According to numerous sources close to the company, Yahoo is offering to pay $30 million to $40 million for the maker of address book apps and plugins.

That’s below the more than $40 million raised by the San Francisco-based startup from a variety of venture capitalists, including First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures and Khosla Ventures. Launched in 2008, Xobni — which is “inbox” spelled backwards — received its initial round of funding in 2006 from Y Combinator.

Sources inside Yahoo said that, as envisioned at the current acquisition offer, Xobni common shareholders might not get any of their investment back over preferred ones, which might hold up or even scotch any deal. Yahoo could certainly offer more, although sources said that seemed unlikely.

As with most of these purchases, any deal might also simply fall apart. But other sources noted that the company has been shopped to several different companies and that Yahoo has offered the best price and is the most natural home for it, given its strong email offerings.

Sources said the deal was of particular interest of Yahoo co-founder David Filo, who still plays a key tech role at Yahoo and has worked previously with Xobni’s CEO Jeff Bonforte. Before he headed Xobni, Bonforte was VP of social search and the real-time communications for Yahoo.

Bonforte would certainly be a nice re-hire for the Silicon Valley Internet giant, which is in need of leadership in the key communications area.

AllThingsD.com had previously reported on Yahoo’s interest in Xobni. It has been mulling the company — as well as a spate of others all over the tech landscape — for a while.

As Liz Gannes noted, Xobni “could be a fit for Yahoo’s mail and productivity tools, as it neatly creates automated profiles for each email contact with correspondence history and social network data.” Its products have expanded from just an Microsoft Outlook plugin to supporting Google’s Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Apple’s iCloud, and it also offers Smartr Contacts apps for Android and iPhone.

If the deal is complete, it continues Yahoo’s buying binge under CEO Marissa Mayer, who appears to be using M&A as a talent recruitment tool — essentially, if you can’t hire them, buy their company.

Among her recent purchases are a spate of mobile app companies, for which she has only spent $16 million in total, with the exception of Summly for a lot more. And, of course, she also bought Tumblr for cool $1.1 billion.

But Google, in a statement released on Friday evening in response, isn’t satisfied with Facebook’s deal with the Feds.

“We have always believed that it’s important to differentiate between different types of government requests,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “We already publish criminal requests separately from National Security Letters. Lumping the two categories together would be a step back for users. Our request to the government is clear: to be able to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately.”

Facebook’s data disclosure deal with the federal government comes on the heels of a knock-down, drag-out battle behind the scenes with lawmakers in Washington over the past week. Consumers were on high alert after reports from the Guardian and the Washington Post suggested that major tech companies in the Valley were sharing private customer data with the government via a National Security Agency program, codenamed PRISM.

Companies across the Valley lobbied hard, both in public and private, to be able to disclose to consumers the number of requests for information they received from the government, and how many of those requests they’ve complied with. Google was the most outspoken of the bunch, with other companies like Facebook and Yahoo following suit.

What Google seems to be arguing here, however, is that Facebook’s deal isn’t a win for consumers who want more transparency. As Facebook’s deal stands, tech companies are allowed to release information requests in aggregate and within specific ranges — meaning you can’t drill down on which agencies are making the requests. In other words, with the numbers Facebook is providing, you’re seeing requests from state, local and federal agencies, and there’s no way to differentiate the quantity from each.

Microsoft followed Facebook’s lead on Friday evening, releasing its own aggregate numbers for information requests for the six month period ending December 31, 2012. It too, however, agreed with the overall sentiment desiring greater transparency.

“With more time, we hope [the U.S. Government] will take further steps,” Microsoft VP and deputy general counsel John Frank wrote in a company blog post. “Transparency alone may not be enough to restore public confidence, but it’s a great place to start.”

Update 9:20 pm PT: Twitter legal director Ben Lee issued a statement via tweet on Friday evening, largely echoing Google’s sentiment:

“We agree with @Google: It’s important to be able to publish numbers of national security requests — including FISA disclosures — separately.”

One source said Facebook continues to fight for greater transparency. Google will do the same; however, it has not come to an agreement with the federal government in its own separate discussions.

After AllThingsD.com reported earlier today that Facebook had been in advanced discussions with the federal government to allow it to disclose requests under national security laws, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), to the public, sources said that Google has appeared to be following its lead and is similarly engaged in talks to do the same.

This parallel effort would allow the Internet giants, as well as other digital companies, to disclose aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, as well as their scope.

This controversial issue has occupied Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. over the last week, after a series of news reports about the level of U.S. government scrutiny of telephonic and online communications of all kinds.

While sources noted that the discussions might not result in any action, it appears as if they are in advanced stages and could result in more robust disclosures being allowed if agreements can be made.

Pressure to take action has escalated ever since myriad allegations that top Silicon Valley Internet giants had given authorities unprecedented access to their huge stores of information via a National Security Agency program called PRISM. The companies, also including Microsoft and Yahoo, have denied that kind of “direct” access, but cannot escape the spotlight placed on how much information they are all compelled by the government to hand over legally.

That’s why all of them — facing consumer backlash and a big hit to their reputations — have called on the government to allow them to lift restrictions on reporting national security requests for information.

Google has been most vocal in calling for changes, while also taking to government officials behind the scenes, as Facebook had already been doing. The two companies, though, are not working together, and are having these discussions separately.

How much leverage the pair have together or apart is unclear. Collectively, they could threaten to sue the government to allow the disclosures, or be more publicly pugnacious about cooperation, as Twitter has done.

Instead, they are employing both public statements and private outreach to the Justice Department, the NSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The goal is to be able to release more accurate information, typically via a “transparency report,” which discloses legal queries received.

But strict non-disclosure rules for the most important ones, from FISA, prevent the companies from telling users what is being given to the government.

Earlier this week, Google’s top lawyer David Drummond published an open letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI director Robert Mueller Tuesday asking to be able to publish information on such requests.

Drummond noted that the government should be able to “publish in our Transparency Report aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures — in terms of both the number we receive and their scope.”

He added: “Google’s numbers would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made. Google has nothing to hide.”

Maybe we will see soon enough, sources tell me, including the possibility that the numbers could be available within a few days.

“As Mark said last week, we strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe. In the past, we have questioned the value of releasing a transparency report that, because of exactly these types of government restrictions on disclosure, is necessarily incomplete and therefore potentially misleading to users,” Ullyot said in a statement.

