“We’re at an inflection point”, eBay CEO John Donahoe said from the stage at Innovate, eBay’s brand new developer conference that launched today in San Francisco. “We’ll see more change in how consumers shop and pay in the next three years than we’ve seen in the last 15 years”.

Donahoe’s prediction for the future came as context for giving a more complete introduction today to X.commerce, the platform formed by eBay and its nest eggs PayPal, Magento and GSI — designed to create a robust, full-service and “open” eCommerce solution. The eCommerce solution “to rule them all”, one might say.

But the real kicker is that, as Leena wrote earlier today, what X.commerce really symbolizes is the first instance of eBay creating a business that truly caters to developers. In the past, eBay developers have been divided into the eBay marketplace, PayPal, etc., but now developers have all those technologies in one place, allowing them to create “new shopping and eCommerce experiences based on these interconnected suite of tools”.

One of the more anticipated announcements to come out of Innovate was a partnership between the world’s largest social network and eBay, which will see the latter integrating Facebook’s Open Graph (the tree of connections Facebookers create by sharing and interacting with friends and content on the social network) into its Magento and GSI global commerce platforms.

What does this mean? The partnership will basically give third party developers a bigger voice in the development of social commerce, allowing them to build new social shopping experiences for consumers and retailers, share their ideas, and create personalized apps for buying, selling, and sharing that have Facebook’s social features baked right into them.

While building Facebook’s features into eCommerce offerings may allow them to make shopping more personalized and display friends’ thoughts about products right in their eShops, the truth is that social commerce hasn’t exactly taken off over the last year. Merchants already have the opportunity to set up storefronts on Facebook to sell directly to their customers while they’re networking or surfing a brand’s fan page, but so far sales on the platform haven’t impressed.

It seems that consumers aren’t particularly jazzed about doing their shopping on Facebook — part of which may be due to the novelty of Facebook’s eCommerce or it could simply be a reluctance to embrace new commerce functionality on what is really a platform designed to share pictures and stalk former romances. It also may have something to do with the fact that many consumers are worried that their credit card and personal information is being scooped up by Facebook in the transaction process. Either buyers are redirected to a brand’s own online store, or they buy on Facebook and often have to accept an app request to make a purchase. That app request can give away a bunch of information on the user and it’s really something many consumers are still loathe to do.

Indeed, it’s a result of this that, as VP and General Manager of X.commerce Matthew Mengerink said today, online shopping remains “a very individualistic and lonely experience”. Which is a shame considering the fact that Facebook’s Director of Platform and Mobile Marketing Katie Mitic told the Innovate crowd that shopping is inherently a social activity and that the world is really just beginning to get a taste of “what’s possible with social commerce”.

Of course, to achieve what’s possible with social commerce eBay and Facebook need the developer community to get excited and want to be on board. Yet, as Reuters pointed out, some analysts and eCommerce experts were hoping for a deeper and perhaps more full-featured partnership between the two companies. And Mitic’s announcement was met with little to no applause from the 3,000+ developers and techies on hand.

This could of course be that they were tired, or that the recent changes to Facebook’s platform that took users beyond the “like” button to allowing them to share what they’ve “read” or want to “taste” just don’t sound that enthralling when applied to social commerce. With eBay’s new Facebook integration, developers will now be able to build social commerce apps that allow users to share what products they “buy”, “want”, “own”, or “recommend”. But is this enough to really change the face of social commerce?

Mengerink said that, in the market today, too many shopping apps target the point of sale, but that the real-life process of browsing, discussing what products are appealing or not, and trying different things on, for example, is inherently social, but it doesn’t always involve buying.

“What we’re encouraging developers to think about is to try out the more ‘pre-shopping’ social experience”, he said. Meaning that the process of joining friends at an online store, browsing, sharing, and chattering via enhanced social features is a way to encourage brand recognition, organic word-of-mouth familiarity with products — and is integral to making the online shopping experience more resemblant of offline shopping. And to grow online sales. The question is, of course, whether or not this is truly possible just with “want” and “own” buttons, and just how much these new pre-shopping features can boost a brand’s bottom line.

The virtual shopping experience is a long ways off from one that mimics its offline counterpart, and I’ve yet to be convinced that just because one of my grade school friends interacted with a product on Facebook, which then popped up in my news stream, that I’m more likely to interact with that product and buy it just because of some loose social connection manifesting while I’m in the process of turning off more Facebook sharing features. Yes, it adds to a brand’s network, and if I’m browsing friends’ profiles and see a product I want to learn about before buying, this is a great conversation starter.

What do you think? Is this a win for developers, consumers, eBay, or Facebook (or all of the above)?

