Apple Store app update brings Passbook support for gift cards, Siri integration for checking prices

Apple has updated their Apple Store app for the iOS devices that let you check out prices, buy products and track your purchases on the go. The update brings support for Apple Store gift cards with Passbook support and Siri integration.

Now you can purchase Apple Store gift cards for your friends and family through the Apple Store app. When you send a gift card, it arrives as a mail to your recipient. They can then choose to send it to their iPhone and it appears in Passbook through iCloud integration. They can then just walk into an Apple Store and purchase items by showing the pass in the Passbook app.

Another cool new feature is integration with Siri, so you can now just ask Siri for prices of Apple products and it will provide them if you have the Apple Store app installed.

Both features are only available in the US for now.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Facebook partners with Datalogix to track offline retail purchases

Facebook is working with Datalogix to track demographics of users clicking on Facebook ads and making offline in-store purchases.

 

Facebook is beefing up its advertiser services after feeling the pressure to offer improved analytics tools for marketers to see just how well their Facebook campaigns are fairing. Facebook has delivered, The Financial Times reports, by partnering with Datalogix to track whether Facebook users who click on ads end up purchasing products.

With a database of over 70 million Americans that have signed up for in-store loyalty cards and programs at over 1,000 retailers, Datalogix can match respective Facebook accounts to email addresses or other pertinent information that users would have provided when signing up for the in-store programs. Facebook then receives a report to identify its users that have made purchases at a retail location and those that have not after viewing an ad on the social network, potentially weeding out the pain points in an advertising strategy and helping measure the efficacy of Facebook advertising.

“We are working with Datalogix to help advertisers understand how well their Facebook ads are working. We also do this through our partnerships with companies like Nielsen and comScore and through our own advertising tool,” a Facebook rep told Digital Trends in a statement.

The partners have tested 45 campaigns and have found that Facebook advertising was an effective tool in a marketer’s toolbox. Of the campaigns measured, 70 percent of advertisers made $3 dollars from in-store purchases for every $1 spent. But the click-through rates on Facebook ads are less than desirable. Wordstream’s study suggests that desktop click-through rates stand at just 0.051 percent, almost half of an average click-through rate for any ad on the Internet. Facebook’s mobile ads and Newsfeed ads, according to our report on Socialcode’s study, fare far better with click-through rates of 0.79 percent and 0.327 percent respectively.

While form of tracking will undoubtedly raise some alarms for existing users, identifying information and email addresses will remain anonymous. Datalogix categorizes people in its reports into general groups between those who have made purchases and those who have not. The real privacy kicker is there there won’t be an opt-out capability directly available via Facebook. Facebook didn’t answer our question about whether it would offer users an opt-out mechanism on its own site, and it would appear you will have to visit Datalogix’s website in order to get rid of the service. But Facebook’s spokesperson provided the following statement on the matter in light of the assurance that it was working with a third-party auditor:

“We know that people share a lot of information on Facebook, and we have taken great care to make sure that we measure the effectiveness of Facebook ads without compromising the commitments we have made on privacy. We don’t sell people’s personal information, and individual user data is not shared between Facebook, Datalogix or advertisers.”

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

So long, Mr. Popular: Fake Follower Check outs surprising Twitter frauds

The Fake Follower Check application shows how many famous people's follower count has been wildly inflated by spammers and block purchases.

It’s been a bad week for Twitter fans. First, the company hinted that the new Twitter API would break a whole lot of third-party developer’s software. Now, StatusPeople has proven that a whole lot of people’s all-important follower count is fake as @FakeSteveJobs.

StatusPeople is a company that makes “social media platforms for business.”  But unlike many companies with that mission statement, it doesn’t just promise to get your business more followers; it helps you figure out how many of your existing followers are spammers, inactive, or otherwise mere social media clutter.  That’s the purpose of their Fake Follower Check, an application that runs a follower list through a set of spam criteria. FFC mostly looks for followers who have few or no followers or tweets, but follow a lot of people themselves.  It’s not exactly a bulletproof algorithm – will no one hear the silence of social media’s introverts – but it’s not bad as a quick and dirty review system.  

Things get more interesting when you run Fake Follower Check on other people’s follower lists. A clever reporter at Business Insider decided to run some Twitter-loving celebrities through the FFC, and discovered that pop stars like Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga have follower lists that are 45 to 48 percent fake, President Barack Obama’s follower list is about 41 percent phony, and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has a follower list that’s 22 percent spammers.  Over at Metafilter, user crunchland decided to check for both fake and inactive accounts on the follower lists of prominent right-wing political figures, and discovered that not only were the faker numbers high, but Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, and Barack Obama all had more fake and inactive followers than real people.

All of this would be nothing more than drive-by schadenfreude if not for the fact that many media outlets, celebrities, politicians and corporations use follower counts as a measure of their real-world success.  When Newt Gingrich was trying to convince the press that his presidential candidacy wasn’t just a scheme to get casino billionaires to buy him lunch, he pointed to his follower count as proof of his grassroots popularity, only to be accused of buying that count. Similar accusations have been lobbed at Mitt Romney, whose follower list included a number of users whose only presence online was a page offering to increase your Twitter following for a modest charge. 

Why would anyone pay for a bunch of fake followers?  First and foremost, because it leads to real followers. Jason Rundle, at PR Daily, tried buying a block of 1,000 fake followers to see if it would affect his real follower count, and was depressed to find that “my new, lifeless flock convinced other real people that the profile was popular and influential.”  That kind of increase can have real consequences when a high follower count can bring Hollywood agents and major publishers to your virtual door, reasoning that anyone with that many followers must have a built-in fan base.  Even Saudi clerics are taking an official position on the ethics of buying fake followers; as with most things Saudi clerics take a position on, they think it’s bad.

The practice of paying people to simulate popularity predates Twitter, the Internet, and the English language.  Long before the Roman Empire, rich men would hire professional mourners to follow their funeral trains making a great show of weeping to convince bystanders of their noble character.  The practice was so common that the Greek legislator Solon banned it in 6th century B.C., though it remained both frequent and frequently banned well into the 19th century. On a similar but more cheerful note, the word “claque”, today used to refer to a politician’s advocates, originated in early 19th century France, when professional agencies would arrange for crowds of any paid-for size to come cheer your theatrical or operatic performance, a useful service in the days when riots would often break out over who had the bigger audience.  So while buying followers may be a sleazy way to get donations, press attention, and ego gratification, it is at least a charming outbreak of traditionalism in the new media world.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com