“We would welcome the opportunity to provide a transparency report that allows us to share with those who use Facebook around the world a complete picture of the government requests we receive, and how we respond. We urge the United States government to help make that possible by allowing companies to include information about the size and scope of national security requests we receive, and look forward to publishing a report that includes that information,” he said.

Similar requests were made by Google and Microsoft earlier in the day.

Under current legislation, it is illegal for companies to disclose that they’ve been served with a request.

Yet the tech giants have faced a difficult situation over the past week, after the Guardian and the Washington Post published stories claiming that companies such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft were working in cooperation with the National Security Agency to deliver private consumer information — including emails and conversations — to the federal government. (The stories have since been changed, though it is unclear what role Google, Facebook and others have played in dealing with the NSA.)

If allowed to disclose said numbers, Google chief legal officer David Drummond argued in an earlier statement, it would “clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made.”

Bloomberg is launching Bloomberg Beta, a new $75 million venture capital tech fund that will be headed by former IGN head Roy Bahat.

The newly minted VC is charged with investing in and also creating early-stage startups for the media and financial news giant.

“Set up as a true fund, Bloomberg Beta will invest for financial return, selecting companies independently of their current or future business relationship with Bloomberg L.P.,” said the company in a press release.

The independent fund — with Bloomberg as the only limited partner — will initially focus on data, technology platforms, content discovery, media distribution, as well as networks and communities, human-computer interaction and “radically new organizational models.”

I am not sure exactly what that is, but the longtime tech exec Bahat — he is also chairman of Ouya, along with his stint running the News Corp.-owned gaming network — has already invested in a range of companies, including Newsle, MkII, Nodejitsu, Codecademy, Errplane and ProsperWorks.

Other Bloomberg Beta partners include Karin Klein, who was an exec at Bloomberg; and James Cham, who comes to the fund from Trinity Ventures.

Bloomberg has had some experience in investing, having backed an internal effort, Bloomberg Ventures, which is no longer in operation.

That’s because Levchin’s newest start-up involves an iPhone app aimed toward helping women get pregnant.

Called Glow, the company has built a fertility tracker that uses cutting-edge data analytics and published information on ovulation cycle forecasts to help advise a woman on the best times for her to conceive.

Users must enter in personal details about their menstrual cycles, their body temperatures and other habits to inform the Glow app. According to Levchin, the app adjusts to the individual as she logs more and more data.

Then, it gives the user — and her partner, if he or she opts to use a version of the app — insight into her fertility window.

The next step is on the part of the users, and it’s advisable that the iPhone might be put aside for that part.

Levchin appeared onstage today at the D: AllThings Digital conference to demo the free app for Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.

Onstage, Levchin logged into Glow as his wife, told the app that he and his wife were trying for their third child, entered in menstrual cycle information and was presented with a swipe-through calendar that is color-coded based on peak fertility times.

Another data point that goes into the app is the texture of the cervical mucus, which Levchin explained is an important indicator in fertility tracking.

Glow also offers clever prompts and notifications. For example, Levchin said, the app might remind a woman on an especially fertile day that it’s a good time to wear nice underwear. Her partner might receive a notification on the same day to bring flowers home.

“Many of the reasons why people find it difficult, when they’re keeping on the clock, is because it becomes unpleasurable when it’s a routine,” he said in the pre-interview.

To say Levchin’s Glow is well timed is both an understatement and a bad pun. The topic of women’s roles in the workforce and at home have been pushed to the forefront of conversation in recent months, thanks to published works like Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” and Anne-Marie Slaughter’s cover story for the Atlantic. Three weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal featured an editorial by a woman who chose to freeze her eggs at age 36, spending $50,000 over the course of the two-year process.

Due to a variety of socioeconomic factors, more women are having children later in life. A 2010 Census Bureau study called “Fertility of American Women: 2010” compared childbearing patterns with those in women from 10 years earlier. The study found that a “delayer boom” was under way, in which highly educated women — those with a college degree or above — were more inclined to delay childbearing into their 30s than those with less education.

When I asked Levchin whether the app was inspired by personal experience, he said, “My wife and I were lucky. We had our children without any issues.” (Levchin and his wife, Nellie, have two kids.)

“But we have people close to us that have gone through multiple IVF trials,” he added, “and we’ve heard them say, ‘We’re not going to put my wife’s body through this anymore.’”

To be sure, there are many other apps available that track women’s periods and ovulation cycles.

But Levchin’s goal, ultimately, isn’t just to help women get pregnant. He believes arming the average citizen with data about his or her health will ultimately cut down on health care costs in the long run. He said he plans to eventually apply this financial model to other areas of health.

Last month, at D: Dive Into Mobile, an entrepreneur named Geoff Clapp stood onstage and demoed another app aimed at offering accessible health care. Called Better, this iPhone-only app connects users directly to the Mayo Clinic’s vast database of health information and, for a monthly fee, will also put you in touch with a Mayo Clinic nurse or doctor for consultation.

At the top of the tiered pricing plan is what Clapp referred to as the “Black Card” service, referencing the American Express card for the uber-wealthy, which includes access to emergency health care.

“We’re taking the best of Silicon Valley and best of clinical health and making it happen,” Clapp said in an interview at the time.

Unlike Glow, the Better app is HIPAA-compliant and pre-tax dollars can be put toward a monthly Better subscription.

There will be some, of course, who are dubious about an iPhone app’s ability to make a difference in the current healthcare system in the U.S. This sentiment is probably best encapsulated in a recent New Yorker story by George Packer, which quotes the Belarusian, dark-side-of-the-Internet scholar Evgeny Morozov as saying, “They think that anything that helps you bypass institutions is, by default, empowering or liberating. You might not be able to pay for health care … but if you have an app on your phone that alerts you to the fact that you need to exercise more, or you aren’t eating healthily enough, they think they are solving the problem.”

Levchin is underscoring his commitment to Glow, and to the new age of digital health, by contributing a million dollars of his own money to a mutual insurance fund that goes to pay for fertility treatments for those who fail to get pregnant after 10 months of using the app.

Users also have the option to contribute $50 a month to the fund, a hundred percent of which will then be put toward their treatments. If they do get pregnant, they forfeit the funds.

