MobileCrunch |  |
- Breaking: RIM “Streamlining” Operations, Lays Off 2,000
- Facebook’s Secret iPad App Exposed [Pictures]
- Facebook’s iPad App Is Hidden Inside Of Their iPhone App
- iPad Book Apps Hobbled: Only Existing Account-Holders Can Use The Apps, Google Books Booted
- Closing The Redemption Loop In Local Commerce
| Breaking: RIM “Streamlining” Operations, Lays Off 2,000 Posted: 25 Jul 2011 04:12 AM PDT In line with RIM’s planned “cost optimization program,” the company is moving a number of executives into positions of greater power and will lay off 2,000 of its estimated 19,000 person workforce. In an effort to consolidate product efforts, the company is also moving former COO of Product Engineering, Thorsten Heins, into a position that makes him also COO of Product and Sales. Current COO, Dan Morrison, is retiring after a period of medical leave.
Patrick Spence will take the role of Managing Director, Global Sales and Regional Marketing. In slightly related news, the company has just purchased web-based video editing service JayCut. JayCut is based in Stockholm, Sweden. What’s interesting about these moves? Well, each of the new directors have been tasked with turning around a sinking ship and it seems that, in the face of increased scrutiny, they’re throwing some smiling new faces at the problem. Sadly, the company is also dumping two thousand “redundant” faces, a move that points to more than just reactive cost-cutting.        
   |
| Facebook’s Secret iPad App Exposed [Pictures] Posted: 25 Jul 2011 01:48 AM PDT So, we just exposed the awesome secret that Facebook’s iPad app is actually already out there, hidden inside of the iPhone app. Now it’s time to show it to you. I’ve been playing with the app for much of the night, and it seems solid. Of course, there’s no guarantee that this is what Facebook will launch when the iPad app does officially hit, but this looks and feels about right. After months of downplaying the importance of having an iPad app, and instead playing up HTML5, Facebook has clearly spent some time working on this. At the same time, it is an HTML5-rich experience, with things like the News Feed being populated this way. But other things, like image uploads simply cannot be done without native code at this time. At the end of the day, would I use this app over the full website, which functions pretty well on the iPad already? Absolutely. I cannot wait for this app to actually launch. Below, find many images. Update: We’ve just talked to a source who had previous seen the app and says that this is in fact the app Facebook was intending to launch shortly. We’ll see if that gets sped up now.                                              
  |
| Facebook’s iPad App Is Hidden Inside Of Their iPhone App Posted: 25 Jul 2011 01:35 AM PDT There are things out there all around us that we often miss because we’re just not looking. This is perhaps most true in the tech world, where thousands of secrets are out there in the wild, hidden in code. If you know where to look, or if you can read the code, you can find those secrets. It’s how so many features of iOS get revealed early by sites like 9to5 Mac, who are great at parsing the code (and confirming our non-code-digging scoops). It’s how we knew basically everything about Chrome OS before it actually launched. It’s how we knew Facebook Places was coming before it was announced. And now we’ve just uncovered a new massive find this way. Hidden in the code of Facebook’s iPhone app is the code for something else. Something everyone has been waiting over a year for. The iPad app. Yes, it’s real, and it’s spectacular (well, very good, at the very least). And yes, it really is right there within the code. Even better, it’s executable. (Update: a lot of pictures here.) For the past couple hours, I’ve been using Facebook’s iPad app. Well, I should qualify this. I can’t be sure if this is the version they’ll actually ship, but based on everything I’ve seen, I’m going to assume it’s at least very close to the version they’re going to ship. While much of it is written with HTML5 (as you might expect from Facebook), the native iPad work is very good too. In particular, the navigation system is great. Unlike the iPhone app — which even its creator is complaining about now as being stale — the Facebook iPad app uses a left-side menu system that can be accessed by the touch of a button or the flick of the iPad screen. The app also makes great use of the pop-overs (overlay menus) found in other iPad apps. When you flip the iPad horizontally, the list of your online friends appears and you can chat with them as you do other things on Facebook. The photo-viewer aspect looks great — similar to the iPad’s own native Photos app. Places exists with a nice big map to show you all your friends around you. Etc. It’s all good. I’m going to put up a post after this one with a ton of screenshots of the entire app. All of this is possible apparently thanks to a seemingly tiny update Facebook pushed yesterday to their iPhone app. Version 