swift’s post, Vote.org received 65,000 voter registrations in the 24 hours that followed.
It’s unclear how large of a ripple effect Swift’s post will have on the election. Previously, when musicians have encouraged fans to vote, it largely increases the interest and awareness of the election, but rarely do those fans show up on Election Day. We’ll have to wait and see if Swifties are at the polls on November 6.
[bctt tweet=”Does @taylorswift have enough influence to drastically increase the number of young voters on #ElectionDay? We’ll find out on November 6. ” username=”@StantonComm”]
“I for one welcome our new robot overlords”
Last week, Google announced its brand-new Pixel 3 phone during a swanky press event in New York City. The hardware of the phone is like its predecessors, but it’s the AI and machine learning software that makes the Pixel 3 stand out.
Some are skeptical about how much your phone should know and the amount of control you should give it. One of its more controversial features is Duplex, which can place calls for you and set up appointments. This feature may save you two minutes but might be especially weird for a hostess at a restaurant talking to a robot to make a dinner reservation.
Are Systrom and Zuckerberg still Facebook friends?
Last month, we wrote about the shocking departure of Instagram’s co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Their sudden exit was shrouded in mystery until Systrom broke his silence this week and caused speculation about what’s really happening at Facebook HQ.
At the Wired 25 summit in San Francisco, Systrom said, “Nobody leaves a job because everything is awesome. Any time you leave anything, it’s sad…obviously, there were tensions.” This calls into question what the current state of Facebook’s corporate culture is and where the social media giant is headed.
