This is the second post in a series on NFC here on ReadWriteMobile which will serve to get you up to speed on what NFC is, what notable developments are underway and what commercial programs using NFC will arrive this year. You can follow this series by clicking the tag  (or bookmarking the tag) "NFC 2011."

Before we could begin talking about NFC developments, advances and upcoming commercial programs in specific, we first had to get you up to speed with what exactly NFC is. The first post in the series is the best starting point for those unfamiliar with the technology. In the post below, we'll examine the different types of mobile wallet initiatives that will use NFC.

How Can a Phone Replace a Wallet?

When you think about a technology designed to replace your actual wallet - you know, the beat up leather-bound bill holder containing cash, credit and debit cards, paper receipts, coupons and discount cards  - you begin to realize what a complex undertaking it is for any one company to deliver a complete solution.

A credit card company like Visa may team up with your bank to offer you a way to use your mobile phone as a replacement for a single plastic credit card, but it's only one piece of the pie. What about the coupons? What about your loyalty cards? What about the rest of your credit and debit cards from other banks?

At present, Apple, Google and other mobile platform providers are likely working on a comprehensive mobile wallet solution for consumers, but they lack experience in some areas where financial services companies excel: providing customer support for issues like the proper handling of chargebacks, understanding the relevant regulations that apply to the industry, implementing the necessary level of security that must be involved when processing transactions from a host of merchants and hundreds of thousands of customers through a large worldwide network built for transactions, and other concerns.

Given these challenges, it's not a sure thing that your preferred mobile wallet provider will be the one Google or Apple or another mobile platform provider creates; it may be a service from your mobile carrier (for example, here in the U.S., Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile or AT&T).

A third possibility is that your bank itself ships some type of complete mobile wallet system as a part of their mobile banking/mobile payments product. In this mobile wallet, other third-party services could complement the bank-provided, NFC-enabled debit and credit "cards" you use on your NFC-enabled mobile phone.  (Not actual plastic credit cards, but digital ones, stored on your device).

There's no real answer to the question about who will be the dominant mobile wallet provider, not only because these services have not yet launched (or are just now doing so) but because when they inevitably do, there's no way to foretell which service consumers will actually prefer.

To begin our overview of mobile wallet, we're going to look at three different types of players, which we will break down into three categories we'll call the apps vs. the operators vs. the banks. But first, let's examine what a mobile wallet actually is.

But What Is a Mobile Wallet?

A mobile wallet, or an e-wallet (or in Apple's case, an iWallet!), is not just a smartphone application that you download from an app store. To the end user, there may be an icon on their homescreen that launches the user interface to your mobile wallet, but that is only a part of the overall solution. The complete mobile wallet solution actually consists of both the user interface itself and the secure element chip on the phone where your personal data (your credit card number, passport ID, shopping history, coupons, etc.) is stored. The user interface allows you to interact with NFC applications and with the secure data stored on the secure element on your device. A third part of the solution is the antenna, which is the piece that makes the near field communication possible.

It's the secure element on the phone that's the most important part to the mobile wallet, though, and it's why the wallet isn't just "another app." Sarah Clark, an editor for NFC industry trade publication NFC World, describes the secure element like so: "[It] acts like an electronic version of your wallet and can be used to replace everything from credit cards and loyalty cards to bus and train tickets, library cards, door keys, coupons and even cash."

This secure chip, she explains, "can be built into mobile phones and other devices by the manufacturer, they can be integrated into SIM cards issued by mobile networks to their subscribers and they can be added to existing phones via special microSD cards or stickers issued by banks and other organizations."

Your mobile wallet will likely arrive empty, she says, just like a regular wallet does. You will fill it with whatever services you want.

Next Page: Mobile Wallet Solutions from Mobile Platform Providers

1. Mobile Wallet Solutions from Mobile Platform Providers (Apple, Google, Etc.)

When we talk about mobile wallet "apps" from the mobile platform providers, you now understand that what we mean is an app that serves as the interface to a comprehensive mobile wallet solution where all your bank cards, bank accounts, coupons, loyalty cards, receipts and more are duplicated on your phone. These simply don't exist yet here in the U.S.