3.4.4 seemed like a small version that restored the “Send” button for comments and chat among a few other little things. Facebook may have even pushed it out in response to some backlash they had been getting about the app, as Financial Times covered a few days ago. Perhaps it was the rush to fix some of those issues that caused Facebook to push this version — which will clearly eventually be Universal Binary (meaning it will house both the iPhone and iPad versions of the app) — with the iPad elements inside. Whatever the case, the app is carrying a payload of much greater importance than some bug fixes. So, I’m using it. Can you? Well, yes — if you don’t mind doing some things you’re technically not supposed to do to your iPad. We obviously don’t recommend it, but if you catch my drift, I’m sure you can figure out a way to access Facebook for iPad. Related, it must be noted that a Canadian engineering student, Marvin Bernal, who calls himself an “iOS Enthusiast” actually noticed this Facebook mistake almost immediately and tweeted about it. So, after over a year of complaints, Facebook now appears to truly be on the verge of releasing the iPad app. It has now been well over a month since the New York Times’ Nick Bilton reported about the app’s existence and said it should launch in the “coming weeks”. At the time, we further verified its existence , but did not hear a timetable for the launch. Once source now says that based on the HTML changes rolling out on an hourly basis, it looks like work is still underway. But much of that work appears to be smaller tweaks at this point. We’re close — just in case the code being attached to the iPhone app didn’t give that away. During the launch of the Skype video chatting integration a few weeks ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that the company was gearing up for a full slate of launches in the coming weeks. The iPad app will be one of them. And based on what I’ve seen tonight, I’d be even less surprised if Project Spartan ties in with it as well eventually. The one thing the iPad app (like all the other Facebook mobile apps) is missing is gaming (and all other third-party apps). Spartan could bring that down the line. We’ll be doing a post with a ton of images shortly. Below, a quick taste. Update: And all the images. Enjoy. Update 2: I’ve confirmed with a source who had previously seen the Facebook iPad app that this is in fact the very app that they were planning to launch with. We’ll see if that timetable gets sped up now.        
  |
| iPad Book Apps Hobbled: Only Existing Account-Holders Can Use The Apps, Google Books Booted Posted: 25 Jul 2011 12:49 AM PDT At the beginning of the year, Apple said it wanted 30% of everything sold through the iPad platform. You could sell almost anything – books, downloadable content, magazines, pictures of kittens – but, according to their subscription rules, everything had to go through Apple itself and you could not, in short, go out to a web page to complete the transaction. That promise – to shut down external web stores on the iPad – has been fulfilled and the Nook, Kindle, Kobo, and Google Books apps have just been either drastically changed or removed from the App Store entirely. Nook, Kindle, and Kobo now have no access to the web-based bookstore and you can no longer create accounts in the app. Only users with current accounts and books on file in the various stores can read them and book purchasing. For example, as of today, users of the Nook Kids app are no longer able to access the Barnes & Noble web store while Kobo users cannot create accounts or buy books from the app. You’ll also notice that the Google Books app is now missing from the iTunes store, presumably for either a full overhaul or (and I doubt this) out of spite. I’m of two minds when it comes to moves like these in the App world. On the one hand, magazines like The Daily (remember them?) and, more pertinently, the New Yorker prove that inside app sales and subscriptions works quite adequately and allows everyone – from the content providers to the “carrier,” in this case Apple, to maintain a revenue stream necessary for the continuation of our cultural heritage. But here’s where things get a little rough: Apple is basically saying that it’s our way or the highway and those who don’t like it can drop off of iOS entirely or rededicate their efforts to HTML5-based readers that may or may not be superior to app-based systems. Again, this is Apple’s device and Apple’s rules but the freedom-loving self-publisher in me says “Hey, Amazon already takes their cut, why do I have to risk them taking a bigger cut because of this goofiness? And why do I have to settle for a potentially sub-par reading experience because Apple wants 30 cents out of my buck?” As someone who despises the current publishing industry, I’m glad Apple’s cracking down on folks who have had it too good for too long. However, I worry that the author and the reader and not the publisher will be the ones to pay in the end.        
