Path is not your typical social network yet many people familiar with social media try to use it like every other network. They spend their time trying to friend as many people as possible to create yet another noisy stream (#yans).

The application is actually built around the principle of Dunbar’s number and beckons you to invite your closest personal relationships so that you can have the most meaningful experiences. I recently sat down with Path CEO, Dave Morin to ask what people should do when someone that is not an intimate person friend wants to be a part of their social graph. Dave believes that you are doing people a favor if you ignore their request. Path is supposed to only be the content that you care about and that you want to see from the people that you care the most about. It is your personal journal and so you should not have anyone reading it that you would not want to share the fact that your kid scored the game winning goal in the soccer game.

 

I hear from people all the time that Path is incredibly cool looking, but that it is not for them because their friends are not on the application. I have a bit of a different philosophy. Users who like the concept of Path should just start using it to do their life journaling. The app is incredibly versatile and can be your means to publish content to twitter, Facebook, foursquare and even Tumblr and it makes a very cool timeline that can quickly remind you of all of your adventures. Create all of your mobile content on Path, push it to other networks when you feel it is appropriate, but make Path the hub of your mobile content universe. Do this even if you do not have any friends on Path. If you need help getting people on to Path, ask them to take the Path Challenge.

If you journal, when you start to work on your friends and family, you can show them how beautiful the app is with a lot of your own data. You can take them through the fun creation process, show them how quickly it uploads video and how easy it is to look back over time on the things that you did. Dave tells me that people love to take pictures of food, menus and other artifacts that give them clues as to how the experience was at a restaurants, bar or other awesome place. I believe that Path is what Gowalla wanted to be. It’s your personal log of not only your adventures but of your life in general. And it’s going to get better with the Nike Fuelband integration which will export data to Path via bluetooth.

Remember, Path is an intimate social network. You are supposed to only be friends with people who you are close enough to to care about all of the content they create. This is what makes Path awesome. I am using my Path to get to interact with the startup scene, share with allen & gerritsen people and with some very close friends like my book co-author, Aaron Strout. I am actively trying to recruit my family, but they are still resisting, yet they seem to almost be coming around. And I will not rest until they do.

Aside from the fact that one of my ultimate faves, Neon Indian, put together a mehriffic stinker another great year in music has come and gone. In case you were not paying attention, I put together a list of stuff I really liked. Sorry, Wilco did not make the list and neither did the new Muppets soundtrack even though Man or a Muppet is a brilliant song and the things they do with chickens are pure magic. The 2009 list saw such awesome bands as: . 2010 was also amazing with. Stupid honorable mentions and housekeeping from past years aside, let’s rock 2011. You can cruise to the end of the article if you want to to find a Spotify playlist.

10. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks- Mirror Traffic

This guy is one of the greatest songwriters of our time. Wait, you’ve never heard of Pavement? There’s clever around every corner. Malkmus just sees the world in a deliciously different way that our brains cannot comprehend, but thank GOD we can enjoy. Check out Senator first.

9. Toro Y Moi – Underneath the Pine

Chill and bounce simultaneously. You can’t understand how amazing it is until you try them both together. Also has the distinction of being the most disgusting cover of 2011.

8. Atlas Sound – Parallax

hi fi or lo fi… how about both?

7. Metronomy – English Riviera

Just plain fun. Cranky bass and persistent, snippity drumming makes this one for me.

6. Real Estate – Days

It’s more of the same from them. Their more of the same is amazeballs.

5. Black Lips – Arabia Mountain

These guys are trying to reinvent beach rock and they are doing a damn fine job. I thought someone would pick up Modern Art for an ad this year because it’s so catchy and unique.

4. Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring for my Halo

According to Wikipedia, his music has been likened to that of Bruce Springsteen[3] His influences include Fleetwood Mac, John Fahey, Bob Dylan and FM Rock generally. I like him anyway.

3. Crystal Stilts – In Love with Oblivion

Remember Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry? Of course you don’t. If you did though, you would recognize that this is who they meant to be. This could have been my top album. The other 2 are that good. It’s backdoor, it’s trashy, it’s droning, it’s fucking incredible. You might hate it. That’s OK. Try it anyway.

2. Built Like Alaska – In Troubled Times

You have never heard of these guys and you may never hear of them anywhere but here. That’s OK. It happened. You are better off. Listen to this one top to bottom for a few days and you will be glad you did.