There are so-called "mobile wallet solutions" of a sort today - but not the kind that will exist in the future. For example, U.S. carrier Sprint introduced its Sprint Mobile Wallet back in October 2010. But this initiative is designed for online purchases, not purchases of physical goods in the real world where a tap of your phone at checkout deducts the payment from your personal bank account.

It's expected that the mobile platform providers are building more complete mobile wallet solutions that use NFC, however. Google introduced support for NFC technology into its Android mobile operating system (version 2.3, aka "Gingerbread") and it recently pushed out an update that makes that function work both ways - read and write - a necessary component to any mobile payments system.

More on Google's NFC plans: Google Considering a Mobile Payments Service, January 2011

Apple, too, has various NFC-related patents on file and has hired a well-known expert in the field, but, as usual, is completely silent on what it has in development. We can only speculate what the company is working on by tracking its patent applications - like this one spotted in February 2011 which shows an e-wallet icon. The general expectation is that Apple's e-wallet will work with the NFC technology built into a future iPhone.

Although few would ever bet against Apple, it's still fair to say that implementing NFC and financial services for a mobile wallet solution of this scale requires significant investment and, frankly, a massive amount of work. Even a company as accomplished as Apple will find that to be complex challenge.

In addition, what the mobile platform solutions also have to deal with is how to handle - or ignore - the mobile carriers' desire to be involved. While Apple has traditionally proved itself to be a company whose goal is to disrupt the control a carrier has over the handset, successful NFC solutions in other parts of the world have always had operator involvement. In fact, they've typically been joint programs launched via a partnership between banks and operators alongside support from handset manufacturers, not cases where a single player like Apple tries to go it alone. Of course, this is Apple. It could be the one to buck that trend.

Next Page: Mobile Wallet Solutions from Operators

2. Operator-Provided Mobile Wallets

Speaking of operators, lets make this clear: they want to be involved. Not only that, but they want to be the mobile wallet providers. To that end, they've teamed up to make sure that happens.

During February's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, some of the world's largest mobile operators announced their intentions to launch commercial NFC services. In total, 16 operators - América Móvil, Axiata Group Berhad, Bharti, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT Corporation, MTS, Orange, Qtel Group, SK Telecom, SoftBank Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telekom Austria Group, Telenor and Vodafone - declared their support for the technology. For these operators, NFC isn't just about the mobile wallet. It can also deliver services like mobile ticketing, mobile couponing, information exchange and the ability to control access to things like cars, homes, offices, hotels and more.

In the mobile operators' case, the deployment of NFC would involve using the SIM card in the phones as the secure element that provides the necessary authentication, security and portability.

As NFC World notes, Apple's and Google's initiatives will be based on embedded secure elements within the phones themselves - such as the technology found today in Google's latest flagship phone, the Nexus S - not the SIM card. To some industry watchers, the teaming up occurring now among mobile operators on the matter of NFC is a clear confirmation that the next iPhone (the iPhone 5), will almost certainly have NFC built in.

In addition to the GSMA announcement, three of the four major mobile operators in the U.S. (Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T) have joined forces to launch Isis, a mobile payments venture that will use Discover Financial Services' network to process payments. Barclaycard U.S. will be the first to issue customers Isis accounts. This mobile wallet solution will handle both credit, debit and prepaid transactions. It's expected that Barclaycard will be the first of many card issuers to come on board with the venture.

More on Isis: AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile Join Forces in New Mobile Payments Venture Called "Isis", November 2010

Isis claims that it already has recruited some merchants to use its service, but will not name names just yet. The group knows that getting merchants to adopt the technology is critical. Merchants don't want an AT&T-only solution, Jim Stapleton, head of sales and account management at Isis and a veteran of AT&T Inc., told the website Digital Transactions in February 2011.

