T-Mobile Apologizes For Mistakenly Sending Notification Bar Ads

You must have noticed it in the news last week that T-Mobile took the opportunity to display ads in the notification bar of some Android phones with the occasion of an update to T-Mobile's My Account application.

After the word got out, T-Mobile made an official statement, via e-mail and from a spokesperson, saying that the advertisement was a mistake and that the carrier is sorry for any inconveniences it might have caused. The wording goes like this: "during a recent software update, a message to promote T-Mobile's free VIP Zone was mistakenly sent to certain customers and appeared on the notification bar for some Android devices. After T-Mobile was made aware of this mistake, the company stopped the notifications. T-Mobile apologizes for the inconvenience this may have caused customers".

With most of Google's revenue coming from ads, do you see a possible future where ads would be delivered, in a similar way, to your mobile device (and not only in free, ad-supported applications)?

4 Big Business Secrets for Finding New Customers

Let’s face it: most big companies aren't known for being trendsetters. But they are pioneers when it comes to finding new customers. Because large companies operate on such a large scale, mistakes can be very costly. This forces them to carefully choose, refine and innovate to find the best sales techniques. Here are four big business tactics you should put to work.
1. Go mobile
People everywhere have adopted the mobile phone as their device of choice. There are more than 6 billion mobile connections in the world, compared to under 2 billion PCs. Big companies have seen the light and are scrambling to take advantage of mobile’s potential. Small businesses can do the same.
Consider creating a mobile-friendly website if you haven’t done so. More businesses and consumers are looking for products and services on mobile phones, and websites designed for PCs typically don’t work well on small screens. You may want to develop a mobile app to make interactions with customers and prospects easier. Also investigate mobile barcodes—known as QR codes. People are increasingly using these codes, which can provide an instant link to businesses and their offerings.
2. Research your market
A big company tends to be detached from its customers, so it must go the extra mile to learn what makes them tick. It must continually investigate its market and learn how customers perceive it, how it compares to competitors and how it can expand its products or services.
Small businesses are closer to their customers, so they frequently underestimate the importance of research. It’s easy to take customers for granted and not delve into information that could dramatically improve your offerings or reveal how to find new customers.
Try to take advantage of every personal encounter to gather information, and consider organizing events that can increase that interaction. For example, an auto dealer might host a customer appreciation day several times a year. Also take advantage of social media like Facebook, Twitter and online directories to learn what customers have to say about your business.
3. Go digital
Industry researchers continue to predict dramatic increases in spending on online marketing—via e-mail, desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets and other devices. Online ad spending in the United States is expected to grow 23 percent to nearly $40 billion in 2012, according to research firm eMarketer. Big businesses have found that online marketing allows them to offer easy purchasing through e-commerce, forge deeper customer relationships and reach consumers and businesses all over the globe.
To help ensure you make the most of online marketing, take a closer look at your company’s website. Can users search for your products and understand your services easily? If you engage in e-commerce, is the buying process smooth and intuitive? Do you regularly refresh the site with new information and special offers?
Also, are you taking advantage of interactive tools to establish a dialogue with prospects and customers? For example, are you using banner and search engine advertising to get the word out, and are you using e-mail to promote marketing offers? Finally, are you making your company and its products or services easy to find by posting business listings on online directories?
4. Plan and track
Planning and tracking may sound antithetical to innovative marketing, but it is key to hitting the mark and closing sales. You’ve probably heard the saying attributed to merchandising king John Wanamaker: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted—I just don’t know which half.” Well, now you can. Analytics tools allow you to track responses to your online marketing, and fortunately many of them are free or relatively inexpensive.
You can help get the best results from your online advertising by tracking the click-through rate. Test different ads and adjust your efforts to focus on what works best. Also look at performance data for your website, mobile messaging and social media activities. Metrics to examine include:

• Who’s visiting and what they do
• Who’s buying and what they buy
• Who clicked on an invitation or offer
• How much time they spend on your site
• What they say about your products or services

AT&T offers a number of tools and services to help your small business adopt these and other big business tactics. In particular, consider AT&T’s mobile marketing, interactive and Web hosting services.
Alice Bredin is an internationally renowned small business expert. She is founder and president of Bredin Inc., a marketing consultancy that helps Fortune 500 firms develop profitable, long-term relationships with small and medium businesses. She has advised millions of business owners over the last 20 years through her books, syndicated newspaper column, radio commentary and forums.
Photo credit: iStock