1. Washed Out – Within and Without

TAKE THAT NEON INDIAN!!! This should have been you.

I picked a song from each album and made a list on Spotify. Here is my 10 Awesome Modern Rock Albums of 2011 on Spotify. Enjoy and commence telling me what I missed in the comments.

The new Path user interface is gorgeous. Dave Morin’s team has come up with a user experience that will change the way that people think about application design.  Path abandons the standard bottom toolbar that most consumer behavior oriented applications have for 2 buttons in the sticky header and a red plus sign that looms on the bottom left hand of the screen. Clicking the plus sign reveals a swiss army knife that allows you to add a new journal entry starting with a photo, a person, location, song, thought or your lucidity state. The last of which would be even cooler if it was integrated with life stats hardware like the Fitbit or Jawbone Up.

The new user interface is gorgeous. It is UX pr0n and this version of Path will change or at least challenge the way that every app designer thinks about every consumer app they design moving forward. One of our best designers, Charlie Guerrero picked it up for the first time this morning and was blown away by how fluid and responsive the app is for everything that is going on.

The application is clearly designed after the Facebook timeline. They have adopted the cover concept as well as the entire timeline concept. What Path does better than any other application is that it tells you who has seen your post. That is really quite bold.

Here is the problem. It is still just Path. While I think that the new design pattern will inspire a lot of curiosity, I see more applications adopting this style of design than people actually making Path part of their daily routine. In other words, in spite of the fact that it can post to Facebook, twitter and foursquare it’s not going to replace Facebook mobile unless Facebook acquires Path and decides to replace their mobile experience with Path. Path is decidedly cooler, but people will reject it because 700 million of their closest friends are on Facebook and this is essentially an alternative.  The adoption of many of Facebook timeline’s design patterns coupled by the fact that founder Dave Morin is ex-Facebook and still has strong relationships could be an indication of an exit strategy. Time will tell.

Another thought though: It knows where you are, who you are with and it knows if you are sleeping and knows if you’re awake. If they just add an indicator for whether you are bad or good they could have a suitor at the North Pole.

 

This post is for 2 audiences:

People who travel to or live in Boston, New York, Chicago, Seattle or San Francisco.

Startups looking for inspiration.

 

If you are a startup and you are looking for another to model yourself after, you might consider Über. Über is Travis Kalanak’s ~new ride (limo) service that I think of as the Trader Joes of transportation.

Why is Uber a great startup?

• Uber understands its audience.
• Uber solves a problem for its audience.
• Uber optimally uses the technology available, but is still very simple.
• Uber has a staff of people who are dedicated to ensuring that your experience is positive.
• Uber does a great job activating passionate riders and drivers.
• Uber is easy to explain to anyone.
• It started with a sound business model.

They solve a supply chain problem elegantly. Cabs are unpredictable and often dirty and smelly. Black cars are often trying to convince people to ride with them. You will see drivers standing outside of conference centers, hotels and stadiums hustling. Riders do not always understand the terms and it feels shady. Uber unites people who want a high quality ride with black car drivers who can give them one. Uber brings a bit of on-demand luxury to everyone (in its markets) at an affordable price and a uniform experience. When you use Uber there’s no question about how you will pay or when you will pay. Uber values their community and actively interacts with people.

 

What makes Uber an uber use of mobile?

Uber incorporates multiple features and channels into the experience to make it simple. Assuming you have an iPhone or Android phone (it also works on feature phones using text messages), the GPS use is excellent for both riders and drivers because you can always see where each other is and how soon they will get to you.  You get a text message when your Uber driver is arriving just in case you are not still looking directly into the app to watch the driver. The app tells you the name of the driver and gives you the option to call them if you want to give them special instructions or ask them any questions before they arrive. The rate is predetermined and because you hook your credit card up during the signup process, payment happens in the background – all in. You do not need to tip. It’s included. You rate your driver on a 5 star scale. Every driver I have had (about 20) has been 5 star. When I ask them why they are only 4.8 or 4.9 stars, they say that someone was drunk or that they were just a hard grader.

 

If you want to tell someone about Uber, you can use these expressions:

• It is simple.
• It is fun.
• It is visual.
• The experience is predictable.
• It solves real (first) world problems.
• It has a solid business model.
• It takes advantage of and maximizes features of smart phones
• It makes a high quality service accessible to anyone (in their markets)

Download Uber and tell me if you agree that it is one of the most elegant uses of mobile yet.