  |
| Closing The Redemption Loop In Local Commerce Posted: 24 Jul 2011 07:26 AM PDT When it comes to local commerce, the ultimate prize everyone is going after right now is how to close the redemption loop. The redemption loop starts when a consumer sees an ad or an offer for a local merchant, and is completed when the consumer makes a purchase and that purchase can be tracked back to the offer. If you know who is actually redeeming offers and how much they are spending, you can be much smarter about tweaking and targeting those offers. Groupon, LivingSocial, and other daily deal sites have created enormous value by pushing the redemption loop the furthest. When someone buys a daily deal, for instance, that translates into cash for the merchant. But for the vast majority of their deals Groupon and LivingSocial do not track whether or not they are ever redeemed, much less the amount each consumer actually spends at the store or restaurant once they show up. In order to complete the circle and track offers all the way through redemptions, it is necessary to either tap into the payment system or create an alternative way to track redemptions. Different companies are tackling this problem in different ways, but they almost all rely on a shift from emailed coupons to offers delivered through mobile apps. Next Jump CEO Charlie Kim, who recently partnered with LivingSocial to power daily deals across his commerce network, sees a shift in targeting from broadcasting deals to narrowcasting them. “Blasting out a deal to everyone in New York is not targeting,” he says. “When you broadcast too much in any category, it is just a lot of noise. Email response rates have plummeted for everyone across the industry. What used to be 10% response rates even a year ago, now you are talking the 1% to 2% level.” The constant barrage of emails from Groupon, LivingSocial, and every daily deal copycat is creating user fatigue that is visible in declining response rates. And that is why mobile is so appealing. If you can send deal notifications to people’s phones based on their exact location and nearby deals, you have the beginnings of narrowcasting. Later on, companies will figure out how to layer on ways to target by income, gender, and other factors as well. Mobile and local commerce go hand in hand. In a few cities, Groupon is testing out Groupon Now and LivingSocial is offering Instant Deals. In both cases, the deals appear on mobile apps and can be redeemed instantly, rather than having to wait a day for the deal to go live, as is the case with their regular daily deals. The downside of these deals is that Groupon and LivingSocial cannot take advantage of their existing deal inventory and they have to actually provision participating merchants with iPhones and iPads so that they can accept the deals and Groupon/LivingSocial can track them. Yelp is doing something similar where you have to show a redemption code to the merchant from your phone. Foursquare and Facebook are taking a different approach through their separate partnerships with American Express. Since AmEx is the payment system, it records deal redemptions along with the actual payments. Merchants and consumers don’t have to do anything different from what they normally do. Pay with a credit card and your deal is redeemed. Except it only works if you have an AmEx card and the discount is credited to your account later. Google is trying to link Google Offers to its Google Wallet, which requires an NFC chip in your phone and an NFC reader at the merchant’s checkout. It has the advantage of working with MasterCard, Citi, and other large payment processors. But it also depends on a brand new technology that will take a long time to become widely available. The key to closing the redemption loop is definitely payments. Investor Chris Sacca recently told Kevin Rose in a video interview the best reason why Twitter should buy Square is because Twitter has the broadest reach to distribute offers and deals, and Square has a built-in way to track redemption. This was just an off the cuff remark in a friendly chat (Twitter isn’t even in this business yet), but it makes sense. We are moving from a world of online ads that produce impressions and clicks to online and mobile offers that produce real sales. If the deal companies can figure out a way to actually measure those sales, it could open up local commerce in a massive way that makes what they’ve done so far look like child’s play.        
  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch » Mobile To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