In the case of the former, Glow will recommend fertility treatment facilities based on users’ locations.

“The rates of success from facilities is required to be published by law, but most people don’t know how or where to access that,” Levchin said. “We have data on the best places.”

Full D11 Conference Coverage

In a key hire, Jawbone said today that it had hired Mindy Mount, a top corporate VP at Microsoft, as its president.

The move by the San Francisco-based maker of wireless, music and wearable devices is part of what has been a major upgrading of its management and board. Recently, Jawbone added Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Rob Wiesenthal of Warner Music as directors.

Jawbone has also recently done a big acquisition — purchasing BodyMedia, a wearable health and fitness company, for $100 million. The move comes just a couple months after it bought data and digital-design companies Massive Health and Visere.

All this expansion requires tight organizational efforts and Mount has a lot of financial and operational experience, having held several key jobs at the software giant. She was most recently corporate VP and CFO at Microsoft’s Online Services Division, which includes Bing, MSN and Microsoft Advertising. Before that she held a similar job at the Entertainment and Devices Division, which has the Xbox, Zune and Windows Phone units.

Previous to that, Mount ran AOL’s U.K. unit, worked in strategy at Time Warner and also was an exec at Morgan Stanley. She has an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business and an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In an interview today, Mount said that what attracted her to Jawbone was the challenge of scaling the fast-growth company, which is helmed by CEO and co-founder Hosain Rahman.

“Right out of the block, I’ll be spending time on business operations, since the scale and scope and complexity of Jawbone has really increased,” she said. “What really attracted me to the role is that it is a really meaty one … It’s a company with great products, where I can come in and have real impact, because consumer electronics companies really have to execute.”

Jawbone products include Jawbone wireless headsets, Jambox speakers and the Up personal fitness wristbands. The company has raised a lot of funding, totaling about $210 million from such venture firms as Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, as well as Deutsche Telekom, investor Yuri Milner and others.

Thanks to app tweaks and software updates, it’s easier than ever for you to hand your photographic history over to the company of your choice.

Consider this: Take a photo using your iPhone, and Apple can instantly upload your snapshot to your iCloud account, where it’s accessible via any of your connected Apple devices. Google can do that, too, with Android phones and your Google+ account. There’s Microsoft and SkyDrive integration, Facebook and album image uploading. Not to mention others like Amazon Cloud Drive and Dropbox.

Google doesn’t want to be left behind, as evidenced by the company’s latest robust photo offering. The Google+ team dropped a massive update to its photo-editing capabilities at its I/O developer conference on Wednesday, bringing a series of professional-grade photo-editing tools to anyone who uses Google+.

The advantage here, Google would say, is that while everyone may offer free online photo storage in some capacity, Google is the one with the consumer editing suite. But you don’t have to be an expert-level Photoshop user to work with Google’s new tools. Auto-enhance, auto-highlight and even “auto-awesome” leverage the power of Google’s algorithms to choose the best pictures out of the many you’ve uploaded, and automatically make them look better than they did before.

The point is simple: The more you’ve invested yourself in a service — be it by filling out and continuously updating your profile, or through uploading photo after photo to its cloud-based storage — the less likely you are to fall away from using it. If all of your memories are stuck inside of, say, Facebook, you’ve got an online repository, an album to point others to in the future or to re-download as you see necessary. And, perhaps because of the emotional nature of the material, you’re less likely to even want to move it in the first place.

It’s also the type of media where platforms see some of their highest engagement from users. Facebook, I’ve been told, sees far and away more activity and engagement from users focused on photos in the stream than they do from text-based status updates. Google+, too, sees high engagement from in-stream pictures.

Users aside, big data companies like Google and Facebook gain reams of information from the photos you’ve sent in. Each file is another piece of location metadata to be registered, another image to identify and tag using facial-recognition tech, another way of recognizing the people and places you interact with most in your daily life.

So now, when all companies are offering similar uploading options and essentially unlimited free online storage, it’s up to competitors to differentiate to try and stand out.

That’s easier said than done. Facebook obviously has its billion-strong network (not to mention the rapidly growing Instagram), where many of your friends already likely have a presence. Apple touts accessibility and safety via only a certain set of devices. And Google+, while its usage and engagement stats are constantly a point of contention, will at least offer a simple, powerful photo tool set that gives any amateur photographer the ability to make their vacation pictures look a whole lot better.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter what winds up luring you to one service over another. What matters is how they keep you coming back to upload more of your photos, more of your memories. Perhaps Google’s new editing-feature suite will give it the edge it needs to stay in the game.

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That’s what Bloomberg CEO Dan Doctoroff told employees in a companywide email following a complaint from Goldman Sachs that accused Bloomberg News journalists of using private subscriber information pulled from company data terminals to break news.

According to reports, Bloomberg journalists routinely gathered information from the company’s financial data terminals, which are widely used on Wall Street. While reporters weren’t able to see market-sensitive details like securities-level or trading data, they were able to see customer contact, login and usage data, and chat information between subscribers and customer service representatives.

Far from hard-core “big data,” but easily enough to gather insight into a trader’s interests and thinking. Indeed, sources at J. P. Morgan tell the Financial Times that the firm believes that Bloomberg reporters used login information to determine whether Bruno Iksil, the so-called “London Whale,” had left the bank. Other sources tell CNBC that a former Bloomberg employee used the company’s data terminals to view usage information on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

Sources say that a preliminary investigation into the incident by Bloomberg found that hundreds of reporters had misused the company’s terminals by trolling for scoops.

Just ask yourself this: How much would a hedge fund pay for the information Bloomberg journalists had?

— felix salmon (@felixsalmon) May 11, 2013

Bloomberg has since restricted its newsroom staff’s access to customer data, following the complaint from Goldman. It has also created a new client-data compliance officer to oversee customer data-security issues. Meanwhile, both the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department are said to be scrutinizing the incidents.

Dow Jones & Co., publisher of AllThingsD and The Wall Street Journal, competes with Bloomberg in financial news and information.

Doctoroff’s note in full, below:

Since our founding more than 30 years ago, the proper safeguarding of customer data has been a central tenet of Bloomberg’s culture.

A Bloomberg client recently raised a concern that Bloomberg News reporters had access to limited customer relationship management data through their use of the Bloomberg terminal. Although we have long made limited customer relationship data available to our journalists, we realize this was a mistake.