 

My friend Jay Staggs loves and hates Klout. His favorite saying about klout is also the title of this post: “Klout lies!”. He and the gang at MurphyUSA have a friendly competition around Klout scores and Jay gets really wound up every time the site makes significant changes to the algorithm or Casey Petersen encroaches on his lead. Jay is a competitor. He likes to win. I like Jay.

Hiroki Murakami, a blogger at The Next Great Generation and aspiring adman wrote a cool post entitled Klout Updates Its Super Secret Algorithm of How Cool You Are. He interviewed me for the article via Google+. Some of the material hit the cutting room floor, but I think it’s worth posting here.

HM: Did the new Klout algorithm update improve the service? Is there greater transparency or effectiveness?

SM: I don’t know that the new changes improved the service. The nice thing about twitter is that it’s a level playing field where people act like brands and brands act like people. Klout seems to be trying to make it more like a caste / class system with the scoring.

HM: Any educated guesses on Klout’s secret sauce (how their algorithm works)?

SM: I’m guessing the algorithm has a few different elements: frequency, “recency” and something like Google Pagerank where your Pagerank is a function of the Pageranks of sites that link to yours. In other words if you talk to personas with high klout and they talk to you your klout improves.

HM: Do you think that influencer rankings like Klout or PeerIndex as a concept are generally a good invention?

SM: The purist in me doesn’t like the public scoring. I think it would be cool if Klout scores were private and Klout found ways to give brands access to them. I don’t care for the spectacle and I don’t care for the elitism. I’m not sure it would be the advertising “success” that it is if they did things differently. The thing I like about Klout is the attempt to segment people based on their high influence conversations. They aren’t ways right: I’m apparently influential about Tylenol and the New York Yankees. What?

I like the ideas behind Klout. I want to know who is influential by topic so that I can follow them. That is really interesting to me. What I dislike is that Klout is a disruptive change to the ecosystem and actually changes behavior instead of just measuring. The topics that people are influential about are wildy inaccurate.

It’s trendy to say you do not care about Klout scores, but the fact is that there are a lot of people out there making big bets on Klout. People are changing the way that they communicate with others, changing up follow strategies etc based on Klout scores. You know who you are.  While you are making changes and talking to more cool kids, I’d caution you to heed Jay’s warning and please do not talk to me about the Yankees.

I missed the delivery of my iPhone. I should have had it sent to work, but sometimes work deliveries do not go the way I want them to so I figured it would be easier to just have it sent home where my wife would be able to sign for the package. She was out with the kids when it was delivered so I called UPS. They gave me a time between 7:30-8:30PM and said to stop by the depot in Watertown and get my phone. They made it sound like a breeze.

It was a dark and stormy night. I pulled up to the depot and saw approximately 80 people already in line through the monsoon-like downpour. I parked my car around the corner because the street parking was full. I walked up to the giant warehouse with brown delivery trucks and tractor-trailers zipping by and pulling past the gate into the vast garages. The warehouse was corralled by a giant fence with an open gate where trucks pulled in and out of the driveway. Next to the gate is a guard house where civilians and employees can enter the facility. The line began at the guard house and sloppily snaked down the sidewalk.

I got there around 7:45 and the line was not budging. I saw my co-worker Andie near the front and figured she could use some company. None of us knew what was going on or how things would work, we just knew that we had received calls from UPS that told us to be there and that our phones were supposed to be waiting for us (and that it was raining). We started talking about how we thought things might work while a woman behind us who would later become known as Cat Lady chimed in in a slightly British accent. She was short, plump and bespectacled, with grayish, Brillo-y curls and a mousy look. She would become the most annoying person in the world.

A real Boston man emerged from inside the guard house. He explained to us that his name was Joe, that he was the supervisor (the supah’ visah) and that he was going start getting people their phones by address. Because of the extremely high volume of iPhones purchased and the fact that all of them were shipping on this rainy Friday, UPS drivers were working overtime so in spite of the fact that they told us our phones would be there between 7:30 and 8:30, many were still out on trucks. The weather, a thick, New England rain with soupy, cool fog was further aggravating the situation.