Sony Shakes Things Up Under New CEO, Reorganizes For The Post-PC Era

Sony enters a new era April 1st. On that day Kazuo Hirai will replace Sir Howard Stringer as Sony’s president and CEO. The challenges ahead are massive; Sony is facing a financial and organizational calamity. Sony is simply too big and has fallen too far and Hirai is tasked to bring Sony back to glory.
Sony just announced a new corporate organization that shows drastic change is underway. Under this strategy, dubbed One Sony, separate Sony divisions will share management, hopefully streamlining decisions and creating a more unified end-user experience that better utilizes Sony’s content offering. Sony under Stringer was an unwieldy multi-headed beast. Hirai is clearly trying to tighten the reins. It just might work and it has to work.
Prior to Stringer, Sony was led by Nobuyuki Idei who started feeding the hungry Sony machine. Under his watch Sony established Sony BMG Music Entertainment and purchased Hollywood’s Metro-Goldwyn Mayer studio in 2005. He entered into the joint mobile-phone venture with Ericsson. He was also the Sony exec that green-lighted the loveable, but still a bit strange, Aibo robotic dog.
Stringer was left with a bit of mess when he took over in the summer of 2005. At that time Sony was far from being just a consumer electronic company and majorly involved in nearly ever aspect of media creation and distribution. Now, in 2012, Sony’s once-mainstay TV division is drowning in red ink, the company just dissolved its partnership with Ericsson, and there is little, if any, compelling reason for a consumer to use one of Sony’s many media distribution platforms over Netflix, iTunes or Amazon.
Sony is simply not built for the current consumer electronics game. We’re entering into the age of digital appliances, a post-PC era if you will, and 15 years ago Sony would have been the top player. But now, in 2012, Apple and Samsung are the big kids on the playground; Sony is hiding under the slide doing his homework.
The PlayStation happens to be the one bright spot in Sony’s recent history. Sony’s incoming CEO, Kazuo, led that division for the last 5 years. There is hope, Sony fans.
Under the One Sony structure, Sony sees digital imaging, gaming and mobile devices to be the three cornerstones of its electronic business. Hirai himself will be in charge of Sony’s troubled HDTV division. The company will still pursue the medical technology field but what was separate medical-related divisions within Sony will be consolidated into one unit. Perhaps most promising though, Sony is appointing Kunimasas Suzuki, currently Executive Deputy President of Consumer Products. & Services Group, to be the officer in charge of unifying Sony products and creating a better user experience across the company’s entire product and network service line — something the company desperately needs. He is also in charge of Sony’s mobile business, showing that Hirai understands that going forward user experiences start in the mobile sector.
Sony of old is long gone. Sony will never be the same nimble company again. However, with the proper structure and leadership Sony might once again regain its swagger. Sony was once the shining example of user experience and hardware design done right. Sony needs to find its soul. If any company can properly battle Apple in the arena of consumer electronics, it’s Sony. After all, it’s Sony that Apple and Steve Jobs were aiming to dethrone 15 years ago.

T-Mobile CTO Says 84Mbps HSPA+ Still a Possibility

Two weeks ago, we heard that T-Mobile had confirmed it was no longer planning to follow HSPA+ 42Mbps upgrades with those that would bring its network 84Mbps service. As it's been focusing on introducing LTE instead, the carrier reportedly abandoned its future upgrade plans for HSPA+. That seemed like a rational enough decision, but now we're hearing that HSPA+ may yet see 84Mbps service, at least according to T-Mobile's CTO.

Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray recently participated in a question-and-answer session which T-Mobile published on its blog today. One question specifically regarded 84Mbps upgrades, and the chances of T-Mobile going ahead with them. Rather than the blanket dismissal we last heard, here Ray says that LTE is the clear focus, but that T-Mobile hasn't closed the books on HSPA+ yet, and will keep thinking about introducing 84Mbps service. Ray himself says he "would like to see both technologies advance".

Honestly, T-Mobile's going to have a lot on its plate as it attempts to get ready for LTE service starting in 2013. It might be nice to get a few phones supporting 84Mbps before then, and see service introduced in a few major markets, but considering how late to the LTE game T-Mobile already is, maybe it would be better off just concentrating on LTE for now.

