Fabrizio Giordano

Google is announcing today that websites that are optimized for mobile will now factor into ad quality. The company says that last year it began to limit ad serving on smartphone devices if they pointed to landing pages with Flash-heavy content, in order to improve the experience for users. Now the search giant will be considering the mobile optimization of a website as a new factor of mobile ads quality for all AdWords campaigns that are driving mobile traffic.

As a result of this change, ads that have mobile optimized landing pages will perform better in AdWords and drive more traffic. The core guidelines for landing page quality apply across devices (on desktop and on mobile) but this consideration will only affect AdWords on mobile devices.

For background, Google’s landing page quality for mobile sites factors in site navigability, simple layout, content prioritization, mobile features, touch features, minimal flash, landing page load time. Landing page quality is one of several factors that determine an advertiser’s keywords’ Quality Scores.

As Google says, a poor mobile web experience can negatively shape a consumer’s opinion of a brand or company and make it hard for them to engage or make a purchase. In fact, 61% of users are unlikely to return to a website that they had trouble accessing from their phone.

Unsurprisingly, Google is pushing its own mobile site creator, through Google Sites, on publishers and site owners who want to create a simple mobile website. Considering the holiday shopping season is getting closer, retailers may want to be sure their sites fit into Google’s landing page guidelines. Certainly, this year more than ever, holiday shoppers will be using their mobile phones for search and purchasing.

Multi-device social gaming platform Sibblingz is announcing that a number of Facebook game developers have selected their platform to go mobile. BitRhymes, IKIGames, LuckyLabs, Fortune Planet, DeezGames and CrowdStar are now using Spaceport to build their games for user across iOS, Android and other platforms.

Sibblingz allows developers to simultaneously create games on Facebook as well as iOS and Android devices, allowing players to continue the same social game as they switch between devices. The platform also offers the developers the ability to monetize free-to-play games with virtual goods.

The company’s cloud-based game creation platform, Spaceport, allows game developers to build a game once, using Javascript, and have it play across all smartphone operating systems, with a native app-like experience and fast performance. The web-based games run as a hybrid HTML5 – native app, and the code for the game is written once, in a simple scripting language, so that they can then run on any device. And developer can also create native iOS apps as well using Spaceport.

The developers are basically turning their Facebook games into HTML5-based mobile web games as well as native games for the iOS App Store and Android.

As my colleague MG Siegler reported earlier this summer, Facebook has a secret plan, called Project Spartan, to bring applications to the mobile web via HTML5. We know this is being launched soon and Sibblingz says that Spaceport allows developers to create HTML5 games that are compatible with Project Spartan through an HTML5 canvas-rendering engine available for iOS and Android.

Sibblingz founder Ben Savage has told us that the startup is working with multiple Facebook game developers who are preparing for Project Spartan. It’s a huge, Zynga-sized opportunity and clearly many developers are throwing their hats in the ring.

It’s taken a while, but newspapers across the U.S. are finally ready to leverage all those retailer relationships, build their own mobile coupon service and possibly revitalize their dying ad businesses.

Dozens of them are partnering up with the Associated Press to introduce iCircular (no, it’s not from Apple), an HTML 5-based, iPhone “app within an app” that will offer localized, real time deals. An Android version is expected later this year.

Newspapers have been closing, merging and watching as their circulations and revenues shrink for well over a decade. They’ve struggled to compete with the real-time news offered by thousands of web sites and, more recently, social networks. At the same time, traditional media has grappled with a variety of new advertising competitors, including Craigslist, an online classified ad service that does for free what newspapers charged for for well over a century. Circulars still arrive in virtually every newspaper’s daily and weekend editions, but revenues have declined as advertisers insisted on paying less for access to fewer eyeballs.

Leading the charge in the white-hot online deal space is Groupon, which launched in 2008, and reported over $713 in revenue in 2010. It was this close to going public when the startup put it on hold to “ride out” the current economic turmoil. That delay may provide just the window iCircular needs to get going and attract some eyeballs.

However, the real test is whether anyone actually uses the deals they find in iCircular. As Mary Junck, Chairman of AP’s board of directors’ revenue committee told PaidContent, this is still just a “test.” “We’re going to be looking closely at several things in particular,” Junck expalined to PaidContent. “We’re going to be interested in seeing the audience numbers for iCircular and how often the deals are used. The newspaper partners have all agreed to do heavy promotion for this.”