Excerpt image courtesy of TechFouzan

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Mindshare Technologies, the provider of survey technologies and realtime customer feedback solutions, announced today that it has received a $20 million investment from Sorenson Capital, a private equity firm that specializes in buyout and growth equity investments. The PrivateBank and Trust Company also contributed to the investment, which will be used to accelerate product growth and ramp up hiring.

As part of the investment, Fraser Bullock, managing director of Sorenson Capital and former COO of the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics as well as Ron Mika, a co-founder and managing director of Sorenson Capital, will be joining Mindshare’s board of directors.

Mindshare Technologies provides companies with automated survey and feedback management tools that allow businesses to more effectively interact with their customers and employees, improve customer satisfaction, and encourage customer loyalty. The company also develops and utilizes custom speech and text analytics to allow businesses to automate their customer feedback, using these text analysis tools to pull out key phrases, and save companies from hiring a giant customer relations department.

Different from CRM and the Salesforces of the world, Mindshare instead works with enterprises to build “Enterprise Feedback Management” solutions, which allow these businesses to collect, analyze, consolidate, and use feedback sources from a variety of channels to improve business operations and profitability. Using its proprietary survey technology to capture the voice of the customer in realtime, Mindshare works with businesses to transform this unique data into actionable intelligence and reporting.

The company currently completes more than 175,000 surveys each day in 106 countries, 28 languages, and 25 different industries. According to the team, in August 2011, the company recorded monthly revenues of more than $1.6 million, and grew revenues at 33-percent in 2010. Mindshare currently works with brands like Arby’s, Hertz, Tony Roma’s, Comcast, Marriott and more to improve customer interaction and loyalty.

For more on Mindshare, check ‘em out at home here.

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Enterprise social networking platform Yammer is expanding the reach of its network today, launching Yammer Connect. The new plug-ins allows users to bring their Yammer identity to other business applications and an Embed feature enables companies to embed Yammer feeds into their intranet or other apps.

Using a JavaScript API, developers can add the Yammer Login Button to their applications via Yammer Connect. The Login Button eliminates the need for Yammer’s more than three million users to maintain multiple user profiles across business applications. So similar to the way you use Facebook Connect to log into consumer apps, Yammer Connect allows workers to authenticate business apps with their Yammer identity, and all of their profile details will automatically be completed. And users can share activity from third-party applications with colleagues back on Yammer.

Using ‘Yammer Embed’, companies can actually add Yammer’s conversations and realtime feeds into other business apps where employees spend their time, such as company intranets or content management systems. Yammer Embed lets employees view, post and reply to messages in the context of their work without having to navigate to a separate application.

Yammer also recently added support for in-line videos within news feeds and badges to its communications application. Expanding the reach of Yammer to third-apps is yet another way that the company can become the Facebook for the Enterprise.

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Case in point: the Casio CA-01C [JP], which NTT Docomo (Japan’s leading telco) started distributing a few days ago. Technically, the device can be called a feature phone, but it outshines the one or other smartphone out there when it comes to some specs.

Here’s the main spec list:

• 3.4-inch/naked-eye 3D touch display with 480×854 resolution
• 0.8-inch OLED sub-display
• 16.3MP CMOS sensor
• camera: special mobile Exilim engine, full HD video recording, 3D picture display, 3x digital zoom, LED flash
• DLNA support
• YouTube connectivity
• Wi-Fi IEEE802.11n, Bluetooth, infrared connection
• e-wallet function
• digital TV tuner
• dust-and waterproof body
• microSDHC slot, HDMI interface
• battery: 220 minutes continuous talk time, 560 hours stand-by on 3G

It sounds crazy, but this specific model is basically a phone and digital Exilim camera rolled into one. Just one of many examples: its so-called business shot function automatically corrects shots taken diagonally in conference rooms or event halls, like so:

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AppSense, which specializes in what it calls ‘user virtualization’ solutions, has raised $70 million in its very first round of funding. Interestingly, the entire investment comes from one backer, Goldman Sachs, whose managing director Pete Perrone will be joining the company’s board of directors.

AppSense says it will use the funds to “capitalize on its position as a market leader” in what it anticipates will turn out to become a $2 billion market in the next few years.

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Services like Google Voice, Reader, Analytics and AdWords will now be available on Google Apps accounts. The apps can be accessed through a new interface in administrative control panel for new customers. Existing customers can transition to the new interface at their own pace but Google says it will automatically shift all App customers over to the new control panel early next year.

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Or throw fistfuls of cash in your direction.

According to a reliable source with knowledge of the transaction, e-invoicing company, TradeShift has just secured between €12 to €15 million euros from PayPal ($16 to $21 M dollars).

