By Staff reports

February 22, 2012

Trump Toronto

Luxury Daily today – Trump bolsters CRM through mobile presence; Neiman Marcus launches multichannel Louboutin anniversary campaign for social interaction.

Article source: http://feeds.mobilemarketer.com/~r/homepage-news/~3/TvdOpuuaivA/12167.html

Tags: Messaging, mobile, SMS, text

This entry was posted
on February 22, 2012 at 11:34 AM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Posted in Mobile Text Message (SMS) Marketing by JeffArnold No Comments Yet

Article source: http://www.pocket-promo.com/trump-bolsters-crm-through-mobile-presence-3/

By Staff reports

February 22, 2012

Trump Toronto

Luxury Daily today – Trump bolsters CRM through mobile presence; Neiman Marcus launches multichannel Louboutin anniversary campaign for social interaction.

Article source: http://feeds.mobilemarketer.com/~r/homepage-news/~3/TvdOpuuaivA/12167.html

Tags: Messaging, mobile, SMS, text

This entry was posted
on February 22, 2012 at 11:34 AM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Posted in Mobile Text Message (SMS) Marketing by JeffArnold No Comments Yet

Article source: http://www.pocket-promo.com/trump-bolsters-crm-through-mobile-presence-3/

Referral traffic is pouring out of Pinterest and Facebook’s Open Graph frictionless sharing. With Sociable Lab’s licensable EverShare you can snatch their functionality without any serious development work and soak up some page views. EverShare lets you host your own Pinterest-style product or content boards to give your users their social curation fix. It also instantly roots your site into Facebook’s confusing APIs so purchases, comments, reviews, and pins are automatically blasted at friends of your visitors.

Pinterest’s simple, stable sharing canvas has struck a chord with ecommerce shoppers and middle America’s women in particular. You could add Pin It buttons to your site and hope they get clicked, but great websites steal, they don’t borrow. Sociable Labs licenses a website personalization SaaS to sites that want to instantly get social. EverShare Gallery mimics Pinterest’s home page activity board, but only displays trending products and those shared by a user’s friends.

I’ve spoken to several developers and they want to add Frictionless Sharing, but they’ve found the Facebook developer docs confusing. Considering how most sites and apps that integrates it see traffic go through the roof, there’s surely plenty of sites looking for a turnkey hose into the Facebook Ticker, Timeline, and news feed. EverShare Connector makes it as easy as writing a check.

Once integrated, users don’t even have to go back to Facebook to see what friends are sharing. The sidebar activity feed also includes the option to turn off sharing, for those who don’t want friends to know how many shoes they buy.

Virality best practices are developing faster than most companies can employ them. Meanwhile, good developers and designers are in short supply. For content sites, buying referral traffic might not produce big ROI. But for ecommerce sites, a monthly SaaS subscription could pay for itself quickly since Sociable Labs says socially sourced traffic converts 250-300% higher.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/social/~3/ZRC_U2_KwxY/

Referral traffic is pouring out of Pinterest and Facebook’s Open Graph frictionless sharing. With Sociable Lab’s licensable EverShare you can snatch their functionality without any serious development work and soak up some page views. EverShare lets you host your own Pinterest-style product or content boards to give your users their social curation fix. It also instantly roots your site into Facebook’s confusing APIs so purchases, comments, reviews, and pins are automatically blasted at friends of your visitors.

Pinterest’s simple, stable sharing canvas has struck a chord with ecommerce shoppers and middle America’s women in particular. You could add Pin It buttons to your site and hope they get clicked, but great websites steal, they don’t borrow. Sociable Labs licenses a website personalization SaaS to sites that want to instantly get social. EverShare Gallery mimics Pinterest’s home page activity board, but only displays trending products and those shared by a user’s friends.

I’ve spoken to several developers and they want to add Frictionless Sharing, but they’ve found the Facebook developer docs confusing. Considering how most sites and apps that integrates it see traffic go through the roof, there’s surely plenty of sites looking for a turnkey hose into the Facebook Ticker, Timeline, and news feed. EverShare Connector makes it as easy as writing a check.

