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Tag Archives: mobile privacy
Mobile Retail Focus for 2013? (60min Business World interview)
In the following interview I discuss with Wayne Hurlbert, the preeminent business blogger (Blog Business World), that retailers need to embrace new strategies to reconnect with their customers. We discuss:
- Strategies to win back customers who have left the malls, big box, and other retail outlets for their mobile devices.
- How the behavior of mobile shoppers is different from both tethered online customers and from the traditional in store consumer.
- Techniques for winning back those customers, reconnecting with them, and regaining their long term loyalty.
- How to embrace mobile technology as a competitive advantage for your business, and place yourself in the forefront of the mobile shopping revolution.
10 mobile predictions for 2013 in under 75 words
1. Substitute “Mobile” for more inclusive term “CONNECTED SCREENS”
2. Geo-LOCATION crucial to social strategy
3. NFC continues to be far field
4. For RETAIL: space between bricks and clicks most valuable
5. For everyone: space CONNECTING screens most valuable
6. Mobile viruses push SECURITY agenda
7. More PRIVACY transgressions, More PRIVACY protection
8. ANDROID increase the lead in a 3 horse race
9. Operator CAPACITY drives new business models
10. Through-The-Middle (TTM) services counter OTT
Mobile Privacy Experts: Consumer Trust Vital
Gary Schwartz, president and CEO of Impact Mobile and chair of the North American Chapter of the Mobile Entertainment Forum, tells Street Fight that building trust should be the core of a retailer’s mobile and online strategy. “The key to engaging with the consumer in a trusted relationship in a retail environment is you don’t want to engage with people who don’t want to engage with you,” says Schwartz. “The outreach should be focused on loyalists with a retailer’s brand. It’s about your loyalists putting up their hand and saying ‘hey I want to talk to you because I love your product.’”
“You need to make a call to action on all your touch points, and say if you love my product opt in. Once you have that, you have to let them opt out at any time,” Schwartz adds. He believes the strategy can be outrageously successful: “If you’re on target, if you are talking to them and they love your product, they will stay with you. It will attract 10x over your email channel.”
Building trust requires developers and businesses to implement a strategy that give consumers a better idea of what information is collected from them, and what choices they have to control it. Regulators have encouraged developers and businesses to engage in “privacy by design,” that is, incorporate transparency and protections for consumers on their information as products are built and launched.
Regulators have become increasingly aggressive in addressing what they perceive as abuses in the use of consumer information from mobile devices. Already, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Research in Motion and other major application stores have agreed with the California Attorney General to require all developers to provide privacy policies with their applications, include a process to display such policies in their stores, and report developers that are not complying. The California Attorney General’s office warned it will take enforcement action if the privacy policy process is not in place within six months.
Privacy vs. Data: How to build consumer trust?
By Gary Schwartz
The way we define the term privacy is subjective. In the United States, we police privacy based on a very broad definition under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act that prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.” The devil is in the policy details.
If the news headlines over the past few months are any indication, we are mighty confused with what to call private and what to call public, what to sanction and what not to sanction. How can we start to solve small-screen privacy when we have not solved our digital angst on the desktop?
Jules Polonetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum, says that when the browser invariably crashes it pops up a commiserating dialogue box asking you permission to send the diagnostic report to the browser company anonymously to help them fix bugs and build a better browser.
Faced with this privacy brief, only 3 percent of users click “Yes.”
Digital natives
Is it because we are digital immigrates? Our children happily offer data everyday about personal activity without hesitation.
Is the challenge simplifying the legal narrative to allow consumers to make an informed decision without interrupting their next click on the small screen? It seems an improbable feat.
In March, the Federal Trade Commission issued a report on best practices for businesses collecting personal data called “Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change: Recommendations For Businesses and Policymakers.”
The FTC, which is taking a proactive lead on privacy in the beltway, seems cognizant that it needs to create a flexible framework to best interpret what is unfair or deceptive in Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.
Girls Around Me: An issue of privacy and trust!
By Gary Schwartz
Why the shock and awe of a mobile application that helps guys find girls around them – an app which uses publicly available data from Facebook and foursquare’s APIs, data which is completely permission-based?
Well, the “GirlsAround.Me” app, understandably, riled the press. The Cult of Mac blog’s headline reads: “This Creepy App Isn’t Just Stalking Women Without Their Knowledge, It’s A Wake-Up Call About Facebook Privacy”. CNET’s op-ed reads: “Girls Around Me and the end of Internet innocence.”
However, the “Girls Around Me” app is simply another in a long list of controversial services that use information that is floating about the digital commons.
The Russian company, i-Free, that developed the app cannot understand the kerfuffle, claiming that it has been used as a “scapegoat” for the privacy debates whirling about Washington. Honestly, it has every right to be confused.
The industry itself is confused and responding to privacy in reactive knee jerks instead of thoughtful best practices. The problem is the complexity and sensitivity of social data. Combining location check-in with social graph is a potent privacy cocktail.
