We just got a hot tip from one of our Verizon buddies. Apparently Verizon Wireless is starting a new BOGO campaign tomorrow that includes both of its Android handsets the Droid and Eris both Palm phones the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus along with the LG Chocolate Touch and Samsung Alias 2 features phones. We hear the promotion will allow you to mix and match any of the eligible handsets or even a Winmo/feature phone of equal or lesser value. Of course the buyer will be required to sign a two year contract but that's par for the course on these types of deals.

Our tipster says the stores have been prepped and the promo is set to begin tomorrow. No word on how long it will run so you better get your new phones soon.

Scammers beware though, remember Verizon recently hiked its ETFs on most advanced devices to counter those that were taking advantage of Verizon's genius nature. It's no longer worth it to simply get two new phones, pay the ETF and hawk the other one on eBay for a quick profit.

Joel has decided to chase venture capital for StackOverflow, but I can't exactly figure out why. He lists six benefits that just don't compute under even light scrutiny:

1. The Answers market is in a land grab mode
Unlike eBay, where there's a general market for goods and you get huge network effects from having a critical mass of buyers and sellers, StackOverflow is all about niches. People who are searching for how to make sql server not go slow? aren't likely to bleed over to how to make swedish meatballs?.

This means that you'll have to fight for every niche. Similar to how general forums would have to fight for every niche. Just because you have a forum site that's big for gamers, you won't have much of an edge attracting foodies.

Finally, it's not like this is a new idea with no other entrants. Look at Yahoo Answers for a site that's still up with a similar model and look at Google Answers for another that couldn't be turned into a worthwhile business and closed.

2. Stack Overflow is like Starbucks
It really isn't. Starbucks can use capital efficiently because they have big capital expenditures securing land, building out stores, and purchasing coffee machines. Where's the capital intensity part of starting another answers site? Adding another server? Coming up with a new design?

It doesn't seem like Stack Overflow can efficiently use big money for anything but advertising itself. Which is kinda funny when the whole business is about getting page views to sell for ad crumbs. It also rings very much like dot-com. Remember when all you had to do was get eyeballs? Oh, it's free? Who cares, let's make it up on volume!

3. Stack Overflow wants to get on Techcrunch
If you're listing the publicity of Stack Overflow raises $10M in Series A by Fancy Schmancy VC as the 3rd pro for taking money, you're bound to be in trouble. The Techcrunch post you're going to get from this is going to scroll off the front page in 4 hours and nobody who's actually going to use your service is going to care.

Do you think people looking for an answer to how do I get the three gold rings in zelda? is going to give a hoot who's money you're burning to provide that forum? Or even that the advertisers you're hoping to attract is going to look at anything else than CPM and demographics for a clue on whether to invest? No.

4. The investor will give you advice, connections, and introductions
They may, but most of the introductions your typical investor is going to give you is how to get you out in 3-5 years. You can find a lot of advice in many places. Rarely is the quality of the advice associated with having money involved of largely superior quality.

And if you end up building something of considerable value, then the connections and introductions will come all by themselves. You usually have to work to fight them off with a stick when things are going great. And getting an intro to Mr. Very Important Person before you have anything of material value is usually not going to give you much anyway.

5. Taking money means big exit or IPO
I'd argue the opposite. When you take money, your exit is bound to be smaller unless you're playing the Web 2.0 lottery game (where a few lucky contestants gets bought for sums completely uncorrelated to business fundamentals). Taking money means giving up equity, which means there'll be less left over if you happen to build something that's valuable enough for others to buy.

And I don't know if you've heard, but the IPO markets aren't all that interested in eyeball companies without the numbers to back them up any more. Doesn't matter how many letters of the alphabet you've used for series whatever funding before you got there.

If you can build a great, profitable business, you'll have all the options to sell or go IPO. Taking VC only complicates that.

6. Taking VC will make your company successful
This one is funny. So if you're not looking to take VC and play the Web 2.0 lottery or aim for an early exit, you're just in it for personal aggrandizement. If you take the money, you just want the best for your business. Spot the disconnect here.