Once integrated, users don’t even have to go back to Facebook to see what friends are sharing. The sidebar activity feed also includes the option to turn off sharing, for those who don’t want friends to know how many shoes they buy.

Virality best practices are developing faster than most companies can employ them. Meanwhile, good developers and designers are in short supply. For content sites, buying referral traffic might not produce big ROI. But for ecommerce sites, a monthly SaaS subscription could pay for itself quickly since Sociable Labs says socially sourced traffic converts 250-300% higher.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/social/~3/ZRC_U2_KwxY/

Every time a dating site succeeds in making a match, it loses two users. To offset churn, Zoosk tells me that tomorrow it’s announcing a new business model that complements subscriptions with date discounts, expert relationship advice, gift ideas, holiday reminders, online scrapbooks. The products could convince users to pay even after they’ve found their sweethearts. If users fall in love with the new revenue streams, the whole dating industry could start courting happy couples.

Zoosk now has 15 million monthly active users across its site, mobile, and Facebook app. It also has a $90 million annual sales run rate, up from $20 million in 2009. Still, it’s had to raise $40.5 million to buy ads and failed dating sites so it can replace the users who cancel their subscriptions once they’ve found a mate. Most users don’t want to look like losers by sharing their Zoosk activity on Facebook or Twitter, so the service misses out on the organic virality enjoyed in other verticals.

But Zoosk may have found a way out of this downward spiral. While a $12-$30 monthly subscription may seem expensive, singles, and men in particular, are used to forking over cash to impress dates with dinners, drinks, and nightlife. Zoosk could grow profits if it captured some of this spend by offering discount package dates similar to romantic experience subscription service BeCouply.

Once a couple emerges from the high-priced date honeymoon period, Zoosk could sell them on reminders and gift ideas. It could take cut of spend on birthdays, Valentine’s Day, and the winter holidays, as well as digital scrapbooks.

Finally, Zoosk could identify couples on the verge of breakup through on-site behavior analysis that surfaces users returning to their profiles for the first time in months. Then it’s as simple as targeting them with in-house ads about how true love never dies and they’ll never find someone better.

[Image Credit: iStockPhoto]

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/social/~3/H7OHD3yuJ3U/

Every time a dating site succeeds in making a match, it loses two users. To offset churn, Zoosk tells me that tomorrow it’s announcing a new business model that complements subscriptions with date discounts, expert relationship advice, gift ideas, holiday reminders, online scrapbooks. The products could convince users to pay even after they’ve found their sweethearts. If users fall in love with the new revenue streams, the whole dating industry could start courting happy couples.

Zoosk now has 15 million monthly active users across its site, mobile, and Facebook app. It also has a $90 million annual sales run rate, up from $20 million in 2009. Still, it’s had to raise $40.5 million to buy ads and failed dating sites so it can replace the users who cancel their subscriptions once they’ve found a mate. Most users don’t want to look like losers by sharing their Zoosk activity on Facebook or Twitter, so the service misses out on the organic virality enjoyed in other verticals.

But Zoosk may have found a way out of this downward spiral. While a $12-$30 monthly subscription may seem expensive, singles, and men in particular, are used to forking over cash to impress dates with dinners, drinks, and nightlife. Zoosk could grow profits if it captured some of this spend by offering discount package dates similar to romantic experience subscription service BeCouply.

Once a couple emerges from the high-priced date honeymoon period, Zoosk could sell them on reminders and gift ideas. It could take cut of spend on birthdays, Valentine’s Day, and the winter holidays, as well as digital scrapbooks.

Finally, Zoosk could identify couples on the verge of breakup through on-site behavior analysis that surfaces users returning to their profiles for the first time in months. Then it’s as simple as targeting them with in-house ads about how true love never dies and they’ll never find someone better.