Operators know that to force consumer adoption of a new technology, it must be integrated into their daily lives on a regular basis. That's why Isis is first talking to merchants at coffee shops, grocery stores, quick-service restaurants, parking lots and garages and most importantly, transit systems (bus, train, subway, etc.). Getting these types of merchants on board with the initiative is critical for its success.

Meanwhile, on the consumer side, Isis wants to offer more than just payments. It also wants to also offer electronic coupons, loyalty programs and ticketing, reports Digital Transactions, referencing a statement made by Sarab Sokhey, a Verizon Wireless non-payment NFC executive and advisor to Isis.

Next Page: Mobile Wallet Solutions from Banks

3. Banks and Mobile Wallets

A third category, and one not necessarily mutually exclusive to categories number one and two above, is the one that involves banks. While a bank card may be integrated at some point into a complete mobile wallet solution, such as the one offered by Google or Apple or your carrier, for now, some banks are forging out on their own with NFC-enabled mobile banking products. We could also consider these "mobile wallet services," of a sort.

On this front, there are NFC-enabled mobile wallet services under development now from several U.S. banks including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase and U.S. Bank. All four banks have trials underway in major cities using Visa's In2Pay microSD solution, for example. This solution became commercially available from Visa back in December 2010, but it needs the banks' involvement to really take off in the consumer space.

Bank of America's mobile wallet program, which will launch in the second half of this year, recently made the news when the blog BGR spotted an invitation the bank was sending customers to try the BlackBerry microSD solution (a microSD card with NFC capabilities). Visa told us that Bank of America was already testing this solution in major markets including New York, San Francisco and L.A.

The microSD technology Visa uses is provided by a company called DeviceFidelity, which also makes solutions for iPhones and Android devices. The microSD card is inserted into a phone's memory slot, when possible, to NFC-enable the device. But in the case of the iPhone, a slot is not available. DeviceFidelity works around this issue by using a special, protective case for iPhone users where its microSD functionality is built in.

It should be noted that these sorts of microSD and case solutions are a way to NFC-enable both current and older devices where NFC is not built into the phone itself. In the future, as NFC technology becomes more prevalent, such a solution would not be required.

While they're more of the dark horse in the race to become complete mobile wallet provider, it's possible that banks could expand their mobile wallet solutions to include more than just the NFC-enabled credit card replacement technology, but could expand their programs by integrating solutions from third-party providers. But for now, banks are solely focused on replacing just your payment cards (debit, credit and prepaid). For some consumers, that may be enough for now.

In future posts in this series, we'll look at some of the solutions mentioned above in more detail. Stay tuned.

Le studio hollywoodien lance une première expérimentation de location de films directement sur le réseau social, avec "The Dark Knight".

La page pour regarder le film "The Dark Knight" sur Facebook (Capture d'écran)

La Warner va devenir le premier studio hollywoodien à distribuer des films à travers le réseau communautaire Facebook aux Etats-Unis, a-t-elle annoncé mardi 8 mars.

Ce nouveau service sera étrenné avec "The Dark Knight - Le chevalier noir", le dernier opus des aventures de Batman et l'un des films les plus profitables de tous les temps.
Le film sera accessible à la location à l'adresse www.facebook.com/darkknight. Il en coûtera 30 "crédits Facebook", soit 3 dollars, et le film pourra être visionné de façon illimitée pendant 48 heures, a précisé la Warner.

Pour l'instant, seuls les abonnés de Facebook aux Etats-Unis auront accès à ce service, que la Warner décrit comme une expérimentation. D'autres titres devraient être proposés à la location ou à la vente "dans les prochains mois".

 

"Une façon simple et pratique d'avoir accès à nos films"

 

"Facebook est devenu une destination quotidienne pour des millions de gens", déclare Thomas Gewecke, président de la distribution numérique chez Warner. "Mettre nos films sur Facebook est un développement logique de notre distribution numérique".

"Cela offre au consommateur une façon simple et pratique d'avoir accès à nos films, à travers le plus grand réseau communautaire au monde", ajoute-t-il.

