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Industry insights from Red Door Interactive

July 2nd, 2010 – Welcome to another RDI Click! post. Click! is a weekly collection of digital news highlights from Red Door’s most inquiring minds.

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Why We Check In: The Reasons People Use Location-Based Social Networks – ReadWriteWeb
In this week’s Click! we’ve taken a closer look at the growth and opportunities around  “geo-location” or location-based technologies.   As the use of location based services continues to skyrocket, restaurants appear to be the primary benefactor.  Users of the technology are provided with opportunities for being be wooed into a new experience at a nearby location or simply find their favorite fix in a matter of seconds.  The restaurant example cited on the Wikipedia page for Location-based advertising notes that in addition to a user becoming aware of the location, they can instantly access a map of how to get to the spot.

“Services like Foursquare, Gowalla and others make it easy to post your physical location to the Web – but what makes people want to do that at all? Fifteen-month-old Foursquare is adding 100,000 new users every week, and Facebook has made it clear that location is a feature it is preparing to offer soon. What’s the motivation for users to register where they are in the offline world online?”  

This article from Read Write Web surveys users of the services to find out why.
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Restaurant Owner Increases Sales by 110% with Foursquare Swarm Badge Party - HubSpot Blog
“How do you attract a flash mob of 150+ people to your restaurant? Offer the possibility of a Foursquare Swarm Badge, of course! Last week, restaurant owner Joe Sorge attracted 161 Foursquare users at the same time to his burger joint in Milwaukee, AJ Bombers (pretty impressive considering there are approximately only 300-400 total Foursquare users in the area). Even more impressive is the fact that the restaurant more than doubled its typical Sunday sales, with an increase of 110% that day.”
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What Twitter Places Means for the Future of Location - Mashable
What does Twitter Places mean for you or your business? Like most of us you probably use twitter to communicate and spread information to your followers, but with Twitter Places you will be able to take the power of your tweet to a whole new level. “Location-sharing — via applications that use geo-location to tie locations to places for the purpose of letting users broadcast where they are — is prime for a breakout moment. Places add context to tweets, and it’s this context that will finally help location-sharing holdouts understand why location matters and how they could benefit.”
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PayPal Launches Mobile Express Checkout To Enable One-Click Buying On Smartphones - TechCrunch
eBay has expressed that mobile is the future for e-commerce. The numbers only reinforce this as “mobile payments are poised to reach $200 billion by 2012″, according to Juniper Research. eBay is focused on making  PayPal the leader in the mobile payment realm, and they are on track to doing just that. ”PayPal’s mobile transactions have grown as smartphone usage has increased, from $25 million in 2008 to $141 million in 2009.”
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Verizon Wireless Said to Start Offering IPhone in January - Bloomberg
According to UBS AG analyst John Hodulik, “The iPhone, which has been the sole domain of rival AT&T in the U.S. since June 2007, will give Verizon a boost in its competition for smartphone customers.” He estimates that the “92.8 million Verizon customers will likely buy 30 million iPhones per quarter.” What does this potentially mean for your business? More people using your mobile site with their smartphones.
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E-mail Continues As A Marketing Overachiever - AdWeek
“Despite all the complaints one hears about e-mail spam, a survey in the U.S. and 12 countries in Europe and Asia/Pacific finds plenty of consumers willing to act on marketing e-mails that catch their fancy. Released this week, the study shows 58 percent of respondents saying an e-mail marketing message has prompted them to make a purchase at an offline store or via a call-center order desk.”
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A comprehensive list of noteworthy news can be found at http://delicous.com/RedDoorInteractive.  Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter if you’d like up to the minute updates on our latest posts http://twitter.com/reddoor.