Things worth reading for February 26th through March 4th:
FCC Moves to Redirect Phone Subsidies for the Poor – PCWorld Business Center – Big news, surfaced by @shellypalmer
Facebook To Share Users’ Home Addresses, Phone Numbers With External Sites – Yikes! “Facebook will be moving forward with a controversial plan to give third-party developers and external websites the ability to access users’ home addresses and cellphone numbers in the face of criticism from privacy experts, users, and even congressmen.”
The Apple strategy tax – Will Apple slowly kill its business as Microsoft once seemed to? Check out this interesting piece from Ars Technica.
AT&T Offers Mobile Shopping Alerts – WSJ.com – “AT&T Inc. is taking aim at mobile advertising with a program that serves up special offers via text message when its wireless subscribers are near a retailer or brand participating in the program.
“AT&T is working with Placecast, a six-year-old start-up, to deliver advertising and offers to subscribers’ cellphones via its “ShopAlerts by AT&T” program. The service, which targets the ads based on a person’s location, age and gender, is currently only available in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco. Eventually, ads will also target interests, such as sports or cars, which users will be asked to identify when subscribing.
“Subscribers will have to sign up for the service, which takes advantage of mobile-phones’ ability to track their users’ locations. In theory, that means companies can target offers at people in a position to act on them immediately, a capability advocates hope will open up a lucrative new advertising market.
Coming Soon: Advertiser Alerts on Your Phone – Digits – WSJ – “On Tuesday Loopt, a social network catered to mobile-device users, unveiled a plan to allow advertisers to send alerts to Loopt users, based on their location, when they want to offer them an limited-time deal.
“A restaurant looking to fill empty seats, for example, could alert a nearby Loopt user of a special price for a meal if they arrived first, says Loopt’s chief executive Sam Altman, in an interview. “We’re very excited about this,” he says.
“The initiative, called Reward Alerts, will begin later this month and builds on prior efforts by Loopt, other social-networking services such as Facebook and Foursquare and big Internet companies such as business-review site Yelp and search giant Google to tap into the market for local-business advertising.”
Facebook ‘Like’ Button Takes Over Share Button Functionality – “After months of updates to its Like button, Facebook has released an update that fundamentally changes the button’s functionality to that of a Share button. Now after hitting the Like button, a full story with a headline, blurb and thumbnail will be posted to your profile wall. You’ll also be given an option to comment on the story link. Previously, only a link to the story would appear in the recent activity, often going unnoticed by users.”
Plan to Create a Digital Works Institute Wins Ad Contest – NYTimes.com – “The idea, submitted by Kip Voytek, a specialist in interactive advertising, is to form a national institute that would be focused on education in the realm of digital arts and sciences.”
PressThink: How the Backchannel Has Changed the Game for Conference Panelists – Really terrific post (about a year old) by Jay Rosen.
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