Les studios hollywoodiens ont déjà fait plusieurs tentatives de distribution en ligne, que ce soit à travers Amazon, le video-club Netflix ou l'iTunes d'Apple. Mais c'est la première fois qu'un studio investit Facebook, qui compte plus de 600 millions de membres.

La nouvelle a fait chuter de plus de 4% l'action de Netflix, cotée au Nasdaq.

 

In February 2010 we took a look at the state of the mobile web and how various platforms were performing by country. 12 months have now passed so we thought it would be interesting to take another look at the this space and see how things have changed. Additionally with the recent events that have taken place across North Africa and the emergence of social media and mobile internet as tools of the revolution we thought it would be interesting to take a look at those countries and see what the predominant platforms in use are.

(click for the full image)

We can see that in countries such as Egypt and Tunisia Nokia (more commonly associated with legacy handsets) dominates. It seems that in developing markets such as Brazil, India, China, Egypt, Tunisia and Russia Nokia still holds the top spot (in Egypt the numbers are as high as 80%).

When we look at more developed markets such as North America, Europe, Australia and Japan we see that it is the newer players such as Apple that lead the way. Interestingly USA has a reasonably even split between Apple, Google’s Android and Blackberry.

In many of the developed markets Google’s Android has made impressive gains in the last 12 months, often at the expense of Apple’s iOS. For example in the USA Apple’s market share has dropped from 53% 12 months ago to 35% today, while Google’s Android has gone from 12% to 27%. In the UK we see a similar picture with Apple dropping from 55% to 42% and Android gaining 10% during the same period.

Nokia has seen large drops in China over the last 12 months, from 80% to 59% with newer mobile devices such as those from Apple gaining ground. Could this be a sign of development, will other countries such as Egypt and Tunisia follow suit as they develop their economies? Would the revolutions in those countries have looked any different if the proportion of smart phones was higher, perhaps leading to an even greater exchange of information? Possibly, however what is certain is that Apple has lost market share in the majority of developed markets over the last 12 months as new devices have entered the market and competition has increased.

For 2011:

For 2010:

Twitter hopes to generate something like $100 million from advertising this year, but first it has to teach people how to buy its ads. Here’s how it’s doing that: A hand-holding how-to video, which walks through everything from pricing to dealing with angry users.

The tutorial, which runs 40 minutes, is up on YouTube, but it’s unlisted and is only accessible via a private link. Thanks to a helpful reader, I’ve been able to watch it myself, and I’ve uploaded it at the bottom of this post so you can see it, too.

But it is 40 minutes long–and most of you don’t need to watch all of it. Here’s what you need to know if you’re interested in advertising, technology and Twitter’s first attempts at making real money:

Promoted Tweets, Twitter’s first big ad product, hasn’t taken off.
Instead, at least for now, Twitter is pushing customers to spend most of their money on Promoted Accounts, its pay-per-follower product it rolled out at the end of last year. Twitter tells advertisers they ought to spend $4 on Promoted Accounts for every $1 they spend on Promoted Tweets–the original Google-style ad concept CEO Dick Costolo introduced last year. Twitter says that’s because it’s a lot easier to buy the former than the latter, because there’s a lot more inventory available. (And because Promoted Accounts will “turbocharge” Promoted Tweets.)

Promoted Tweets should get a big push in the next month or so.
Until now, the only way you’re going to see a Promoted Tweet is if you click on a search term that someone has purchased, or if you’re using Twitter app HootSuite. But Twitter says the ads will start running in users’ regular “timelines”–the primary Twitterstream they see–on its own Twitter.com site, by the end of Q1. That’s going to make them much more visible, and should hopefully help with the inventory problem noted above.

Twitter is telling customers to expect an “engagement rate” of 1 percent to 3 percent.
Ad buyers are usually trying to measure success by figuring out how many people looked at or clicked on an ad. Click-through rates for most Web ads are very tiny, and according to an ad buyer who has seen Twitter’s presentation, the company says a realistic click-through rate is 0.3 percent. But “engagement” rates–which measure when a user retweets an ad, or likes it, etc.–are supposed to be much higher. My tipster, by the way, says Twitter is requiring new ad buyers to make a purchase of at least $5,000 worth of inventory in order to participate in the company’s beta tests.