Back to Joe. Picture a cross between Dennis Leary and Kevin Bacon. Joe is a leader, a guy who gets things done. He can control a crowd and his combination of brash Boston accent, quick decision-making and sense of humor immediately earned him the respect of the crowd. He started reading off addresses from his clipboard which he held up over his head angled so the rain would slide off the glossy back.

Now at this point, the line is meandering down the street so only a few of us can hear him. Naturally, selfish people are walking up and starting to ask him personal questions. Cat Lady cannot help herself from asking if any of the phones are from Newton. She asks about every 5 addresses. At one point I hear her mutter that she cannot believe her cat is home alone. Poor Mittens! That’s when I told Andie we were calling her Cat Lady. Joe actually begins to answer a few of the questions which delays getting down the list. Enter The Teacher. Teacher takes the list and at the top of her lungs starts reading and checking off addresses as people emerge from the line. Joe takes this opportunity to take a step back and come up with a better plan. Cat Lady and The Teacher have an argument. Cat Lady mumbles more under her breath and begins pacing. Somewhere in Newton, Mittens is enjoying a relaxing evening alone.

So the people who emerge from the line are instructed to line up on the other side of the fence and talk to Other Joe. Other Joe is a bit like Cliff Clavin, but he’s not nearly as sharp. He generally emerges from the warehouse with one box at a time and generally seems to be doing more harm than good in the situation. He’s slow, friendly and inefficient. He has a small flashlight that from time to time he shines on Joe’s list. Joe cracks a glaring smile with a laugh and head shake each time he does. There’s also a ginormous man named Little John who is big, but is not very strong handling too many directions in sequence. Other Joe and Little John are not doing things to boss Joe’s liking so he talks to them about what to do and then grabs a yellow mail crate. He comes back into the crowd and extracts the list from The Teacher’s hand, much to her chagrin. He thanks her, stands on “the golden podium of hope” and explains that he will be the one reading addresses. In between each address, Cat Lady starts to ask if he will read any addresses from her town. After the 5th or 6th time, everyone starts to get annoyed. She proclaims that she cannot bear to be without her poor kitty much longer. I start a small campaign for finding her package first. Each time Joe finishes reading a list, he goes back into the warehouse to create a new list. When he returns and puts his podium down, people get excited. Every time I see a plastic yellow bin from here on out, I am going to start to hope that person has my iPhone. Pavlov’s dog, baby! On the third list, Joe triangulated my house. He read off so many addresses in my neighborhood that I was certain mine would be called. No dice.

If your address is called, go into the line and give your ID to Little John. Victorious people are high-fiving a head shaking, but slightly amused Joe as they blissfully hand their IDs to Little John and Other Joe who go into the warehouse and emerge, with one box each time. They go through the proper carding procedure, but there are times when people are in the guard house with their box and somehow their IDs are still in the warehouse. There was a lot of wacky juggling happening and finally they decided that people did not need to give up their IDs to have a box leave the warehouse, just needed to show it to have them leave the grounds.

At around 8:45, Andie decides she has had enough and that she may come back later. She had been there since 7:00 so I tell her that I’ll post to her Facebook wall when they call her address. Sure enough, they call hers at 9:00, but it turns out it does not matter because it just means they have found your phone, not that it is at the guard post. It starts to rain again so I decide to go into the building.

Now recall that I mentioned that this building is a guard outpost which means there is a security guard and 2 metal detectors inside the hut. It’s designed to fit maybe 5 people comfortably and there are at least 20 people inside. Smell your neighbor! Make a new friend. Now people are piling into the guard tower not only because this is ultimately where they get their phones, but also because it has started raining. That’s when I met Blondie and The Dude. Blondie was the name she called herself. She told me that she saw Channel 4 on the scene and that she was inside trying to stay off camera. The Dude wore a classic Patriots hat with an Italy soccer sweatshirt that went surprisingly well together. He has been in the guard house for a while and has started to, in semi-good nature, disparage the operation. He reminded me of Fitzy. The Dude and Blondie are up against the wall. There is a chair also against the wall. The Dude starts making fun of the security guard who takes the chair back behind the desk. The Dude waits until the security guard sits down and moves the chair back into the line. At this point I think it’s probably wise to start distancing myself from The Dude.
“Don’t make him shoot you bro.” I say.
The Dude says “he doesn’t have a gun.”
Me: “He might have a taser!”
Dude: “I’ve been tased before. It’s not so bad.”
Me: “The good news is that he ordered his taser and was not home. He’s not only a security guard, he’s also in line for his package.”
Blondie: “There should be an app that tells you when your package gets here.”
Me: “There is. The good news is that he doesn’t have his taser now. The bad news is that he will get it with plenty of time to charge it before you ever get your phone Dude.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see security guard crack a smile.
In the meantime Andie has returned with her boyfriend. She tweets me to let me know that Cat Lady finally has her phone, but not before annoying every last person. Andie is concerned because the address on her license is not the same as the one on her package. Somehow someone emerges with her phone and her boyfriend persistently reminds them that they are there and that they could leave with the phone. She gets her phone and everyone cheers. “I can’t believe you got a 4s before me Andie!” I joke. She goes home to try her luck with the activation servers (which have been jammed all day) and to see if she can see us on Channel 4.

