MetroSEEQ

More bad economy news this morning - I thought I put together a summary of what I gathered over the past few months.  Maybe there are some pattern emerging to see when this will all end.

• – In April, the IMF said that banks and other financial institutions could lose $1 trillion from the credit crisis as mortgage-backed assets lost most of their value - and it is still sticking to that estimate. So far banks have written off nearly $500 billion - half way there.
• – US Inflation rate at 17-year high, sharpest monthly jump since Sept 2005
• – Consumer confidence index at 16 year low, 5th lowest reading ever and expected to get worse
• – Consumer prices jump 1.1% in June - 2nd fastest pace in 26 years (much worse than expected) and energy prices jumped 6.6% in 1 month.
• – Unemployment rate reaches 5.5% in May from 5% - it is the fastest pace in 20 years.
• – Producer prices up 1.4% in May - 7.2% higher than they were a year ago.  This is the 8th consecutive month that prices had risen by more than 6% on an annual basis.
• – US foreclosures up 57% in January - there was a 9-% increase in the number of houses being repossessed by banks compared with January 2007.
• – Crude oil is 80% higher than it was 1 year ago, and 40% higher at the start of the year.
• – Health care spending to double in 2017
• – Economy is #1 issue on voters minds

Maybe review sites should stop thinking how they can lure local businesses into doing more and more online advertising and think about how we can help them

A lot of people have been contacting me about how cool Urbanspoon’s iPhone application is. Yes, it’s pretty cool and I wish I had a team to work on a cool iPhone app too to boost my coolness factor. I have several ideas but they are more practical than they are for entertainment purposes. If you want entertainment, check out the Wheel of Meal on MetroSEEQ. Now, that’s a piece of sophisticated piece of code that is far more advanced than Crazym_nus. Take a spin, you’ll know what i mean, and remember to turn the sound on too.

Okay, so why have not worked on mobile app yet? Well, the 1st reason is, I just don’t have the developers who have spare time to do it. 2nd reason is I don’t have 31 million venture money like YELP to do whatever they please. 3rd, the focus of the company is deals and coupons and there are just too many obstacles mobile coupon to be a reality now. Here are 5 reasons

1. Compatibility - too many carriers and too many devices to check phone compatibility. In short, if the world only uses iPhone and AT&T, i’d jump on it.

2. Lack of variety - critical mass hasn’t been reached for these coupons to be useful yet.

3. Lack of design depth - most advertisers haven’t started designing for mobile yet.

4. Interface/algorithm - it’s hard to come up with an interface and algorithm that will deliver you the coupon you need, when you need it

5. Hard to target - not only is tracking consumer on GPS a political issue.  There’s just not a filtering system to send you the relevant coupons yet.  In my view, I think this will have to be proactive than passive on the consumer part to acquire the coupons they want… otherwise targeting is just too difficult.

6: Optical barcode scanner not powerful enough - U.S. standard of barcode is somehow less powerful than Japan’s… that’s why they can do it first and we still have an infrastructure problem to overcome.

I think mobile coupons will happen someday. According to the reuters article I posted earlier, 77% of the consumers between ages 18-34 said they are likely to use coupons if given access to paperless technology.  77%!  That’s a pretty sure bet there if you’re a gambler.  I also suspect the number will grow given the bad state of economy, everyone is looking for a deal these days.

A friend of mine sent me an article on Reuters yesterday about how in the economic downtown, 67% plan for coupon use.

It’s a long article with lots of numbers, here it is i more readible form:

ICOM Survey breakdown: www.i-com.com

Age

18-34 yr old - 71%

35-54 yr old - 68%

55+              - 63%

Geography

Midwest - 70%

West - 69%

North East - 64%

South - 62%

Annual Income

<50K - 68%

>50K - 67%

Coupon Technology

58% of consumers responding to the ICOM survey see their coupon use increasing if they could download a coupon from
the Internet and have it automatically connected to an electronically swiped frequent shopper card.

> 77% of consumers in the 18-34 age group said they are much
more likely or somewhat more likely to use coupons if given access to this
paperless technology

63% in the 34-54 age group
47% in the 55+ age group

Conclusion: Everyone likes a good deal