Apple giving $100 refund to recent iPad buyers

Apple is offering $100 back to customers who purchased the iPad at its former price. Apple seems to be offering the $100 refund only to those who purchased the original model tablet within 14 days of the announcement of the iPad 2 on March 2, 2011. So a pretty close guess would make the cut-off date for refund eligibility February 16. Devices purchased before that date likely would not qualify.

The refund, which will be applied to a person's credit card, applies to all versions of the first-generation iPad.

Apple giving $100 refund on recent iPad purchases

Dwolla Spots Supports Mobile Payments at Retail Locations

Dwolla "Spots" enables mobile payments for goods and services at retail locations using their mobile devices. Dwolla charges a flat transaction fee of 25 cents per transaction.

To pay a brick-and-mortar merchant, a Dwolla user selects the Spots tab from within Dwolla's mobile application, finds the business on a location-based map, and enters the transaction amount. The funds are sent immediately to the merchant.

Groupon: The Accidental Success

If you ever have been part of a start-up, you know that a successful business model sometimes just emerges in a way that was unforeseen in the original business plan. In Groupon's case, the successful model was something of a "Hail Mary" pass to save an original vision, an online fund-raising service, from collapse.

Groupon originally was founded as "The Point," an online fund-raising service that used the "tipping point" concept (donations had to reach a specified level before any of the donations were accepted). That now is the foundation for the group buying concept as well: offers aren't triggered unless there is a minimum take rate.

Groupon: the billion-dollar that company turned down Google

"Deal A Day" a $4 Billion Market in 2015?

BIA/Kelsey projects "deal-a-day offers" will grow  from $873 million in 2010 to $3.9 billion in 2015, representing a 35.1 percent compound annual growth rate.

But the firm also says the "deal a day" market could grow to as much as $6.1 billion by 2015 (47.4 percent CAGR), while a very conservative outlook pegs the space at $2.1 billion (19.7 percent CAGR).  read more here.

Of course, right now the industry itself has not reached consensus on what the new industry should be called, or which other existing markets it is part of. Group discount offers might be considered part of the local advertising business, the e-commerce business, mobile or online advertising or location based services, for example.

Hyper-Local Also Can Mean Hyper-Small

A new study by Borrell Associates suggests that "visitor" traffic to hyper-local mobile sites could be over-reported by a factor of four-to-one, if one assumes that the purpose of such hyper-local advertising is to reach people actually in a local area.

The big attraction to “local” comes from the fact that local websites hold more value because their site visitors make the vast majority household purchases within a few miles of their homes. The new study suggests the unique visitor-to-actual-people ratio is nearly 4 to 1. Audiences are being overstated, and some of those visitors aren’t even local.

Borrell Associates, Inc | How Unique is Unique?

http://www.borrellassociates.com/wordpress/2011/02/18/about-that-report-on-web-traffc/

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3.4 Million Net New Broadband Adds in 2010