Having recognized this mistake, we took immediate action. Last month we changed our policy so that all reporters only have access to the same customer relationship data available to our clients. Additionally, we decided to further centralize our data security efforts by appointing Steve Ross, one of our most senior executives, to the new position of Client Data Compliance Officer. Steve is responsible for reviewing and, if necessary, enhancing protocols which among other things will continue to ensure that our news operations never have access to confidential customer data.

To be clear, the limited customer relationship data previously available to our reporters never included access to our trading, portfolio, monitor, blotter or other related systems or our clients’ messages. Moreover, reporters could not see news stories that clients read, or the securities they viewed. Bloomberg has very strict data security policies in place, in addition to significant and rigorous training, processes and protocols. Upon hiring, all Bloomberg employees enter into confidentiality provisions, including Bloomberg News.

Client trust is our highest priority and the cornerstone of our business, and we are deeply committed to ensuring the complete integrity and confidentiality of our clients’ data in all situations and at all times.

Dan

Aio Wireless (pronounced Ay-Oh) is launching Thursday in three cities — Houston, Orlando and Tampa.

Plans range from $35 to $70 a month, and devices offered include smartphones from ZTE and Samsung, as well as the Nokia Lumia 620 (a Windows Phone model that previously hadn’t found its way stateside). Customers can also bring their own devices to the network.

It also has the iPhone at standard unsubsidized prices, meaning that a 16 gigabyte iPhone 5 sells for $649. At the other end of the spectrum, the ZTE Prelude, an entry-level Android device, is priced at $49.

Aio’s website has a decidedly non-corporate feel, with a woodgrain background and promises of being “simple” and “delightful” — two words not always associated with wireless carriers.

AT&T is taking another page from T-Mobile’s playbook, offering unlimited data with all its plans, but pricing the different options based on how much of that data customers want at full speed.

The heftiest plan offers a whopping 7GB of high-speed data for $70, while a 100MB plan costs $35 a month.

AT&T is not alone in establishing separate brands aimed at different segments of the market. Sprint, for example, sells prepaid service under both the Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile brands. Sprint has used both to try out different pricing and marketing tactics than it uses with its main brand.

In a Tuesday ruling, the Berlin Regional Court declared eight of the 15 clauses in Apple’s data use policy invalid because they don’t comply with German law, and forbade the company from doing things like asking customers for “global consent” to use their data.

Since Apple had already agreed to abandon the other seven clauses earlier this year, the court’s ruling means the company now has to either adjust its privacy policy to accommodate Germany’s requirements, develop an entirely new one specific to the country, or prevail on its likely inevitable appeal of the ruling. Apple declined comment.

It lasts all of 60 seconds, and depicts a boy — made up of individual atoms himself — encountering a single atom that he befriends and throws like a ball. He then bounces up and down on a tiny trampoline made up of atoms, then throws the original atom into the sky, where it erupts into a tiny commercial for the company that produced it: IBM.

What’s going on here is this: Scientists at IBM’s Almaden Research Lab in San Jose, Calif., have figured out a way to precisely move and manipulate individual atoms. To do it they’re using a big piece of equipment called a scanning tunneling microscope that weighs two tons and operates at a temperature of minus 268 degrees Celsius (or 450.5 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale, according to the Unit Convert widget on my Mac). In the world of physics and nanotechnology, this thing is a big deal and led the two IBM inventors to share the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1986. (Here’s a video history about it.)

Using a computer, researchers used a tiny needle that moved along a surface of a postage-stamp sized bit of copper. The needle would draw within one nanometer (a billionth of a meter) of the individual atoms and thus “feel” them so it could then move them into place and shift them around frame by frame in order to make the stop-motion action happen. The film you’re about to see is made up of 242 such frames using not one but two of those scanning tunneling microscopes. The atoms have been magnified about 100 million times from their original size.

Before they tried animation, and in the tradition of humorous art that sometimes appears on the surface of individual computer chips, the folks at IBM experimented with illustrations made of atoms. Among them was a rendering of the Starship Enterprise from “Star Trek” that’s not much more than a single nanometer tall. (Pictured at right; click the image to make it bigger.) Before that, way back in 1989, the big brains at Big Blue were able to spell out the company name using 35 individual atoms of xenon.

So why is IBM using atoms to make crude animations? As has long been the case, everything inside computers is getting smaller all the time. According to Moore’s law — named for Intel co-founder Gordon Moore — individual transistors on chips tend to shrink every 18 to 24 months. So does the amount of space needed to store individual bits of data. Right now, IBM says, it takes about a million atoms to do that, but it can see a trajectory leading to a point in the future to where that number can be reduced to 12 atoms. At that scale, the media to store information will be so compact that every movie ever made, including “A Boy And His Atom,” could be stored on a device the size of your iPhone. That means the ability to move and manipulate individual atoms with great precision will eventually come in handy.

“Steamboat Willie” it’s not, but here for the first time on public display, is IBM’s “A Boy And His Atom.”

And here is the obligatory “Making Of …” video that explains how and why the movie was made, including an interesting detail: What moving individual atoms sounds like.

Image copyright Cartoonresource

However, there is a revolution brewing in the enterprise and it’s starting right at the desk of the chief marketing officer (CMO). The way that products are purchased is being disrupted, and this is forcing the CMO to catch up. Buyers are now in control of the buying process and their behaviors are growing increasingly unpredictable. As such, marketers must strive to be everywhere buyers are; and to do so, marketers are starting to use data-driven automation to reach and address the needs of prospects wherever they may be in the buying process.

The changes that this revolution will bring over the next decade to support new marketing strategies will drive tens of billions of dollars of investment and innovation to the bottom lines of hundreds of thousands of companies around the world. The top marketing technology players — including Salesforce.com, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Google and Adobe — see the impending fight, and the war to own the marketing technology market has begun to play out. Battle lines are being drawn, and they center on the customer relationship management (CRM) system.