Twitter is warning buyers that some users will have a problem with their ads.
At the end of the presentation (around the 35-minute mark), the company takes time out to coach buyers about “dealing with negative user feedback,” which it more or less assumes they’ll be getting. “People are averse to change, especially when it comes to advertising, and this type of feedback is to be expected,” Twitter’s off-screen instructor explains. The company’s suggested coping strategy: Don’t worry! The complainers are an “extremely marginal percentage of the total.”

[UPDATE: So how do the ads actually work? A Twitter ads tester would like to share their experiences with the rest of the world, but can't.]

via mediamemo.allthingsd.com

Today, Facebook rolled out a new commenting system for blogs and third-party sites. We’ve implemented it here on TechCrunch, and after a few hours of the system being live it is obvious that it has its share of pros and cons. Readers have certainly noticed, and there is already a ton debate about whether this is good or bad for the Internet.

It is certainly not perfect. Facebook comments don’t support Twitter or Google logins. It doesn’t yet allow sites to archive their comments to make backups (although an API for that is forthcoming I am told), and switching away from Facebook comments after a few months on the system looks like it will be a hassle (data portability anyone?). Some corporations block Facebook, which kills it as a commenting system for that subset of users. In one fell swoop it could hurt Disqus, which is a great startup that’s been perfecting its commenting system for years. And there are lots of little bugs we’ve noticed that hopefully will be fixed soon (we were manually moderating every comment on TechCrunch until a few minutes ago, and you still can’t see a comment count at the top of each post like you could before).

On the other hand, it also has some real advantages. Primary among these is that it requires commenters to use their real identities. In the past few hours, most of the anonymous trolls who have come to call TechCrunch comments a second home are gone. Of course, some people don’t want to comment with their real names for good reason (they want to speak freely without fear of reprisals), but for the most part in practice anonymity was abused. It was used mostly as a shield to hide behind and throw out invective. Have the trolls really vanished or will they return? I certainly hope they are gone. We have fewer comments in general on most posts today, but the conversations are much more civil and interesting.

The other main benefit is social virality. When you comment on TechCrunch, your comment also appears in your Facebook stream with a link back to the post (unless you opt out of that option in the comment box). It would be better if the link went right to your comment instead of to the post in general, but that is a feature that can be added. It brings in more readers from Facebook who are pulled in to see what their friends said.

So what are the results? So far today, Facebook is our No. 2 referring site, after AOL (thank you, Justin Bieber). It is beating out Twitter, which is usually our top source of referring traffic. This viral effect would be twice as powerful, of course, if people could use their Twitter IDs as well.

Pros

• Real names and identities greatly reduces the number of trolls and anonymous cowards in comments.
• Social virality boosts traffic by creating a feedback loop between Facebook and participating sites.  Friends pull in their friends, creating a social entry point to your site.
• Automatic sign-in if you already signed into Facebook elsewhere, lowers the barriers to commenting.
• Most “liked” comments get voted to the top.  It also knows who your friends are, so you will see those comments first.

Cons

• No support for Twitter or Google IDs, which leaves out the other half of the social Web.
• No backups and other lock-ins will make it hard for sites to leave.
• If you work somewhere that blocks Facebook, you are out of luck.
• Your friends might be surprised to find their replies in your Facebook News stream reproduced on another site’s comments.  Expect a backlash.
• Moderation bugs, no view counts at the top of posts or ways to highlight site owners/writers in comments.

What do you think are the biggest pros and cons?

@ScepticGeek
Mahendra Palsule

I don't think FB offers any backup for comments, unlike Disqus does with WordPress. Also, issue of single-point-of-failure.

about 17 hours ago via TweetDeckRetweetReply

@alexia
Alexia Tsotsis

The worst thing about Facebook Comments is that now all our comments are people bitching about Facebook Comments.

about 14 hours ago via Seesmic DesktopRetweetReply