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daily 12.21

Personalized magazine, like Pandora for news.

The system works out well for retailers, which have taken a one-two punch from both the popularity of online shopping and the way smart phones enable consumers to comparison shop while in the store, looking at listings from competitors for lower prices before deciding to buy. In the sixth annual survey from National Retail Federation Foundation and American Express Customers' Choice survey, conducted by BIGresearch, Zappos.com and Amazon.com took the top two spots. Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2011/05/25/mobile-checkout-devices-save-time-encourage-spending/#ixzz1NTlLUiZH

Online retailer using personal shoppers and direct email to the recommend items to the site's most valued customers.

Daily 5.5

Want Web companies to stop using our personal data? Be ready to suffer the consequences.

"Tabbedout, a mobile payment system for restaurants and bars, is now upgrading its system with customer relationship management tools that helps merchants understand who's walking in the door and helps them treat customers better. Now, when a customer opens a tab through the Tabbedout mobile app, restaurant owners can see if he is a new customer or a regular, how much he normally spends and what he prefers to order. Merchants can also receive direct feedback from customers through the Tabbedout app. That allows them to respond directly to a customer or offer a special coupon to thank him or soothe him after a bad visit. And with the new CRM tools, Tabbedout merchants can also segment and target their users. Merchants can send an offer as a reward for a loyal customer or entice a new customer to come back and get back data on how many offers are actually redeemed."

""We've indexed 52 billion unique connections," says Patton, "So when you go to Atlanta it's customized to you. We can personalize everything to you as an individual user as it happens.""

""If you think about the unique identifier - the cookie - it's just a way to identify a browser and then have the smarts behind it to serve a particular ad. If you have Open Graph data from Facebook, you would have to work through issues with personally identifying information, but you are essentially adding some behavioral data, which is what they are doing on their own site now. I don't know how far they could extend that, but there is a big push in the industry to start to utilize more sources of data for more specific targeting.""

"Walmart began recruiting top Silicon Valley talent and acquiring start-ups last year. For instance, Walmart acquired Kosmix, a company that specializes in making web design more seamless, for $300 million. That team has been working for over a year to fix Walmart's systems and improve its website.  Walmart is investing in the "social gifting" market. A year ago, Walmart launched "Shopycat," which makes gift recommendations based on friends' Facebook profiles. The site is now called "Walmart Gifts" and allows customers to log in and get personalized recommendations based on Facebook and Twitter profiles.  The retailer got a better search engine. A dozen top engineers took 10 months to build it, and while the company won't discuss sales figures, they said the new system is more user-friendly. "If you search for cotton socks now, you'll actually find them," Manjoo writes.  Walmart is trying to lead the charge in same-day shipping. Its at an advantage considering that 96 percent of Americans live within 20 miles of a Walmart.  Walmart is investing like crazy in its mobile app. "Walmart imagines that as you go through an average day, you'll remember things you need--milk, bread, a new tennis racquet, a toy truck for your nephew's birthday--and tell the voice-enabled Walmart app. The app will list each item's location inside your local Walmart and include product info; eventually, it will also learn your preferences and offer recommendations. And once you're actually in the store, you'll be able to summon an associate to help you," Manjoo says. "

"Ian Heidt, director of product management for Qualcomm Labs, said the technology pulls in information from a variety of sensors on the phone, how consumers use the phone, including the camera, and location to create a unique fingerprint. "In early trials in Japan, we've seen improvement on targeting," he said. "It shows how mobile and content change the behavior of consumers." Trials conducted by Blogwatcher in Japan found that consumers were three times more likely to click through and respond to WITYU notifications and offers as compared with non-contextualized and non-personalized offers. Click-through rates rose by more than 60% when specials and offers were delivered to consumers."

"Microcontent sharing takes this to the next level: What if you could break down an article into its constituent parts and share them independently? Perhaps one day aggregators could reassemble not just articles into a personalized newspaper, but also individual quotes, images and videos? I'm so excited about microcontent sharing that we've implemented it into the new Mashable.com. If you visit an article on the site and hover over an image or quote, we provide options to share that piece of content to your social networks. We hope to take this idea even further in future iterations, but it's a start."

"To get a feel for the tablet vs PC market, I again looked to IDC for data on computer sales. Last month, it reported a total of 87.7 million personal computers were sold in the third quarter of this year; down 8.6 percent from the year ago quarter. That's not a favorable trend, considering tablet sales grew nearly 50 percent in the past year. If you were to ignore the smartphone for this exercise - which has surpasses sales of the PC early this year - and do a quick calculation of the total tablets and PCs sold, 24 percent of the 115.5 "computers" were tablets in the last quarter."

"Citi piloted LinkedIn's first branded community in April, erecting Connect: Professional Women's Network as a sponsored group for members to discuss topics online, such as women-on-women bullying in the workplace. Then in late summer something unexpected happened: Members began taking things offline. One New York-based member posted a question, asking if others would like to meet in person. That has spawned nine different meet-ups in not just New York but Seattle and Miami. "That's not necessarily behavior we could have predicted from an online social network," said Citi's managing director and head of North American marketing Vanessa Colella."

The Follow tab will allow Spotify users to follow their friends and celebrities to help better discover what they're currently listening to as well as their feedback on certain tracks. Think of it as Spotify's own personal network that revolves squarely around music available on the service. - See more at: http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/02/spotify-gradually-rolling-out-new-social-network-features/#sthash.RakJaSX0.dpuf