CRM as the system of record

Salesforce has been spending much of the last decade building its CRM system. Since more than 75 percent of the companies that use Salesforce are B2B, the company’s CRM platform is arguably the system of record for the B2B marketer. This puts Salesforce, as the fastest-growing scaled vendor in the space, in the driver’s seat to become the platform where marketers keep their treasure trove of prospect and customer information and interaction data. Oracle, NetSuite, IBM, Google, SAP — and arguably even Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter — don’t want to see Salesforce have the lock on such valuable data. To fend off the Salesforce threat, these companies are developing their own audience data strategies, ranging from aggressive acquisitions to building cookie data exchanges, or even building their own social networks (if they’re not one already). As each realizes, the vendor that controls audience data “wins” because all marketing decisions are keyed off of this information.

With the CRM system as the system of record, seamlessly connecting all of the marketing systems in an enterprise, executing programs and then measuring success becomes possible — once the right data can be plugged in. For example, today’s marketing automation systems sync with CRM systems so that as a salesperson moves prospects from leads to qualified opportunities, the marketing system can automatically send a different messages to each prospect, depending on what stage they are in within the marketing funnel.

However, integration currently ends there and the marketing organization is unable to easily tie the opportunity for unique messaging into any other marketing channel — such as SEM, social media or display advertising. The next step needed is an integration of all of these activities. In the above example, once the salesperson moves a prospect from a lead to a qualified opportunity within the CRM system, the move would trigger display advertising and social media marketing that syncs creative and messages across all channels in real time, and then adds the prospect’s interaction with each mechanism back to the CRM record. Scalable, measurable, one-to-one marketing that requires no additional marketing resource is the result.

What’s next?

The incentives for marketers to realize the holy grail of right message, right place and right time are clearly in place. So what’s getting in the way of all this progress from happening immediately? Two big areas have slowed progress: Integration of data across multiple systems in the enterprise, and privacy. The vendors duking it out for ownership of data — Salesforce, Oracle, et al — have begun work with data platforms to solve the integration issue. Privacy, however, remains a concern. The argument goes: If consumers don’t know what you’re using this information for, you shouldn’t be using it. This is a fair and reasonable argument, and in the CRM world where customer and prospect information is tied to personally identifiable information, it is going to be important that consumers opt in to the information being collected by the marketer. The tradeoff is similar to the one made today in loyalty programs such as grocery store or airline frequent flier programs: You give a company the ability to track your purchases and incentivize you to buy more through discounts and coupons, and they will give you a better experience as a customer.

The future of enterprise marketing is one in which consumers benefit from transparency concerning where and how their data is being used, and through improved, more relevant experiences from vendors, service providers and favorite retailers.

To this end, expect the battle for data to continue as enterprise giants fill their platforms while trying to deliver the CMO increasingly sophisticated and integrated capabilities. Unprecedented efficiency in marketing will result, increasing growth and profits for the enterprise as more dollars become available for investment. The promise of true one-to-one and completely measurable marketing has been a long time in the making. It’s coming fast, and it’s going to transform the enterprise over the next decade.

Russell Glass, CEO of Bizo, is a serial technology entrepreneur, having founded or held senior positions at four venture-backed technology companies. Prior to Bizo, Russ led the marketing and product management teams at ZoomInfo, a business information search engine, where he sharpened his B2B marketing skill set and developed his love for business data.

The Bay Area-based private company has acquired BodyMedia, Inc., a 14-year-old Pittsburgh-based company that makes health-monitoring armbands.

The move comes just a couple months after Jawbone, which makes the wearable Up fitness band in addition to popular audio devices, acquired data and digital-design companies Massive Health and Visere.

Jawbone acquired BodyMedia for more than $100 million, according to people familiar with the deal, although both companies declined to give more specifics about the financials of the deal.

So what’s the appeal of BodyMedia for Jawbone? Unlike the Massive Health and Visere buys, which were mainly for talent acquisition, BodyMedia’s value lies in both the team and the company’s patents. BodyMedia has had more than 80 patents issued over the years, many in the area of multi-sensor technology. As a combined entity, BodyMedia and Jawbone will have over 300 patents issued and filed.

While the $130 Jawbone Up wristband does many things — it tracks activity levels and sleep patterns, and works with a compatible mobile app for Android and iOS to log food consumption — it lacks some of the high-tech sensors that BodyMedia’s products have.

“I think the first phase of this market has been about accelerometers and what those can do,” Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman said in an interview. “Now it’s about getting even more granular, and also, how we can get all that tech into an efficient form factor.”

To that point, BodyMedia’s armbands, which will continue to be sold for the time being, contain four different types of sensors, which measure your skin temperature, heat flux, galvanic skin response (GSR) and overall movement.

But compared with the wristband form factor of the Jawbone Up, the BodyMedia bands are bigger, bulkier products. Earlier this year, BodyMedia introduced a slimmed-down version of its health-tracking band, called the Core 2, to compete in the growing category of barely noticeable, 24/7 wearable fitness devices.

So can we expect to see a Jawbone wristband with GSR sensors anytime soon? “We’re working on lots of things,” was all Rahman would say, adding, “We’re exploring where we would see sensors working, and how we can put more and more on top of the body.”

The BodyMedia team will stay in Pittsburgh and will remain intact, both companies say. BodyMedia’s Chris Robins will no longer serve as CEO of the company, and will instead become the general manager of BodyMedia and a vice president of business development at Jawbone.

Jawbone also said today that it’s opening up its Up mobile software to ten different fitness-app makers, including RunKeeper, MyFitnessPal, LoseIt, Withings, Sleepio and IFTTT (for workout prompts). Jawbone Up users with iOS devices will now be able to share data to and from these partner apps with the Up app.

But for some people they’re a mystery. Why would you use a messaging app when your phone’s SMS text messaging function is fine enough for photos and text, or if you use iMessage on the iPhone?

The point of these new smartphone messaging apps is to go beyond that, by letting you send different kinds of media, connect easily and cheaply with international friends, and even send pictures of yourself that will self-combust a few seconds after they’ve been opened. They also create new, mini social networks that companies hope make users stick around.

These apps, for the most part, use data to send the messages, so they won’t add to your tally if you have a monthly limit on SMS through your wireless carrier.

This week, I channeled my inner teenager and dove into a handful of different messaging apps, including WhatsApp, Snapchat and a new one called Burn Note. I see some of the benefit to using these apps. Some features are useful, like being able to loop in friends who own various phones on the same messaging thread. Others are just fun, like the app that let me doodle on a Google search pic before sending it off to a friend.

