WHERE » WHERE in the News

‘App’lying her talents to the mobile marketplace

Jennie — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:02:29 +0000

One of our Northeastern University co-ops was featured in NEU’s news! Here is the article:

News @ Northeastern by Greg St. Martin | May 21, 2012 – Working both as an Android and iOS developer on co-op gave Elise Murray, CIS’12, more than just the technical know-how to say, “There’s an app for that.” Now she can say, “I have a job doing that.”

Murray, who graduated in May as a combined major in computer science and business with a concentration in entrepreneurship, spent two summer co-ops working for Boston-based mobile commerce company Where, Inc., performing upgrades to the company’s smartphone apps and fixing bugs.

The experience helped her land a full-time job with PayPal — a business unit of Ebay, the ecommerce giant that acquired Where, Inc., last year. Murray will become an official member of PayPal’s Android developer team this week.

PayPal’s Don Kingsborough: In-store payment is ours to lose

Jennie — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:48:54 +0000

GigaOm by Ryan Kim | January 14, 2012 - Don Kingsborough could have called it quits. The man who founded Worlds of Wonder Toys, famous for Teddy Ruxpin and helping lead the introduction of Nintendo in the U.S., and the former president of of consumer products at Atari, was just winding down his time last year at Blackhawk Network, a pre-paid card company that he had sold to supermarket Safeway. With his options expiring, he decided to sell and contemplated retirement.

Kingsborough came in [to PayPal] and honed the in-store payment initiative, which was underway well before Kingborough arrived. He focused on appealing first to consumers and making it simple for them to grasp, before ensuring the merchants could be able to understand the value of the system. Then he went about getting the cooperation of merchants, criss-crossing the country to call upon retailers and payment infrastructure companies to get them on board. Along the way, he helped PayPal pick up necessary components like location-based service WHERE, whose CEO Walt Doyle was personally persuaded to sell by Kingsborough. The plan is now to start rolling out the payment system in the second quarter though the first U.S. trials have already begun with Home Depot.

PayPal Looks to Expand in Boston

Jennie — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:18:01 +0000

Boston Globe by Scott Kirsner | January 13, 2012 - PayPal, the electronic payments arm of Internet auction site eBay Inc., is looking to add as many as “several hundred’’ jobs to its Boston operations, company officials said, becoming the latest name-brand technology company to expand its local presence.

Governor Deval Patrick and Lieutenant Governor Timothy P. Murray met in November with top executives from PayPal, including then-president Scott Thompson, to talk about expanding the company’s operations here. PayPal currently employs just over 100 people at its office in the North End, where it is developing software to bring its services and advertising to mobile devices like smartphones.

PayPal: Mobile Payments and Location-Based Offers Go Hand-In-Hand

Jennie — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 05:41:17 +0000

GigaOm by Ryan Kim | January 3, 2012 – As we have been reporting, PayPal is gearing up to launch an in-store payment system that will compete with Google Wallet, Isis, Square and others. But the company isn’t just building out a point-of-sale transaction network. It’s looking to engage consumers well before they set foot in a store.

Walt Doyle, the CEO of WHERE, which was acquired by PayPal last year, said that will be a key battleground in mobile payments, pulling in consumers off the street. WHERE, which operates a location-based ad network, will be used as a way for merchants and retailers to engage consumers with deals and offers and lure them into stores, where they can check out using PayPal’s upcoming payment system. Doyle told me in an interview that the system will make mobile payments interesting to both consumers and merchants.

eBay Uses WHERE to Send Shoppers to Local Chain Stores

Jennie — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:08:59 +0000

eCommerceBytes by Ina Steiner | January 2, 2012 – In April, eBay acquired WHERE, a provider of location-based services including mobile advertising and search and recommendation services. WHERE CEO Walt Doyle explained on the PayPal blog last week how WHERE fits in with PayPal’s vision of helping brands reach consumers in multiple ways.

Doyle described a mobile advertising campaign WHERE had executed for the Vicks Behind Ear Thermometer where it used Google and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data to enhance the targeting of the campaign.

WHERE served up ads on mobile devices that would only appear to mothers in regions with a high incidence of flu who were within two miles of a retailer that carried the advertiser’s thermometer – retailers included Target, Walmart, Babies R Us, Rite Aid and Walgreens. Mobile users who fit all criteria were shown a banner ad within an app that read “Flu levels in your area are high. Be prepared with Vick’s revolutionary Behind Ear Thermometer” and then given the locations of the nearby retailers.

Using Google’s Data to Reach Consumers

Jennie — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 22:03:08 +0000

The New York Times by Andrew Adam Newman | December 22, 2011 – THE viruses that Google researchers usually focus on are those that strike computers, but in recent years, they have studied those that infect people, too.

Google correlated billions of flu-related Web searches from 2003 to 2008 with actual Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data over the same period. Then, because Web searchers’ Internet addresses indicated location, Google devised a formula to estimate regional flu activity based solely on searches, with a reporting lag of only about a day, outdoing C.D.C. flu reports, which typically are published a week or two after outbreaks.

In 2009, researchers from Google and the C.D.C. wrote an article summarizing their findings in the journal Nature, and stated that the new predictive model — now called Google Flu Trends and accessible in an interactive format online — could be a boon to public health. “Up-to-date influenza estimates may enable public health officials and health professionals to better respond to seasonal epidemics,” they wrote.

What the researchers probably did not predict was that the Google flu data would end up being the cornerstone of an advertising campaign.

