Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Zavee, Privacy and Data Security

by Ron on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

When I was writing this post I wanted to link to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post. I had previously signed up for Facebook Connect for the Post so I was taken directly to the article. And I have a small confession: I don’t think I fully understand how Facebook Connect works and, more importantly, what its implications may be for the privacy of my information on Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg at f8 2010 (Washington Post photo)

In his op-ed Zuckerberg admits only to “mov[ing] too fast” to introduce privacy tools that “were too complex”. Zuckerberg goes on to say that Facebook’s intention was to provide “lots of granular [privacy] controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted.” The ability to fine-tune privacy settings seems like a good idea given the wide variety of content available on and through Facebook. However, the risk of missing something significant and inadvertently setting a control incorrectly may well outweigh the value of granular controls.

However, Facebook’s recent history of introducing, then modifying, changes to the platform, along with its enormous size and influence in the social media space, has created an environment in which not everyone is willing to take the company’s statements at face value (the comments on almost any post on the allfacebook blog are instructive). We believe that it is in the interest of everyone in the space – users as well as networks – for Facebook to get a better handle on how to develop, introduce, explain and refine significant changes to its platform.

It is axiomatic that users should control the amount of personal information they share, and with whom. I’m not sure there is one best way to ensure this, and granularity versus ease of use for privacy controls seems to me a debate worth having. Zavee is oriented toward the ease of use end of the spectrum. We provide very clear but fairly granular choices about who gets to see what information. Furthermore, all of our privacy settings default to the most limited distribution, which minimizes the downside risk for the user.

In addition to receiving credible assurances about the privacy of their personal information, users of social networks – especially social shopping networks – need to be completely comfortable that any financial information they provide will be maintained and transmitted with the utmost security. Platforms such as Mint ask for a wide range of personal financial information since Mint’s model is to aggregate that information and make it easier for the member to use. Blippy and some other sites require registration of a credit card, as their model involves sharing purchases over a social network. Zavee also requires registration of a credit card, although unlike Blippy Zavee does not share purchase details over the network.

Zavee has a number of safeguards in place to protect users’ credit card data. First, we use Secure Sockets Layer technology from industry leader Verisign to provide secure access to the platform for every Zavee user. That’s why our URL starts with “https://” and has a distinctive green band in the address window. You can see the Verisign seal in the footer of our site and can click on it to learn more about Secure Sockets Layer technology.

Second, we only collect the minimum card data necessary for the Zavee platform to function. Anyone who has ever made a purchase online, or even over the phone, knows that the merchant is required to collect not just the the card number, but also its expiration date and security code, and sometimes the zip code for the billing address. Zavee only needs the card number, so that’s all we ask for. Anyone who improperly obtained that information would still be unable to use the card for an unauthorized transaction.

Third, Zavee itself never collects or stores any credit card information. The card registration page may look the same as other pages on the Zavee site, but it isn’t actually on our site at all. When a user registers a credit card the card number is automatically encrypted and sent directly to our data provider, a company called TSYS. TSYS is one of the largest credit card processors in the world and maintains secure credit card databases for, among others, VISA itself. Once TSYS receives and registers the card number it sends a secure, unique identifier back to Zavee. Our system is set up to use only this identifier when we process shopper transactions, so the actual card number remains within TSYS’s secure environment. Our databases are stored in a secure facility in the US, but if anything happened to the card identifiers we would simply get a copy of the relevant database from TSYS.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Overly complex privacy settings may have the effect of inadvertently decreasing actual privacy. No one should find that acceptable.
  • Zavee is a simple platform from a privacy standpoint and has simple, intuitive privacy controls that are designed to minimize user risk.
  • No one should ever be in doubt about the security of their financial data. Zavee uses industry best practices to protect the credit card numbers that members provide.

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Checking Out Checking In

by Ron on Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

Have you checked in yet?

Foursquare @SXSW

Foursquare @SXSW

Location-based social networks such as Foursquare and Gowalla make use of the GPS capabilities of smartphones to let users communicate in real time not just what they are doing, as with Twitter, but where they are. They are growing rapidly, and for businesses they are well worth checking out.