Now even given all this, there's actually still an argument for why Joel should take the money. It'll probably lower the chances of Stack Overflow ultimately succeeding as a long-term sustainable business, but if he has eyed that he has a hot property right now, it'll be a good time to take some money off the table.

A fool and his money will soon be departed applies equally to venture capitalists as it does to everyone else. If Joel and co. can negotiate a deal with Sand Hill road to give them a nice payout as part of the deal, this might well be even better than trying to shop around Stack Overflow for a sale that it's probably premature for.

Much better to take a small slice of the proceeds from a if this just get 1% of the billion dollar advertising market than to take the slice from how much money did you make for the past 12 months? of a strictly look-at-the-books sale.

Go cherries, go!

Shared by Kristopher
BBC News - Facebook dominates UK mobile use

Facebook dominates UK mobile use

Facebook is changing the design of its homepage Facebook dominates the lives of mobile internet users in the UK, according to figures from a mobile industry body. The social network accounts for nearly half of all the time people in the UK spend going online using their phones. The data, from the GSM Association (GSMA), showed that people in the UK spent around 2.2bn minutes browsing the social network during December alone. The true number may be even higher as the data was only collected from three of the five UK networks. The data, which will eventually be collected from all five networks, showed that 16 million people in the UK accessed the internet from their mobile phones in December 2009. Together, they viewed a total of 6.7 billion pages and spent more than 4.8 billion minutes (60 million hours) online during the month. MOBILE MINUTES SPENT ONLINE Facebook; 2.2bn minutes Google sites; 395m minutes Microsoft sites; 165m minutes Orange sites; 138m minutes AOL (and Bebo); 106m minutes Apple; 104m minutes Vodafone; 89m minutes BBC sites; 83m minutes Flirtomatic; 54m minutes Yahoo sites; 48m minutes Source: GSMA/Comscore Facebook dominated the statistics, racking up the most unique visitors (5 million), the most number of pages viewed (2.6 million) and the most time spent on the site. Google sites were second in the list with around with 4.57 million unique users. However, they spent on average less than one-fifth of the time on its sites, compared to Facebook. Others sites that appeared in the top ten - which accounted for 70% of usage - included Yahoo, eBay and Microsoft. Facebook is currently the largest social network on the web, with around 350 million users. The six-year-old site is rolling out a new homepage design which focuses more on chat and search.

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

The feed yard is a place filled with rusted out digital representations of days gone by. It is home to the lost feeds of blogs and corporate sites that once used them diligently to share their ideas.

Like any scrap yard there is money to be made in this yard. It has been quite a surprise to me that a market for dormant or abandoned RSS feeds hasn't sprung up. The opportunity to engage subscribers within a niche without being required to go out and earn those subscribers is has been hanging around for years.

The concept was first introduced to me by a failing at Current TV years ago. They had a master feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/currenttv that I was subscribed to.

For nearly 6 months not a single update came through the feed. Then one day it was firing off 20 updates every few hours. Only the updates weren't for Current TV, they were for items on eBay with current' in the title.

Surprised, I got in touch with a friend that I thought might have contacts at Current to see if their feed had been hijacked. My friend did get me in touch with the right people and we traded a few emails. However, they were less concerned with the content in the feed than they were that it was still active.

At the time their FeedBurner account was currenttv and all other feeds were labeled currenttv/topic. This legacy feed was the only one that was cranking out eBay data so it went under the radar. I'm sure if you click the link for the feed above you were able to see what goodness was left inside.

I'm not sure whether this type of feed yard would lead to genuine commerce or nefarious activities but that isn't for me to decide. My guess is that it would be a gray area shunned by many and praised by others as an opportunity to extract value from failed properties. I think this is a revenue stream worth exploring for the right startup that doesn't mind a little rust.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

The Feed Yard is a post from: TechStartups.com

Talk to most people about ecommerce and the first thing they probably think of is Amazon.com or eBay. Many of these folks feel that Amazon has locked up ecommerce and that eBay is the only site for person-to-person sales the online equivalent of a garage sale or a collectibles fair.

