PayPal Getting into Daily Deals Business

PayPal says it is getting into the daily deals business, competing with firms such as Groupon,  LivingSocial and Google in the daily deals space. That move should ratify thinking that such "coupon" businesses have a direct relationship to mobile wallet and payments businesses.

The company will make its first foray into mobile deals in the first quarter of 2012, partnering with some of the top 200 U.S. merchants, PayPal President Scott Thompson said.

PayPal is chasing a daily coupon market that may more than double to $4.17 billion by 2015, according to research firm BIA/Kelsey. PayPal to get into deals business

AT&T drops bid for T-Mobile

It's over: AT&T has formally abandoned its effort to buy T-Mobile USA. AT&T already had booked a $4 billion charge, representing the breakup fee to be paid to T-Mobile USA for a failed acquisition attempt. AT&T drops bid for T-Mobile

Deutsche Telekom, the parent of T-Mobile USA, now will be looking at other options to make liquid some of its U.S. operations, for the simple reason that it needs the cash to build out Long Term Evolution networks elsewhere.

We also should expect a new round of activity by firms looking to partner or invest in T-Mobile USA as well. Presumably those new suitors are investors who have complementary assets, such as spectrum assets that could help T-Mobile USA create an LTE network, while giving the new investors access to the skills a mobile service provider possesses.

T-Mobile USA's problems include lack of spectrum for a fourth-generation network, customer churn, lack of access to the Apple iPhone, and competition both from the "premium" providers AT&T and Verizon Wireless at the "top" of the market and lower-cost prepaid providers from below.

Sprint has somewhat similar problems, being much smaller than either AT&T Wireless or Verizon Wireless and less well positioned financially.

Technology Industry Faces Major Disruption

The technology industry is in the midst of a huge wave of growth, innovation and disruption, driven in large part by mobile devices and the "cloud social graph," causing huge challenges for incumbents of every sort, including Intel, Microsoft and Research in Motion, for example.

Google, Apple, Facebook, Samsung and others such as Amazon are taking over, argues Jean-Louis Gassée. Technology disruptions 

The Top 20 iPhone And iPad Apps of 2011

From social magazines to music discovery apps to console-quality games that players can hold in the palms of their hands, there are hundreds of new titles in the iTunes App Store that will inform, organize, and entertain virtually anyone who owns an iOS device.

Here are 20 of the best iOS applications of 2011, according to Techcrunch. The Top 20 iPhone And iPad Apps of 2011

Flipboard arguably has been the most-significant consumer content consumption app.

Top 10 Feed & RSS Technologies of 2011

News and activity feeds have become increasingly important ways people keep track of news, issues, products and people they care about.

Here's one list of 10 important feed tools. Top 10 Feed Technologies of 2011

"Percolate turns brands into curators," the company says. Marketers might be able to use the service to discover feeds full of content and then distribute those feeds to Percolate users. to consume.

Feedly.com is designed to run on mobiles, tablets or PCs. 

Cross motion sensing and analytics and you'd get Shopper Tracker

If you combined Kinect, the Microsoft motion-sensing device, plus Google Analytics, the dashboard for website usage statistics, you'd understand Shopper Tracker.

Shopper Tracker uses spatial recognition software, heat sensors and proprietary algorithms to analyze customer movements, such as which store shelves are most popular, which items are most touched, which taken and then put back. Spying on Your Buying



Shopper Tracker: tracking real world conversions like web analytics

Technology Reshapes Software, Marketing

One often hears it said that "content marketing" has "been around forever" in the form of newsletters, brochures and custom publishing. So what accounts for the explosion of interest in "content marketing" now?

One way or the other, though it would be a mistake to attribute everything to widespread changes in technology, that would seem to be the best answer. 


In the software business, it often is said that dramatic changes in computing technology now mean a new start-up can launch with about 10 percent of the capital investment required a decade ago. Dramatically lower startup costs


In fact, some venture capitalists say underlying computing costs, resulting from a combination of lower hardware and software tools, mean a software company can be launched for 10 percent of what would have been required in 2000. Venture capitalist Mark Suster says that when he built his first company in 1999 it cost $2.5 million in infrastructure just to get started and another $2.5 million in team costs to code, launch, manage, market and sell our software.



“So it’s not surprising that typical “A rounds” of venture capital were $5 to $10 million,” Suster says. “We had to buy Oracle database licenses, UNIX servers, a Sun Solaris operating system, Web servers, load balancers, EMC storage, disk mirrors for redundancy and had to commit to a year-long hosting agreement at places such as Exodus.”



With the introduction of open-source software, most notably what was called the “LAMP” stack, including Linux (operating system), Apache (Web server software), MySQL (instead of Oracle) and PHP.



“Suddenly infrastructure software was nearly free,” he notes. “We paid 10 percent of the normal costs for the software and that money was for software support.” The point is that a 90-percent disruption in cost spawns innovation. Infrastructure costs 90 percent lower


At the risk of oversimplifying matters, those same technology trends explain why content marketing has gained new prominence.



You may not be able to afford to buy a television network, but nothing's stopping you from creating your own YouTube channel, the argument legitimately can be made.



The cost of launching a newspaper or magazine is prohibitive, not to mention risky. But blogs can be set up for free or very affordably. And every trend in media represents a vast multiplication of channels and sources. All mass medium have been fragmenting for decades, starting with cable TV, then satellite radio, then, most importantly, Web-based media.



Consider the role of “search.” Some 90 percent or more of buying decisions begin with a Web search. Throughout the purchase cycle, users are searching for information, recommendations, research, reviews, authority and credibility.



And once they find the information they seek, they're sharing it with others involved in the purchase decision: a friend, a spouse, a colleague, or their boss, or perhaps they're throwing that information out to a trusted network to vet it, or to validate their position in the decision-making process. Why PR is Poised to Own Content Marketing


Now you can add tablets and smart phones to the list of reasons why fragmented media environments, explosive amounts of new content and always-with-you content consumption devices mean the role of content in all marketing processes has suddenly assumed such new importance.



Not only is it harder to get attention, and keep it, the cost of “going direct” to the audience, without using gatekeepers, is easier than ever. It would not be inappropriate to argue that technology platforms are the fundamental enablers for content marketing’s rise, as technology advances likewise account for new global interest in mobile payments, mobile wallets, mobile commerce and mobile banking.



Marketing, no less than telecommunications, television, audio, print media, banking and retailing are being reshaped and disrupted by fundamental technology changes.