But their usefulness depends a lot on whether your friends and family are using the same apps. Otherwise, the conversations in the apps stall, which happened to me. And it can be a little distracting, to say the least, to have messages flying through a second or third app on the phone.

Here’s a guide to help you evaluate how they work before you commit to using one.

Adding Multimedia to Messages

One of the most popular message apps available is WhatsApp, which has been around since 2009, and runs on iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows phones. It costs 99 cents to download, and WhatsApp has said that it plans to introduce a small annual fee to users in some countries.

WhatsApp is super simple in design, and yet it goes beyond regular old text messages with options to send — in addition to photos and videos — audio notes, contact cards and an active map image that pinpoints your location. It pulls in local business data, so I was able to get specific and message a friend my location at a Subway sandwich shop.

WhatsApp has a big international user base; two of my most active WhatsApp friends included a regular international traveler, who was in Vietnam at the time, and a friend from Canada.

WhatsApp worked fine for me, and I’ve continued to use it with at least one friend who regularly pings me through the app. My only gripe about the app was that the photos I took and sent through the app weren’t saved to my iPhone’s camera roll.

Another new app for multimedia is called MessageMe. MessageMe launched last month, and is available on iPhone and Android phones. Unlike WhatsApp, MessageMe is free to download. And MessageMe lets you doodle on the images you send. I sent an ailing co-worker a picture of chicken soup I found through Google search, and scribbled on it: “Feel better!”

MessageMe also allows you to send song excerpts directly through the app. From there, the recipient can buy the song from iTunes or Google Play.

Of the two, I used WhatsApp more, mostly because I had more friends using the service. But I prefer MessageMe’s design and features.

Making Your Messages Disappear

A growing trend in messaging is sending images and text that will vanish after the recipient has had the chance to view them — something that addresses some privacy concerns and raises other issues, like illicit-photo sharing among teen users.

A well-known app with this core feature is Snapchat. Free to download, it’s available on iOS and Android devices.

With Snapchat, you snap a picture or video from the app, and then determine the length of time the viewer can see it, from one to 10 seconds. You send it off, and shortly after the recipient opens the message, it disappears. If you want to get creative, you can also doodle or scribble text on the photo message. One friend sent me a Snapchat of his poker hand with the text “Not Winning.”

I just don’t understand why I’d use this on a regular basis, although I see the appeal for people leaving digital footprints they are worried about others seeing. Usually if I share a smartphone photo with friends, it’s because something made me think of them, or it’s a particularly cool image. And I’m okay with those people having that picture.

And, let’s say I did want to share a self-combusting pic: Snapchat users still have the ability to capture a “screen shot” of the image sent to them, if they’re quick enough.

A newer app that offers disappearing messages is Burn Note, which was spawned from an email service of the same name. These are text-only messages with a view time of up to 120 seconds. The messages first appear as black boxes. Pressing on your phone’s touchscreen will unveil the text within the boxes.

Burn Note lets you create a password for conversations as an additional layer to ensure privacy. There’s also a checkbox at the bottom of the app that’s meant to prevent messages from being copied, but I was still able to capture a screen shot of these messages.

The bottom line is, even if a messaging app promises to erase your messages for you, there are still ways in which they can be saved.

Payments and Group Messages

Remember GroupMe, the app that made group messaging easy and then was acquired by Skype (which was acquired by Microsoft) in 2011? This app is still around, and despite the fact that others have crowded into the same space, it has some new features that are worth checking out.

The main feature of GroupMe, which is free to use, is that friends with different devices can all be on the same thread. So, even if you have an iPhone, one friend has an Android device and another is using a feature phone, you’ll all get the messages. Whether GroupMe uses data service or SMS, however, depends partly on the kind of device you’re using.

Prior to doing research for this column, I hadn’t actively used GroupMe for about a year, and I was surprised to find that I liked it better than before. This time, I started a group with three friends to organize upcoming weekend plans. It worked well for us, except for one friend who said that the deluge of messages used up all of the memory allowed for texts on her flip phone.

GroupMe now lets you create a tab among friends — let’s say you’re out to dinner, and someone comes up short — and charge everyone’s credit cards from the app, provided that they’ve attached their payment information to the app.

This isn’t a new concept. An app called Venmo, to name just one, allows shared bill payments via text message. But it’s new to GroupMe. I created a bill on the app and sent it to my friends, but I’d have to wait for two or more people to “split in” before I could collect from them.

GroupMe also has a new feature for photos, provided you’re using the GroupMe app and you’re not on a feature phone. If you and your friends share a series of photos during your group conversation, you can conveniently swipe to the left to see all of the pictures arranged in a gallery on the side, instead of swiping up through the conversation to find that one shared photo you liked.

A lot of these messaging apps are stepping on one another with feature sets: WhatsApp offers group messaging as well, and the creator of MessageMe says the company plans to introduce bill-splitting to the app.

So, is it worth it to use another messaging app aside from your phone’s built-in capabilities? It ultimately depends on how valuable the extra features are to you — and whether the people in your work or social life are using them, too.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that both MessageMe and WhatsApp have indicated they will introduce bill-splitting to their apps. While MessageMe plans to do so, WhatsApp’s co-founder has said the company believes mobile payments to be a possible area for monetization in the future.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130429/which-messaging-app-is-right-for-you/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130427/livingsocial-hack-update-investigation-ongoing-while-emails-out-to-50-million-users/ http://allthingsd.com/20130427/livingsocial-hack-update-investigation-ongoing-while-emails-out-to-50-million-users/#comments Sat, 27 Apr 2013 19:45:02 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=316158

After a massive breach of its computer systems yesterday, LivingSocial has sent out emails to all of the 50 million customers impacted, a company spokesman said, and is now working with law enforcement in an investigation to help find the perpetrators.

The company declined to give more information about how the hackers might have entered the Washington, D.C., daily deals company’s system to get access to names, emails, birthdates and encrypted passwords. But it did note that it was taking extra measures to restrict access to all of its systems and consumer data and has been doing heavy monitoring of consumer accounts.

LivingSocial also underscored that credit card information of its users has not been hacked. “We store credit card data through a financial processing network, so the full number literally does not exist anywhere in our system,” the spokesman said.

