In this week’s industry news wrap up: Google introduces new app to make it easier to shop on mobile phones; Zuckerberg wants to allow under-13s to join Facebook; AdWords now offering tablet-specific targeting; Yahoo to make changes to its email platform.
Google Wallet
Internet search giant Google Inc. has unveiled an application that would enable consumers to use their Android smartphones to pay for products at hundreds of thousands of retail stores worldwide. Google Wallet, set to launch this summer, is the company’s entry into the burgeoning and increasingly competitive business of turning mobile devices into digital credit cards.
Zuckerberg to the Government: Let the Young Ones In
A known fact to anyone with young siblings or cousins, young kids are on Facebook and they are breaking the law. However, Mark Zuckerberg wants to change all of that under the guise of “educating” America’s future workforce. Currently companies are prevented from collecting information from children under 13 by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). But recent polls suggest young children regularly flout the law, with a massive 7.5 million U.S. children under 13 holding Facebook accounts according to a recent survey.
AdWords’ Tablet-Only Targeting Now Live
People are really desperate for new and interesting items in their Facebook news feeds. Likes, of course, are a huge opportunity for Facebook when it comes to advertising. Carolyn Everson, Head of Ad Sales for Facebook, says that there are currently 50 million likes per day for pages on Facebook, which is out of a billion or more likes per day across the web.
Yahoo Revamping Its Email Service
Good news for folks who resisted the siren call of Gmail. Yahoo announced Tuesday it will roll out a brand-new interface for its estimated 277 million users during the next few weeks. The company has been testing a beta version of this powerful upgrade for seven months and wants all its users to embrace this better working and smarter designed version of the popular service. The rollout couldn’t come soon enough; Yahoo lost 3 million users from April 2010 to April 2011, while Gmail gained 24 million users during the same period.
Tags: email, Facebook, Google, Groupon, tablet advertising, Yahoo!