Google Brings Location Search History to Mobile Browsers

We've talked before about some of the tools Google has made available in order to help bridge the gap between the time you spend working on your computer and time spent on your smartphone. There's stuff like Chrome to Phone, for example, which lets you access information your pulled-up while browsing from your PC while later on a mobile device. Today the company has a tweak along those lines to introduce to its mobile site, letting you easily access information on places you've researched from your smartphone.

If you've got Google's Web History enabled, letting it keep track of your queries, it's now going to pay special attention to the details on any physical places you end up searching for. Later on, when you pull up Google on your phone's browser, you'll be able to review those locations through a new "Recent" icon. Unlike Chrome to Phone, there's no special software to install on either side of this equation; you just need to be logged-in to Google on your phone with the same credentials you use on your PC.

For now, the new feature works on Google's Android browser and with Mobile Safari on iOS.

From Zynga To Flipboard: Why All Eyes Are On China For The Next Mobile Boom

Editor’s note: Chris Shen is vice president at Chinese gaming company The9. Prior to joining The9, he served as group account director and account director for several advertising agencies in Shanghai and Taipei.
If you spend any time speaking with Western mobile companies, one topic that’s likely to pop up is their “China strategy.” Due to a mix of mobile penetration, sheer population, and popularity of the mobile web, Western mobile companies recognize there’s a lot of money to be made overseas.
The idea is not without merit: China is the world’s largest mobile market with almost one billion users, 69 percent of which access the Internet through their phones on a regular basis. As such, plenty of big-name Western mobile companies have already begun entering China. However, the mobile market is still immature with issues like fragmentation and piracy, making distribution exceedingly difficult for developers. China isn’t quite yet a home away from home for Western developers, but it’s poised to be the next big mobile market.
China’s lucrative potential is especially relevant for mobile developers. Mobile apps and games were popular in China well before the United States caught on, and the market is only going to get bigger. Smartphone adoption is picking up and opening a window for Western developers to introduce new titles, while in-app purchases are on the rise in China and app downloads have almost tripled in the last year (more on that in a second).
Rise of the Smartphones
China has over 980 million mobile users. While this number is staggering, the majority of users own feature phones. As such, many local developers create apps that cater to feature phones. However, in the past few years, smartphone adoption — both iOS and Android devices — has increased significantly. According to research firm Strategy Analytics, almost 24 million smartphones were shipped to China in 2011, surpassing the number of devices in the U.S. This trend is still gaining steam and creating a profitable window for Western iOS and Android app and game developers. The9 and GREE recognized this trend early and established the $100 million Fund9 to help developers port their games to Android and distribute them in China.
Loads of Downloads
In addition to a massive user base, China’s mobile activity is also skyrocketing. More people are downloading more apps and games. According to mobile analytics site App Annie China’s mobile download numbers have grown by almost 300 percent in the last year. Additionally, research firm Distimo reported that over 30 percent of Apple’s App Store downloads were coming from China by the end of 2011, as opposed to only 18 percent at the beginning of that year.
In-App Purchases and Virtual Goods
China’s massive mobile potential is more than just a numbers game. It’s true that there are more mobile users in China than anywhere else, but they’re also starting to spend more. A lot more. According to App Annie, mobile revenue in China has nearly tripled in the last year, increasing by 187 percent. This is partially due to Apple’s recent announcement that they’re going to start accepting App Store payments in Chinese yuan. Now Western game developers can seamlessly offer virtual goods to China’s huge audience.
Western mobile companies can’t afford to ignore the Chinese market. A good example of this is Flipboard. Before launching in China, Flipboard was plagued by multiple clone apps that grew in popularity in the app’s absence. Since launching in China’s App Store, the company has been successful partnering with big-name companies like Sina and Renren. Hit mobile game maker, Rovio, saw a similar problem with loads of unlicensed Angry Birds (even a theme park) being sold in China. Their solution: open an entire Angry Birds store in China.
There’s more incentive to enter China than just to protect a brand. Companies like CrowdStar, GREE, and Zynga have all announced China ambitions.
As China’s mobile market continues to mature, it’s safe to assume that issues like piracy and fragmentation will become less problematic. For mobile game developers looking to cash in on China today, there are still some ways they can bring their apps over successfully. Finding a local partner to help with distribution, security, and catering to a Chinese audience will ensure a more successful launch.
Companies like The9 recognize both China’s complexity and its opportunity, and are eager to work with Western app developers. By leveraging carrier partnerships and working with multiple distribution channels, local partners can eliminate the headache of entering China.
Developers also need to localize their apps if they want them to succeed in China. This means not only translating apps into Chinese, but also customizing design aspects to meet cultural preferences and various channel requirements.
China is a beast already and it’s only going to get bigger. As Apple and Google continue to penetrate the market and cater to Chinese audiences, there will be a great window of opportunity for Western developers to rake in the yuan.
[image via flickr/bfishadow]

