Category Archives: Technology

I pretty much knew that as soon as I wrote my post about Highlight that I’d have to write yet another one about all the other location services taking off this year at the South by Southwest conference. Just a few years ago, the main competitors in this arena were Foursquare and Gowalla. Sure, there were other folks like Brightkite, Whrrl, Loopt, and others, but what everyone was pretty much talking about was Foursquare and Gowalla. And three years later, Foursquare seems to be the only one standing tall–well until this week.

The location-based service space is rapidly heating up with over a dozen new services set to take off and fight for attention at SXSW starting this Friday. If you think that this is almost like a primary battle like in politics, then you’re absolutely right. Services like Glancee, Banjo, Intro, Sonar, EchoEcho, and many others are seeking the spotlight and to unseat the front-runner service that folks like Robert Scoble and TechCrunch are calling the “must have” app at SXSW: Highlight. But if you’re trying to find a good way to figure out which ones are which, then I suggest you take a look at this great analysis done by TechCrunch writer Sarah Perez.

With SXSW, most people are either wondering about which parties they should RSVP for or which sessions they should put into their schedule. However, the recent news of emerging location-based services has added some unneeded stress in their lives. Contrary to the time when Foursquare and Gowalla did battle, the one consistent thing in that scenario was that they had a bit more privacy associated with it–revealing one’s location to the public (and when others were logged in) was opt-in, but now, the services doing battle all will reveal your proximity to others along with other pertinent information like your interests, your photo, and maybe your biography. It will also reveal mutual friends that you have. I think that’s kind of interesting and useful, but there are some scenarios where just giving out that information freely (without some sort of opt-in) would be a bit much.

Interestingly, this battle royal location services brings a new era in location-based services into light. You might say that it’s the marriage of Google’s failed attempt at using and promoting Latitude with Foursquare to create a service that will slowly change the way we find people. But is there a discernible difference between the 12 or so applications that are fighting for your attention? Let’s take a look at some of the details about these applications as reported byTechCrunch:

Highlight:

Highlight has been getting a lot of attention pre-SXSW, especially from members of the tech scene. The app uses your Facebook profile to match you up with nearby friends who share your interests. Highlight has a very cool and simple design, but it also seems to be moving toward becoming a personal, social CRM system that helps you remember people’s names and when you met them, as well as just suggesting nearby people you may like.

Glancee:

Glancee is most like Highlight, in that it also uses your Facebook profile data and interests to help you discover nearby users. But unlike Highlight, it doesn’t display people’s exact location on a map, only giving a general distance (e.g. “5 miles from you”). People are ranked by distance and common interests. On the app’s homescreen, it summarizes how many things you have in common – possible conversation starters, I suppose. You can then reach out to those suggested folks using the app’s built-in chat function.

Banjo:

Banjo has been around for a bit, but a recent update has given the app enough new polish to see it achieve “featured” status in the iTunes App Store. The best part about Banjo is that it doesn’t have a desolate first-launch experience – that is to say, even if none of your friends use the app, Banjo may still prove useful. Instead of only relying on Facebook, Banjo also taps into data from Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram and more, and shows you where people are and what they’re saying/doing, based on their check-ins or geotagged tweets. The app also lets you know when your actual friends are nearby, even if they’re not on Banjo.

Intro:

Just launched today, INTRO is meant for business, not social, networking. The app is built on top of LinkedIn, and includes messaging, privacy features and a premium “teleport” option that lets you virtually network with others anywhere in the world. In order not to limit itself only to INTRO users, the app also uses Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare data to display other nearby users.

Sonar:

Sonar, updated just in time for SXSW, has moved away from focusing on people checked into particular venues and now focuses more on finding recommended people nearby. The app separates your nearby friends from a section of nearby “relevant” people, who are ranked based on how many friends you have in common. Like Banjo, the app finds nearby users based on their check-ins in (or geotags) on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, but fills out user profiles with data that also includes LinkedIn info. Also, like most others in the space, Sonar can alert you when friends are nearby.

