Julian Assange to Launch Social Network for Diplomats, Twofacebook -Borowitz Report

LONDON (The Borowitz Report) – Moments after being released on bail, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was already making plans for his next venture, a social network for diplomats called Twofacebook.

Mr. Assange said he came up with the idea for the new site while combing through hundreds of thousands of pages of WikiLeaks documents: “I realized that diplomats didn’t have a way to reconnect with old colleagues so they could lie to them.”

Saying that he hopes to build the site into a “portal of deceit,” Mr. Assange said, “This will be a must-visit destination on the Internet for sworn enemies to friend each other.”

The WikiLeaks founder said that Twofacebook would also enable members of the diplomatic community to share information about music, movies and TV shows “that they say they like but actually detest.”

Additionally, he said he had high hopes for the site’s first online game, Harmville, in which diplomats can kill or maim each other’s sheep.

via Borowitz Report.

Shopkick Proves Early Success In Driving Foot Traffic With Sports Authority | Mobile Marketing Watch

Just four months after kicking off a partnership with Sports Authority, Shopkick is enjoying early success with its LBS rewards app that promises to drive foot traffic into retail stores.

As an inaugural partner, Sports Authority put Shopkick to the test by trying different rewards levels to see what worked.  The app works by detecting a “Shopkick Signal” located in each participating store to deliver rewards known as “kickbucks” to each user.  Kickbucks can be collected and redeemed across all partner stores for things like in-store gift card rewards, discounts at top retail stores, song downloads,  movie tickets, hotel vouchers, Facebook Credits to play games online, donations to 30 different causes and charities and more.

Sports Authority doubled and even tripled the number of “Kickbucks” awarded to shoppers simply for walking into participating stores.  The kickbucks – the so-called “cross-retailer currency of shopkick” – did as intended: as the reward amount increased, more consumers walked into the store with the shopkick app, and in some cases up to seventy percent more.

“Sports Authority is committed to offering our customers the best value and reaching them with the latest technology. shopkick provides a unique technology that makes location-based rewards economically feasible for the first time, has unparalleled team expertise, and with the list of blue chip retailers we joined as launch partners, we were convinced to experiment with the first location-based shopping app in the market,” said Jeff Schumacher, Chief Marketing Officer of Sports Authority. “We had 50% to 70% more shoppers walk into the store with shopkick when we increased the rewards for walking in. There is a direct and measurable correlation. shopkick’s model works.”

For each Sports Authority promotion, they increased kickbucks awarded (2x or 3x) to see how higher rewards impact walk-ins. Walk-ins measure the actual presence of shoppers in a participating store, vs. the proximity-based measurement delivered by GPS-based check-ins. With each promotion, the impact on walk-ins increased dramatically – even as baseline check-ins grew organically – delivering 50 to 70 percent increase in walk-ins.

I’ve been intrigued with Shopkick since its debut, mostly because of the company’s unique take on location-based rewards and it’s emphasis on physical retail stores.  Though it’s still early, these results are interesting, even though it’s too early to judge long-term success.  It should get interesting as more and more retailers sign on.

via Shopkick Proves Early Success In Driving Foot Traffic With Sports Authority | Mobile Marketing Watch.

The Future of Money and Technology Summit

This is a very cool event … informative and timely… Check it out…

The Future of Money & Technology Summit brings together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution providers, service providers, and organizations who work with them at the convergence of cash and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving money ecosystem in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment.

Hotel Kabuki

1625 Post Street

San Francisco, CA 94118

Monday, February 28, 2011

9am – 6pm + cocktail party!

The Summit will be soft launched on Wed. December 15, 2010. Register today to get the early bird “pre-sale” discount!

via The Future of Money and Technology Summit.

In Defense of Transparency – Why Central Bank Secrecy is Detrimental to Free-Market Capitalism