Led By Social, Gaming Investment, M&A More Than Doubled In 2011; Consolidation Looms

Yesterday, we took a look at the growing comfort consumers, specifically gamers, have with purchasing virtual goods and currency on the Web and mobile devices. Virtual goods are becoming a booming market thanks to the growing maturity of gaming platforms, free-to-play models and the profusion of mobile devices.
Today, international investment firm Digi-Capital published its in-depth review of the global gaming space, giving us a sense of the size, breadth, and activity of the very international gaming market last year that is contributing to the changing behavior around virtual commerce — as well as a glimpse into what we can expect from the industry over the course of 2012.
For starters, Digi-Capital found that gaming investment and M&A more than doubled in 2011, as private placements grew by 96 percent to $2 billion, the number of transactions increased by 67 percent to 152, and the average fundraising round increased by 17 percent to $13 million. When combined with the enormous IPOs of Zynga and Nexon, investment value nearly quadrupled. All in all, gaming M&A volume grew 88 percent to 113 transactions, value grew 160 percent to $3.4 billion, and the average M&A deal size grew 38 percent to $30.4 million.
In terms of which gaming sectors saw the most investment and M&A activity in 2011? Unsurprisingly, social and casual games took home the bacon, making up 57 percent of private investment and 45 percent of M&A activity. Digi-Capital believes that Zynga’s IPO was likely the “high water mark for Social Games 1.0,” as the crowded nature of the space will make it increasingly difficult for companies to sustain user acquisition and retention.
In analyzing global gaming in terms of total daily active users and individual game daily active users, the investment firm found that a small number of companies are delivering on the promise of maintaining (and growing) their user bases, specifically referencing Wooga and King.com. However, with the trend beginning in 2011, this year will likely see continued consolidating M&A activity in gaming.

Second to social and casual gaming in terms of transaction volume was social/mobile games, with 30 percent of private investment and 27 percent of M&A activity, although the value of private investment hasn’t really hit its full potential yet. Digi cited DeNA and Gree as two examples of how investment in social-mobile games can actually deliver ROI, with the former seeing more than $1.4 billion in revenues at a 50 percent operating margin, and the latter seeing equivalent revenues in the 12 months leading up to December 2011, with a 46 percent operating margin. Going forward, mobile-social and cross-platform games will continue to attract significant attention from both investors and potential acquirers.
And just as we wrote in April last year, large, profitable Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean gaming companies will continue to look for M&A opportunities in North America, as gaming continues to explode across Asia. The same will be true for some of the big American gaming companies, but both suffer from a lack of local knowledge, and cross-pollination.
Going forward, Digi-Capital expects online and mobile games to significantly contribute to the growth of the international gaming market, with the total market reaching an estimated $82 billion by 2015, and online and mobile games taking 50 percent of that revenue. (Interestingly, it expects the pure console sector to be “flat to down” over that time.) What’s more, the report forecasts that Asia and Europe will take 87 percent of the revenues for online and mobile games, with China leading at 36 percent, followed by Europe at 20 percent, South Korea at 12 percent, and Japan at 10 percent.

However, while online and mobile games are growing their scale and share of the overall market, consumer markets are expected to continue to fragment, and profitable business models will become harder to come by. Over the course of the next year, gaming companies will have to develop multiple development platforms, instead of relying on one hit game, and find multiple platform and geographical distributors. Relying solely on Facebook won’t cut it for long. Rapid, low-cost game development and redevelopment cycles, fast failure, strong analytics, and true scalability will continually become more significant as the industry matures.
That being said, Digi-Capital found that there is more demand for investment among high-growth gaming companies than there is supply, as “outside major investment deals, online and mobile games companies still find it challenging to find high quality investors, and traditional VCs are becoming increasingly selective.” The current trend among VCs, the report finds, is to go after later-stage deals, but there’s potential to change as the market changes and more people flock to mobile and social games.
All in all, it seems there are plenty of potential growth and consolidation opportunities across the gaming sectors, but there’s no doubt that mobile-social, online, and cross-platform games will continue to explode over the course of the coming year, and we can expect M&A and investment activity to increase as social gaming works toward consolidation and more mobile gaming companies rise into the spotlight.

