A new twist in the same-day delivery business

Would you like to receive your next online order with 15 mins? That is what the latest start-up company, shutl.com wants to accomplish. Shutl is also the poster child for many new Era of E-Commerce In 2013: Instant Gratification. Started in UK, Shutl.com is able to free shipping by assigning a basket value for each order. For example, the company would ask the customer to spend 49 on this order in order to get free shipping. I think that the same-day delivery will be the tread going forward as more companies now are trying to enter this space. Recently, Walmart and Amazon both announce to launch the same day in selected cities, and feedbacks on this have been largely positive. The challenge for the same delivery is that it is hard to scale it up. While UPS and FedEx are adjusting their fleet to accommodate the same day delivery, it will be hard to image that these two carriers can handle up to 1 million packages per day. So, I think it will be probably many years before the same day delivery can go “mainstream”.

Advertising Opportunities in digital magazines

With the increasing number of the tablet devises on sold, almost all the magazine publishers have started to come up with app of their own magazines. This digital publishing has allows the publisher not only capture and retain the readers who would otherwise only choose to read the article online but also creates an opportunities for the advertisers who can come up with specific ads for the ad campaign. 

For example, these ad campaigns can target the reader based on their location. So, when you open you magazine, say Time, you will see the advertisement from the store what are nearest you and what is on sale. When it comes to the political elections, the readers would be able to see the ad from the candidate who lives in their areas.

High-speed trading for online advertisement

In the recent months, buying and selling ads we all see on websites have become in a little interesting, thanks to companies like Rubicon, which recommends the buyers in real time how much to bid on ad spaces on popular website like facebook or google. In addition to the information on the available ad spaces, the company uses third party companies’ data on the demographic of audience. Using these two pieces of data, the company quickly calculates a price for that available ad space based on the specific buyer’s interest. For instance, if the buyers is interested launching a campaign that will target the people between 18-25, the company will suggest a price for the website on which the buyer wish to advertise.

I think it’s a great idea, because the ads that appears on the website will look more relevant. Users of the website will think that advertise becomes a helpful the information. Moreover, the advertiser will get a better return on their investment. Even better, using the company’s algorithm, the advertiser can quickly know the price of the ad space, which meant that buying the ad will be a lot less hassle. So, it’s a win-win-win situation. The critics think that such operation can undermine the privacy of the users, because the accuracy of the data comes at the cost of the obtaining user’s personal information.  While this claim has some metric, the company can alter the way how the collected personal information gets used. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/technology/your-online-attention-bought-in-an-instant-by-advertisers.html?pagewanted=all

Mobile Messenger App Heats Up

It seems that there is another app aiming at the mobile messaging sector. This new app is called line. It is developed by a Japanese company. The app is getting so many downloads that it becomes the fastest growing app in the recent month. The company is saying that at the current stage it does not plan to monetize its fast growing user base, instead it is trying to focus on getting even more users in the future. As I wrote in my previous blog, it seems that the mobile messaging apps are getting a lot of attention from the users. One recent article in New York Times reports that the revenues from text messaging has been decreasing in recent month for tech companies, such as Verizon and AT&T. While this article supports the fact the more people are switching their text messaging to apps, the companies that development these apps still didn’t figure out the revenue model for the its services. Even worse, the competition between the apps is getting fierce. So far, the two other messaging apps, WeChat and Line, are completely free and there are no ads, while Whatsapp is charging user a yearly subscription of $1. The subscription model might make sense for Whatsapp, but at $1 per year per user is not going to be enough to cover the bandwidth required for storage all these data, such as photo or short video clips. So, at this stage, the companies are hoping that more people will ditch the text messaging and switch to apps, with enough people it will become easier for companies to come up with revenue model.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/11/13/line-asias-answer-to-whatsapp/