Harvard guy gets his iPhone. Then Birthday Girl’s name is called. She must have told us 20 times that it was her birthday. It was probably her 25th birthday, but on her way out we gave here a “Happy 39th”. I looked at Blondie and told her we were not singing Happy Birthday. Joe starts taking down the addresses of people who are in the guard station and says he’ll personally go look for them. We grab the list and write down our own addresses as Joe is being distracted by people with questions that anyone in the world could have answered. The tortoise-like people in the bunker write their addresses down while setting off the metal detectors approximately every 120 seconds. This provides endless material for The Dude. The guy from 138 Bigelow St was called in the second round. His phone was sitting on the counter. His ID however was lost with Other Joe in the warehouse. Poor guy. He just stood there staring at his phone, making sure no one else took it while they attempted to retrieve his ID.

About 15 minutes after the we write down the list of numbers, Little John comes back into the guard shack and puts down a handful of boxes. I start looking at the addresses and proclaim “OH MY GOD THAT’S MINE!”. I get out my ID (no WAY I’m letting someone take it to the warehouse, I learned from Bigelow who got his phone and ID back just 2 minutes ago.) Little John looks at me and says: “I think I’ll take this one home.” I look at everyone and say “I’m not going to argue with him.” He decides maybe he will let me have my phone, signs me out, grabs the package back from me and laughs, then hands it to me. I tell Blondie it’s been real and tell The Dude not to get tased. I leap out of the door squealing “I’m FREEEEEEEEE”! It’s now 10:45PM.

Thank you UPS for going out of your way and outside your process so a bunch of angry (and in my case, really amused) iPhone zealots and newbies could get their phones.

Facebook recently announced that they were taking away the ability to check in, thus killing their offering, Facebook Places. This did not come as a surprise to anyone who has been listening to me spout off about the space because my contention has been that Facebook does not intend to kill foursquare, rather they meant to test into whether or not someone in the main stream would actually purvey the unnatural behavior of the check in.

 

Again, the Unnatural Behavior

 

1. Enter a place (some people skip this step)
2. Take out the phone
3. Find the application
4. Friends start to get a little annoyed
5. Open the application
6. Click the places or check-in button
7. Spouse apologizes to friends
8. Find the place in the list
9. Click on the place
10. Friends think “whatevs” and go find a table without you
11. Click check-in
12. Reap the benefits of telling your friends where you are and how cool you are [points, badges, status updates]
13. Repeat for as many systems as you care to check into
14. Sit down to find out your friends have ordered you a Michelob Ultra. That will teach you!

 

They Didn’t Want To Do What You Thought They Wanted To Do

Why hasn’t Places “worked” for Facebook? The answer is quite simple. They did not want to build the model that everyone thought they wanted to build. In other words, they were not trying to replicate foursquare. My theory is that they did not believe that the mainstream would check in and therefore did not exert the kind of energy necessary into building the necessary components to make it valuable. In order for this stuff to work, you either need to build a self service model with a clear list of services, an API that allows people to build whatever they can imagine, a sales team to sell specific services into merchants or all of the above.