The app, which was announced late last year, should appear today within the apps of participating newspapers (there are 40, including the New York Daily News and the Los Angeles Times). In addition to offering localized deals, iCircular lets you build shopping lists and participate in loyalty programs.

What’s your take? Do you welcome digital circulars from your local newspaper on your iPhone? Or are you satisfied with localized deals from Groupon and other deal providers? Let us know in the comments.

More About: craigslist, groupon, icircular, online deals

It’s taken a while, but newspapers across the U.S. are finally ready to leverage all those retailer relationships, build their own mobile coupon service and possibly revitalize their dying ad businesses.

Dozens of them are partnering up with the Associated Press to introduce iCircular (no, it’s not from Apple), an HTML 5-based, iPhone “app within an app” that will offer localized, real time deals. An Android version is expected later this year.

Newspapers have been closing, merging and watching as their circulations and revenues shrink for well over a decade. They’ve struggled to compete with the real-time news offered by thousands of web sites and, more recently, social networks. At the same time, traditional media has grappled with a variety of new advertising competitors, including Craigslist, an online classified ad service that does for free what newspapers charged for for well over a century. Circulars still arrive in virtually every newspaper’s daily and weekend editions, but revenues have declined as advertisers insisted on paying less for access to fewer eyeballs.

Leading the charge in the white-hot online deal space is Groupon, which launched in 2008, and reported over $713 in revenue in 2010. It was this close to going public when the startup put it on hold to “ride out” the current economic turmoil. That delay may provide just the window iCircular needs to get going and attract some eyeballs.

However, the real test is whether anyone actually uses the deals they find in iCircular. As Mary Junck, Chairman of AP’s board of directors’ revenue committee told PaidContent, this is still just a “test.” “We’re going to be looking closely at several things in particular,” Junck expalined to PaidContent. “We’re going to be interested in seeing the audience numbers for iCircular and how often the deals are used. The newspaper partners have all agreed to do heavy promotion for this.”

The app, which was announced late last year, should appear today within the apps of participating newspapers (there are 40, including the New York Daily News and the Los Angeles Times). In addition to offering localized deals, iCircular lets you build shopping lists and participate in loyalty programs.

What’s your take? Do you welcome digital circulars from your local newspaper on your iPhone? Or are you satisfied with localized deals from Groupon and other deal providers? Let us know in the comments.

More About: craigslist, groupon, icircular, online deals

It’s taken a while, but newspapers across the U.S. are finally ready to leverage all those retailer relationships, build their own mobile coupon service and possibly revitalize their dying ad businesses.

Dozens of them are partnering up with the Associated Press to introduce iCircular (no, it’s not from Apple), an HTML 5-based, iPhone “app within an app” that will offer localized, real time deals. An Android version is expected later this year.

Newspapers have been closing, merging and watching as their circulations and revenues shrink for well over a decade. They’ve struggled to compete with the real-time news offered by thousands of web sites and, more recently, social networks. At the same time, traditional media has grappled with a variety of new advertising competitors, including Craigslist, an online classified ad service that does for free what newspapers charged for for well over a century. Circulars still arrive in virtually every newspaper’s daily and weekend editions, but revenues have declined as advertisers insisted on paying less for access to fewer eyeballs.

Leading the charge in the white-hot online deal space is Groupon, which launched in 2008, and reported over $713 in revenue in 2010. It was this close to going public when the startup put it on hold to “ride out” the current economic turmoil. That delay may provide just the window iCircular needs to get going and attract some eyeballs.

However, the real test is whether anyone actually uses the deals they find in iCircular. As Mary Junck, Chairman of AP’s board of directors’ revenue committee told PaidContent, this is still just a “test.” “We’re going to be looking closely at several things in particular,” Junck expalined to PaidContent. “We’re going to be interested in seeing the audience numbers for iCircular and how often the deals are used. The newspaper partners have all agreed to do heavy promotion for this.”

The app, which was announced late last year, should appear today within the apps of participating newspapers (there are 40, including the New York Daily News and the Los Angeles Times). In addition to offering localized deals, iCircular lets you build shopping lists and participate in loyalty programs.

