Square Is Developing An Engine To Make Local Recommendations

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Square Building A 'Recommendation Engine' (The Verge)
Square, the mobile payments provider, is reportedly developing a recommendation engine capable of suggesting places users may be interested in visiting based on their mobile transaction history. There are already a number of recommendation apps on the market, but one that uses payment data to generate suggestions is unique. If true, this could be a powerful advertising tool: What better way to predict consumer spending habits than by analyzing what they've already spent money on and where? Read >

What Merchants Want From Mobile Payments (SiliconANGLE)
Bill Ready, CEO of Braintree, a mobile payments platform, explains why he thinks mobile payments solutions will be adopted by merchants. As Square's possible move into advertising implies, the possibility for frictionless, location-aware payments mean consumers and merchants will learn more from one another, even as transactions are made more convenient. There's a video at the end of the post. Read >

Demand For Tablets And Touch PCs To More Than Double (TechCrunch)
Over the next five years, the market for tablets and touch PCs is expected to grow from 367.6 million units in 2012 to 762.7 million in 2017. NPD DisplaySearch expects tablet shipments to increase 67% year-over-year in 2013 as popularity for standard notebooks dwindles. Read >

iPhone Misses Out On Millions Of Customers Globally Due to Carrier 'Holdouts' (Bloomberg)
Key carriers in China, Russia, India and Japan still want nothing to do with the iPhone's high prices and the pressure that puts on wireless operators to subsidize consumers' smartphone purchases. Read >

Amazon Beats Google To Launch Paid App Store In China (memeburn)
Android devices in China can now download Amazon's Appstore app and access its app selection much as they do any other third-party app store. Although Amazon's Kindle tablet devices aren't yet available in China, speculation is that they soon will be. Google Play only offers free apps in China. Read >

During Samsung Smartphone Launch, iPhone Steals The Conversation (Forbes)
Peek Analytics scoured Twitter to find out what smartphones people were talking about the most when the Samsung S4 launched ten days ago. Over the course of 4 days, Samung's S4 was tweeted about 230,000 times, whereas Apple's iPhone was tweeted about 2.9 million times. It goes to show the long-lasting effects branding and marketing can have on controlling the conversation. Read >

Hulu Plus Now Available On Windows Phone (Engadget)
The on-demand video service made up of major broadcast networks continues its shift into mobile. Hulu has announced that its premium subscription service Hulu Plus is now available on Windows Phone, complementing its previous offerings on Windows 8 PCs and tablets, iOS, and Android devices. As w discussed in a chart a few days ago, made-for-TV video enjoys high completion rates on mobile. Read >

Mobile Search Continues To Grow At Significant Pace (Mobile Marketing Watch)
Traffic to online directories and other local search resources from mobile more than quadrupled in 2012 and more than 48% of U.S. mobile users use their mobile devices to access local content. The study is from the Local Search Association and comScore. Read >

Sprint and Time Warner Form Mobile Alliance (Fox Business)
Time Warner's publishing division has agreed to provide magazine content and news to Sprint devices. The partnership will help increase the mobile visibility of publications such as People, Sports Illustrated, and Entertainment Weekly. Time Warner and Sprint will also open up mobile advertising to each other's audiences to broaden reach for clients' ad campaigns. Read >

50 Facts That Prove The Power Of Mobile Marketing (Social Media Today)

In case you needed more facts showing the benefits of mobile marketing, this slide deck produced by HubSpot is chock-full of convincing nuggets of information for your next presentation. A few key takeaways:

1. Mobile ads perform 4 to 5 times better than traditional online ads.

2. 74% of smartphone users use their phones for shopping, and of that 79% make a purchase as a result of using their phones.

3. Mobile coupons have a redemption rate 10 times higher than that of print coupons. Read >

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.