[Image Credit: iStockPhoto]

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/social/~3/H7OHD3yuJ3U/

The WinZip iOS app, which lets you crack open .zip files from your iDevice, has only spent a short time on the App Store (and by short, I mean, like, a week). But there’s already plenty to brag about.

The app saw over 30,000 downloads on Day One, and nearly 150,000 on Day Two. As of last night, WinZip has blown by the 500,000 download hurdle with approximately 512,000 installs.

Let’s put this into some perspective, yes?

Social to-do app Any.DO saw over 500,000 downloads in its first thirty days of availability on the Android Market. Meanwhile, Kevin Rose’s micro-recommendation app Oink clocked in at 100k downloads in its first three weeks or so on iOS.

Who knew Apple loyalists needed a way to open .zip files so desperately? (Other than WinZip, of course.)

I spoke with WinZip president Patrick Nichols to see just how these crazy numbers came to be, and surprisingly there wasn’t much to it.

“It was really organic,” said Nichols. “The reality is that we just wanted to build a good application and get the word out.”

And apparently it worked: 500,000-strong on the download front, and more to come. Nichols said that an Android version of the app will be available around spring.

Article source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/22/winzip-ios-app-tops-500k-downloads-in-8-days/

The WinZip iOS app, which lets you crack open .zip files from your iDevice, has only spent a short time on the App Store (and by short, I mean, like, a week). But there’s already plenty to brag about.

The app saw over 30,000 downloads on Day One, and nearly 150,000 on Day Two. As of last night, WinZip has blown by the 500,000 download hurdle with approximately 512,000 installs.

Let’s put this into some perspective, yes?

Social to-do app Any.DO saw over 500,000 downloads in its first thirty days of availability on the Android Market. Meanwhile, Kevin Rose’s micro-recommendation app Oink clocked in at 100k downloads in its first three weeks or so on iOS.

Who knew Apple loyalists needed a way to open .zip files so desperately? (Other than WinZip, of course.)

I spoke with WinZip president Patrick Nichols to see just how these crazy numbers came to be, and surprisingly there wasn’t much to it.

“It was really organic,” said Nichols. “The reality is that we just wanted to build a good application and get the word out.”

And apparently it worked: 500,000-strong on the download front, and more to come. Nichols said that an Android version of the app will be available around spring.

Article source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/22/winzip-ios-app-tops-500k-downloads-in-8-days/

Firespotter Labs, makers of the food photo-sharing app Nosh (and more recently, the hilarious spoof app Jotly), is launching its latest creation today called NoshList, a new waitlisting application for restaurants. The app, designed for the iPad, ties into to the company’s consumer-facing Nosh mobile app, which allows users to rate and review restaurants and dishes from their mobile phones.

While the integration between the two apps (Nosh NoshList) is limited – customers just receive text messages about their reservation with links to download Nosh – it would make sense for deeper integrations to arrive in the future. NoshList’s venue analytics are calculated in real-time, for example, and could be integrated into the Nosh consumer app to provide current wait times. Consumers could then see those wait times and add their name to the waitlist within Nosh, which could tie back into the iPad app.

Those features aren’t live yet, but given Firespotter’s background, it would be right in their wheelhouse to move down this path. The company was started by GrandCentral co-founder and CEO Craig Walker, and GrandCentral, as you may recall, was acquired by Google in 2007 where it became Google Voice. Walker left the Google Voice team in late 2010, and later founded Firespotter Labs. In other words, this team knows a thing or two about telephony, and keeping costs low.

Currently, when a customer’s table is ready, they’re alerted by either text or phone through the NoshList platform.

The app also allows the restaurant to easily manage parties – adding, seating and removing them as necessary – just by pushing a button. To add walk-up customers, NoshList users simply enter in a name, phone number and tap a button for the party size. There are even different icons for gender and age groups (i.e., blue for boys, pink for girls, and an icon that looks sort of like Darth Vader for “unknown”).