Still, the hack is a huge blow for LivingSocial, which is owned in part by Amazon, impacting 50 million customers, who will now be required to reset their passwords. All of LivingSocial’s countries across the world appear to have been affected, except in Thailand, Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines, as LivingSocial units Ticketmonster and Ensogo there were on separate systems.

This is the latest big data breach in the consumer Internet space, which has seen troublesome incursions into some high-profile companies recently, including Zappos, LinkedIn and Evernote.

The attack comes at a tough time for the company, since it has been trying to turn itself around after a downturn across the daily deals landspace. LivingSocial got a large cash infusion recently from investors to help stanch its losses. Amazon owns 29 percent of the company.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130427/livingsocial-hack-update-investigation-ongoing-while-emails-out-to-50-million-users/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130426/livingsocial-hacked-more-than-50-million-customer-names-emails-birthdates-and-encrypted-passwords-accessed/ http://allthingsd.com/20130426/livingsocial-hacked-more-than-50-million-customer-names-emails-birthdates-and-encrypted-passwords-accessed/#comments Fri, 26 Apr 2013 20:15:00 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=316036

LivingSocial, the daily deals site owned in part by Amazon, has suffered a massive cyber attack on its computer systems, which an email from CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy — just sent to employees and obtained by AllThingsD.com — said resulted in “unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers.”

The hack includes customer names, emails, birthdates and encrypted passwords.

The breach has impacted 50 million customers of the Washington, D.C.-based company, who will now be required to reset their passwords. All of LivingSocial’s countries across the world appear to have been affected, except in Thailand, Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines, as LivingSocial units Ticketmonster and Ensogo there were on separate systems.

One positive note in a not-so-positive situation: The email sent to employees and customers noted that neither customer credit card nor merchant financial information was accessed in the cyber attack.

This is the latest big data breach in the consumer Internet space, which has seen troublesome incursions into some high-profile companies recently, including Zappos, LinkedIn and Evernote.

When asked for comment on the email, a LivingSocial PR spokesman confirmed the attack and that 50 million customers were impacted.

The attack comes at a tough time for the company, since it has been trying to turn itself around after a downturn across the daily deals landspace. LivingSocial got a large cash infusion recently from investors to help staunch its losses. Amazon owns 29 percent of the company.

More to come, but here’s the email sent to employees, including one that will be sent to customers soon:

Re: Security Incident

LivingSocialites –

This e-mail is important, so please read it to the end.

We recently experienced a cyber-attack on our computer systems that resulted in unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers. We are actively working with law enforcement to investigate this issue.

The information accessed includes names, email addresses, date of birth for some users, and encrypted passwords — technically ‘hashed’ and ‘salted’ passwords. We never store passwords in plain text.

Two things you should know:

1. * The database that stores customer credit card information was not affected or accessed.

2. * The database that stores merchants’ financial and banking information was not affected or accessed.

The security of our customer and merchant information is our priority. We always strive to ensure the security of our customer information, and we are redoubling efforts to prevent any issues in the future.

To ensure our customers and merchants are fully informed and protected, we are notifying those who may have been impacted via email explaining what happened, expiring their passwords, and requesting that they create new passwords. A copy of the note is included below this email.

If you have any questions or concerns, please visit Pulse –https://pulse.livingsocial.com/intranet/Home/more_updates.html — for a list of frequently asked questions. If you have additional questions that aren’t answered in the FAQs, please submit them via email to XXX@livingsocial.com.

Because we anticipate a high call volume and may not be able to answer or return all calls in a responsible fashion, we are likely to temporarily suspend consumer phone-based servicing. We will be devoting all available resources to our web-based servicing.

I apologize for the formality of this note, which the circumstances demand. We need to do the right thing for our customers who place their trust in us, and that is why we’re taking the steps described and going above and beyond what’s required. We’ll all need to work incredibly hard over the coming days and weeks to validate that faith and trust.

– Tim

Subject: An important update on your LivingSocial.com account

LivingSocial recently experienced a cyber-attack on our computer systems that resulted in unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers. We are actively working with law enforcement to investigate this issue.

The information accessed includes names, email addresses, date of birth for some users, and encrypted passwords — technically ‘hashed’ and ‘salted’ passwords. We never store passwords in plain text.

The database that stores customer credit card information was not affected or accessed.

Although your LivingSocial password would be difficult to decode, we want to take every precaution to ensure that your account is secure, so we are expiring your old password and requesting that you create a new one.

For your security, please create a new password for your *email_address* account by following the instructions below.

1. Visit LivingSocial.com

2. Click on the “Create a New Password” button (top right corner of the homepage)

3. Follow the steps to finish

We also encourage you, for your own personal data security, to consider changing password(s) on any other sites on which you use the same or similar password(s).

The security of your information is our priority. We always strive to ensure the security of our customer information, and we are redoubling efforts to prevent any issues in the future.

Please note that LivingSocial will never ask you directly for personal or account information in an email. We will always direct you to the LivingSocial website — and require you to login — before making any changes to your account. Please disregard any emails claiming to be from LivingSocial that request such information or direct you to a different website that asks for such information.

If you have additional questions about this process, the “Create a New Password” button on LivingSocial.com will direct you to a page that has instructions on creating a new password and answers to frequently asked questions.

We are sorry this incident occurred, and we look forward to continuing to introduce you to new and exciting things to do in your community.

Tim O’Shaughnessy

CEO, LivingSocial

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130426/livingsocial-hacked-more-than-50-million-customer-names-emails-birthdates-and-encrypted-passwords-accessed/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130425/wi-fi-voice-calling-come-to-more-new-york-city-subway-stations/ http://allthingsd.com/20130425/wi-fi-voice-calling-come-to-more-new-york-city-subway-stations/#comments Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:15:53 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=315478 Busy New Yorkers are about to get even more distracted.

Today, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the body for New York City’s arteries of public transit, had completed the first phase of a citywide project to install Wi-Fi and voice-calling service in its subway stations.

Service is now expanded to 36 subway stations, including the six that were tested last year. Major stations, including Times Square and Rockefeller Center, are included in the expansion.

The project allows for voice calling, text messaging and Internet browsing from the station platforms — not on the trains themselves. And you’ll have to be a customer of participating wireless services to access voice and data.

Carriers AT&T and T-Mobile have already signed on to provide service for wireless voice and data for their customers. Executives from Verizon and Sprint were also in attendance at Gov. Cuomo’s press conference, as the two carriers say they plan to be a part of the network down under.