I live in Boston, and there’s an app for that: 5 must-have apps for Bostonians

Jennie — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 16:32:37 +0000

Boston.com by Whitney Prior | November 11, 2011 BOSTON – As someone who is never without my iPhone, I can say with some level of confidence that I know a thing or two about what makes an awesome mobile app. And since an iPad is out of my budget and my laptop is packed away when I’m on the go, this knowledge often comes in handy. Phone in hand and on a small budget, I’ve learned to breathe easier, live simpler, and get places a heck of a lot quicker with the help of a few fantastic apps.

Here are five must-have apps for Boston residents.

CEO of Where, Walt Doyle Joins Celtra’s Board of Directors

Jennie — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:48:07 +0000

BostonInnovation by Gregory Gomer | October 4, 2011 BOSTON – Cambridge based Celtra has just made a big strategic move in appointing a new board member. According to an announcement today by Celtra, current president and CEO of Where, Inc., Walt Doyle, will be joining Celtra’s Board of Directors. Celtra offers the most flexible and easy-to-use platform that enables scalable, rich media mobile advertising across native apps and the mobile web on the most popular device platforms. The company’s AdCreator lets advertisers easily create, distribute and measure rich media mobile display advertising. Doyle will be joining Grandbanks’ Tim Wright and Fairhaven’s Mark Hatfield who joined Celtra’s Board earlier this year.

“Celtra is at the forefront of innovation in mobile display technology. From ad creation and trafficking, to tracking and performance optimization, our AdCreator platform provides advertisers with the most comprehensive solution in the market today,” said Miha Mikek, CEO of Celtra. “Walt understands the opportunity in front of Celtra and has helped companies in our position win in very competitive environments. His experience, insights and assistance in establishing the company’s direction will be a tremendous advantage as we continue to innovate and make rich media mobile advertising accessible to even more advertisers. We couldn’t be happier to have an executive of Walt’s caliber joining our team.”

Mobile ad market gets more muscle

Jennie — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:08:49 +0000

USA Today by Jon Swartz | July 15th, 2011 SAN FRANCISCO — The mobile-ad market is scorching hot, in part because companies are getting more comfortable with using those ads to reach the third of American adults who own smartphones. That shift is coming despite consumer concerns about privacy and the amount of detailed data about themselves that they might be giving up.

This week, mobile-ad network Mojiva landed another $25 million in funding. DealNet, a new ad network for local merchants, debuted. And Target.com is pushing a major back-to-school mobile ad campaign via a Pandora application.

Money spent on mobile ads will soar nearly seven times, from an anticipated $3.3 billion this year to $20.6 billion in 2015, predicts Gartner.

eBay to Acquire WHERE, a Leading Location Media Company

devin — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 16:01:39 +0000

eBay Inc. has reached a definitive agreement to acquire WHERE, a leading location media company and local discovery mobile application. WHERE is expected to enhance the company’s position in local and mobile commerce and deepen its ability to connect retailers with consumers.

Founded in 2004, WHERE is a Boston-based business at the forefront of the intersection of local and mobile commerce (two of four trends we have clearly been focusing on for some time now – the other two being social and digital). WHERE operates a leading local mobile discovery application – WHERE – and a leading location-based advertising network – WHERE Ads. Through these services WHERE provides personalized, hyper-local advertising, offers, and deals to millions of mobile consumers across North America. More than 120,000 retailers, brands and small merchants use WHERE daily to reach new audiences and deliver real-time foot traffic to their doorstep.

We’ve talked about how much I enjoy my job here on Ink in the past. From covering our earnings calls in real-time to traveling to events both near and far, it is both an exciting and rewarding role I get to play in the grand scheme of things. However, I really think the most rewarding part of this job is getting the opportunity to work with and meet intelligent, interesting, unique people – both inside the organization and out. So being the one who gets to publicly welcome the WHERE team into the eBay Inc. family is right up there.

It is a happy coincidence that our agreement to acquire WHERE comes on the first day of the O’Reilly Where 2.0 conference in Santa Clara. A conference that Mok Oh, Chief Innovation Officer, WHERE will be speaking at and one I will be live-blogging from on Thursday morning when eBay’s Jack Abraham (founder and former CEO of Milo.com) will be taking the stage to talk about the future of shopping. He’ll no doubt be touching on the fact that local and mobile commerce companies like WHERE are blurring the lines between offline and online commerce.

In the case of WHERE, by delivering personalized, hyper-local advertising, offers, and deals to shoppers on their mobile phones, we see a huge opportunity for retailers and brands to reach more buyers, and for consumers to get more choice and value when they shop.

I’ll be most interested to see how eBay integrates PayPal’s online payments technology into the WHERE mobile application. eBay Inc. expects that this integration will allow consumers to find, shop and pay for great local deals anytime, anywhere and help retailers reach local buyers in real-time.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of 2011. eBay Inc. does not expect this acquisition to have a material impact on its financial guidance as issued both in conjunction with its fourth quarter earnings release on January 19, 2011 and updated on March 28, 2011.

Forward Looking Statement

This blog post contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from those discussed. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, the possibility that the transaction may not close, the reaction of the users of WHERE’s services, the future growth of WHERE’s business, the reaction of competitors to the transaction and the possibility that integration following the transaction may be more difficult than expected. More information about potential factors which could affect our business and results is included in eBay’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2010, its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, its Current Reports on Form 8-K, and other periodic filings. All forward-looking statements are based on information available to eBay on the date hereof, and eBay assumes no obligation to update such statements.