At the bottom of the screen, NoshList shows the current wait times by party size for at-a-glance information, as well as the number of total guests waiting and the total seated.

NoshList has a lot of competition in the restaurant customer management space – besides OpenTable, there are startups like Livebookings, Timeview, Tableista, NoWait, DinerConnection, WaitList Manager, TurnStar and dozens (dozens!) of others. But Firespotter is offering its app for free for now, with monetization to come later on. Although the company isn’t talking about forthcoming features, things like improved analytics and 2-way paging (meaning customers could text back to the restaurant) are obvious next steps.

Prior to today’s launch, the company has been testing the app in several restaurants in the San Francisco Bay area, like Unami Burger, for example.

The app is live now on the iTunes App Store here.

• FIRESPOTTER LABS

Firespotter Labs is not a company. Of course we’ve got all the fancy papers and rolling office chairs to make it seem like a company, but at the end of the day we’re just a room full of crazy people dying to make an impact on people’s lives. None of us go to “work” anymore.

Then what do we do here at the lab? We make things people like. Simple. If people don’t like what we make we throw it…

Learn more

Article source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/22/new-from-the-makers-of-nosh-noshlist-a-free-waitlisting-app-for-restaurants/

Firespotter Labs, makers of the food photo-sharing app Nosh (and more recently, the hilarious spoof app Jotly), is launching its latest creation today called NoshList, a new waitlisting application for restaurants. The app, designed for the iPad, ties into to the company’s consumer-facing Nosh mobile app, which allows users to rate and review restaurants and dishes from their mobile phones.

While the integration between the two apps (Nosh NoshList) is limited – customers just receive text messages about their reservation with links to download Nosh – it would make sense for deeper integrations to arrive in the future. NoshList’s venue analytics are calculated in real-time, for example, and could be integrated into the Nosh consumer app to provide current wait times. Consumers could then see those wait times and add their name to the waitlist within Nosh, which could tie back into the iPad app.

Those features aren’t live yet, but given Firespotter’s background, it would be right in their wheelhouse to move down this path. The company was started by GrandCentral co-founder and CEO Craig Walker, and GrandCentral, as you may recall, was acquired by Google in 2007 where it became Google Voice. Walker left the Google Voice team in late 2010, and later founded Firespotter Labs. In other words, this team knows a thing or two about telephony, and keeping costs low.

Currently, when a customer’s table is ready, they’re alerted by either text or phone through the NoshList platform.

The app also allows the restaurant to easily manage parties – adding, seating and removing them as necessary – just by pushing a button. To add walk-up customers, NoshList users simply enter in a name, phone number and tap a button for the party size. There are even different icons for gender and age groups (i.e., blue for boys, pink for girls, and an icon that looks sort of like Darth Vader for “unknown”).

At the bottom of the screen, NoshList shows the current wait times by party size for at-a-glance information, as well as the number of total guests waiting and the total seated.

NoshList has a lot of competition in the restaurant customer management space – besides OpenTable, there are startups like Livebookings, Timeview, Tableista, NoWait, DinerConnection, WaitList Manager, TurnStar and dozens (dozens!) of others. But Firespotter is offering its app for free for now, with monetization to come later on. Although the company isn’t talking about forthcoming features, things like improved analytics and 2-way paging (meaning customers could text back to the restaurant) are obvious next steps.

Prior to today’s launch, the company has been testing the app in several restaurants in the San Francisco Bay area, like Unami Burger, for example.

The app is live now on the iTunes App Store here.

• FIRESPOTTER LABS

Firespotter Labs is not a company. Of course we’ve got all the fancy papers and rolling office chairs to make it seem like a company, but at the end of the day we’re just a room full of crazy people dying to make an impact on people’s lives. None of us go to “work” anymore.

Then what do we do here at the lab? We make things people like. Simple. If people don’t like what we make we throw it…

Learn more

Article source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/22/new-from-the-makers-of-nosh-noshlist-a-free-waitlisting-app-for-restaurants/