What’s your take? Do you welcome digital circulars from your local newspaper on your iPhone? Or are you satisfied with localized deals from Groupon and other deal providers? Let us know in the comments.

More About: craigslist, groupon, icircular, online deals

PayPal held an event today in Los Angeles for merchants to get a early look into the eBay owned payments giant’s new technologies. As CEO Scott Thompson says in a blog post, PayPal is re-imagining money and making it work better for merchants and consumers – whatever device you’re on, wherever you are in the world, and however you prefer to pay (whether that’s cash, credit, or installments).

The company says it will be rolling out a one-stop shop for merchants, both online and local businesses, to manage payments from customers. Details are sparse but PayPal says that new features will include location-based offers, making payments accessible from any device and offering more payments flexibility to customers after they’ve checked out.

So in the video included in this post, you can see that PayPal will allow local businesses to accept PayPal payments from customers via their mobile device using scanning technology, and QR codes. eBay CEO John Donahoe referred to an in-store PayPal experience earlier this year. You’ll also be able to use PayPal in physical payments gateways at stores as well (where you would normally complete the credit card swiping process).

And users will be able to access realtime store inventory, receive in-store offers, and real-time location-base advertising from stores.

Sam Shrauger, VP of Global Product and Experience for PayPal, tells us that this new platform is not just about payments. These services will allows merchants and consumers to better connect, from the search process to the post-purchase time period.

He explains that nation and international merchants are already integrated this platform, and 20 merchants will be live with this by next year.

PayPal held an event today in Los Angeles for merchants to get a early look into the eBay owned payments giant’s new technologies. As CEO Scott Thompson says in a blog post, PayPal is re-imagining money and making it work better for merchants and consumers – whatever device you’re on, wherever you are in the world, and however you prefer to pay (whether that’s cash, credit, or installments).

The company says it will be rolling out a one-stop shop for merchants, both online and local businesses, to manage payments from customers. Details are sparse but PayPal says that new features will include location-based offers, making payments accessible from any device and offering more payments flexibility to customers after they’ve checked out.

So in the video included in this post, you can see that PayPal will allow local businesses to accept PayPal payments from customers via their mobile device using scanning technology, and QR codes. eBay CEO John Donahoe referred to an in-store PayPal experience earlier this year. You’ll also be able to use PayPal in physical payments gateways at stores as well (where you would normally complete the credit card swiping process).

And users will be able to access realtime store inventory, receive in-store offers, and real-time location-base advertising from stores.

Sam Shrauger, VP of Global Product and Experience for PayPal, tells us that this new platform is not just about payments. These services will allows merchants and consumers to better connect, from the search process to the post-purchase time period.

He explains that nation and international merchants are already integrated this platform, and 20 merchants will be live with this by next year.

Mobile payments company BilltoMobile now has direct carrier relationships with all four of the major carriers in the U.S., including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile (the deal with T-Mobile is the newest relationship to be announced). This makes BillToMobile the first and only mobile payments platform to have direct carrier connections with all of the top four major U.S. mobile carriers.

Similar to Zong and Boku, BilltoMobile provides a payments platform that allows users to use their mobile phone as their payment option when they check-out online. They input their mobile phone number and in some cases their mobile phone billing zip code. A six-digit number is sent to their cell phones via text as a one time password. They enter this authentication code online to complete the purchase and the charges will be put on their wireless bill.

The company added Sprint earlier this year, Verizon in March of 2010 and AT&T in October 2010. T-Mobile is the latest carrier to join the mix and round out the list for BillToMobile.

So why are direct carrier relationships important? Historically, mobile payments companies like BillToMobile, Boku and Zong face the challenge of lofty carrier rates. Wireless carriers have charged roughly 30% to 40% to process transactions made via mobile phone accounts, making it very difficult for these companies to scale beyond virtual goods. These transactions costs are passed down to developers using the technology, which are then passed to the consumer. To avoid these costs, BillToMobile has been negotiating a number of direct relationships with carriers as a way of possibly avoiding these costs.

While BillToMobile declined to reveal exact carrier rates, the company did say that total carrier inclusive of merchant/developer fees are in the low-mid teen range. The company also serves as a gateway for companies like Zong and Boku to access these lower rates.