Both networks are about two years old but have entered the mainstream only recently. Users of Foursquare “check in” at different locations to tell their friends where they are and what they are doing. Foursquare also has an element of game play that lets users collect “badges” for certain activities, such as earning a “barista” badge for checking into five Starbucks. Foursquare has a large user base that skews young and lives in cities, and has attracted a certain amount of backlash (note: strong language at link), although it has its defenders. Gowalla doesn’t depend quite as much on its game mechanics, but supports media files, such as photos, and claims to be looking for a broader (and perhaps older) demographic.

Businesses seem to have less of a “wait and see” attitude toward location-based social networks than they did toward Facebook and Twitter. It may be that, having been through this before with other Social Media outlets they simply need less persuading when it comes to location-based networks. It may also be that the business case for location-based networks is more obvious than with, say, Twitter. Another possibility is that the networks themselves have become business-friendly faster. Foursquare already has the ability to serve merchant offers based on location, although it is still refining its analytics dashboard. In any event, marketers are not sitting on the sidelines. Recently, Pepsico announced a “geo-based loyalty program” in partnership with Foursquare that will reward consumers who check in via iPhone at businesses that serve Pepsi products. The History Channel also is using Foursquare to promote its show, “America, The Story of Us.”

Do networks like Foursquare and Gowalla have relevance for small businesses? We think they do. Even basic data on who has visited a business, how frequently, etc. adds to the merchant’s knowledge of the customer base. Serving offers and other content to those customers has obvious benefits, although it still isn’t clear how the merchant can get a full picture of the return on investment from that content (merchants will know how many people used (and, presumably, saw) the offer, but won’t necessarily know how many of those transactions were made by customers who would have purchased anyway). Checking in to a business from a location-based network also can provide extended word of mouth for the merchant. It’s going to take time to figure out how to use these services for business, but that was true with Facebook and Twitter. And, as with Facebook and Twitter, there is a lot of potential and no real downside for businesses that experiment.

At Zavee we are currently exploring the fit with location-based networks, but we fully anticipate using this technology to add value to the Zavee experience for both merchants and shoppers. With both cash back offers by merchants and reviews by shoppers, Zavee provides a great deal of content whose value can only be enhanced by becoming location-aware.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • You heard it about Facebook, you heard it about Twitter. Well, location-based social networks aren’t fads either.
  • Businesses have wised up and caught up, and are right on the heels of consumers in discovering how to make these services useful, relevant and rewarding.
  • If you were sitting on the sidelines while Facebook and Twitter were becoming huge, don’t let it happen again!

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Tape This to Your Fridge (or Maybe Your Monitor)

by Ron on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Maybe it’s a sign of our collectively diminishing attention spans, but magazines (and blogs) seem to run more and more articles that are basically lists. There’s even a term for it: the “listicle”. (Want to guess what the graphic equivalent is called? Right, it’s a “charticle”!) Listicles often reflect shallow thinking and lazy writing, but sometimes they provide tremendous value, collecting and condensing a great deal of knowledge into the kind of piece you want to print out and tape to your refrigerator door.

I’ve recently come across two listicles of the latter kind, both from sources every small business owner should be following. The first is from Mashable, which provides all sorts of valuable information about social media. This post by Ross Kimbarovsky, who co-founded an online community of graphic designers that now exceeds 43,000 members, offers 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips. In addition to its overall clarity and conciseness, this post adds value in two interesting ways. First, it goes beyond Twitter and Facebook to explain some less widely known tools, including mobile/local social network Foursquare and brand consistency tools such as Namechk. Second – and at least as important – the post suggests both a basic and an advanced strategy for each of the 10 tips. This approach provides a road map for small businesses that are just starting out in social media or are unsure how extensive a commitment they want to make. This post recognizes that different businesses will have different needs and appetites for social media, shows businesses how they can mix and match different tools and provides a framework for increasing the utilization of social media marketing over time.

Deep in Conversation

Deep in Conversation

The second post comes via the Conversation Agent blog: a compendium of 25 Must-Read B2B Marketing Posts. I haven’t read all 25 yet but so far every one has been thought-provoking and several have provided significant value to our business; I imagine you will feel the same way. Business-to-business marketing frequently gets overlooked in the rush to market to consumers, so it’s great that some of the best minds in the social media space are paying attention to the needs of the B2B marketer.

This is by no means an original observation, but it really is amazing how much useful material can be found just by spending a little time searching the Internet. It’s even more amazing how many talented people have done so much of the heavy lifting by finding, evaluating, collecting and editing valuable source material for marketers like us. We hope you find these posts as worthwhile as we have. Please let us know how they work for you.

