Posts tagged mobile
MacRumors recently reported that the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 4.3, has a hidden “find my friends” feature.
The obvious interpretation is that Apple is building a location-based social network to compete with Foursquare, Facebook Places, Google Latitude and hundreds of location-based startups in the mobile-social space.
10 Great Apps by Marketers (they’re not just for the iPhone anymore)
Location Services Barely on the Map
The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a national survey that found just 4 percent of Americans use location services like Foursquare. That figure is actually lower than when Pew first surveyed online users in May and found 5 percent using a location service. Overall, 7 percent of mobile phone users are also location users. Even among 18-29-year-old Internet users, the figure is just 8 percent.
Unsurprisingly, these services overindex for men, with 6 percent of online men using them vs. 3 percent of women.
Report finds mobile apps by banks are confusing to users
A recent study shows that banks still have work to do on their mobile applications.
Personally, I’m very happy with the online and mobile version from my bank, USAA.
Yelp is making their app updates informal and fun - reminds me of good old custom 404 page messages that progressive companies put out.
Google Gets Physical in the Local/Mobile Race
Sources are saying that Google is planning on distributing mobile devices to local businesses to allow users to check-in and rate the business. If it is true, this bold maneuver could go either way. My initial thoughts…
- Are there better ways for Google to spend the same budget to inspire mobile users to interact with these local businesses?
- What will businesses do when they start getting negative ratings? Remove the devices? So ratings will be skewed?
- How will they choose which businesses get these devices? Large chains with enough traffic to drive the most interaction and content, leaving small mom and pops in the dust?
Ben & Jerry's Explores Augmented Reality
Ben & Jerry’s worked with its PR firm, Edelman, and “imaginative tech” development shop Circ.us, which used metaio’s Unifeye Mobile SDK to roll out natural feature tracking on the iPhone.
Foursquare appears to be winning the location war
- As of today, Foursquare has just over 1.9 Million users. Gowalla has around 340,000.
- At its current pace, Foursquare will surpass 2 Million users within a week.
- Foursquare is adding almost 10x as many new users per day as Gowalla and, despite a significantly larger base, has a daily percentage growth rate that is 75% higher than Gowalla’s.
- Currently, Foursquare has about 5.6 Million venues and Gowalla has 1.4 Million venues.
- 1 in 3 venues on Foursquare have been checked into only once or never.That number is 1 in 4 on Gowalla.
- The most popular venue name is “Home,” followed by national fast food chains like “McDonald’s” and “Burger King”
- On Foursquare, men outnumber women almost 2-to-1. Exact gender breakouts are not available for Gowalla, but the most popular first names suggest a similar distribution.
iAd Platform will create more clutter for mobile
The “iAd” platform, Apple’s mobile advertising network, will go live on July 1 with spending commitments already secured by major advertisers such as Nissan, Citigroup, Unilever, General Electric,AT&T (the exclusive service provider for the iPhone) and Walt Disney (where Steve Jobs holds a board seat and is a major shareholder).
From their initial announcement, Apple plans to distribute 60% of the revenue generated from the ads to application developers that use iAd to monetize their apps. While Steve Jobs said that the intent is “to help our developers earn money so they can continue to create free and low-cost apps for users”, I feel that any impression-driven ad model tends to drive development that is counter to what users and advertisers really want.
We saw this with Google Adwords when they opened up their content network to CPM pricing. Marketers have created millions of dummy content pages in an effort to capture traffic, drive up useless impressions and push clicks - often confusing users and stripping advertisers of their media.
Another more recent example of an impression-driven ad model not leading to a better user experience is with Facebook applications, which are riddled with deceptive practices and forced installs.
In my opinion, the only model that takes in to consideration the user experience as well as the advertisers goals is a performance based model, since developers and marketers are forced to show highly relevant, engaging ads to targeted users in order to turn a profit.