Apple, Google, And Others Agree To Mobile App Privacy Policy Guidelines

Though Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM, Amazon, and HP don’t always see eye-to-eye, the six of them have entered into an agreement brokered by California Attorney General Kamala Harris to take a tougher stance on the issue of mobile privacy.
Going forward, the six companies involved must provide users with a privacy policy if the app in question collects personal information. Though the move will affect the app submission and downloading process for users the world over, it was designed to bring those six companies into compliance with California state law.
“The majority of mobile apps sold today do not contain a privacy policy,” Harris said. “By ensuring that mobile apps have privacy policies, we create more transparency and give mobile users more informed control over who accesses their personal information and how it is used.”
It isn’t just enough for these companies to provide app-specific privacy policies to their users; they must also do it before the user downloads it, creating a much-needed means for them to opt-in. Apple and company also need to be consistent in how they display that information, as the agreement Harris brokered called for “a consistent location for an app’s privacy policy on the application-download screen.”
On top of that, users will also be given tools to help police their respective app stores. The terms of the agreement note that the platforms in question will allow users to report non-compliant apps, which could bring about some welcome change in some respects — while the Android Market already allows users to flag questionable apps, the iOS App Store and the Windows Marketplace don’t give users that power.
The past few weeks have made the mobile privacy issue a hot-button topic outside of the tech sphere, and the attention doesn’t just end with California’s AG — two congressmen sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook posing questions about user data privacy, and the White House will be holding an online meeting tomorrow to accompany the release of a white paper on online privacy. Regardless of how this privacy discussion began, don’t expect for the talk to subside any time soon.

Mobile Advertising Is The Baby Huey Of The Media World (And Apple Is Taking The Low Road)

Editor’s Note: This guest post was written by Frank Barbieri, a serial entrepreneur and sometime blogger. You can follow him @frankba.
I had dinner last week with a senior exec from a global advertising holding company who asked what I often get asked these days, “What’s going on with mobile advertising?” it’s a timely question as last week Apple announced they were lowering the buy-in price for iAds from $500,000 to $100,000 and increasing the publisher revenue share from 60% to 70%. The move seems innocent enough, but with a little inspection is actually very worrying for a segment still struggling to shake off its inferiority complex, and potentially chilling for many innovators and entrepreneurs.
You would think that the Flurry data posted late last year on exponential mobile adverting inventory growth late last year would correlate with an industry finally reaching maturity. But a couple weeks after that data posted I had a conversation with a Fortune 100 senior media buyer who became bearish on mobile ad spending in 2011.
This person has a total media budget in the tens of millions annually, and for the first time since she started buying mobile, she decreased her spend over the previous two quarters and expects to decrease even more in 2012. Why? Perceptual and brand attitudinal data consistently comes back as not even outperforming search engine marketing.
Mobile advertising has become the Baby Huey of the media world: it’s huge and lumbering, but not mature. Analytics, measurement and targeting have not caught up to where online is, exactly when we’re hearing inventory volume is set to surpass online. Neither Comscore nor Nielsen rank the top mobile apps like they rank the top online properties by category and unique users. Nor do they rank ad networks. Phone and operating system manufacturers as well as the carriers have created fragmented and feature poor cookie environments on phones. What is seen as standard operating procedure online, the use of cookies to target users and understand usage, is treated as heresy in mobile.
This lack of basic advertising infrastructure means it’s hard to manage and measure brand campaigns. Performance is a different story as you just spray massive volume and pay for the converted. But with brand advertising you have to tune the campaign to give the right audience the right message the right amount of times in the right context to move the needle on campaign objectives. All this becomes near impossible without the simple help of a cookie. Only in isolated cases is buying brand advertising on mobile valuable. For instance buying direct from content brands with huge audiences and registered targeting data, like Pandora and The Weather Channel. Or buying video where brand studies still consistently show attitudinal value. Otherwise it’s just too hard to buy quality at scale.
Look at the somersaults Millennial Media, the largest North American “independent” ad network undergoes just to try and replicate simple cookie functionality to target a unique user (from their S1 filing):

MYDAS then runs a proprietary set of algorithms to analyze multiple data points from the device, carrier and app to statistically determine, on an anonymous basis, the likely unique user of the device and the app requesting the ad.