With these direct billing relationships, over 275 million, or about 90% of U.S. mobile subscribers, now have the ability to charge online purchases of digital goods and services from online merchants. More than 12,000 merchants process with BilltoMobile globally with roughly 175 digital goods and services merchants currently processing their mobile payment transactions through the BilltoMobile platform in the US. BilltoMobile’s average Direct Merchant ticket size is $14, with an average carrier spend per subscriber as high as $40 per month. And about 60% of BilltoMobile’s monthly payment users are repeat customers.

Carriers seem to be responding to mobile payments as a viable option for consumer transactions. Two of the top four carriers have already increased the spending caps for subscribers, so that consumers can charge anywhere from $100-$200 per subscriber per month.

And there’s more validation in the technology from other technology companies. eBay also made a big bet on the mobile payments space with their $240 million purchase of Zong earlier this year, and a number of tech giants have reportedly been eying Boku as an acquisition target as well.

BilltoMobile has raised $9.5 million from Morgenthaler Group and Danal (Danal is actually a majority shareholder). For now BillToMobile has been able to lead the way with direct carrier relationships, so it should help solidify the company’s position in the mobile payments space.

Joyent has revealed the winners of Node Knockout, the annual Node.js hacking competition it sponsors. This year’s hackathon, which encourages developers to build apps using the increasingly popular server-side JavaScript environment Node.js, included over 320 teams with more than 700 people competing. That’s a big jump from the 100 teams and 250 participants seen in 2010.

The resulting winners are a diverse bunch, including everything from games and YouTube battle parties (we’ll explain…) to practical tools aiding in website design and game development.

Here are this year year’s winners:

Overall Winner & Solo Winner: Observer 

Observer is tool designed to help you better understand your website visitors’ behavior by watching them navigate your site in real-time. You can see what the users are typing, what they’re clicking and even what keyboard shortcuts they’re using. You can also immediately start a chat session with a website visitor who appears to need assistance.

If you don’t have time to track all your users, you can store sessions for later playback. And all of this functionality can be implemented through a simple one-script installation.

Overall Team Winner: Eight Bit Beats

Eight Bit Beats is a collaborative, social beat and melody sequencer. Upon loading the site, you enter your name/handle, choose a sound board (DJ, Drum Kit, Special FX, etc.) and then start to add music to a collaborative track made with others.

Public Popularity Winner: Driv.in

For even more fun, check out Driv.in, the YouTube battle party. The idea is that you create rooms on the site so that you and your friends can watch videos together in real-time. Now, where have we heard about something like that before?

Yep, it’s pretty much the same thing as Chill, with the synchronous video watching, video DJ’ing, built-in chat and all. The only difference is that the “room” looks like a drive-in theater, not a movie theater as in Chill. Oh, and Drive.in has the added benefit of being able to throw tomatoes at the videos you hate. Take that, Rebecca Black!

Most Utility /Fun Winner: Doodle or Die

Doodle or Die is basically an iteration on Pictionary, where you are given things to draw and have to guess what others have drawn. The site is pretty basic, but the team is working on furthering the project as an iPad /iPhone/Android app that will be called Doodleblast.

Best Design Winner: ACROnode.com

ACROnode is a slightly more intellectually challenging game than the above, and it’s loosely based on the original Acrophobia IRC game. Players are given a random acronym and are challenged to create “backronyms.” For example, when presented with “NBAM” you might play “Narwhal Bacons At Midnight.”

Players score each other’s backronyms and receive points based on the number of votes, and for being the first to submit their backronym. It’s geeky, funny and, as indicated by the win, pretty to look at, too.

Most Innovation Winner: Blue GPU Lava 

Returning to the more practical entries, Blue Lava is a small demo showing the node-webgl library. The entry is the open source library itself, not the visualization/demo. With this, developers can create advanced video games for modern platforms using Node.js. This library specifically targets the HP TouchPad. However, it can run on other platforms. Here’s the demo in action.

 Most Complete Winner: Chess@home

Chess@home is a project whose goal is to break the current world record for the largest Chess AI. It will use JavaScript and Node to organize the largest chess ever on a future “D-Day” to pit a Chess Grand Master against thousands of computers. The question is, can a JavaScript-based AI beat a Grand Master? Or will the human beat the machines?

In the meantime, you can play against the networked machines to test your own skills.

Those are all of this year’s winners, but if you’re curious about the other projects that emerged from the hackathon, you can check out the full list of entries here.