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Groupon Officially Launches Payments Platform
As part of its bid to diversify its revenues and become the “local commerce operating system” for SMBs, Groupon launched a payments trial in the SF Bay Area in May. Today that business, Groupon...
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Tello’s PassTools Could Help Make iPhone’s Passbook a Mega-Hit (and SMB Ready)
Apple’s Passbook (mobile wallet) is being downloaded right now by perhaps millions of people who are updating to iOS 6. By next week there may be as many as 80+ million iPhones that have installed it....
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Open Mobile Summit: Going Deeper on Mobile Payments
Today I’ll be moderating a session about mobile payments at the Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco today. The session is “Wallet wars: mobile payments from theory to practice.” It features the...
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DudaMobile Announces SMB Mobile Sites Deal with Yahoo
As one of the features of its small business suite of services (e.g., webhosting), Yahoo is now making mobile websites available through DudaMobile. This is a coup for DudaMobile, which already has...
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It’s Time for Another E-Commerce Reality Check
Yesterday comScore released quarterly e-commerce data. The metrics firm said that Q3 US e-commerce spending was nearly $42 billion. That means 2012 e-commerce is on pace for something close to $180...
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Online Sales Still a Tiny Fraction of Offline Buying, Mobile the Bigger Story
The story isn’t e-commerce. The story is how the internet (and mobile access in particular) is affecting retail sales overall and especially in stores. ComScore estimated Thanksgiving and Black Friday...
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Placed Data Offer Insight into Real-World Traffic Patterns
One of the most interesting trends in local is the development of location analytics — using mobile devices to measure consumer activity and movements in the real world. A variation on that is location...
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What Do LivingSocial and Groupon’s Woes Tell Us about Consumer Interest in...
The short answer is almost nothing. Many journalists have argued that consumers have soured on “deals” in the wake of the well-publicized struggles at Groupon and LivingSocial, which just laid off 10%...
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The New Shopping Paradigm: O-2-O-2-O
Roughly seven years ago Yahoo coined the term “ROBO” (research online, buy offline) to express what was then a growing phenomenon: people using the internet for research before buying offline in local...
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Spaaza ‘MyPrice’: A New Response to Showrooming
Over the past holiday season the revelation for many people was the degree to which mobile devices were used as part of the consumer shopping and purchase process. Big box retailers and specialty shops...
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Facebook Gift Card Could Be Huge Hit
Facebook previously introduced a way to send actual goods to people (via credit card): Facebook Gifts. However it has now gone further by debuting a plastic gift card that can be used (and reused) at...
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$1 Trillion in E-Commerce: Tiny vs. Local Sales
EMarketer reported that e-commerce surpassed $1 trillion in 2012. This is a major milestone and a “psychologically” powerful number. Here are the charts reflecting the regional contributions to the...
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Avvo Launches Legal Lead-Gen Marketplace
It works for contractors and mortgages, why not for lawyers? Legal directory site Avvo has launched an RFP/lead-gen marketplace for attorneys. Finding a lawyer today is a matter of traversing the usual...
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Groupon Q4 Disappoints Some, but Take a Look at Mobile
In today’s earnings announcement, Groupon missed or met (depending) analysts revenue expectations. There was also an unexpected EPS loss of $0.12. Below is the consolidated financial statement. For the...
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Placed: Bed, Bath & Beyond, Best Buy Among Retailers Most Vulnerable to...
Amazon is the biggest promoter and beneficiary of the so-called mobile “showrooming” phenomenon. To date, however, much of the evidence of showrooming has come from consumer surveys rather than actual...
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IAB: 78% of Electronics Shoppers Did Online Research Before Going into Store
There have been a number of reports published recently about showrooming. I wrote about one out today from Placed. There’s another one coming out tomorrow. And earlier this week the IAB released a...
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JiWire: Almost 70% Used ‘Mobile Wallet’ in Q4
Mobile ad network JiWire released its Q4 audience insights report this morning. Based on survey data from 5,000 US and UK mobile users it covers a range of topics and questions. There’s a great deal of...
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ReachLocal Enters New Phase with Local Transactions, Hosted Commerce Services
I met with ReachLocal CEO Zorik Gordon a few days ago and he gave me a tour of the company’s new product suite. Most interesting were “ReachCommerce” and a related, new consumer service ClubLocal. This...
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Amazon Trying to Push Me to Kindle Fire
Over the course of the weekend I conducted a bunch of searches on Amazon for the Nexus 7 and iPad Mini. I was checking the range of prices and options available. I have considerable Amazon credit and...
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Retailigence Begins to Realize Promise of ‘O2O’ Marketing
The “Online-to-Offline” opportunity is at least 10X larger than e-commerce. That’s the massive prize local shopping platform and data provider Retailigence is pursuing. And after nearly four years the...
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