Why Central Bank Secrecy is Detrimental to Free-Market Capitalism

Eric Fry Reporting from Laguna Beach, California…   WikiLeaks is grabbing the headlines, but your California editor considers the “Icky-Leaks” issuing from the Federal Reserve to be much more intriguing – like the icky leak that the Fed doled out trillions of dollars in clandestine bailouts and guarantees during the crisis of 2008 and early 2009.   Thanks to a nifty little provision in the Dodd-Frank reform bill, the Fed was forced to come clean with these embarrassing details. On December 1, the Fed published an exhaustive and detailed list of bailout recipients, along with the sums each received.   “The document dump confirms,” The Nation reports, “that the $700 billion Treasury Department bank bailout…signed into law under President George W. Bush in 2008 was a small down payment on an secretive ‘backdoor bailout’ that saw the Fed provide roughly $3.3 trillion in liquidity and more than $9 trillion in short-term loans and other financial arrangements.”   Bernanke vehemently resisted making these disclosures…for obvious reasons. The disclosures reveal the Fed’s too-cozy relationship with Wall Street. They also reveal a kind of institutionalized arrogance: the Federal Reserve knows what’s best for us, even if we don’t know it ourselves…or believe it.   During the last several months, Chairman Bernanke frequently and persistently asserted the need for secrecy at the Federal Reserve. Transparency, he argued, would compromise the Fed’s independence. The argument is ridiculous. Secrecy facilitates corruption and abuse. Transparency prevents it. A couple of free-thinking politicians recognized this reality early in the credit crisis.   As early as February, 2009, Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont Independent, complained to Bernanke, “Given the size of the [Fed’s] commitments, it is incomprehensible that the American people have not received specific details about them.”   Bernanke tersely replied: “The Federal Reserve does not release specific information regarding the borrowings of individual institutions from our lending facilities. The approach is completely consistent with the long-standing practice of central banks.”   As it turns out, this approach is also completely consistent with promoting deceptions and conducting crony capitalism…like doling out enormous bailout checks to Wall Street banks without ever disclosing the timing or size of these bailouts to the general public.   This is not a healthy circumstance for an economy that purports to practice “free-market capitalism.”   From: The Daily Reckoning | Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Bank Of America, Visa Pilot Mobile Payments — Mobile Payments — InformationWeek

Starting in September, Bank of America customers will be eligible for a test program allowing them to pay for store purchases using their smartphones. The country’s largest consumer bank is partnering with Visa to run the pilot in the New York area, marking the biggest step the two companies have taken so far to create a “digital wallet” with a range of financial capabilities.

Visa will undertake a similar test program in October with US Bancorp. The United States has been slow to deploy mobile payment technologies that have been used in countries like Japan, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and South Korea for years. A Bank of America spokesperson said payments from smartphones are a “critical capability” since users have accepted and adopted bank services from their mobile phones.

A select group of employees and customers in the New York area will be chosen to install small chips supplied from Visa and its technology partners into their smartphones, which will send radio signals over short distances. Customers will need to wave their handset near point-of-sale devices in stores in order for their bank data to be collected and to complete their purchases. The bank did not release figures on how many people would participate in the pilot.

If the pilot goes well, the service may be expanded, a Bank of America spokesperson told Bloomberg. Among the retailers that can accept mobile payments are McDonald’s, Burger King, Home Depot, Walgreens, and CVS, as well as New York City taxis, the spokesman said.

via Bank Of America, Visa Pilot Mobile Payments — Mobile Payments — InformationWeek.

Smartphone Mobile Banking Use Approaches 50% — Mobile Banking — InformationWeek

BI research has announced that about 50% of smartphone users are planning to use their devices for mobile banking, including mobile shopping. A parallel announcement this week highlighted the ABI survey findings when Wells Fargo began rolling out its mobile banking pilot.In its survey of 2,000 consumer technology users, ABI said nearly half of the responding smartphone users said they already or will soon use their phones for mobile shopping. A slightly higher percentage — 53% — use or intend to use their smartphones for mobile banking.More Security InsightsWhite PapersShared IT Infrastructure – New Storage Buying CriteriaGARP Report: “Risk Management Systems – Flaws, Fixes and Future Plans.”ReportsBreach DiariesVirtual Servers, Real RisksVideos Stanford legal expert explains the legal ramifications of research, hacking.”We see mobile commerce in the U.S. finally starting to achieve a mass market appeal,” said ABI senior analyst Mark Beccue in a statement. “Its not just smartphone owners: non-smartphone mobile users interest in mobile banking and commerce services, while lower than that among smartphone owners, is also on the rise, with 17% of non-smartphone users surveyed using or intending to use mobile banking services.”Mobile phone carriers, credit card vendors, shopping sites, and smartphone providers are racing to get a toehold in the rapidly emerging mobile payments and shopping markets.

via Smartphone Mobile Banking Use Approaches 50% — Mobile Banking — InformationWeek.

A Real Jaw Dropper at the Federal Reserve

What have we learned so far from the disclosure of more than 21,000 transactions? We have learned that the $700 billion Wall Street bailout signed into law by President George W. Bush turned out to be pocket change compared to the trillions and trillions of dollars in near-zero interest loans and other financial arrangements the Federal Reserve doled out to every major financial institution in this country. Among those are Goldman Sachs, which received nearly $600 billion; Morgan Stanley, which received nearly $2 trillion; Citigroup, which received $1.8 trillion; Bear Stearns, which received nearly $1 trillion, and Merrill Lynch, which received some $1.5 trillion in short term loans from the Fed.We also learned that the Feds multi-trillion bailout was not limited to Wall Street and big banks, but that some of the largest corporations in this country also received a very substantial bailout. Among those are General Electric, McDonalds, Caterpillar, Harley Davidson, Toyota and Verizon.Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations including two European megabanks – Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse – which were the largest beneficiaries of the Feds purchase of mortgage-backed securities.Deutsche Bank, a German lender, sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities. Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds.Has the Federal Reserve of the United States become the central bank of the world?The Fed said that this bailout was necessary to prevent the world economy from going over a cliff. But three years after the start of the recession, millions of Americans remain unemployed and have lost their homes, life savings and ability to send their kids to college. Meanwhile, big banks and corporations have returned to making huge profits and paying their executives record-breaking compensation packages as if the financial crisis they started never happened.

via A Real Jaw Dropper at the Federal Reserve.