EchoEcho:

This app will be helpful to those at SXSW who are actually there to attend panels and presentations, not just parties. Why? Because EchoEcho can map your friends indoors, too. The app uses GPS outside then switches to Wi-Fi when you head indoors, using special tech from the startup WifiSlam to map out the interior of the buildings.

Kismet:

Launching just in time for SXSW, Kismet finds nearby people using ambient location data like Highlight and Glancee, but also finds them using active check-in data like Sonar. The app lets you create “pop up events,” too, which can then be discovered by other app users who are nearby (think “happy hour drinks,” “SXSW panel on social apps,” etc.). Nearby people are ranked based on degrees of separation, which extends beyond mutual friends. Kismet is also one of the few that lets you check-in to both Foursquare and Facebook, saving you that extra step.

Glassmap:

Glassmap is more of a “Find My Friends” type of service, except one that works cross-platform (iPhone & Android). Built on top of Facebook, Glassmap finds your Facebook friends who are on Glassmap and plots their location in real-time on the map. You can selectively enable or disable who can see your current location, and the app makes smart use of server technology to preserve battery life.

ntro:

Not to be confused with INTRO, the business-focused app, ntro is for meeting people who share your interests. You can either enter in these interests manually, or have them imported from Facebook. The difference with ntro (which is almost like the social version of INTRO, surprisingly!), is that you can filter through search results by interests and set your own “top” interests very narrowly. (e.g., not just “music” but a name of a band). Ntro also allows you to message users who share interests in common with you.

Mingle:

Mingle is most similar to INTRO, in that its focus is on business networking. You join Mingle using either your LinkedIn account, Facebook account, or you can sign up directly. It will then show you who’s nearby and available for networking using your phone’s GPS. Like INTRO, you can specify your occupation and who you want to meet, but you can also post that “intro” to Facebook, if you choose. The key difference between Mingle and INTRO, however, is that users are ranked by proximity alone on Mingle – there isn’t an indication of the friends or friends of friends you may have in common.

Once you’ve read all of the descriptions, there are two things that kind of become clear…the location-based app industry is slowly moving into creating clones with different niches and those that are the same are becoming very difficult to differentiate themselves from one another. The goal of each of these applications is to help you network and find people, but in an area like SXSW, the one thing that services will want to be absolutely clear about is telling people who are often interested in why they should use your service why they’re different from the others in the marketplace. But as of this point, the best way for people to really figure out what the market leader is going to be is to simply download all the applications to their mobile device. Then, they’ll need to create a screen where all these apps can be easily accessed and then test them out one by one–take them for a test spin, if you will.

Quite frankly, I might just stick with Path or Foursquare and leave it at that this year at SXSW.

Photo Credit: Quandary by Reikhavoc/Flickr

We all know that this week, Apple will be announcing some very special–the iPad 3. Sure, there is a lot of speculation with some facts and maybe even some mis-truths being strewn about, but we’ll all find out on Wednesday, March 7 when Apple unveils its latest product for the whole world to see here in San Francisco.

But wait, seeing that South by Southwest is right around the corner, some people are wondering whether Apple will open up another popup store like it did at last year’s show. If you remember, right around this time last year, Apple had unveiled the next generation of the iPad and a week or so later, opened up a makeshift store right in Austin, Texas in the heart of SXSW. Lines were scattered around the corner with people just waiting to buy this great gadget and CNET reported that Apple really stole the show.

So with Apple’s announcement on Wednesday, will the thousands of SXSW attendees (and non-attendees) be anticipating another popup store being located just blocks away from their hotel and the Austin convention center? Probably, but in a post on Austin360.com, Apple seems to confirm that they’re not going to be opening up a popup store this year. Sorry folks, but you’ll have to wait to get your iPad 3. But it realistically makes sense when you think about it–it’s probably all due to the timing of the announcement and SXSW. Last year, the company unveiled the iPad 2 on March 2 with the store opening on March 11. This year, the announcement is March 7, but SXSW starts on March 9–not enough time for them to open the store and get it ready. Sure, Apple could have had this all prepped and ready to go, but if Apple had got a store started already, wouldn’t you think there would have been more noise saying Apple’s setting something up?

