Social Commerce

Mobile
Facebook Stock Jumps After Announcing Mobile Ad Network
May 01, 2014

After starting the day at a deficit, Facebook picked up momentum after announcing several new products at its f8 developer conference, including the Mobile Ad Network.

News
Facebook’s eCommerce Push
May 01, 2014

Using its auto-fill service Facebook is putting its toe into eCommerce waters, albeit with a partner retailer in both cases. The social media giant announced yesterday that the 450,000 merchants currently using e-commerce site builder Ecwid will now be easily able to integrate Autofill With Facebook...

Mobile Commerce
MoneyGram Signs Facebook App Deal With PicomoPay
April 29, 2014

Funds-transfer company MoneyGram on April 28 announced a deal in which U.S. consumers in May may begin sending transfers using PicomoPay’s Facebook application to more than 336,000 MoneyGram agent locations in 200 countries.   Social and mobile-payments platform PicomoPay enables consumers to conduct person-to-person payments...

News
Police Targeting Uber And Lyft Drivers?
April 28, 2014

It’s not easy being an innovator, as Lyft and Uber drivers in place likes Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are finding out as the police are issuing thousands of dollars in citations to “send a message.” Officers in plain cloths in Madison and Pittsburgh have used the...

International
Frrole Starts With Crowd-Funding, Ends Up With $245K In Angel Investment
April 22, 2014

Frrole, an India-based data analytics start-up that combs Twitter looking for patterns and trends that could be interesting and actionable for businesses, has just raised $245K in Angel funding from investors including former head of Yahoo! R&D centre in India Sharad Sharma, Eka Software founder Manav Garg and Google’s...

Mobile Commerce
The Five Forces of mPOS
April 17, 2014

Players continue to zig and zag around the mPOS space yet common themes are beginning to emerge. The March mPOS Tracker highlights the five key things that all successful – and scalable mPOS solutions have. Want to see if your solution makes the cut?

Europe
Coming Soon To Payments: Facebook?
April 14, 2014

In a departure from their roots as the internets premier destination for posting adorable pictures of children and ill-advised pictures of drinking, Facebook is making and entry into the payments industry with remittances and electronic money. The social media behemoth is weeks away from receiving regulatory...

News
Crowdsourced-Shopping Site The Hunt Nabs $10 Million In Investment From Khosla
April 11, 2014

The Hunt offers and interesting variation on crowdsourced shopping–it allows users to post snap shots of retail items like clothing or home goods and then post them and get other users trying to hunt them down. It is an approach that has garnered attention and...

Alternative Finances
Crowdfunding’s Unique Risks
April 08, 2014

The “kickstarter” movement, where groups of private investors provide funding to get new businesses and projects off the ground, has seen a fair share of innovations – both success stories and an assortment of failures. But the concept of crowdfunding in general also has taken...