Seriously. Enter hoop, commence jumping. Ad platform managers I’ve spoken with are now worried that even this will get worse as Apple deprecated unique phone identifiers in iOS 5 and is poised to cloak UDIDs from apps in iOS 6. This is one of the data points Millennial surely uses as do many ad platforms and it means there will be one less credible way to ensure a unique user is targeted. This means brand advertisers will again buy less at lower prices.
No doubt consumers have strong opinions about companies using and storing data on their phones, and they should have controls and transparency. But shouldn’t the browsers at least shoot for parity with the web? Isn’t that a better experience for consumers in the end? Where cookie infrastructure feeds a revenue model and users always have the option to turn cookies off. That revenue model in turn allows great content and apps to flow. Simple unique user targeting is foundational to online ad spending and in mobile we’re using magic potions to describe a “likely” unique user. Ad spend will never catch up to online with these constraints. That will eventually hurt developers and end users’ access to great content and apps.
Apple’s strategy now is to help itself while it hurts the industry. iAds can identify unique users through iTunes registration and maybe they’ll even reserve UDID information for themselves as a trusted steward of consumer privacy. It just so happens that that stewardship creates an unfair advantage in the ad network space where networks will have trouble competing. Machiavelli would have noted with glee the timing of the announcement and Millennial Media’s expected upcoming IPO.
Frankly Apple doesn’t care as much about advertising revenue as they do about happy publishers. As the lack of ad infrastructure depreciates the value of developer inventory, Apple is providing a life support alternative in the form of higher revenue shares. This is a short-term fix and bad for the industry as buyers like the one referenced at the beginning of this post want to see a vibrant ecosystem of sellers and selling technology to increase their spend to online levels. The move is bad for most publishers no matter what the revenue share.
Apple could have easily taken a position to build quality and value in the mobile brand advertising ecosystem by addressing the infrastructure problems rather than pretending that they alone can support the segment. As one platform product manager put it to me, They could have designed a “reliable, and privacy conscious third-party tracking mechanism” that all networks and developers could use. This would help networks and brands to better track and target users and ad usage across properties, web and app. It would lead to a well spring of new ad innovation on iOS devices. This would have started to build the infrastructure for brand buying at scale with confidence and credibility. Users would get higher quality advertising. Developers get more dollars and Apple wins by having happy developers.
What they did instead is tell advertisers they are slashing prices and opening up the bargain bin. And they told developers that they’ll be happy with the new benevolent ad dictatorship and sole innovator. Shame. Mobile advertising was very close to its Cinderella moment, and Apple just decided to keep the glass slipper and close the ballroom doors.