Wealthiest .0000001% Hail Tax Deal « Borowitz Report

GENEVA The Borowitz Report – President Obama’s deal to extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich drew rave reviews today from the wealthiest .0000001% of Americans, who pronounced the deal “a total home run.”“When we first heard about the deal, we were like, this is too good to be true,” said multibillionaire Thurston Howell IV, a spokesman for the richest .0000001%.  “But when our butlers read the plan aloud to us during the cocktail hour, we were incredibly stoked.”The 29 plutocrats who make up the nation’s wealthiest .0000001% were at their annual meeting at Mr. Howell’s villa in Geneva, Switzerland when news of the President’s deal was first released.“Bill Gates and Warren Buffett were the first to hear about it, and then the news just kind of trickled down, if I may use a favorite phrase of ours,” Mr. Howell said.“The President deserves credit for recognizing what the wealthiest .0000001% have known for years,” he added. “Our cost of living has soared astronomically, especially when you consider how expensive it’s gotten to control the outcome of elections.”In response to critics who have said that Mr. Obama’s decision to extend the tax cuts represents a change in his position, Mr. Howell said, “If I may coin a phrase, that’s change I can believe in.”

via Wealthiest .0000001% Hail Tax Deal « Borowitz Report.

Take everything given to you and make something better.

Here’s a clip from an excellent post on OnStartup.com

Take everything given to you and make something better.

Society is all about evolution, especially in technology and software. The greatest technologies take the fundamentals of what already exists in some form, but improves them with the new pieces that have evolved. I wrote about this earlier in a piece called “Build What Was Previously Not Possible.” As an entrepreneur you will continually find new tools and innovations brought forth by other entrepreneurs. Take every single relevant thing you can find and bake it in to your product to make something better. For some that might be mobile, social, local,etc. Always ask yourself: “Am I using all the resources that are available and making something better?” We literally get nowhere with complacency, but get everywhere with advancement. Dont change the game, evolve the game.

Work Before Glory

The best entrepreneurs are humble and dont really care about the glory. One of the things that Dharmesh has taught me over the past few months is to keep a level head and be humble. Dont worry about the next press article that comes out about your company. Eventually there will be too many of them that it wont matter. It should be about the work you produce instead of the side benefit of glory. Your work will live on forever, but the glory will fade away when the next acquisition or rumor pops up. Legends are products of their work, NOT their glory.

Do what they say you cant

The competitive nature of entrepreneurship is a fun one. Many people will tell you that it cant be done or that it is too crazy. They will tell you that a better X cant be built or you wont be able to accomplish a small goal like fundraising or hiring. The people telling you this might not even be strangers, but close friends and family members. The only way to prove them wrong is to do it.

via How To Become Legendary- 23 Things Michael Jordan Taught Me About Entrepreneurship.

What is Facebook Really Worth?

Facebook loses money. It loses a lot of money. While the company has a ton of web traffic and therefore is in an enviable position, it has no revenue generating features in place except for displaying advertising. However, income generated by advertising doesn’t cover the expenses of running such a complicated and resource intensive website, which is why the company continues to raise money through multiple rounds of venture capital investments and investment agreements with other companies.

In fact, the business model for a Facebook IPO seems eerily reminiscent of the business model of many technology stocks during the Internet Bubble of the late 1990s. An Internet company that has never generated a profit, but whose very nature as a high-trafficked web property means that enormous streams of future revenue are all but guaranteed, goes public without a concrete strategy for its future business and the public snaps up the shares hoping to triple or quadruple their investment in just months.

Supporters and company insiders, of course, dismiss such concerns out of hand noting that their enormous traffic base is coveted by such giants as Microsoft and Google. The catch is, that while those already very profitable companies can afford to wait and see how to make a profit from Facebook, or who can leverage the non-stop stream of visitors to increase the value of their other products and services, a stand alone Facebook has little hope of generating the necessary revenue to succeed on its own.

While the company does indeed has a huge user base, and that pool of users is indeed diverse, there is still no plan to monetize that userbase other than displaying Internet ads. Unfortunately, it may be that the Facebook audience is much less valuable than other when it comes to advertising.

Consider how many of Facebook’s users do absolutely nothing on the website other than share pictures and updates with their family members. How many grandmas log onto Facebook daily for no reason other than to see if pictures of their grandkids have been posted by their children? These users not only never click on an ad, they don’t pay any attention to them either, because they have never made an online purchase in their life, making their “eyeballs” worth less than on other websites.

Time will tell if Facebook can find a way to monetize its very fickle audience without driving them off to other services, or if Facebook is just a late entry to the never profitable Internet bust like pets.com.

via Facebook Stock IPO Good Investment.