Do you need a loyalty program?

Loyalty problems tend not to be on the forefront of entrepreneurs’ minds. But an aggressive retention marketing program, even in early stages of a company’s history, can pay big dividends.

The relevance of such programs depends on your business model. Your customer value can be the deciding factor in how useful these programs can be for you.

In businesses where a typical customer spends large amounts per interaction or tends to stay for a long … Continue Reading

Mobile OS company Symbian enters app store fray: Launches Horizon

Symbian, the company that makes operating systems for a large number of the world’s mobile phones, today will be announcing the launch of Horizon, its own path into the thick forest of app stores.

The company will make the announcement later this morning at MobileBeat2009, our application-focused conference today in San Francisco, where Symbian executives such as executive director Lee Williams will be speaking and elaborating on the product.

The service is not a full-fledged … Continue Reading

Namibians come up with clever Sudoku game for multiple devices

I’ve never written about a game company in Africa. Here’s a first. Gamecarte of Windhoek, Namibia, has come up with a clever twist on Sudoku, the numbers game that so many people are obsessed with around the world.

They’ve created a version of the game that runs on the company’s web site. You can log in and play it there. Then you can pause it and pick up where you left off on a mobile … Continue Reading

Mobile roundup: AT&T's unbright future, LG's widescreen, GetJar's legible logo

AT&T’s future not so good once it loses iPhone exclusivity — The LA Times talks to Pali head resarcher Walter Piecyk who says it’s as simple as everyone thinks: Customers will head to faster, more reliable networks, by which Walter means Verizon.

Speaking of which, O2 will no longer have exlusive iPhone dibs in the UK — Mobile Today, the British site, reports that “the move is set for as early as September” to allow … Continue Reading

Will Twitter really make $1.54 billion in 2013?

Twitter has a business model after all — and one that it’s betting may go from bringing in $400,000 this quarter to $1.54 billion in four years, according to documents leaked earlier today.

Projections that distant are not particularly useful, but they give a hint of Twitter’s ambitions. The company has been mum so far on how it plans to monetize the rapidly growing user base for its site, which had about 37.3 million worldwide … Continue Reading

Penguin FB: A truce offering or Trojan Horse from Facebook to Twitter?

Now this is interesting. Facebook, which at one point a few months ago seemed set on becoming Twitter, might now be experimenting with a way of making its service work rather smoothly with the microblogging service. Earlier today, Inside Facebook spotted a tweet from Facebook developer Blake Ross, who said “test” from a service called “penguin fb” (he’s since taken it down).

Facebook has gone around saying that it sees itself and Twitter as two … Continue Reading

Five rules of thumb for social media advertising

Over the course of the last few months, Sprout has had the opportunity to work with some amazing brands and agencies to create social engagement campaigns. Together with our clients, we’ve introduced consumers to a new video game and allowed musicians to showcase their best track for a chance to win a record deal. What we’ve learned from these projects is that social media success involves common sense, listening to peers and looking at things … Continue Reading

Apple confirms: Pre locked out of iTunes

Apple PR wrangler Natalie Kerris has officially confirmed to BusinessWeek what Pre owners have been tweeting: “iTunes 8.2.1 … disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre. As we’ve said before, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with unsupported digital media players.”

Just this second, Palm spokeswoman Lynn Fox has sent out a counter-snipe: “Palm’s media sync works with iTunes 8.2. If Apple chooses to disable … Continue Reading

Twittergate: "Most difficult part of Web 2.0 security is the human''

The release of Twitter’s internal documents overnight by a hacker is a potent reminder of how much information we store in the cloud and how vulnerable that data is.

Furthermore, it raises questions about Twitter’s security practices, given that the break-in didn’t happen because of a complicated hacking strategy, but because the hacker got the right answers to password reset questions. Twitte co-founder Biz Stone stressed that the attack didn’t compromise any Twitter accounts and … Continue Reading

Startup Spotlight: People Capital brings peer-to-peer lending to student loans

Editor’s note: VentureBeat has started a new series called “Startup Spotlight.” Every week, we’ll sift through the scores of companies applying to be promoted in this series and profile the best one. Companies can sign up here at the Entrepreneur Corner, which is currently sponsored by Microsoft. (Of course, we’re still interested in covering startup news and innovation in our day-to-day coverage.) Today, we continue the series with People Capital, below.

