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Your Instagram Data Is Now Officially Facebook Data
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5969001/your-instagram-data-is-now-officially-facebook-data
A new Instagram privacy policy goes into effect on January 16th, 2013. The service will now be sharing your data with its new owner Facebook. Get used to it.
Basically, Instagram has updated a few of the subhead sections of its policy to reflect the fact that it is a part of Facebook now. Instagram can now share information like cookies, log files, device identifiers, location data, and usage data,with “with businesses that are legally part of the same group of companies that Instagram is part of.” According to the Instagram blog, it’s a wonderful thing for you:
Our updated privacy policy helps Instagram function more easily as part of Facebook by being able to share info between the two groups. This means we can do things like fight spam more effectively, detect system and reliability problems more quickly, and build better features for everyone by understanding how Instagram is used.
Less spam? Great! Of course, this also means that Instagram is heaping its data over with the privacy nightmare that’s Facebook. The data will definitely be used to target better advertising at you on Facebook, and to serve you advertisements on Instagram whenever that starts happening. Here is the relevant section from the new policy:
Affiliates may use this information to help provide, understand, and improve the Service (including by providing analytics) and Affiliates’ own services (including by providing you with better and more relevant experiences).
This was inevitable, but at least now it’s official. [Instagram via TechCrunch]
We Don’t Plan to Build Apps for WinPho8
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5968080/google-we-dont-plan-to-build-apps-for-winpho8
If you’ve been holding out for a Gmail or Drive app on WinPho8, you’re all outta luck. Google has announced that it has no plans to roll out Windows Phone 8 software for the major Google apps.
Speaking to V3, Clay Bavor, product management director at Google Apps, explained:
“We have no plans to build out Windows apps. We are very careful about where we invest and will go where the users are but they are not on Windows Phone or Windows 8. If that changes, we would invest there, of course.”
Instead, Google plans to concentrate its efforts in iOS and Android apps:
“In 2012 we’ve laid some of the ground work and really improved the experience of our core apps on mobile devices, such as adding native editing of spreadsheets for both iOS and Android apps.”
Like Google Maps, which is now back on iOS. So, if you have an intimate love affair with the big G, look like WinPho8 still isn’t for you. [V3]
Image by AP
See The Entire Hyper-Local Marketing Business Collapsed Into One Intense M&A Target Graphic
There are a LOT of hyper-local marketing companies in business right now. Everyone knows Groupon and LivingSocial, of course. And Facebook and Google also have local offer businesses.
But there are also tons of smaller ones, and sub-units tucked into larger businesses — like AOL’s Patch and MSNBC’s EveryBlock.
Some of the businesses are publishers of local information (Patch, and YP, for instance). And others are hyper-local marketing businesses like Groupon or The Weather Channel. Google, of course is both. They all have one thing in common: They’re in the business of helping local businesses advertise themselves to local customers.
We decided to try and display them all in a chart based on size, and whether they are likely to acquire, or be acquired, by other companies. (With all due respect to LUMA Partners, let’s call this an InsiderScape.)
The result suggests that the business has organized itself into two types of companies: a small set of large, acquisitive players; and a large set of small, non-acquisitive players. (There are very few large players that don’t have acquisition histories, and very few small players that are scaling up via leveraged acquisitions.)
Crucially, this huge number of companies are all doing essentially the same thing — digitally connecting local businesses with their consumers. That suggests this is a commodity environment in which companies are likely to experience severe downward pressure on their ability command prices from merchants. And that means consolidation, through M&A, is likely.
Check it out, and let us know if we got anything wrong:
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The Reason Larry Page Doesn’t Want Googlers Thinking About The Competition Is Pretty Inspiring (GOOG)
During an interview with Fortune’s Miguel Helft, Google CEO Larry Page is transparently reluctant to talk about who he thinks is Google’s competition.
Helft asks him: “Is it Siri? Is it Amazon or commercial queries?”
Page tries to dodge the question, saying: “I don’t really think about it that way.”
Helf presses: “Because you don’t think about competition?”
And then Page drops this doozy, which is pretty inspirational for people in the tech industry:
“Obviously we think about competition to some extent.”
“But I feel my job is mostly getting people not to think about our competition. In general I think there’s a tendency for people to think about the things that exist. Our job is to think of the thing you haven’t thought of yet that you really need. And by definition, if our competitors knew that thing, they wouldn’t tell it to us or anybody else. I think just our strengths, our weaknesses, our opportunities are different than any other company.”