Wi-Fi is available through Boingo, and Transit Wireless is providing the infrastructure for the five-year project. Currently, the Wi-Fi is free through a sponsorship by HTC, which requires that the user watch an ad for the company’s new flagship smartphone before accessing the Wi-Fi.

The original plan to have the major stations wired by the end of 2012 was delayed in part by Hurricane Sandy.

New York City already offers free Wi-Fi service in 20 parks across five boroughs. And Google earlier this year brought free Wi-Fi to the Chelsea neighborhood (where the search giant has offices, marked by a giant sign), spanning a 13-block coverage zone.

So how does New York City stack up to other major metro areas? Surprisingly, it lags behind some in terms of underground Wi-Fi installation. Last year, London’s transportation authority introduced Wi-Fi service to 120 Tube stations, powered by Virgin Media, although it is mostly pay-as-you-go service and doesn’t include wireless calling.

In Asia, the JR East line in Tokyo is dotted with Wi-Fi hotspots, although, again, many require a prepaid pass; Hong Kong currently offers limited daily sessions of free Wi-Fi in 14 MTR stations. Indian Railways also just launched a pilot for free Wi-Fi Internet service on trains on the New Delhi-Howrah Rajdhani line.

But it’s often better to get it right than to get it first, as evidenced by the Wi-Fi service in San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit system. BART commuters were promised that Wi-Fi would be widely available three years ago, but service is still notoriously unreliable.

(Feature photo courtesy of Leone Fabre/Flickr Creative Commons. Photo of girl in subway station courtesy of Hernan Seoane/Flickr Creative Commons.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130425/wi-fi-voice-calling-come-to-more-new-york-city-subway-stations/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130424/freedompop-begins-shift-to-sprint-network-with-3g4g-hotspot/ http://allthingsd.com/20130424/freedompop-begins-shift-to-sprint-network-with-3g4g-hotspot/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:00:10 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=314823 Wireless startup FreedomPop, which offers free and low-cost mobile broadband service, is offering its first device not solely tied to Clearwire’s WiMax network.

FreedomPop plans to start offering the Overdrive Pro hotspot, which works on both WiMax and Sprint’s 3G network. FreedomPop plans to offer products on Sprint’s LTE network later in the year.

“The biggest criticism with our service to date has been the coverage gaps in certain parts of the country,” FreedomPop CEO Stephen Stokols said in a statement. “We’re planning on launching our full national LTE roll-out by the end of this year, but until then, adding nationwide 3G coverage gives users the ability to connect from anywhere.”

As with other FreedomPop plans, users get a certain amount of data free (in this case, 500 megabytes), and can pay a fee for additional data or other services. The device will sell for $40, or users can trade up from FreedomPop’s existing hotspot.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130424/freedompop-begins-shift-to-sprint-network-with-3g4g-hotspot/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130423/predictive-data-startup-infer-raises-10m-from-redpoint/ http://allthingsd.com/20130423/predictive-data-startup-infer-raises-10m-from-redpoint/#comments Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:30:59 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=314535 Infer, a Palo Alto, Calif., startup that makes data-focused business apps to help companies target their best potential customers, said it has raised $10 million in a Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures. Andreessen Horowitz, Social+Capital Partnership, Sutter Hill Ventures and angel investors also participated in the round. Infer, which is profitable, mines a range of data to determine those with the highest propensity to buy. Along with the funding for its “predictive customer scoring model,” Satish Dharmaraj of Redpoint Ventures will join the company’s board.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130423/predictive-data-startup-infer-raises-10m-from-redpoint/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130419/interview-bill-gates-talks-about-tech-innovations-for-vaccines-ahead-of-global-confab/ http://allthingsd.com/20130419/interview-bill-gates-talks-about-tech-innovations-for-vaccines-ahead-of-global-confab/#comments Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:26:22 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=313914

Earlier today, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates discussed technological innovations for vaccines, ahead of a Global Vaccine Summit being held next week in Abu Dhabi.

Set during World Immunization Week, 300 people — including Gates, who is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and who will be delivering a keynote address — will gather on April 24 and 25 to talk about what the world community needs to do move forward the effort to vaccinate children, including a plan to eradicate polio by 2018.

It’s an important effort since, according to the Gates Foundation, every 20 seconds one child dies from a disease that could have been prevented by an existing vaccine.

“The key thing to understand is that vaccines are miraculous,” said Gates in a roundtable telephone interview with several reporters, noting that they are low-cost in relation to the huge benefit they provide.

Two key next steps, he said, have to do with a variety of technologies that are being explored to help in the delivery of vaccines, and also finding ways to make them cheaper.

“There is an under-investment in general, particularly in doing things for the poorest,” he said, requiring his private organization and others to pay for the research or to work with big pharmaceutical companies to create technologies that can also be deployed in more lucrative ways in rich countries. “Usually, there is a missing market incentive.”

Still, there is innovation in the sector, even if it is slow.

Gates referenced a “super-thermos” approach that is being field-tested in Senegal that keeps vaccines cold without needing more energy. Another effort is under way to formulate vaccines so that they do not need to be kept cold in the first place. A third is to combine several vaccines together to get the prices down.

Also important are improvements in satellite mapping technology, which allows field workers who deliver the vaccines to better assess where the need is. That’s especially important since a lot of the work is still on the ground, such as the push to eradicate polio in much the same way as smallpox has been. Currently, noted Gates, it is still an issue in just three countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

And since reaching near total coverage is critical — “The difference between 85 percent and 90 percent [coverage] can be the difference between success and failure,” said Gates — making sure health workers find the people they are trying to vaccinate is paramount.

“It’s kind of a high-tech thing compared to how it was being done,” said Gates.

But, although there have been great hopes around the use of mobile devices in the field to access and record accurate data on patient visits, immunizations and other health information, it’s still an uphill battle against easier paper solutions.

“The paper-based systems are preferable,” said Gates, because of lack of reliable connectivity and ease of use. “It’s a high threshold to get rid of that and use cellphones.”

Or, as Gates noted in a blog post from a recent visit to Ghana, where cellphone data-keeping is being tested: “Many of us are looking at potential digital strategies for record-keeping, but paper is pretty good.”

(Photo courtesy of the Gates Foundation)

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