What it looks to boil down to is that we’ll get the announcement, talk about it at SXSW, but won’t actually experience it (or wait in line for it) until we’re all back home after SXSW.

Sorry folks…

Photo Credit: Apple Popup Store in Austin during SXSW 2011 via LaughingSquid/Flickr

One of the latest trends in online marketing today centers around one of the largest platforms on the Internet: Facebook. Billions of dollars are being spent advertising on Facebook alone with a predicted worldwide revenue exceeding $5 billion in 2012. It might seem like there’s a rosey forecast ahead, but eMarketer is predicting that over the next two years, growth rates will dip significantly, but yet, more money will still be floating into Facebook’s coffers and more than double the 2011 revenues to $8 billion. Just what could this mean for brands and businesses advertising on the social network? Could the increased revenue, but stagnant growth be an indication that businesses are spending more, but aren’t getting enough from their return? This could be a sign that brands could use some help to get more bang for their buck or least get a handle on how to be more effective with their Facebook advertising execution.

GraphScience, a full-service social data and Facebook advertising platform, is just the company that they’re looking for. Launching today, this platform for the top 100 brands and retailers, will enable companies to move beyond engagement and convert them into sales all through Facebook. All of this is done using GraphScience’s SocialEngine platform, which leverages Facebook ads API and will tap into the social graph using its “powerful algorithms” and social data to help brands create highly targeted campaigns for maximum branding and revenue generation. Simply translated: you put your trust into SocialEngine and it will spit out the data you need to make sure that your advertising is effective enough to make everyone happy.

But the problem isn’t necessarily that brands are timid about Facebook advertising or that the strategies are inefficient. No, the problem could potentially reside in the fact that Facebook isn’t keeping up with the demand that brands are asking for. The Examiner reported yesterday that the social network is facing considerable pressure from brands for more advertising on the site. Sure, the site initially sought to do advertising to raise some money while it was still private, but now that it’s going public, brands are demanding that their needs should be taken care of. As the Examiner puts it: As more people continue to surf the Internet from their laptops, desktop computers, tablets and mobile devices such as a smartphone or just a regular cell phone with Internet access, eventually it’s possible for online advertising to surpass television as roughly 425 million Facebook users currently access the site from a smartphone or tablet. So where’s the inventory? Greg Kahn, Executive Vice President and Business Development at Optimedia International, says that there’s no argument that for the past year, Facebook is a place to be (for marketers).

Isn’t it about time that brands who want to get marketing on Facebook had a chance to get more sensible targeting and had the ability to look at more social data to make educated and wise decisions on where they want to spend their money? That’s what GraphScience hopes to achieve using SocialEngine. By analyzing millions of targeting combinations across a wide array of demographics like age, gender, location, interests, and more, brands will be able to identify highly-targeted user segments in real-time and then make optimizations on their bids to increase the return on ad spends. How good is this system? In 2011, GraphScience delivered more than four billion connections to their customers and generated 4-8 times ROI based on click-based conversion for their customers across several industries. Not bad!

The point of using SocialEngine is because it’ll help drive more strategic marketing decisions for the brand’s customers. No more guessing on how your money is going to be spent–find out how exactly and maximize the return. Dave Harber, Senior Director of Marketing and Social Media at Ice (a fashion-focused shopping destination store) reinforces this belief: “GraphScience takes the guess work out of understanding how to find and reach the right consumers on Facebook, and has demonstrated that they not only can help us build a strong fan base on Facebook, but also do it at a cost significantly below industry average.” Isn’t that something that all brands are trying to achieve? Facebook advertising doesn’t have to simply be about placing an ad on the social network and forgetting about it. There’s an art form to getting your ad noticed with both creative and targeting and GraphScience can offer that to brands right now. The company predicts that social media advertising will overtake display and search as the dominant force within the next 3-5 years. If GraphScience can repeat the 4-8 times ROI that they’ve done before, it will be a good sign of things to come. More businesses will finally get to understand Facebook marketing and start to spend more because they’ll be more educated and aware of how to properly execute a strategy.