People Capital has entered … Continue Reading

MTV: Viewers like ads over online videos

We’ve all hunted for the “X” to close those overlay ads that pop up during an online video, but MTV says pairing these ads with a short pre-roll ad is actually quite enjoyable for viewers.

In 2008, MTV began probing customers on ad formats, whittling its advertising possibilities down to three options. Finally, the company enlisted with market research group InsightExpress to get feedback from consumers in research called “Project Insight.” Tests were run across … Continue Reading

Motorola snags former Samsung head of mobile marketing

William Ogle, former chief marketing officer for Pizza Hut, and recently chief marketing officer for Samsung Telecommunications America, has been appointed chief marketing officer for Motorola’s Mobile Devices business. Ogle will report to Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s co-chief executive officer and CEO of Mobile Devices.

In the 2008 video interview with Forbes, below, Ogle says that yes, Samsung’s strategy of marketing 50 to 60 models of phones can be stressful on the marketers. But the array … Continue Reading

Bill Gates says Project Natal will bring gesture controls to Windows 7

Microsoft made a big splash when it talked about bringing its gesture-control system, Project Natal, to the Xbox 360 in games coming next year. But Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has disclosed that the technology will also work with future versions of Microsoft Windows on the PC.

In an interview with CNET News, Gates said the 3-D depth-sensing cameras that are part of Natal will let people control all sorts of devices: PCs, game devices and … Continue Reading

Tesla spared from raising equity to match federal loans

Tesla Motors, recent recipient of $465 million in low-cost federal loans via the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, won’t have to raise new matching funds to qualify like other recipients. Instead, it says it will dig into its revenue from car sales and its 10 percent stake sale to Daimler (estimated at $50 million) to hit the equity mark needed to get the loans.

During yesterday’s showroom opening, the San Carlos, … Continue Reading

Yahoo lets mobile users opt out of targeted ads

Yahoo has enhanced its ad targeting system — “interest-based advertising” in the company’s lingo — so that users can opt out of the targeting from their cellphones. In addition, users who opt out on their computers will automatically be opted out on their phones. Yahoo’s mobile interface is Web-based, so no apps are required.

A post on the company’s policy blog explains the enhancement.… Continue Reading

Berkeley Ventures' new incubator breaks from summer program model

Berkeley Ventures, a new Bay Area incubator for early-stage companies across tech sectors, has just launched with a unique offering: Unlike Y Combinator or TechStars — incubators that run three-month programs — Berkeley It will provide startups with ongoing support for up to two years.

In addition to providing $5,000 to $10,000 in seed money to some startups (in exchange for a 3 to 9 percent stake in each company), the Berkeley, Calif.-based firm will … Continue Reading

Facebook adds 50 million users in 3.5 months, now up to 250 million actives

Facebook likes to keep its traffic numbers close to its chest. Its last update was at the beginning of April, when it said it hit 200 million monthly active users worldwide. Today, it says it has 250 million monthly active users — so an increase of 50 million users over the last three and a half months. This sort of growth, at least in theory, is what the company needs to keep seeing if it … Continue Reading

I want my landline back

(Note: Our MobileBeat 2009 conference is now completely sold out. We hope you got your ticket!)

Back to my post: The mobile beat here at VentureBeat doesn’t belong to me, but like everyone else here I got sucked into the world of smartphones. And MobileBeat 2009 planning here at the office often devolved into talking about the current state of the industry. It also got me to pay more attention to the quality of my … Continue Reading

Zink Imaging names winners in its design-your-own-printer contest

Zink Imaging named the winners of its printer-design contest, which drew both professional and amateur designers to help create the next generation of its inkless printers.

The Zero Boundaries competition was a good example of crowdsourcing, where you motivate a lot of people to create something on your behalf. While such contests are common, Zink managed to get a lot of high-quality work from a bunch of industrial designers for a low price.

It is … Continue Reading