Facebook’s tests with companies like The Gap and REI obviously did not get them jazzed up enough about the platform to invest in the types of developer and infrastructure resources necessary to catch up to and overtake foursquare. It would be one thing for Facebook to use itself as a marketing engine for the platform which, allegedly at one point had 30 million users, but it is another thing to actually have something that pays off any claims that using Places adds value. They could have had more people checking in, but without any way to substantiate value claims- to what end? I’ll answer that question with a collective “meh” from the user base. To top it off, there is still a large group of people who wonder why they should be telling anyone where they are going for fear of some kind of personal security breach. We know that Facebook has been mired in these sorts of problems anyway. So Facebook has quietly taken a page out of Google+ and is allow users to attached their location to a status update instead of checking in.

 

They Already Have the Data

Most LBS applications have a way push their check-in data to Facebook. Facebook has the Places database to take that information and enter it into their Places database in such a way that they can use it later. The funny thing here is that they do not and actually never needed to create a check-in application to reap the benefits of getting the data from check-in applications.  In other words, when you push your data to Facebook, they are not just letting it slip into an abyss, they are actually keeping it and creating a profile about users to better target them with advertisements.

 

Facebook has one of the biggest stores of social and location information. Add Facebook credits to the mix and you get a slice of the big chalupa: social, location and purchases across merchants.  As I mentioned before, the Places database brings structure to this mix and allows Facebook a mix of flexibility and ability to analyze. The latest iteration of location for Facebook now gives you the ability to attach a location to a status instead of checking in. This is far more natural and who cares if you’re actually there? Not Facebook. They now are tracking where you have been or where you aspire to be. There are plenty of possibilities that this opens up, not the least of which is day. In other words, helping you determine what you want to do in a city based on where you’ve been, where your friends go and where people like you like to go. Given the data that they have, they could do much of this without asking you questions ala WHERE, Alfred, Bizzy and some of the other prediction engines. Certainly none of these models are perfect, but Facebook has the critical mass of data to test and tune their model before they release. Why would they do this? Ad revenue. Allowing companies to be recommended in appropriate places. If Facebook knows you like coffee and are staying in Hell’s Kitchen, but there are 10, perhaps companies could pay to have their businesses be recommended more often.

 

Key Takeaway

Here’s the point. If you take away one thing from this rambling blogpost: Places, the Facebook feature may be dead, but LOCATION IS VERY MUCH ALIVE AT FACEBOOK.

 

Google announced this morning that they will acquire Motorola Mobility for 12.5 billion. This is a move that puts Microsoft, Nokia, RIM and other mobile phone competitors on alert. Google CEO Larry Page and Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha had little to say beyond the fact that they are excited about the partnership. Jha did however note that he is particularly excited about the possibilities about convergence of screens, noting that Motorola’s living room products and mobile products could converge faster witha  Google partnership.

Larry Page continuously assured investors that this was a move to continue innovation and protect the open Android ecosystem. All partners are valued and will continue to be valued.

My take on the losers:

• Windows Mobile is further hosed. They would need to give it away at this point to make a dent in the market.
• Facebook needs to get their mobile ducks in a row ASAP. They’ve hired a slew of core developers according to rumors and some of us think they’re working on their own mobile OS. Well, it’s not going to run on Motorola and it certainly isn’t going to run on Apple. Blackberry was the first tablet to get a native Facebook app. Could they partner? Merge?
• Nokia this spells all kinds of trouble for Nokia in the smartphone market. They just dumped their Symbian operating system for Windows and analysts see this actually as a step backwards for them.

 

Highlights from the investor conference call:
Motorola Mobility will continue to operate as a separate business.

Citigroup asked on the conference call why this deal was necessary while some of Motorola’s business is not core to Google’s competency.
Larry Page said he is excited about the opportunity and believes in the senior team at MMI.

Merryl Lynch wondered how it would change Android from a partner perspective. How does this change the overall ecosystem? MSFT is neutral. Will Android stay open? Larry Page said Android will continue to be open. Andy Rubin said it’s business as usual for Android and that this protects the ecosystem, it will not necessarily change it.

Asked how Google valued the transaction and why no stock all cash
Google said they would not talk about the legal strategy or the valuation process.

Goldman Sachs asked about the ability to make a move into the living room and also how these patents might help in the case versus Oracle
Larry: Motorola is a market leader in home devices and solutions. We’re excited to work with them to be a leader in this space.
Sanjay: As you know we’re a leader in the home space. Excited about the convergence of the mobile world and the home world and providing products that delight the customer.
David: We don’t have anything specific to add to the Oracle strategy. There is a claim against us by Oracle and we’ll be defending it very vigorously

Will Google continue to acquire patents?
David: We’ve said for some time that we need to build our patent portfolio. We will continue to do that.