Raymond Rouf, CEO of GraphScience, told me earlier that their philosophy around customers was centered around what can they do to help a business grow value. They’re the first company to really show that Facebook is a viable marketing tool for businesses and have amassed a great deal of customers, from leading national department stores to home furnishing commerce sites to major high-end fashion brands. All are aimed at trying to get the maximum return on their investment. What they are finding is that paid search is still doing better than Facebook ads. In a USA Today article, Dave Beltramini, director of online strategy for G5, said that “the intent for consumers on Google is about shopping, On Facebook, people are more social, looking at photos of their friends’ kids.” It’s all about different behaviors. In fact, Chris Moore, a partner at Redpoint Ventures, says:

Facebook fares poorly in a key pricing metric used in the industry to measure the value of ad inventory in reaching an audience. Its CPM, or cost per thousand impressions, is 22 cents, less than half the industry average for the Web (50 cents) and minuscule compared with Google’s, which is north of several dollars…

Facebook ads are still the Wild Wild West of online advertising and brands will need a guide to help spend their money wisely without throwing it all away. GraphScience has come along at the right time to help shepherd the businesses away from the recreational advertisers and provide them with the full-detailed data that they need to become serious advertisers on Facebook.

You can check out more information about GraphScience and their capabilities by visiting their website.

Photo Credit: Facebook advertising via Bostinno.com

Something is definitely happening within the cloud storage space–it’s getting hot!! And for some reason, it all seems to want to target Android users. Why? Is it because right now, Android phones outnumber the iPhone market here in the US? Quite possibly? Maybe it’s the open source nature of Android? Who knows, but one thing is for sure, two of the biggest leaders in cloud storage have just ramped up their efforts to get you to use their service.

One such company is Box and this week, they announced that they were giving up to 50GB of free cloud storage to Android users. This is an incredible amount that will really encourage people to start saving their data in the cloud. Why? For one, you won’t need to worry about always emailing that file to yourself when you want to work from multiple computers and you can avoid having that discussion about “file size limits” by using a service like Box. What’s more, Box is really going after Dropbox users because out of the main competitors (SugarSync, Dropbox, and Microsoft SkyDrive), none really offer anything close to 50GB like Box is. But the only catch here? You need to be an Android user and have the Box app on your smartphone and/or tablet. Oh, and this is only for personal use only…sorry business users, you’re going to need to deal with what you have. There’s a bit more  to the deal but will this be enough to convince people to leave Dropbox? That might be a tough thing to try and do…

The world of cloud storage seems to be one of those “anything you can do, I can do better” type of environments. Now that Box has announced its 50GB of storage for those using their Android app, Dropbox has come out fighting with an increase of their own. Granted that it’s nothing compared to Box, but Dropbox is increasing their storage limit from 2GB to 5GB. Why? Because they’re interested in helping you store your content without it being lost. In a TechCrunch post, cofounder and CEO Drew Houston said that Dropbox’s mission in life  was to help solve all the “hidden problems” that people have had with technology.

What exactly are these “hidden problems”? Who knows, but the solution that the service is coming up with is finding a way to keep your photos taken from all your devices safe and secure–all in one central place. Starting this week, Dropbox has released its very own Android app (with iOS version coming soon) for Dropbox. This mobile app will automatically upload your photos and videos to Dropbox using Wi-Fi or your data plan. One of the best things is that it’ll all be saved in the original format–no size reduction or quality disruptions.

TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid raised a good point in his post about the Dropbox move: “err, don’t iCloud and Google+ already let you do this?”

I don’t know about iCloud, but with Google+, the fact is that they’re not primarily a cloud storage service–even though we hear about “Google Drive”, the service isn’t a storage service, it’s a social network. No matter what Google’s television commercials say, I believe most people will probably associate Dropbox with being the service to use to store your data in the Cloud. In fact, the explanation that Mr. Houston gave was pretty spot on…there are a lot of people out there who aren’t using either of those services (Google+ and/or iCloud). Most Dropbox users aren’t using Macs at all, so iCloud won’t necessarily work and Google+ is still just getting started.

