reward

App Way to Gripe (or Praise) About Service

Katherine Boehret in The Digital Solution on February 8, 2011 at 2:54 pm PT

Katie looks at Tello, a new website and mobile app that encourages users to chime in on their customer-service experiences, good or bad.

Voices

Why We Can't Stop Playing

Nick Wingfield, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on November 30, 2010 at 5:00 am PT

Not since the invention of bacon and eggs has the collision of fowl and swine tasted so good. A game called Angry Birds is dominating the best-selling-applications charts for Apple’s iPhone with a simple, whimsical premise: Players turn different species of scowling birds into projectiles with which to crush a collection of grunting pigs scattered around various ramshackle structures. More than 12 million copies of Angry Birds have been sold since it went on sale late last year, most of them 99-cent downloads for iPhones and iPod touches, according to Rovio Mobile Ltd., the Finnish company that created the game.

Shopkick Checks In With Target–CEO Cyriac Roeding Talks About Social Shopping

Kara Swisher in News on November 16, 2010 at 10:28 am PT

The idea of being rewarded for being a consumer is getting a lot of heat of late, as retailers seek to take advantage of the fast-moving social phenom among consumers, especially young ones. Thus, a wide range of efforts to combine location-based mobile apps with purchasing, both online and offline. Today, another company in the space, shopkick, announced it had added another store–Minneapolis-based Target–to its list of retailers deploying its platform and mobile app that gives you points for simply walking in a store.

SCVNGR's Seth Priebatsch Talks About Geolocation Wars, Facebook Places and More!

Kara Swisher in News on August 30, 2010 at 9:00 am PT

Last week, SCVNGR integrated its third-party social geolocation game service into the Facebook Places mega-location offering. As it turned out, BoomTown was in Beantown–as in Boston–for a lovely wedding, so I took some prenuptial time to visit SCVNGR’s HQ in Cambridge, Mass., to talk to its founder, Seth Priebatsch.

Bug Bounties for IE? What, You Think We’re Made of Money?

John Paczkowski in News on July 23, 2010 at 10:18 am PT

Security researchers looking to make a buck digging up browser vulnerabilities can ignore Internet Explorer, because Microsoft isn’t going to pay them for their work. Though Google and Mozilla recently raised the bounties they pay for bugs discovered in their browsers, their Redmond rival has no plans to follow suit.

A Deal on a Haircut? That’s What Friends Are For

Katherine Boehret in The Mossberg Solution on March 23, 2010 at 2:19 pm PT

With group-buying Web sites, getting more people to join in on a deal gets you a better deal.

Congress Readies an “Opt-In” Privacy Bill, and the Web Industry Cringes

Peter Kafka in Media on June 23, 2009 at 1:41 pm PT

Here comes the battle the online ad business has been dreading: Congress is drawing up a bill that would require users to sign up to let advertisers track their online behavior–and, if you believe online publishers, more or less destroy the online ad business.

Jason Calacanis Rolls Out the New Mahalo: Yahoo Answers-Killer

Peter Kafka in Media on December 15, 2008 at 1:00 am PT

In October, Mahalo.com founder Jason Calacanis laid off staff at his human-powered search engine. Then he announced he was hiring engineers for a mysterious new “Project A.” Today he’s unveiling it: An “answers” service designed to compete with one of Yahoo’s most successful sites.