Larry’s final thoughts
We are really excited about this whole business and working with the Motorola team, all of its employees and all the hard work that’s gone on over the years. Everyone at Google and Motorola is excited about this. Android is growing like crazy and we are excited about all of our partners including Motorola. This will allow us to charge the Android ecosystem. We really believe that Morotorola is poised for tremendous growth. We’re working with them to accelerate innovation.

*From the press release:*

The daily deals space has been hotter than a habanero pepper with sriracha sauce, but each of the daily deals sites faces a problem. They do not attract people who are going to become loyal customers, but rather a crowd of people called “deal seekers”. Cambridge, MA based SCVNGR’s latest creation, The LevelUp (currently in beta in Boston and Philadelphia) aims to change that. The LevelUp is a daily deals site and iPhone app that is designed to acquire customers, but also to get people to return and continue to spend money. Unlike sites like GroupOn and Living Social which give a single deal for a venue, The LevelUp allows users to unlock 3 levels of deals. The theory here is that they can get people to come back, to train a behavior, to inspire loyalty. After trying the LevelUp, which is in beta in Boston and Philadelphia, I think there are on to something.

Mobile Commerce

The LevelUp is not just a daily deals site, it also incorporates mobile payments. It allows you to store a credit card in your phone and scan a QR code (yes, it’s encrypted – we scanned it to test the security) at point of sale to pay. You are automatically notified of the amount that you saved and sent an email as a backup. The LevelUp eliminates the biggest barrier to mobile payments by not requiring an integration to point of sale systems. Merchants are given a unit (see the picture below) that they enter the transaction amount into and The LevelUp takes care of the rest. Merchants do not need to worry about a coupon code, deal activation or bonuses and multipliers. The merchant application is simple. They can enter transaction amounts and get a transaction history.

The consumer experience is also easy. Once you have added a credit card, It is a two step process.

• Open LevelUp App
• Scan QR code to pay (you can optionally lock this screen so that you need to enter a passcode if you want to)

An ancillary merchant benefit to this is that The LevelUp takes Visa, Mastercard and American Express even if the merchant doesn’t! I do not have the numbers on interchange fees charges for the merchant, but I have heard that there is a cost savings by using the LevelUp.

The LevelUp unfortunately has not solved (yet) for the problem of capturing an itemized basket. As I said before, the merchant just enters the entire amount of the transaction. This tells me that the user spent money and how much they spent, but it does not give me a sense of the specific items that they like. That said, it does give The LevelUp a picture of user behavior across locations that gives them insight into how the mobile deal seeker behaves. This allows them to potentially serve smarter deals based on where they think users are most likely to spend their next dollar on a deal. Sure it would be great to know specifics about items and the things that users purchase, but let’s look at what they do know:

• Place and the semantic data wrapped in a place [category, region, city, state, zip]
• User’s Facebook account (if they login on Facebook)
• Email open rate
• Deals viewed
• Deals unlocked
• Deal executed
• Deal levels achieved
• Frequency
• Lag [time between unlocking deals]
• Purchase amount

The goal is to minimize the lag between visits while increasing the both the frequency and purchase amount. In other words, more expensive visits more often.

 

Three Levels of Deals

When Eric Leist and I went to Bocca Buona in Brighton, MA, we got $4 of credit. That was the first level of deal. The LevelUp attempts to train users to keep coming back to the venue by giving them a second level deal upon using the first and a third level deal after the second.

Eric and I found Bocca Buona’s level 2 was peculiar. They offered us $5 off of a $50 purchase. Because the initial deal was $4 credit and there was no caveat on the amount we needed to spend, this seemed like it was moving us into their catering business where people might be inclined to spend more than their sandwich, pizza and calzone business. Even a family of 4 would be challenged to spend $50 there to eat lunch. Then we realized that the LevelUp keeps track of our purchases over time, similar to the way that SCVNGR allows you to do challenges and rack up points over multiple visits to unlock specials. This made a hell of a lot more sense. In other words, the LevelUp encourages users to repeat the previous behavior before unlocking the next level of the deal. Assuming Eric and I returned to Bocca Buona for lunch and ordered the same 2 sandwiches each time, it would take us 4 visits to spend the $50 and unlock deal level 2.

