Foursquare is a free phone app that uses your GPS location to recommend businesses in your area, based on your check-in history and the check-in history of your friends. You can check into a business, see what others have said about places, and sometimes unlock promotions or specials.
Money has only seen three different major phases: coin, paper, and then plastic. Google is now at the forefront of pushing money to the fourth phase: mobile. Mobile? Yes mobile, with the help of near field communication (NFC) technology integrated in the Nexus S 4G available on Sprint, Google’s vision aims to eliminate the traditional wallet all together.
Replacing the wallet means having all cards, including loyalty, gift, and coupon cards that people carry in their wallets, readily available to make purchases, get discounts, and redeem loyalty points through Google wallet. For a list of other phones and up-and-coming products that are NFC equipped click here.
Making Google’s vision a reality is aided with the partnerships of Fist Data, Sprint, Citi, and Mastercard, among others. Google is currently working with other financial organizations to make all card providers available on Google Wallet. NFC is a lot like a contactless payment card, but included in your phone. It also acts like Bluetooth but used at a closer range. By touching two devices together, either mobile-to-mobile or mobile-to-NFC smart tag the device can collect information. Read On
Think about the last time you tried to do anything on the web with your phone. Chances are that your experience was less than stellar. The problem is that many companies don’t take the time to think about the mobile user and their experience. So who’s doing it right? Read On
Okay, so you and everyone has heard something like “this is the year that mobile takes off” for the last three years. Last year was the biggest leap yet for mobile. Evidence of this can be seen with the expansion of Android onto every device on the planet and the ever-expanding empire of Steve Jobs. Even Verizon is positioning themselves to be the mobile leader in the U.S. with the iPhone and a slew of new Android devices coming this year. In fact if you were to view Verizon’s website today, you would see 34 results just for smartphones! Read On
Last year, there were 1.5 billion local searches made from mobile devices.
Information Week reported that there are over 61.5 million smartphones in use today.
What does that mean for your business? Potentially it means lots more customers, but most local businesses have not taken advantage of this huge opportunity for exposure to consumers on their geographic area.
Launching a mobile-marketing strategy is a fairly complex process so get started off on the right foot by going through these three points. Read On
A while ago I wrote a blog post for this blog all about Facebook Places and why it sucked. An excerpt from that post reads,
“It doesn’t benefit the user at all. When I check in on Places I don’t get points, unlock badges or become the mayor. Although once you check in the businesses name is plastered on your wall which is essentially free advertising. It is way too lopsided to the benefit the business not the user.”
Well, I’m writing this to let everyone know I was wrong, very wrong. Facebook Places has actually saved me money. Turns out saving money is more valuable than becoming the Mayor of a business that doesn’t care, sorry Foursquare. Read On
This week, Google announced some new changes to improve local search and promote Maps listings. Well, that sits just perfectly with us. Here at OrangeSoda, we’ve been offering organic search optimization for four years and local optimization for nearly two years. Google Places marks an important change that will bring those two things together and—just in time—we’re announcing CitrusBlast, the best of both worlds. Read On
According to research firm Gartner, “Mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access devices worldwide by 2013 . . . Gartner estimates the combined installed base of smartphones and browser-equipped enhanced phones will surpass 1.82 billion units by 2013, eclipsing the total of 1.78 billion PCs by then.”
Despite the fact that Mobile is the fastest growing marketing medium (even faster than social media), only 61% of the Fortune 500 say they have mobile strategies on the way. Read On