MSN Launches msnNOW Social Trends App on Facebook, Web and Mobile

One of the Web’s oldest portals, MSN, is about to dive headfirst into one of the Internet’s hottest trends: Social Media.
No, Microsoft, which runs MSN, is not launching its own social network. Instead, the 17-year-old content destination is unveiling a new social reader, msnNOW, on Facebook, the Web and in a new web-based mobile interface.
The initiative is actually two components. According to MSN General Manager Bob Visse, a team of 20 editors will use a new Demand Dashboard to measure velocity and volume of trending topics across Facebook, Twitter, the Bing search engine and BreakingNews.com (a joint MSN/NBC venture).
Stories that are trending will appear on msnNOW in a constantly updating “Biggest Movers” box. In addition, a team of editors will select topics and stories from among those social (and search) trends and create 100 word write-ups for posts that will appear in msnNOW’s What’s Trending homepage.
The page, which will look pretty much the same on the web and in the new Facebook app, will feature a large main story and a grid of other popular stories below. Visse described it as a “river of real-time content”. Within each area, reader will find small icons for Twitter, Facebook and BreakingNews.com. The presence of each will indicate on which social networks the stories and topics are trending.
These are not icons for sharing these posts, but Visse promised that sharing options would be obvious on the Web site and in the Facebook app, where there will be opportunities to share and comment.
Along with each MSN-created post, readers will find related Bing search terms, Tweets and other content. Not every topic or story will get an MSN write-up. For those, What’s Trending will link to a Bing result, which will also offer a link directly to the original content source. “We give the best of the web regardless of where that content or hot story originated from,” Visse told us.
Visse explained that MSN is targeting a younger “always socially connected consumer who lives an online lifestyle for information gathering and seeking.” That may mean that some of the trending content will be a little edgier than what you traditionally see on the portal. It’s all designed to start a conversation. Even the design has the younger demo in mind. It’s image-centric, with what Visse calls “short, pithy headlines.”
It’s also one of the first times that MSN has launched a new product across three separate platforms at once and, as Visse noted, it’s the first time MSN “has done anything interesting with the Facebook social reader experience.” msnNOW, however, will not launch with Google+ integration, though Visse said Microsoft is open to tracking volume and acceleration on the still young social network at a future date.
Visse calls the msnNOW project a “transformative experience for MSN.” Even so, the design is still decidedly MSN-centric across all platforms. Visse contends that while msnNOW is not yet a Metro design (the cubist-look Microsoft is painting across virtually all of its interfaces), msnNOW’s “component-like design is not a big leap to get a Metro-like design.”
The intention with the current look is for a really good, super-easy-to-use interface. The mobile interface, in particular, is designed for easy touch and swipe consumption across multiple mobile devices (the mobile web site should work well on the latest iOS, Windows Phone and Android browsers).
Though MSN currently enjoys a reported 125 million monthly visitors, with 75 million visiting the MSN portal homepage each month, msnNOW will not take over that hot destination. Visse told that msnNOW will have a hard and visible link from the MSN homepage and msnNOW content that does make the main homepage will feature msnNOW artwork and insignias.
msnNOW is an interesting bet for Microsoft, the big software company without its own big social network. Can it be the aggregator instead of the creator? And will content and media companies like the 100-word write-ups — or will they think such stories are cannibalizing their content?
Visse, though, has other concerns. “I’m waiting to see how it works out. Did we connect with the younger demo in the way I think we’re going to? Are the edit choices and the way we package them together interesting and exciting for users?” All good questions and Visse acknowledges that he won’t know the answers until they launch the product.

55% of Shoppers Are Uncomfortable Giving Credit Card Info to Social Networks [INFOGRAPHIC]

Despite the prevalence of social networks, consumers are still queasy about oversharing when it comes to credit card info.
That, at least, is the crux of an online survey executed by digital marketing firm Digitas and conducted by Harris Interactive in early January. Canvassing 2,247 would-be online shoppers, showed a slight majority weren’t ready to use Facebook et al. as a buying platform. Predictably, older and richer consumers were even less apt to share such data.
Other factoids that emerged in the survey: People are spending almost as much time accessing social networks via their mobile devices as they do via their PCs. (Perhaps that’s not so astonishing, since other surveys have showed time on mobile devices eclipsing PC time.) Another data point may be more surprising: Baby Boomers aged 45-54 — especially males — use their mobile device to access social networks more than 18-44 year-olds.
How about you? Are you using your mobile devices more to access Facebook and Twitter? Are you OK giving them your credit card number? Sound off in the comments.
For the full-size version of this infographic, click here.

LinkedIn Plans Mobile Ads This Year

LinkedIn just became the second social media giant this month to signal plans for ads in mobile.
During its quarterly earnings call Thursday, CEO Jeff Weiner said mobile access represents an ever-growing share of time users spend with LinkedIn. He said the company is investigating ways to monetize those page views.
“We’re going to start to run some tests with regard to advertising some of our marketing solutions within the mobile environment,” Weiner said.
When those ads will appear and what they’ll look like is anybody’s guess. LinkedIn did not immediately reply to a request for more information.
Weiner’s remarks come one week after reports surfaced that Facebook will begin serving ads to its 420 million-strong mobile audience. The Financial Times cited unnamed sources who pinpointed a launch date of early March, ahead of the company’s planned public offering in May. Those sources referred to the pending ads as “‘featured stories’ in the news feed.”
In August, LinkedIn revamped its mobile presence with new apps for Android and iOS and a new mobile site. As a result, Weiner said mobile is the fastest growing service on LinkedIn, accounting for more than 15% of total unique number visits.
“Because members need LinkedIn to work wherever they work we’ve made great strides in our platform in mobile offerings in 2011,” said Weiner.
LinkedIn is the number three social networking platform in the U.S., with 33.5 million unique viewers, according to comScore. Throughout much of 2011 the company vied with Twitter for number two, but Twitter pulled away by year’s end with 37.5 million unique viewers.
– Zachary Rodgers, ClickZ

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