Twitter Starts Testing the “Buy” Button for Purchases

Apart from being the real time emporium for photos, news, videos and 140-character snippet for thought, Twitter, the real time social network, is now moving towards becoming a virtual shopping mall for products.

Twitter at the start of the September did announce that they are planning to work on testing a “buy” button, which only can be embedded within a post, but also will allows user to purchase products with just few clicks.

Currently the site relies virtually on advertising for their income, but with this new feature Twitter can generate a new stream for revenue. Currently this feature is expected to be limited to the mobile version of Twitter and it is aiming at selling out only time sensitive or limited editions items like T-shirts and movie tickets.

Currently the e-commerce based on mobiles is highly competitive and the test is coming at a highly intensified state of the e-commerce world. Apple on the other hand also is expected to unveil their new iPhone which has phone-based payment feature (NFC). Twitter’s arch rival, Facebook, already started working on the buy button concept in their service in July.

Social network which includes Pinterest (visual book) consider e-commerce as a potential moneymaker. Even though none of these companies have been able to successfully introduce any new purchasing technology on wider scale; each of these companies has been working on making purchase an easier option from their respective sites. With many of the company’s marketing their products on Twitter and Facebook through messages, the online sales revenue is expected to be in billions of dollars. These companies not only promote their products but also provide user and external link to visit the respective site to make purchase.

Now these companies have taken shopping a step ahead and trying to offer the customers option wherein they can purchase product by clicking on the advertisement instantly. This will not only allow these sites to charge the user a transaction fee but also ensure that the user stays on their website.
In contrary to the previous attempts made by Twitter with e-commerce companies like Amazon, the users don’t need to send any public message with hash tag to buy anything, instead they can just click on the “buy” button to proceed with the transaction. Once the user clicks on the buy button, the service will prompt them to enter the delivery address and payment detail and ask them to confirm the transaction.

According to Nathan, who leads Twitter’s commerce efforts, they have given a website which help one to connect with the things that you adore. To make is more additive, add the transaction experience for the user. The testing of the buy button is expected to be restricted to small user group in America and will feature only 19 entities including musician etc. Even though the idea of certain types of products for sale was unclear, but they knew that anything that has a sense of urgency will be an attraction. It’s about offering user unique products.

Google Conducting Meetings on Privacy Rights across Europe

Search Engine Google has appointed a panel who are going to host a first of a kind of series of meeting to debate on creating balance between information free flow and privacy. These meetings are being conducted post the May court ruling in which Europeans' "right to be forgotten" was reinforced.

Internet search giant has been struggling with the increasing number of requests every month. These requests include removal of any data pertaining to serious criminal offence, to any embarrassing photos, negative press releases and online harassment situations. The first event is being held in Madrid which is the first from the seven meeting that will be held in various European capitals.

According to Google, which hold more than 90% of the search market in Europe, have been able to remove more than half of the 90000 request that they have received till mid-July pertaining to the court ruling which instructed them to remove all the results from the engine, which are no longer valid, insufficient, irrelevant or are no longer relevant for anyone.

In the meantime, the data protection regulators belonging to the European countries are working on setting rules and regulations and guidelines for various search engines. These engines also include Yahoo search and Microsoft Corp. These guidelines are being set to ensure that request received by these search engines are handled properly. This meet is expected to happen on 15th September.

PR War on a serious issue or just another Business strategy: 

According to the head of France’s privacy watchdog and WP29 group of European national data protection authorities, Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, they were very doubtful about this initiative of Google, as they were considering this part of PR war, which is an important part of the business strategy of the company.

As per Isabelle, Google is putting efforts towards setting up their own terms. Google is trying to be open about the issue and be virtuous, but on the other hand they have handpicked the members of the meeting and also ensured that they know about everyone who is expected to be part of this meeting. Google basically is controlling everything from start till the results that is expected out from these meeting.