So you could see merchants testing into some version of the following scenario to see how many times you can get a user to come to their store:

• Level 1: $4 credit
• Level 2: $5 credit after you spend $30
• Level 3: $10 credit after you spend $75 over time

The first level of the deal is designed to acquire. The next two are designed to encourage repeat visits, to train and retain.

Gamified Response

When you scan your QR code, you will receive a notification on your phone (similar to a text message) that tells you that the transaction happened. I would post an example here, but the only one I have has my QR code in it and then you’d be able to use my LevelUp. It tells you the full amount of the transaction and then it tells you how much credit was

Another place we found a little confusing was the post transaction update. See, I had some kind of awesome $10 credit that I may received for signing up. This was automatically applied to my bill, so instead of getting the $4 credit, I ended up with $14. I went back to the merchant to see if they made a mistake. The nice thing about the LevelUp is that merchants never need to worry about whether a deal happened or not. The LevelUp takes care of everything. It even sends you an email so you have a record of the transaction. The email, however is  a tad boring. It’s plain text and is a summary of what just happened in aggregate. I would have at the very least liked to see: you used your $4 credit and used the $10 bonus credit that you received for referring a friend. The LevelUp team has a great sense of humor and can do a bit better. Have you read their blag?

No Checkins (Yet)

SCVNGR users and LBS fans are probably wondering: “What about check-ins?” The LevelUp does not do check-ins but this could easily be integrated with SCVNGR, foursquare or Gowalla to add a passive check-in that happens when the user pays. The LevelUp could eliminate a lot of steps in the check-in process which is currently.

• Take out phone
• Find app
• Open app
• Click places
• Find place (or search for it or add it)
• Click check-in
• Take out wallet
• Find cash or credit card
• Scan credit card
• Sign stupid receipt (i always sign mine ‘Sexy Hamburglar’, no one has ever said anything)

With LevelUp

• Find App
• Open App
• Find Place
• Scan QR code
• (never touch your wallet)

All in all I found the LevelUp to be an excellent experience and one that I plan to continue using and recommending to friends and clients. What do you think? Have you had a chance to try the level up?

In my last exciting post, I talked about how Ditto unleashes the power of semantic data and how awesome it would be if you could harness the power of the data behind a location in foursquare or Gowalla or a dish in one of my favorite applications,foodspotting.

You may recall that Ditto allows users to express their intent in a particular neighborhood and that it does it in such a way that it does not leave much to the imagination. In other words, we KNOW you want coffee, what kind you want and where you are.

Imagine businesses were to begin taking advantage of this and providing a user reasons to come see them. What if businesses could monitor for people who needed them similar to the way that Uber allows black car drivers to see if people need a ride during down time. The example I always use (and I am waiting for this to happen) is that I am in a neighborhood, I say that I want a latte and a coffee show responds with “Hey Mike, come on in. We will save you a spot next to the window and you can use our free wi-fi. Do you like caramel in your latte? What kind of milk?” I would be thrilled and I would act immediately without worrying about whether they were giving me a dollar off.

If businesses could use Ditto similar to how Uber is used, to fill times when they are not full, to attract new customers with or without offers and people could do everything from accept a deal to pay with Ditto (similar to what is now happening with Zaarly) it would open up a great deal of possibilities for interesting data and segmentation. Take a look at this concept of a merchant side ditto application that allows a coffee shop to monitor the area “Bananatown”.

Notice that each of the people who want coffee in Bananatown have a series of stats. These are based on their actions through the Ditto application.

• Probability: This ratio is the amount of times a person has acted versus the number of times they have expressed an intention to act. Below it is also the true number (in this case 48/50). This tells the merchant how likely the person is to act on an offer. Mike is extremely likely.
• Offers: The next number tells how many offers Mike currently has and whether or not he has acted on one.
• Average / Remaining: This tells the merchant on average how long Mike takes to act and how much time has elapsed since then, making it easy for them to tell whether they should act.

I also imagine having ways to tell what kinds of offers that Mike responds to – deals, invitations etc. I see businesses being able to set thresholds based on certain types of activators and automatically pushing an offer within a neighborhood (geo-fence).

How else would you like to see the data segmented? Do you think that this kind of merchant model is the key to Ditto user adoption?