Top Reasons Why People "Follow" Brands on Facebook

A study suggests 37 percent of Facebook users and 44 percent of Twitter users connect with brands using social media to stay in the loop on special offers. About 70 percent said they had used social media to participate in a contest or sweepstakes.

That means social media users are looking for deals and will likely register for contests (or other things) in order to do so.

Top Reasons Why People Follow Brands on Facebook

Dwolla Says Its Grid Payment Network Is More Secure than Card Networks

Dwolla says its "Grid" transaction network will be more secure than the Visa and MasterCard card networks. 


"Every time you swipe your card, you're leaving behind the actual information that would be used with that card," says Ben Milne, Dwolla founder and chief executive. "Every time you engage in a transaction, you're leaving behind information in places you don't even know you're leaving it."

That's an exposure potential users, merchants, card issuers and transaction networks must live with, to some extent. "What we're trying to ask is, if they had or could start over today, would they knowingly let merchants or hardware providers store credit card information that could be used to commit fraud?" says Milne.

That same question can be asked about most parts of the payments business, in fairness. Were we starting over, today, we might lean on customer-owned terminals and access rather than retailer-owned terminals and access, for example.

Most of the $1 million per week in transactions coming through Dwolla are online payments, says Milne. The highest dollar transactions are business-to-business transfers and consumer-to-business payments such as rent. But the new growth is in mobile, Milne says.

Read more.

Half of Mobile Users Use a Banking App Weekly?

Gartner Analyst Skeptical About Mobile Payments

David Furlonger, Gartner's senior analyst for the financial sector, is skeptical about mobile banking applications and near field communication (NFC) payment systems.

He rightly notes that Australian banks have struggled to profit from such ventures and that, globally, most users are just checking account balances, which might positively affect operating costs or improve customer satisfaction, but which do not create new revenues.

“Nearly all the interactions on mobile so far have been checking balances,” he said. “That doesn't sound like a way to make money.”

Some amount of skepticism is healthy. Though the mobile payments, mobile wallet and mobile commerce businesses are in a higher tempo state at the moment, lots of work yet has to be done to create viable business ecosystems. Most retailers and consumers probably do not yet see a clear reason to add NFC or other forms of mobile payment, and so the base of terminals and devices remains miniscule.

So reasonable skepticism about what can happen immediately, or "soon," is warranted. But there has been an undeniable quickening of tempo in 2011. Wherever we are going, we will get there faster than seemed likely in 2010.

Read more.

2011 Social Gaming Revenue Dominated by Facebook

Some 27 percent of the online population of America will play at least one game on a social network at least once per month this year, says eMarketer. That's 62 million people, up from 53 million last year. In 2011, 29 percent of the U.S. online population will play a game on a social network at least once per month. More here.

Revenues from social gaming will be $1.32 billion in 2011, up from $856 million in 2010. Separately, Kevin Ryan, Gilt Groupe CEO says Facebook is on course to generate $1 billion in revenue this year from social gaming all by itself, with most of the revenue coming from advertising. But the $1 billion forecast also includes revenue from Facebook Credits, which allow users to buy items for games and other activities on the social network, he said. Read more.

5 Mobile Payment Tools for Business

According to a new survey conducted by Mobio Identity Systems, 94 percent of North Americans would be happy to complete payments through their phone if they knew the system were secure. Here are five of the top mobile payment solutions currently available for use by small businesses.

5 Mobile Payment Tools for Business

What the iPad Means to Unified Communications

"The first time I held a friend’s iPhone, my immediate reaction was, “Wow, this would be perfect if it were just a little bigger,” says Chris Sullivan, director of training and documentation for AVST.

"The iPad isn’t a game changer, but it’s essentially a more human version of a laptop," he says. The important thing is that Sullivan is thinking about the iPad and tablets in general as having implications for unified communications. But if you look at what Sullivan points to as examples of how the tablet, as a device, might set the stage for more use of UC, you will notice right away that very little of what he thinks is important about UC has to do with "voice" or "using phones," though that is what most people were thinking was at the core of UC some years ago.

Some might argue that most of what is important about the evolution of UC has to do with all sorts of applications other than voice, or phones. It is still about "communications," of course. It is just that "communications" now includes many different modes these days.

What the iPad Means to Unified Communications