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Paperless Business Cards (Really!)

by Ron on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

If you’ve seen this commercial for the Apple iPhone you probably noticed two iPhones exchanging information by being bumped together. It’s an application called, reasonably enough, Bump. And it’s far from the only way to exchange contact information without using traditional business cards.

With so much innovation surrounding what has become known as the “Real Time Web” it isn’t surprising that someone came up with an online alternative to exchanging business cards. What may be surprising is how many alternatives are out there, and how quickly they have caught on with mainstream business users. For proof, look no further than this article on CNN.com, which claims that there are more than 20 such applications and takes a look at eight of them, including Bump.

We have been experimenting (OK, playing) with a couple of these applications and haven’t settled on one yet. We actually like Bump’s technology but we don’t like to think about what happens after an over-enthusiastic bump (hint: it’s not covered by insurance). beamME is another app that exchanges info using an iPhone. It lets you beam without the bump. And since we are talking about iPhone apps, the iPhone’s contact manager lets you share information via email or MMS – no third-party application required.

Awww!

Awww!

Our sentimental favorite is Poken, which is also mentioned in the CNN article. It isn’t very corporate-looking and has some technical hurdles to overcome but it’s a great conversation starter. It’s also a whole lot cuter than any business card we’ve ever seen. Will the Poken ever replace the business card here at Zavee? Probably not, but we just can’t keep our hands off the little pandas, ninjas and geishas.

Poken Pulse

Poken Pulse

Perhaps with a nod to that commercial reality, Poken has just come out with a product targeted to business users called the Pulse. It looks very stylish (if not as wildly adorable as the original) and we can’t wait to try one out. By the way, if you are interested in the Poken – or just want to see how a business can be built almost exclusively using social media – it’s worth checking out Poken Girl, a young entrepreneur who is a Poken distributor in South Florida.

So, trendy gizmo or the future of information exchange? Give some of these business card alternatives a try and let us know what you think in the comments.

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Phoning It In

by Ron on Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Zavee recently moved into our first real office, and one of our biggest challenges was to figure out what kind of telephone system to use.  We have only a handful of full-time employees right now, but we will be adding staff rapidly, especially on the sales side.  So we needed a phone system that met today’s requirements, but also was easily scalable; didn’t require a lot of time, money or overhead to maintain; and didn’t conflict with our extensive use of technologies such as mobile and Skype.  Obviously, cost was also a big factor.

We considered a wide range of options.  The three main technologies we looked at were:

  • Telephone company services
  • Physical private branch exchange (PBX)
  • Virtual PBX

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

The local phone company could have provided everything we wanted, including maintenance.  We could have had an unlimited number of lines, voicemail, call forwarding, conferencing, etc.  However, the phone company services were very expensive and configuration was not quite as flexible as we wanted.  We probably would have wound up with more landline capability than we needed given our reliance on mobile for inbound calling and Skype for outbound.  Still, for a business that has limited needs and a growth path that is well-defined, the phone company might be an option.

We didn’t spend much time considering a physical PBX.  A PBX can do everything the phone company can do and more, but they are not cost-effective for small businesses – at least not for this one.  Thanks to technology and competition the initial costs of a PBX are trending down, but the total cost of ownership, including maintenance, put a PBX well out of our reach.

We decided to use a “virtual PBX”, which is a Web-based telephone system that provides PBX-like services in a hosted environment.  We have multiple lines and several local phone numbers, fax service and full call switching capability without having any hardware (other than handsets) in-house.  We use a company called Ring Central but there are many companies in the virtual or hosted PBX space.  In addition to much lower costs than either the phone company or a physical PBX, we only pay for what we need.  The service is easily scalable, since there is no hardware to replace.  Obviously, we don’t have to perform any system maintenance.

With our phone system in place at a manageable cost we feel better about investing in mobile.  All of our sales reps will have smart phones as well as wireless-enabled laptops.  All of us use mobile as our main phones as well as Skype.  Skype is a Web-based application that supports free computer-to-computer voice calls and inexpensive computer-to-phone calls.  These two technologies let our sales reps operate from anywhere – they aren’t tied to the office.

What technologies do you use for voice communication?  Have you tried Web-based voice applications? Let us know in the comments.

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