If Google declines are request, then that part person can approach the national data protection regulator and appeal against it. There are a lot of cases already registered with the agency. Wikipedia has been able to start a web page which aims at updating every link removal request that is received. This is a form of protest shown by the company to emphasis on the information people are trying to remove. According to regulators these notices are against the ruling of the court.

Strategy of Google: 

According to Kauffman, Google has asked for their input and in formulating ideas. They have also asked French regulator Isabelle to take part in their meeting as well. But this has been declined as a regulator can’t be part of such meetings but they can send their staff to observe the meetings.

Spanish regulators are in no mood to attend this meeting. Eight representatives are part of the advisory council which includes former German justice minister, Google’s general counsel, chairman, two academics. Some other member is the Wikipedia founder and United Nations human rights official

Meeting Schedule: 

After the Madrid meeting, the councils will meet in Rome on 9th Sep, then Paris on 25th, Warsaw on 30th, Berlin on 14th Oct and 16th Oct in London. Last meet will be held in Brussels on 4th November.

Sony’s new selfie gadget – Real or Not?

Sony has come up with a perfume bottle shaped camera for selfies. News that has recently surfaced on Weibo. It has been predicted that this new gadget will make the girls to freaking love it but the question that has been running on everyone’s mind is that ‘is it real or not?’.The website shows a girl holding the new Sony gadget and clicking a selfie but it is still to be established as to whether the picture is a real or a fake one. Whatever, the case may be, it has managed to garner a lot of attention in the recent past.

The real deal:
The image on the website Weibo shows a girl holding a makeup mirror similar to a Smartphone look and clicking a selfie with it. Various issues regarding this news are making headlines:-

• The way the analysts see it :-

The analysts have look at the image and have stated that Sony might be going in a different direction this time and the use of this phone for men is to be almost completely ruled out.

• Why is Sony trying such a different way?

Simple, get girls to go over a gadget and before you know it, you are sold out. No means of offending girls here in this article but if you are able to impress a girl with a gadget then you are to know that this gadget will be a trend in the nearby fashion and therefore, are to trend at a rapid pace. This will work to popularise the gadget very fast and therefore, will link the effect to its sale and maximise the product worth.

• Sony trying to the trendsetter again :-

Whether someone admits it or not, it is pretty clear that when it comes to setting an example or brings a trend into the market in the field of electronics and gadgets, Sony has had an upper hand most of the time over its counterparts. With Sony’s brand market value and great manpower, it has become a routine task for Sony to stay on watch for something new. Having done it with televisions, laptops, symbian phones, Sony is now planning to bring up something that very few had thought about.

• Right time to bring it on :-

Just the moment when the world is going gaga over the ‘selfie’ fever, Sony has played a masterstroke to bring in gadget with its main focus and marketing brains on selfie. Hence, the sale is to be on the high and on demand.

What else is there to look for?

§ It is designed very differently with a rotating camera.

§ Has the ability to swivel around 260 degrees and therefore, can rapidly turn from a from facing to a back facing camera

§ Sony has allowed some selected users to use the gadget but it is still to be decided as to whether this will be a traditional Smartphone or a snapper!

§ Well, the news has surfaced through a website and still the whole deal is to be cleared and given to the public.

Firefox OS to Provide Permission Toggle To the Users

Mozilla’s first-ever mobile operating system could not bring justice for the reputation the company holds, when the numbers of users are concerned. Even after Firefox OS brought the ‘old wine in a new bottle’ concept for developing apps with building apps on HTML5, JavaScript format instead of usual file format, still the company could not ensure a considerablenumber of users across the globe. As expected by the market experts, in a competitive market of smartphones with having supreme OS developer contenders like Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android etc., any new and potential OS developer company must offer something magical to have a sizeable audience. In recent times, many start up OS developers failed to gain attention of the crowd. Initially, Mozilla’s Firefox OS followed them only. But with the promise of a future version of the OS with incredible features, the company is hoping to shake the dice of the market.

