Facebook rolls out 'low-friction' mobile payments system

The new payment flow reduces the number of steps necessary to complete a purchase from seven to two.

 

Facebook began rolling out a new mobile payments system today that reduces the number of steps users must take to complete a purchase from seven to two.

The "low-friction carrier billing" is available to the majority of wireless carriers in the U.S. and U.K. as well as in more than 60 countries around the world, Facebook said today in a developer blog announcing the new system. While U.S. carriers AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile are already on board with the system, one of the notable names not on the list is Verizon's.

"The payment flow is simple," Jessi Xu, a Facebook software engineer, said in the post. "Users who want to pay for a virtual or digital good in a mobile web app open the payment dialog and confirm their purchase."

Facebook's new two-step mobile payments system.

(Credit: Facebook)

Facebook revealed in February that it was working to revamp mobile payments to reduce the number of steps necessary to complete a purchase.

"The payments experience is just broken for end users," Facebook CTO Bret Taylor said at the World Mobile Conference, adding that the social networking giant was working on "partnerships with operators to improve the user and developer experience around operator billing that will eliminate the SMS verification for vast majority of customers."

Developers who have already integrated Facebook Payments into their mobile Web won't need to do anything to upgrade to the new system. Developers can include the new payments system in their Facebook apps via the social network's Payments API.

First Privacy Bill of Rights meeting: Mobile apps targeted

A meeting on mobile applications and data privacy will be held July 12 to start enforcement of President Obama's digital Privacy Bill of Rights.

President Barack Obama walking in front of the White House.

The first in a series of meetings to decide concrete enforcement terms for President Obama's digital "Privacy Bill of Rights" has just been announced for July 12, 2012, and its focus is on mobile apps.

The National Communications and Telecommunication Administration (U.S. Department of Commerce) has decided that it's time to put President Obama's Privacy Bill of Rights into practice.

To begin, they've just invited all "privacy stakeholders" to "generate robust input" for the first consumer data transparency code of conduct.

NTIA has selected mobile app transparency as the focus of the first privacy multi-stakeholder process.

Multi-stakeholders are defined as consumer groups, advertisers, and Internet companies.

"Although other possible topics were suggested and may be pursued in future multi-stakeholder convenings, the mobile app transparency topic presents a strong opportunity for stakeholders to reach consensus on a code of conduct in a reasonable time frame," the NTIA said in its announcement.

The NTIA's first invitation to comment, in March, saw an overwhelming amount of concern about mobile applications because

(...) practices surrounding the disclosure of consumer data privacy practices do not appear to have kept pace with rapid developments in technology and business models.

Perhaps that's in part owing to widespread awareness about Apple's mobile tracking lawsuit, which it has failed to fend off.

The now-famous lawsuit, still in progress, was filed in April, and 18 companies were sued over app privacy including Apple, Facebook, Google, Path, Beluga, Yelp, Burbn, Instagram, Foursquare Labs, (the now-defunct) Gowalla, Foodspotting, Hipster, LinkedIn, Rovio Mobile, ZeptoLab, Chillingo, Electronics Arts, and Kik Interactive.

The lawsuit raised awareness that innocuous seeming apps like Instagram, Foursquare, Foodspotting, and Yelp scrape phones to send names, e-mail addresses and/or phone numbers from users' address books to their servers.

Instagram and Foursquare began to notify users with a permission prompt only after the Path debacle, according to VentureBeat.

A second, similar privacy lawsuit hasrecently been filed against Apple, Pandora, and The Weather Channel over user location data.

The NTIA multi-stakeholder privacy meeting will decide a code of conduct for app makers and much more: its intent is to create a blueprint for data transparency and also make a clear set of rules for app makers to stay within to remain out of trouble a la privacy lawsuits.

When the Obama administration released its comprehensive blueprint to improve consumers' data privacy protections in February, The White House requested that NTIA ask stakeholders -- companies, privacy advocates, consumer groups, and technology experts -- to develop enforceable codes of conduct to specify how the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights will be applied in specific contexts.

A wide range of multi-stakeholders are invited to contribute. About who this affects, NTIA writes:

The issue of mobile app transparency potentially impacts a range of industry participants, including: developers of mobile apps; providers of sophisticated interactive services for mobile devices (such as those utilizing HTML5 to access mobile APIs); and mobile app platforms, among others.

This is only the first in a series of meetings that will address other areas of consumer data privacy.