Dealing with Mobile Consumer Trust on April 24th
We are all excited about the potential for mobile wallets in the store and the cloud. The consumer can click permission for mobile services to track their location and scrape their social graph. These services allow for shopping and social convenience. They allow for seamless, frictionless, realtime interaction with brands and retailers.
There however is an unwritten balance between convenience and trust. When does an location-based application like Highlight move from helping to spooking the would-be social consumer?
On April 24th in DC, join me to discuss how to build a consumer friendly ecosystem that is not dictated by legislation but rather by best practices, transparency and user-friendly signs for the consumer of the services.
There are high stakes. If the industry is not proactive in addressing this crucial issue, the fallout will be costly. Juniper Research recently stated that over $74 billion worth of contactless transactions will occur in three years and the privacy and security issues could cost billions.
Top high-level executives from leading online/mobile companies, content players, ad agencies and governmental agencies will gather to discuss the pressing privacy and security issues facing M-commerce and M-content.
MEF’s Mobile Commerce and Content Privacy Summit
When: April 24, 2012 from 2pm to 6pm, with a reception following
Where: SNR Denton’s DC Offices – Penthouse Suite 1301 K St NW Washington, D.C
For more information or to RSVP, please contact: Marjorie DeHey, GM MEF – North America
Interview: Shopper + smartphone = impulse purchase (WSJ)
Smartphones and other mobile devices are changing the way we shop. Gary Schwartz, founder and CEO of Impact Mobile and author of “The Impulse Economy,” tells Radio’s Adrienne Mitchell smart businesses are responding to more-impulsive shoppers.
Interview: 10 Mobile Big Things in 2012 (BNN)
Business News Network 7.5 mins: 10 Mobile Big Things in 2012 Gary Schwartz, CEO, Impact Mobile, joins BNN to speak about the 10 big mobile things in 2012.
2012 “Top 10″ MOBILE trends & rankings
In a season where every second tweet and Google+ post is a look-back or forward at the “mobile” year, it is sometimes difficult to navigate all the insights. Just Google “Mobile Top 10 . . .” and you will find every blogger, publication and pundit providing their vision of what is newsworthy, trendworthy or simply rankable in mobile.
The proliferation of mobile “Top 10s” is a good thing. It is proof of all the many verticals areas that mobile has intersected. Health, IT, gaming, banking, retail, social, payment, fraud, security, privacy, patent trolling – all now have some form of a top 10 mobile list.
The explosion of the Mobile Top Ten list shows both how disruptive mobile has become and, also, what a massive audience it commands. Top 10-related news headlines seem to drive more hits and be retweeted more than other items.
(Twitter even tweets its top 10 most retweeted tweets. No. 2 being @LilTunechi Lil Wayne WEEZY F “aaaaaaahhhhhhmmmmm baaaaakkkkkkkkkk.” The 2011 top of the top 10 retweets was by Wendy’s restaurants “RT for a good cause. Each retweet sends 50c to help kids in foster care. #TreatItFwd.” Wendy’s raised $1.8 million.)
We seem to all need, what Perry Hoekstra in his blog calls an “Obligatory 2011 Top Ten Mobile Story List.” I presume it helps us simplify this expanding, complex world of mobile. If we can prioritize importance and cut off the discussion at ten, the list can help us make sense of mobile.
Lists also keep us honest. We never are right on half our predictions. Remember our 2010 trends and forecasts? They are out there in the blogosphere for all those with 20/20 hindsight to chuckle.
In December 2010, we all had an opinion on HP webOS-powered tablet plans – that never happened. And where on the list was Google’s purchase of Motorola, ostensibly as fodder for their IP wars against Apple? Missed that one.
But the biggest problem with these lists is their length. In the wasteland of eggnog and turkey dinners, I ask, where are the mobile Clifs Notes? Where is the super-list? Where is the list of lists?
Steve Yankovich, head of mobile for eBay, tells us that the mobile consumer’s attention span is roughly 15 seconds, nose-to-phone. EBay designs its mobile pages for the dwell time at an elevator or the time idling at the red light. Perhaps, in the spirit of mobile efficiency, we better design our year-end prognostications for this small attention-deficit window.
This holiday season, I add to the litany of lists my retrospect and forecast of mobile, but below in 100 words or less.
2011
- Facebook timeline set it back in history
- Google+ builds circle of trust
- Symbian sang swansong
- Apple continued to make data a free commodity
- Spectrum war showed its dark side
- All screens called mobile
- Amazon cloud disrupts the mall
- Consumer data became jewel in the crown
- CarrierIQ poster-child of privacy angst
- NFC wallet traded press, not payment
2012
- NFC proximity marketing, not proximity payment – yet
- X9 (ISO) delivers mobile security recommendations
- Apple says “I Do” to NFC
- Research In Motion exits stage right
- Cloud checkout is optimized and mainstream
- Super App = HTML5 browser
- Focus on prepaid market services
- LTE networks and spectrum become big issues
- Mobile privacy hype continues
- Microsoft and Nokia enter stage left
Not quite 100 words, but near enough.
Happy Mobile New Year.