(Of course the truth is that lots of Googlers do think about the competition, and when they do, it’s mostly about Amazon lately. The reason: Google makes its money from commercial web searches, and increasingly people are just going straight to Amazon.com for that.)
SEE ALSO: 12 Quotes That Reveal How Larry Page Built Google Into The World’s Most Important Internet Company
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Source: Variety
Google Apps discontinues basic package, asks new customers to pony up $50 per user for premium
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/07/google-apps-discontinues-basic-package/
Looking towards Mountain View to provide a suite of digital tools for your new business? Make sure to pen per-user costs into your ledger — Google Apps isn’t free anymore. According to Google’s enterprise blog, the basic Google Apps package is being abandoned to streamline the service, offering businesses a single, $50 per user option that promises 24/7 phone support, 25GB inboxes and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Pre-existing free customers can still hum along unmolested, of course, and the standard pricing doesn’t apply to schools or universities, either. Personal Google accounts are still free too, doling out gratis Gmail and Drive access to anyone with a unique user name. The team hopes that streamlining the Apps will allow it to provide better service, possibly offering enterprise users new features on a faster timetable.
Source: Google
Google buys BufferBox, might give Amazon Locker a run for its money
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/30/google-buys-bufferbox-lockers-online-purchases/
Google has just snapped up BufferBox, a Waterloo, Ontario-based startup that offers temporary lockers for online purchases much like the ones recently deployed by Amazon. Instead of 7-Elevens and RadioShacks however, the relatively young startup has only just started a deal to install parcel kiosks in Canada’s Metrolinx GO Transit stations. The Mountain View company hopes to keep BufferBox alive through the acquisition, with plans for 100 kiosks in Greater Toronto and Hamilton in the next year. Of course, we can’t help but think this could all be part of Google’s master plan for a rumored same-day delivery service that might make Amazon a touch nervous. Hopefully this means future Nexus deliveries will be a just little faster, eh?
Filed under: Misc, Internet, Google
Source: Financial Post, BufferBox
Facebook Is Launching a Numberless "Social Calling" Service
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5962449/facebook-is-launching-a-numberless-social-calling-service
TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook is teaming up with carriers to provide a “social calling” service. Initially striking up a deal with French carrier Orange, it seems the service will allow friends to make voice calls without knowing each other’s numbers.
The service will apparently allow users to make calls from mobile and desktop flavors of Facebook, using ties on Facebook, rather than possession of a phone number, to allow calling. It’ll also apparently support group calls, too.
The service will be powered by Orange’s new IP-based call app Libon—already available on iOS—which is effectively a mobile Skype competitor. The Facebook social calling service is planned to go live in France during the summer of 2013. Orange’s reach spreads far and wide across Europe, though, so it seems likely that the service’s tentacles will spread.
It remains unclear how quickly that will happen, of course, and whether or not Facebook plans to roll it out internationally any time soon. It’s also not clear how consumers will embrace the news: while there’s certainly a shift towards voice calls being made online, the idea of any Facebook contact calling at will is maddening even in theory. [Tech Crunch]
Facebook Is Launching a Numberless "Social Calling" Service
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5962449/facebook-is-launching-a-numberless-social-calling-service
TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook is teaming up with carriers to provide a “social calling” service. Initially striking up a deal with French carrier Orange, it seems the service will allow friends to make voice calls without knowing each other’s numbers.
The service will apparently allow users to make calls from mobile and desktop flavors of Facebook, using ties on Facebook, rather than possession of a phone number, to allow calling. It’ll also apparently support group calls, too.
The service will be powered by Orange’s new IP-based call app Libon—already available on iOS—which is effectively a mobile Skype competitor. The Facebook social calling service is planned to go live in France during the summer of 2013. Orange’s reach spreads far and wide across Europe, though, so it seems likely that the service’s tentacles will spread.
It remains unclear how quickly that will happen, of course, and whether or not Facebook plans to roll it out internationally any time soon. It’s also not clear how consumers will embrace the news: while there’s certainly a shift towards voice calls being made online, the idea of any Facebook contact calling at will is maddening even in theory. [Tech Crunch]
Digital Consigliere
Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.
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