Reports are in that Apple has acquired the 3D motion sensing tech company, PrimeSense. The Israeli pioneer developed the technology behind Microsoft’s original Kinect camera but will not be integrated in the next generation of the Kinect. We can’t help but think PrimeSense may power the much hyped iTV to enable gesture controls in the living room.
Category: Percolate
Coin Consolidates Cards For Flexible Payments
Coin may stand a chance to revolutionize the payments space by allowing you to consolidate your bank and loyalty cards onto a single platform. The Kickstarter project allows you to tie all of your cards to a single one via bluetooth and then actively manage which one you use through an app. Unlike other payment startups, Coin is not a disruptive technology, but an enabler; one that lets you pay chiefly the same way you always did but with more flexibility. While they may run into some friction with banks and merchants who have not sanctioned this activity, the utility Coin provides is worht of attention.
Facebook Partners With SportsStream
Facebook partnered with SportsStream to make sense of its real-time data, both for sports networks and advertisers. SportStream will offer broadcasters and sports teams an interface to search through Facebook’s Keyword Insights, which will allow access to metadata on teams, players, leagues, games, and more to see who’s saying what about live games. It’s an important move for Facebook, which knows that it has a mountain of data about live events – particularly sports events – but is still unsure about how to get that data to the people who are looking to make the most of it. This should allow teams to get a better understanding of how many people they’re reaching, and where, and in addition it will allow advertisers to get all the more targeted on Facebook. This could be a particularly potent partnership for all parties involved.
Loews Hotels Launches Twitter Reservations
On November 19th, Loews Hotels and Resorts will begin letting customers book rooms through Twitter, in a program the company is calling “social reservations.” It works by tweeting @Loews_Hotels with #BookLoews to declare interest in a room, at which point a Loews travel planner will step in and DM a user a link to a chat conversation to finish and confirm the booking process. In an age where 34% of hotel revenue comes through digital and mobile app bookings, this is another big step forward in innovative ways of increasing social engagement while simultaneously tapping into a new revenue stream. The success of this system could determine whether this method of booking becomes mainstream.
Kindle Fire Gets Second Screen Upgrade
In a long-anticipated move, Amazon’s Kindle Fire now has second screen integration to play your downloaded shows on other screens around your house or apartment. The updates, which will be rolling out over the air in the near future, will also include support for PS3 and 4, which means that the Fire devices will be able to “fling” shows to those platforms as well. It’s another move in the ever-growing world of second screen and user control over how and where they view their purchased data.
In Favor Of YouTube Comments
Users have spoken in outrage (as they do with any major change to a a major platform) over YouTube’s recent changes to comments. Main changes include Google+ integration, improved moderation tools and the ability to post publicly or privately. Despite the complaints of some 90,000 who are petitioning, Memeburn makes a convincing argument on the why this is an improvement for YouTube. Among their most salient points are the fact that tying your comments to an identity promotes meaningful discussion–a far cry from the current state–and curation as the video owner and those in your circles are more visible. Brands should be in favor of this change (aside from the improved audience data) as YouTube has moved to become a more premium network a brand would like to associate with. While comments will likely drop as a result of this change, they will be more impactful. In the same way marketers have grown weary of the value of a like, they should adopt the same approach to comments or engagements.
Google Play Music Comes To iOS
This development in Google Play Music’s development puts it squarely in competition with iTunes Radio, as well as other streaming applications like Pandora, Spotify, and Rdio, which all have iOS apps and are more deeply integrated into the Apple ecosystem. As well, Google is offering an “all access” option which would allow you to store your music in the cloud, stream music across multiple devices, and include the first month free. All access also adds a radio option. It will be important to see who emerges atop this growing heap of music streaming services.
Twitter Now Running Pre-Roll Ads
Twitter will now run American Express pre-roll ads before Fox programming is displayed on the social network. As part of the Amplify program that launched last week, these Fox spots are ads themselves by design, so the American Express pre-roll ads are effectively ads on top of ads. It’s part of Twitter’s continued effort to become profitable as soon as possible in light of its IPO. Right now, that’s scheduled to be 2015, but if the company can leverage ads to make that happen sooner, they’ll take every chance they can get.
Pinterest Launches API; Announces New Partners
At long last, Pinterest is launching an API that will allow pins to be embeddable across the web. The first partners for the API have already been announced, and include a host of big names: Zappos, Walmart, Disney, Nestle, Random House, and Hearst. It means that Pinterest will try to ramp up its traffic referral data – it’s current second after Facebook in that category – while making itself more useful to sites and brands to post pins and other social details across different networks. It also means more marketing to spend against these strong links between sites. It’s an important more, one that will likely see Pinterests’ already high relevancy only increase.
LinkedIn Partners With Education Firms
LinkedIn announced that it’s partnering with seven of the biggest online education firms to let users add online certifications and courses to their LinkedIn profiles. The program, called Direct-to-Profile Certifications, takes academic accomplishments out of traditional, post-graduate University settings and into the digital realm. The details of the course are published onto your profile through the education firm itself, so ideally faking these credentials isn’t easy. LinkedIn claims that this is the first step in allowing users to keep their profiles updated, so expect to see LinkedIn continuing to expand its third-party updating and certification capabilities.
