Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Facing A Life of Paying By Selfie

MasterCard is testing an app that lets customers pay with a selfie. Facial recognition enables the app to verify one’s identity. After registering, users would be able to pay by looking at their phone and blinking once. The blink prevents thieves from showing the app a picture of a face to get around the system.

For those uncomfortable with this, the app can read one’s fingerprint. Or, of course, one can pay with cash.

45% of smartphone owners begin with Amazon when shopping on a smartphone, according to a survey by Mizuho Securities. Google is in the runner-up slot with 16%.

But when it comes to searching for information, 34% begin with the Google search app, followed by 27% typing into the Safari browser, and 19% beginning with the Chrome browser.

An example of the need for more personalization in mobile – I received a text offer for a brown sugar bacon sandwich. Totally random.

The third quarter of 2015 begins and Gogo is still at dialup speed. I’m told by someone in the know that they raised their prices significantly to discourage usage while still making their overall business goal by gouging the poor suckers who use the crappy service.

What is one to do about an Apple Watch tan line. I’m surprised that CNN hasn’t covered this phenomenon and dubbed it Breaking News.

Matti Makkonen, considered the father of SMS, died at 63. He made an enormous contribution to mobile and to marketing. Despite proven results, text messaging is often too quickly dismissed by marketers.

To the next person who uses appsolutely - pow.

Facebook is giving marketers the option of paying for video ads after 10 seconds of viewing instead of three, per the Wall Street Journal.

A diet-based video game claims to make you thinner. Fat chance.

A man claimed that his iPhone 6 overheated, burst into flames. These stories almost always turn out to be hoaxes.

China’s Huawei introduced a phone with a dancing piece of pizza. I’m figuring that it was something about wanting a slice of the market.

Mobile Driving News Consumption, Participation and "Reporting"

As a former journalist, I have more than casual interest in how news is gathered, delivered, and consumed in this mobile age. Regular readers will know my passion for the truth and I have loudly argued against the notion that a “witness” is a “reporter”, capturing this in several posts. In my view, reporters are trained and experienced, whether they are delivering “information” via mobile, social networks, or by other means.

That debate continues — and so do the developments that shed light on how mobile has impacted news consumption.

A new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project validates our belief that mobile users in different geographies consume news in different ways.

The report reveals that residents of large cities (a segment that on the whole skews younger and are more mobile than other populations) are most likely to stay informed about local topics that interest them through a combination of online and traditional sources. They are particularly likely to get local news through Internet searches, Twitter, blogs, and websites of TV and newspapers.

In contrast, small city (31 percent) and rural (34 percent) residents are more likely than those in larger cities (21 percent) and suburbs (16 percent) to rely solely on “traditional” forms of media for their local news such as local print newspapers and broadcast television.

Suburban residents are distinct in their higher dependence on local radio (likely due to longer commutes to work), while small city and rural residents stand out in their reliance on word of mouth for some types of local information.

Meanwhile, the impact of mobile on news — and everything in our lives — is profound. I therefore applaud the decision by CNN to dedicate a month to examining all the ways mobile technology is changing our lives.

Readers of my Mobilized Marketing book know that I included many insights from Louis Gump, vice president of mobile for CNN. He is behind this initiative that tells us how “mobile technology has shifted from nicety to necessity.”

Appearing across all of CNN platforms, the month-long coverage looks at the impact of mobile devices on many aspects of our daily lives including personal relationships, work habits, cultural quirks, heath, finance, and etiquette.

The upshot of all this?

Because of my background and training (12 years working as a reporter for United Press International), I believe that consumption is driving how (and how fast) information is gathered, even by “credentialed” reporters. Just look at the many mistakes that have been hailed as breaking ‘news’. The false reports on the “death” of United States Congresswoman Gabby Giffords top of the list. Yes, we as mobile subscribers want our information in real-time. But it is up to the trained journalists to follow proven practices like double sourcing to make sure that what is reported is indeed fact. And it’s up to others on social networks to not cause confusion, hysteria or something worse simply because they have used the mobile medium to instantly distribute mere hearsay.

(a longer version of this column appears here http://www.mobilegroove.com/mobile-driving-news-consumption-participation-rep...