Dropbox appears to be wanting to start to take over the Internet and become the de facto service for those seeking Cloud storage. And while they’re not going to be giving away a lot of storage, one probably wonders what else lies in store for Dropbox and what other functionality do the wizards of the Cloud have in store?

Look out wallet, the end is near. That’s right…one of the market leaders in virtual payments is extending their reach from just the virtual world into the physical world. Boku, a mobile online payments company based here in Silicon Valley announced that they’re releasing a brand new payment method whose goal is to “disrupt the current way that consumers pay for goods via their mobile phones or credit cards”. The company is probably more well known for processing millions of virtual currency received by people interested in playing games on Facebook, but has made some considerable strides over the past few years in working to improve the mobile payments space. Whether it’s purchasing companies like Paymo or Mobillcash, establishing direct carrier deals with service providers like AT&T, Vodafone UK, or more, Boku has definitely help lead the charge in terms of how disruptive mobile payments have been to the industry.

And just this week, with the company announcing the launch of an near-field communications (NFC) enabled mobile payment platform, Boku has just changed the rules again, perhaps causing some problems for competitors like Zong, boxPAY, PaymentPin.com, Allopass, Fortumo, and others. Being called Boku Accounts, the intent of this platform is to simply exploit the usage of one of the most precious devices that we, as consumers, carry around all day. This program is a “carrier-distributed mobile payment platform” that will be universally-accepted, platform agnostic, and will work for smartphones and feature phones. The benefits that the user will get from Boku Accounts are real-time spending alerts, budgeting tools, offers & rewards, loyalty programs, and much more.

Sure, you might be thinking that there are plenty of options to choose from for mobile payments in real life. Google Wallet is one of those services currently available–so why should people really care about Boku Accounts?  Well for one, it seems that Google Wallet is a bit limited in terms of being accessible. Right now the service is only available on Sprint’s Nexus S 4G phone while they roll it out and you’ll need to have an Android-powered phone with NFC. With Boku Accounts, you’re not limited based on the device that you have, but might be depending on the carriers that they support–right now they have deals with at least AT&T and Vodafone UK. By using Boku Accounts, customers will be able to track their money easily and perhaps even save money–the service offers a bit of intelligence since it will know where you shop or frequent enough that it can offer you special discounts for stopping by. It’s a win-win for customers and merchants. Mobile carriers will get a boon because it’s a transaction being done on their network but through a secure service.

As an added bonus, Boku has partnered up with MasterCard that will help enhance the experience for consumers using their mobile phones to conduct transactions right from anywhere MasterCard is accepted. Through a special deal called Boku Accounts with MasterCard Prepaid, consumers will have a convenient way to pay on the go. Just visit any store or merchant that has a MasterCard Prepaid card or PayPass-enabled device and swipe your phone across and your transaction is made. Another option would be to get a Boku Accounts sticker that you can afix to your mobile device to help process your payment.

The benefit for merchants to accept Boku Accounts is pretty extensive as well: merchants get to create easy-to-manage loyalty programs as well as targeted offers to reach customers through mobile apps, SMS text messages, push notifications or e-mails.  The online campaign management system of the BOKU Accounts platform also provides merchants with sophisticated analytics so they can manage and modify these offer programs over time to maximize consumer reach and repeat business. As TechCrunch reports, just because a merchant doesn’t adopt Boku Accounts doesn’t mean you can’t still pay using Boku Accounts. Users will still be able to make payments via credit card or NFC enabled terminals.

It will be interesting to see how this progresses in the future and whether or not the world will no longer be using their credit cards in the stores or if the wallet is even still being used. In fact, shall we decree that the wallet no longer holds any valuable function? Is our life completely ingrained within the mobile device? We can already communicate, update information, conduct business, and now even pay virtually and physically in real life using the device. But first, they seem to need to get a foothold here within the United States. According to TechCrunch, Boku currently is only running a payment trial with a major carrier in the United Kingdom. No US carriers have signed on, although Boku probably does have a direct line with AT&T, one of the largest mobile carriers in the country. However, with lots of interest and competition running high with mobile payments in stores, you can bet that within the next year or more, the mobile industry will start to carve out some space for services like Boku to take over and be helpful partners.