Currently available devices with Firefox OS: Chiefly, on the first shot, Firefox OS joined the market via low to middle-range-end smartphones. Firefox OS first launched on the market through the reference phone Flame. Several lower mid-range phones, such as ZTE Open and Alcatel OneTouch Fire, featured this OS. Recently, the Indian veteran manufacturer Intex has come up with super low-end smartphone with Firefox OS.

Advanced feature for the future OS version: According to the company spokesperson, the future version of the OS, Firefox 2.1, will have advanced features, customized for tech-savvy people. According to the media reports, one of those features is permission toggle switch for apps. Like the binary switches on the Android platform, it is meant for those users who are always obsessed about their privacy.

While Google’s most prized OS Android is yet to provide this facility to the users, Firefox announced it to hold the market. According to the Security Engineer of the company, this feature will help a user to allow or deny the app’s request to use a particular feature of the device. For example, as on other OS platforms, Facebook app or Whatsapp app can use your GPS location data. But with this new permission toggle, people will only give permission to the apps of their likings. Users will be able to get the list of the apps allowed for using any service of the device on the settings option. Also it will enable the user to review the permission or also to accept or deny any app usage.

When to expect: 

Notably, the company have announced to launch Firefox OS 1.4, followed by Firefox 2.0. Though Mozilla reported about the future version of the OS, Firefox 2.1 with this advanced feature, but no probable date is confirmed officially yet. According to the company spokesperson, not only the Mozilla, but the partners of the company are also responsible to evaluate, certify and to launch a device or an OS to the market.

To secure the existence in this demanding market, Mozilla finally understood the basic of providing exciting and advanced offer with the smartphones. Now we have to wait to examine the new feature till it hits the market.

Twitter reportedly opening up its Tweet Analytics Dashboard service for each user

When the social site giant Twitter Inc. believes in ‘more people, more fun’ concept, offering new feature for much easy access is very much expected then. The prime contender of Facebook Inc. has reportedly opening up its tweet analytics service for every user. Notably, Twitter has introduced this feature earlier this year, but only advertisers and verified Twitter account holders were eligible to get the feature. Now the company has decided to give its access to all the users gradually. Tweet Analytics Dashboard is a pretty cool tool which helps users to track the performance of their tweets, their account. So, in another word, this tool is a popularity meter for users.

How Twitter Dashboard works:
 
With Twitter Dashboard tool, users can evaluate their twitter performance and will be able to learn more about their tweets. Such as-

• Users can check how their tweets are engaging new people in real time,
• Can compare tweet performance on monthly basis and can check how their tweets played as trends over time,
• Upon clicking a tweet, the dashboard will give every information about that tweet, including number of retweets, favourites, replies, follows or click it received.
• Also the users will be able to download the tweet metrics.

Though the company has assured to offer this service to each user over Twitter platform, but right now any account older than 14 days can avail the offer. Also, according to the press release, users, who primarily tweets in English, Spanish, French and Japanese will get this feature. Those, fulfilling the criteria, can avail the service simply by logging into analytics. twitter.com with their username and password.

How to use the Dashboard:

Follow these simple steps to use the dashboard.

• Click on any tweet to get a charts containing all details about that tweet, which includes number of retweets, replies, follows etc.
• The same chart will show how many times that tweet got clicked and how it engaged with people.
• Download the tweet metrics in a CSV file.

Dashboard keyword definitions:

Once you are well-known with the dashboard terminologies, then you are good to go. Here are the list of those keywords.

§ Engagement rate: This shows number of engagements divided by impressions.

§ Favourites: This number reflects how many times a user made his tweet favourite.

§ Follows: This number tells how many times a used followed you via your tweet.

§ Hashtag clicks: This number gives idea about how many times the hashtag in a tweet got clicked.

§ Impressions: How many times a used posted a tweet on timeline.

§ Replies and Retweets: This number tells you the number of retweets and replies a tweet got.

According to the company spokesperson, with tweet metrics and engagement metrics, which shall be updated in few seconds, the users will enjoy every bit of it to guess their popularity in real time. Before searching for the dashboard, just keep in mind that the account should fulfil all the criteria.