The deal was done quietly, with PayPal dolling out the euros in the form of a loan for TradeShift. When asked to comment, the Denmark startup’s CEO and co-founder Christian Lanng said he could not discuss the speculation at this time but implied that fundraising efforts have been robust this year. A PayPal spokesperson said the company does not comment on rumors or speculation.

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The US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in the past 12 months, Information Technology jobs in the metro area of Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater have declined by 7.2 percent. According to tbnweekly.com, the area had the biggest overall job loss in the state with 4,400.

The decision to create the positions is two-fold: to help local technology professionals that have been hurt by recent job cuts in the area and to support the company’s contribution to making Tampa Bay the high-tech hub of the Southeast.

“In order to become a world-class player in online interaction, we must possess the top talent available,” stated Greg Pearson, CEO. “We are not a conventional company and offer a growth opportunity that many other local companies can’t match. We want to help drive Tampa Bay to become the Silicon Valley of the Southeast.”

Global Marketing Resources, Inc. operates multiple websites; among them the Celebrity Interaction site StarCam.com®, online dating site
PlanetLoveMatch.com™, and social networking site MyDot.com™. All three sites are powered by KABUUM™, which has 20 patent-pending technologies and over 43 interaction services.

Ivan Peña, Marketing Manager and one of Tampa Bay Business Journal’s 2008 “30 Under 30″, joined Global Marketing Resources last year. “I decided to join the team 5 minutes after a meeting with [CEO] Greg. Everything, from his enthusiastic vision to the free lunch perk on Fridays, made me feel like this was the place to be and it turned out to be the case. The opportunity to be part of something global, unique and fresh – and with such income potential – was a blessing.”

Global Marketing Resources, Inc. is looking for the following web developer and IT-related positions:

• ASP.NET Developers (multiple openings)
• Javascript Developers (multiple openings)
• Adobe Flash Developers
• C# Flash Developers
• Mobile App Developers (iPhone, Android)
• Network Engineer
• IT Security Specialist
• Quality Assurance
• Technical Support

Interested applicants can get more information about these exciting positions can send a resume, cover letter and samples of previous work (developers only) to hr ( @ ) gmri dot net dot

http://www.gmri.net

Source:
http://www.1888pressrelease.com/webdeveloperjobs/tampajobs/global-marketing-resources-inc-to-invest-1-million-into-l-pr-244992.html

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Marin’s Search Marketer platform now offers advertisers and agencies the ability to manage Facebook Ads alongside paid search programs on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Advanced solutions for Facebook include algorithmic bidding, audience segmentation, and ad rotation features. Campaigns on Facebook can be segmented by gender, age, geography, or even likes and interests of audiences.

Marin’s software is used by 180 companies including Razorfish, and Macy’s who are both using Marin to target Facebook users. Marin’s customers spend at least $100,000 per month on paid search campaigns across the major search engines, with Marin’s software automatically bidding more than 350 million keywords each night.

As we wrote last week, ad spending on Facebook is expected to reach $1.3 billion in 2010. Integrations on popular search platforms like Marin’s offering should help Facebook reach that goal.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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In
today’s high-risk world, foreseeing potential problems and eliminating them
before they happen is the ideal many executives strive toward. As business
environments move at a rapid pace, making the most of the increased volumes of
available market and customer data has become business critical, a new report
from management consultancy Arthur D. Little warns.

According to the report "The
Art of Systematic Surveillance,” many executives miss the opportunity to
use their data for strategic decision-making, instead relegating it to a “data
management” task carried out by IT. However, as marketing directors and other
business unit heads # are increasingly forced to make quick on-the-spot
decisions, a single view of all company-critical data will give them the information
needed to to respond quickly and confidently to threats and market challenges .

The report outlines a
centralised approach to intelligence management that facilitates the collection
and analysis of all company data, and allows leaders across the business to
quickly access up-to-the-minute market intelligence.

“Our experience shows
that many B2B companies fail to use their data to support long-term
decision-making, and the same can be said for B2C businesses facing new
consumer trends and shifts to emerging markets," said Per I. Nilsson,
Global Head of Arthur D. Little’s Technology & Innovation Management
Practice. “Organizations today are sitting on virtual mountains of unused
data and changes in the competitive landscape, technologies and business models
all mean it is more important than ever to dust off this data and use it wisely
by taking a centralized approach to intelligence management.”

Arthur D. Little
suggests five business functions where competitive intelligence can be
successfully applied:

1. Procurement –
identifying supply bottlenecks and changes in competitor activity

2. R&D – scouting
new technology to gain early advantage

3. Marketing –
monitoring competitor positioning strategy and advertising efforts

4. Sales/after-sales –
monitoring competitor sales approaches and distribution channels

5. Human Resources
–debriefing new employees and analyzing competitor compensation models

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