What if I told you that there's still opportunity in ecommerce. That you can create a competitive, profitable business without being threatened by the behemoths? All you have to do is niche yourself. (Yes, over the past few months I've begun to use niche as a verb because finding and serving a niche is a truly active process.)

Case in point: Gluten-Free food.

My son and I were both diagnosed with an allergy to wheat a few years back. Luckily it's nothing serious, but we both feel better when we avoid wheat. Now, try to find bread or pasta without wheat what a PITA! One solution is to buy Gluten-Free products. Gluten is found in wheat and typically if something is Gluten-Free, it's wheat-free. (Note: this is not always the case, but it helps you zero-in on wheat-free products.)

Our local Whole Foods Market has begun to carry lots of wheat-free, gluten-free products but sometimes without warning or an explanation, they'll stop carrying a product. Over the past few months, they've stopped carrying the only pancake mix that didn't taste like cardboard and we haven't been able to find it anywhere on a consistent basis at any of the local markets.

I found it online at glutenfree.com.

See, as more people in the United States have discovered that they have a wheat or gluten allergy, demand has grown. Realizing that it makes less economic sense for your local grocer to carry these products, this enterprising company started selling them online.

Sure, you have to tack on the cost of shipping, but it's better than eating cardboard for breakfast.

And they're not alone. The number of sites that appear in Google search results for Gluten Free and Wheat Free has grown exponentially in the three years since we discovered our allergy.

So, that begs the question: what other trends are we missing that the big e-tailers haven't tackled yet? What untapped niches are available for entrepreneurs to jump into and dominate before that trend reaches its tipping point and the big guys jump in?

Because then, it will be too late.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

There's Riches in the Ecommerce Niches is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

I'm sure this isn't because of me or my post yesterday, Ebay Partner Network and Transparency, but it is welcome news:

Click Filtering (on-going enhancements)

We have had a few reports that some of our affiliates have been experiencing issues with bots inflating their click numbers. We have been working on a few additional click filtering rules to continue to improve our capabilities in this area and ensure click counts in ePN are an accurate representation of valid clicks. We will continue to roll these out in the coming weeks.

We continue to try and improve the tools and reporting that is available for our partners. If you have thoughts or suggestions, please send them to Affiliates-Program-US@ebay.com. While we may not be able to respond to all suggestions personally, we value your input greatly.

That is the last of three sections in an email sent out by eBay today to keep network partners in the loop. And I have to say this is the closest that I have seen them come to taking feedback from their users into consideration (publicly).

Maybe eBay has learned from the great seller revolts after they changed programs and how those got started.

This email doesn't appear to come from the same group that is handling transparency, but regardless it's a step in the right direction especially if eBay can deliver on better reporting. Not only does it create transparency but it will allow partners and developers to see just how effective their efforts are. The bottom line is that opening up all the tracked data will make this a stronger program that can drive revenue for eBay the reason to have an affiliate and developer program.

I'm not sure if I shared how great their shopping API is but it is simply awesome. Like another great API, Twitter, it is very powerful. With better click data that includes IP and user-agent strings eBay could see a growth in full blown applications or ad networks being built from their platform.

You will be able to sleep better at night, I am sure, knowing that I will be sending my thoughts to the Affiliates Program email address. My first thought will be to ask them why it is an Affiiliate address and not a Partner one.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Ebay Partner Network Click Filtering is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

What I am about to say is because I have been a long time member of the eBay affiliate program, now called eBay Partner Network. It is also of value to anyone that is starting or currently responsible for managing an affiliate program for a company.

My affinity for their brand is the result of being a partner for over three years, my wife being a seller on eBay for nearly ten years, API ease of use and the ability to earn revenue consistently for three years as part of the partner network.

But try as they might, eBay has not driven me away from the partner network . . . yet. They transitioned the program from Commission Junction to an internal program two years ago. The metrics and other monitoring tools suffered as eBay had to get their affiliate legs underneath them. No longer could an affiliate view the extensive reports for click monitoring, referrals, purchases, week to week comps, etc.