The meeting is in Washington, D.C., and NTIA has detailed:

The July 12, 2012, multi-stakeholder meeting will begin at 9:30 a.m and is expected to end no later than 4:30 p.m.

The meeting will be held in the Washington, D.C., metro area; NTIA will announce the venue no later than fifteen (15) days before the meeting, and sooner if possible.

The meeting is open to all interested stakeholders, will be Web cast, and is open to the press.

How to make money on mobile, in three easy steps

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CNET News Molly Rants How to make money on mobile, in three easy steps Molly Wood has written a lot about how it's hard to make money on mobile. Here are some suggestions for how to mix up the perfect mobile money-making cocktail.

by Molly Wood June 1, 2012 12:00 AM PDT Follow @mollywood

Earlier this week, I wrote about how Facebook is in danger from a new kind of social network, one that's born mobile and figures out how to make money on that mobile usage.

I figured, in response to many questions and comments, it was only fair to get a little wonky for a moment about who actually is making money on mobile, or how a site or startup might try a mix of potentially successful strategies in the future. Here are my guesses.

How to make money on mobile

First, the only apps and companies making significant money on mobile right now are making most of that money off in-app purchases. The apps are free, and if you want upgrades like extra jewels, more levels, additional features and so on, you pay small amounts of money over time. Research house IHS speculates that in-app purchasing would generate $5.6 billion in revenue in 2012, up from $970 million in 2011. That number would equal fully 64 percent of app revenue.

And in-app purchases can take all kinds of forms: it doesn't just have to be buying extra jewels in Bejeweled 2 or the Mighty Eagle to get you out of your Angry Birds jam. It's a popular option in photo filter apps, fitness apps like Skimble are trying it for additional workouts, and the model works fine for subscriptions, as well.

Just buy your way out of trouble, with Mighty Eagle.

(Credit:Rovio)

Amazon just started testing in-app purchasing, and while it appears that only 2 percent of Android apps offer in-app buying, that really just means it's kind of an untapped market. It's a proven winner, too: 72 percent of revenue from App Store titles on iOS come from apps with in-app purchasing.

So, that's one obvious mixer in the money-making cocktail we're creating here.

The next is retail and leads: a company gets paid because users click on coupons, take advantage of a local deal, or buy things that are aggregated on a mobile site or app. I know Groupon's current stock price would seem to indicate that local deals are a dead end, but I've never seen a busier cul-de-sac. There's still something to the idea of local offers -- maybe not local deals that feel a little off, somehow, but to the concept of letting you know what's around you when you've got your nose glued to your smartphone while you're walking.

Plus, there are in-app commerce opportunities galore. Apps like Karma, which we profiled at South by Southwest, have a simple premise: aggregate products, make it super easy and social for you to buy gifts for people, and then get paid every time you buy one of said gifts. (Why Facebook, for example, doesn't have gift-giving integrated all on its own is just beyond me.)

Start imagining a fun, easy-to-use app that's social, offers in-app upgrades, and lets you buy really great curated items either as gifts or based on your interest and location...and you start feeling like you've got a winner on your hands.

Social gift-giving app Karma lets you send actual, real-life tasteful gifts to your Facebook friends.

(Credit:Karma)

Then, of course, you've got the booze in the shaker: ads. Advertising is still the biggest moneymaker in mobile -- it's just had a slow takeoff. You can't blame Facebook entirely for not making any money on mobile (although they should have seen the mobile shift coming and made some alternate plans). Mobile advertising accounts for just 29 percent of mobile revenues because advertisers have been slow to jump in the pool. That means, as Mary Meeker pointed out this week at All Things D, that there is massive growth potential in mobile advertising.

Right now, advertisers are concerned that maybe mobile ad tracking isn't as detailed as Web tracking; publishers are figuring out how one ad in an app or on a mobile Web site can make up for five or 10 ads on a full-sized Web page; everyone is trying to figure out mobile CPMs and targeting that isn't too creepy and how to work with ad networks that can sometimes be more trouble than they're worth.

But as I said earlier this week, these issues will sort themselves out, especially as advertisers and publishers start to see how much money is really on the table. Maybe that money will come in smaller increments, and it will take a creative combination of money-making strategies. But it'll happen; only question is who will get the proportions right first.

