After failing to capture the volume of check-ins that that it wanted, Facebook is revamping Places one year after its launch. Instead of being primarily a mobile tool for checking in (a la Foursquare), it is now a more broadly…
Gearing up for a session on mobile tools for SMBs at next month's DMS show, I listened to a webinar today put on by Duda Mobile and AT&T. As the session will focus on "onboarding" SMBs to a mobile presence, Duda builds…
Fresh on the heels of the sale of Backyard, a local offers company to Pixelfish, entrepreneur Steve Espinosa has assembled a new team to develop “Appetizer,” a mobile-centric service that enables restaurants to offer instant deals via push notifications. Using…
After our initial coverage (and the rest of the world's) of Google's surprise bid to acquire Motorola's Mobility Group, we took a deeper look. Below is an excerpt and you can read the rest here. We're about a week into the…
While this news has been out for a little while, we thought it was interesting that a company with powerful TV assets would initiate a deal with a company that provides high-quality, affordable video commercial content for local advertisers. After…
The transfer of reward points and offers from print receipts and clipped newspaper pages to the cloud is expected to be a big part of promotional media’s next wave. But some merchants seem to be deliberately dragging their feet. CVS,…
Mobile barcodes have been prevalent in certain Asian markets for years but are beginning to pick up in the West. We're seeing them pop up more and more in magazines, billboards, store windows -- even on bikinis. Through all this,…
JiWire is out with its latest Insights report, offering user behavior and survey data (n=2,000) from its location-based ad network. One of the biggest takeaways from the data-rich report is that 53 percent of its U.S. users will share their location in exchange for…
SinglePlatform, which places restaurant search info such as menus, specials and photos on search engines and social and mobile media, has raised $3.25 million. The new raise is led by DFJ Gotham Ventures with participation from New World Ventures, First…
It's hard to believe it's already time to vote for sessions for South by Southwest 2012. Before we know it, the actual conference will be here. Seems like SxSW 2011 just ended. The good folks at Loopt have put together…
You've likely heard by now that Google made a surprise bid today to acquire Motorola's Mobility group for $12.5 billion in an all-cash deal -- its largest to date. There are lots of implications for this deal, and Moto's patent…
From the Friday just-barely NSFW department comes the newest mobile marketing phenomenon -- barcode bikinis. U.K.-based Olympic hopeful volleyball pair Shauna Mullin and Zara Dampney (ranked 26th in the world) have posted QR codes on the backs of their bikini…
Today I had the chance to catch up with London-based mobile app and website development outfit Golden Gekko. The firm has lots of top global brands as clients (Jack Daniels, Coca-Cola, Nokia), but has crossed our path by working with…
The appeal of real-time promotions allowing SMBs to add or update a sale or special offer on the fly is fairly apparent. It is a segment that’s been chased after by such players as Google, Yext and others. Add Chalkboard…
We've just confirmed Urbanspoon Biz Dev lead Fred Dimesa for our iPad demo session at next month's DMS conference. One of the reasons this is cool -- besides the fact that we like Urbanspoon -- is that the company just…
Specialized verticals are a major part of the new marketplaces environment. One vertical we like is TeachStreet, a portal that helps consumers find teachers, and then helps sign them up and process payments. Along the same lines is TakeLessons, a…
Online retail spending reached $37.5 billion, up 14 percent from a year ago, according to comScore's latest quarterly study. Highlights from comScore's study include: The 14-percent growth in the quarter was primarily a function of an increase in the number of…
Localmind, a location-based Q&A service, arrived on Android this week, after closing a round of $600,000 in angel funding last month. The app was a hit at SXSW earlier this year but at that time was iPhone only. Localmind leverages…
SocialGuide CEO Sean Casey briefed us today on recent accomplishments and upcoming milestones for his company that focuses on social media activity around television programming running on 170 U.S. networks. The basic idea for users is that in addition to…
Mobile data continue to pelt us. This is a good thing, as ad networks (with promotional intent) release the data they're seeing for ad placement. See, Millennial, JiWire, Jumptap, et al. I usually internalize these data but don't write about…