Then eBay transformed the program most recently from their CPA (where a partner was paid if their link resulted in a sale) program to a CPC program. This isn't your average CPC program with prices set per click it is based on an algorithm that calculates the quality of the clicks from a given link on a 24 hour basis and assigns them a monetary value.

With this most recent transition to CPC and a program controlled by an algorithm (see: bot) eBay developed a Transparency Team. This team has the task of reaching out to partners that have links that aren't performing in a manner that matches the eBay partner agreement (see: fraudulent).

This is a great idea in theory. However, this team wouldn't need to exist if the eBay partner network returned to the same type of reports that Commission Junction used. Instead, when reinventing the wheel, eBay eliminated any useful monitoring for partners. Thus making participating in their program as opaque as it can be. Metrics that provide a payout, ranking or trip the algorithm to send an automated email stating that a partner is somehow engaged in fraudulent activity are nonexistent.

Ebay has removed any substantive accounting for themselves in the process of monitoring or payouts, the crux of a developer or user becoming an affiliate. Hiding reports from users that are accustomed to them as part of other vendor programs.

The problem is a that is a basic customer service issue that has not been addressed by eBay. Reporting, prompt replies and useful feedback data would allow partners to build better programs that meet eBay's standards and can be crafted to drive more quality traffic to eBay.

This example says it all:

Two months ago I was contacted by the eBay Partner Network Transparency Team (see: bot generated email) stating that in their quest to be transparent I should do the same and that I was failing as a large percentage of my links weren't sending referrer data. Meaning that they don't have a record from these links of the website where the link was displayed and clicked on.

Fair enough to ask me about the links. Not fair or right, accusing someone of not being transparent when all of the click data is hidden away. Not fair is waiting two months to reply back with meaningless data stating that eBay is right. See below:

Ebay sure is right that I have a high non-referrer rate and that bots are removed. I guess I should stop questioning their authority . . . sure. I'd do that if I knew what the criteria were or what bots are being removed. Because for nearly two years they didn't remove a single bot from click data.

I've requested more data from the Transparency Team like IP addresses and user-agents of those clicks. Since I can't track the click that is actually going to eBay without breaking the user-agreement with eBay I will be at their mercy to figure out if the clicks are coming from mobile devices or and some proxy bot that has a lust for finding its way to eBay auctions. Maybe the bot master was blocked by eBay for not being transparent enough when scraping their auctions.

Ebay, this isn't how to be transparent or run a valued affiliate program. If my experience hadn't begun with your program on Commission Junction I wouldn't have such high hopes for how the current partner network could operate. As an affiliate, I want to make money, but I also want eBay to succeed.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Ebay Partner Network and Transparency is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

Like you, I've been a member and user of PayPal's service for years. They were early to the game and grew accordingly with a product that made buying online drop dead easy. With an exit to eBay they were integrated into a powerful money minting machine.

They also joined a culture of apathy and disdain for those that help them line their pockets developers.

Like their acquirer, PayPal continued to build a mediocre developer community, foster it with partial code samples, limited information and limited support. Now in kindness to PayPal they did begin providing better support a few years ago and are pretty good when it comes to engaging developers on the message boards offering solutions a problem that has plagued eBay for years.

Visit any eBay developer board and you'll find replies that focus on posting in the wrong thread topic instead of offering a solution. It shows the developers that they aren't a priority.

I was looking forward to the release of the brand spanking new PayPal X Developer Network. Hoping that my previous experience wouldn't hold true and that there would be a renewed focus on the developers that are integrating the PayPal gateways and API's into their platforms. But they let me down.

The new developer community site is plagued with broken links, the same old code samples and forums that stopped loading threads on October 28. The intention is there but the execution is hit and miss.

I can forgive them this time, though. Because it appears that their intention is to focus fully on their API implementations and integrate the legacy products like IPN and PDT into a more standardized solution.

Which will help PayPal as it moves toward working with developers to create a wider range of solutions like mobile and in application micro-payments.

Something else of note with the new PayPal X Developer Network is the improved site IA. Thank you to the person(s) that restructured the information and worked with the UI person(s) to highlight what developers want most . . . documentation.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

PayPal X Developer Network Same as it Always Was is a post from: TechStartups.com