Topics: Miscellaneous, Social networking Tags: Android, in-app purchases, mobile monetization, Molly Wood, local deals, rant, mobile ads, Amazon, Facebook, iOS, mobile Molly Wood Molly Wood is an executive editor at CNET, author of the Molly Rants blog, and host of the upcoming tech show, Always On. When she's not enraging fanboys of all stripes, she can be found offering tech opinions on CBS and elsewhere, and offering opinions on everything else to anyone who will listen.

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About Molly Rants

You feel the fury, and Molly Wood blogs about it. Technology makes the world better--except when it doesn't. And when it doesn't, Molly Wood is here to rail against injustice and help find better solutions. It's constructive criticism--most of the time.

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Peliculas Online

How to make money on mobile, in three easy steps

Molly Wood has written a lot about how it's hard to make money on mobile. Here are some suggestions for how to mix up the perfect mobile money-making cocktail.

June 1, 2012 12:00 AM PDT

Earlier this week, I wrote about how Facebook is in danger from a new kind of social network, one that's born mobile and figures out how to make money on that mobile usage.

I figured, in response to many questions and comments, it was only fair to get a little wonky for a moment about who actually is making money on mobile, or how a site or startup might try a mix of potentially successful strategies in the future. Here are my guesses.

How to make money on mobile

First, the only apps and companies making significant money on mobile right now are making most of that money off in-app purchases. The apps are free, and if you want upgrades like extra jewels, more levels, additional features and so on, you pay small amounts of money over time. Research house IHS speculates that in-app purchasing would generate $5.6 billion in revenue in 2012, up from $970 million in 2011. That number would equal fully 64 percent of app revenue.

And in-app purchases can take all kinds of forms: it doesn't just have to be buying extra jewels in Bejeweled 2 or the Mighty Eagle to get you out of your Angry Birds jam. It's a popular option in photo filter apps, fitness apps like Skimble are trying it for additional workouts, and the model works fine for subscriptions, as well.

Just buy your way out of trouble, with Mighty Eagle.

(Credit: Rovio)

Amazon just started testing in-app purchasing, and while it appears that only 2 percent of Android apps offer in-app buying, that really just means it's kind of an untapped market. It's a proven winner, too: 72 percent of revenue from App Store titles on iOS come from apps with in-app purchasing.

So, that's one obvious mixer in the money-making cocktail we're creating here.

The next is retail and leads: a company gets paid because users click on coupons, take advantage of a local deal, or buy things that are aggregated on a mobile site or app. I know Groupon's current stock price would seem to indicate that local deals are a dead end, but I've never seen a busier cul-de-sac. There's still something to the idea of local offers -- maybe not local deals that feel a little off, somehow, but to the concept of letting you know what's around you when you've got your nose glued to your smartphone while you're walking.

Plus, there are in-app commerce opportunities galore. Apps like Karma, which we profiled at South by Southwest, have a simple premise: aggregate products, make it super easy and social for you to buy gifts for people, and then get paid every time you buy one of said gifts. (Why Facebook, for example, doesn't have gift-giving integrated all on its own is just beyond me.)

Start imagining a fun, easy-to-use app that's social, offers in-app upgrades, and lets you buy really great curated items either as gifts or based on your interest and location...and you start feeling like you've got a winner on your hands.

Social gift-giving app Karma lets you send actual, real-life tasteful gifts to your Facebook friends.

(Credit: Karma)

Then, of course, you've got the booze in the shaker: ads. Advertising is still the biggest moneymaker in mobile -- it's just had a slow takeoff. You can't blame Facebook entirely for not making any money on mobile (although they should have seen the mobile shift coming and made some alternate plans). Mobile advertising accounts for just 29 percent of mobile revenues because advertisers have been slow to jump in the pool. That means, as Mary Meeker pointed out this week at All Things D, that there is massive growth potential in mobile advertising.

Right now, advertisers are concerned that maybe mobile ad tracking isn't as detailed as Web tracking; publishers are figuring out how one ad in an app or on a mobile Web site can make up for five or 10 ads on a full-sized Web page; everyone is trying to figure out mobile CPMs and targeting that isn't too creepy and how to work with ad networks that can sometimes be more trouble than they're worth.

But as I said earlier this week, these issues will sort themselves out, especially as advertisers and publishers start to see how much money is really on the table. Maybe that money will come in smaller increments, and it will take a creative combination of money-making strategies. But it'll happen; only question is who will get the proportions right first.

Peliculas Online