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Skype Mobile for Verizon Goes Out on Thursday

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If you’re a Verizon Wireless customer using a smartphone under any Verizon data plan, you’d be glad to know that come Thursday, Skype Mobile will be available for download to your Verizon phones.  Of course, if you’ve been using Skype since ages ago, you’d know that this mobile app will allow you to get in touch with friends, family and colleagues all over the world.

Skype Mobile will let you make and receive unlimited Skype-to-Skype voice calls to practically anyone else who are also using Skype.  It will also let you send and receive unlimited instant messages with other Skype users, and call international phone numbers at cheap rates.

So, if you’ve got any of the following Verizon smartphones:

  • BlackBerry Storm 9530,
  • Storm2 9550,
  • Curve 8330, Curve 8530,
  • 8830 World Edition
  • Tour 9630 smartphones,
  • DROID by Motorola
  • DROID ERIS by HTC
  • Motorola DEVOUR

then prepare your smartphones now to download Skype Mobile on Thursday.

Skype Mobile works on Verizon Wireless’ voice network for wireless connection during Skype-to-Skype calls.  When making international calls, Skype Credits are required. But for domestic Skype-to-Skype calls are free of charge and will not affect your monthly minute allowance and data plan.

To get the download link for the app, text SKYPE to 2255 on Thursday.

ChaCha Adds Social Dimension to its Q&A Service

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I’m not really sure whether you have heard or at the most used ChaCha.com, a question and answer service that provides quick, accurate answers to millions of question everyday.  Regardless, you might be interested to know that the online Q&A service  is adding some social aspects to its service by launching the new ChaCha.me social platform.

The ChaCha.me platform allows you to build a profile. But once your profile is up, practically all those who’ve created their own profiles as well can start asking you various questions.  Likewise, you are free to ask questions to them too.  It’s like building a social network based on the Q&A format.

To kick off its launch, ChaCha.me is featuring David Guetta who recently won a Grammy Award and currently has two songs on the Billboard Top 50. Guetta will be among the first celebrities who will be featured on ChaCha.me. Once on the featured page, fans can ask questions and hopefully get answers from celebrities.

In addition, ChaCha.me will soon be making its way on mobile platforms, specifically on iPhone and Droid handsets. An SMS functionality is also being planned.

ChaCha’s CEO Steve Jones has this to say about the launch of ChaCha.me:

“One of the most fundamentally appealing qualities of social sites like Twitter and Facebook is the notion that people care about what celebrities and friends are doing and sharing. ChaCha.me provides this forum for users, but also takes it to the next level with intimate Q&A interaction. These ChaCha.me answers may flow into ChaCha’s broad database so that those who are asking for answers from ChaCha will receive, in effect, certified answers directly. For example, ChaCha will now be able to return certain answers about David Guetta, directly from David himself,” said Mr. Jones.

Foursquare is on a Roll! To Launch Free Analytics Tool

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Foursquare is really gearing up to go big time in the next couple of months perhaps. The location-based social network is all over the news the past few days.  Well, what can you expect? It’s closest rival, Gowalla is also up on its feet with new features and new platforms lately.

So, for Foursquare’s latest arsenal NYT’s Bits Blog is reporting that Foursquare is about to roll out a free analytics tool and dashboard in the coming weeks. This tool will allows business establishment owners to get a grasp of information about people who are visiting their business establishments. It will also help store owners in knowing certain demographics about their reglar customers as well as learn how they could make new customers become regular ones.

In addition, the new Foursquare tool will also allow business owners gather a range of real-time data about usage, the number of Foursquare users who have  “checked in”, when these people arrived, male-to-female customer ratio as well as data about the times of day where there were more visitors in their establishments.  If you’re running a business establishment, this information will be very useful for decision making.

Finally, the new feature will also include a staff page for each establishments wherein employees would be able to “socialize” with customers.

Of course, to protect user privacy, such feature will be in an opt-in, opt-out feature.

Would-Be Buyers of E-Book Readers Want to Get the iPad

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Hot on the heels of the just announced pre-order and availability dates of the Apple iPad, here comes an interesting report from a survey conducted by  ChangeWave Research. According to the report – 40% of would be e-reader buyers would like to get the iPad than the Amazon Kindle, Sony E-Reader or Barnes and Noble’s Nook.

ChangeWave surveyed 3,171 consumers right after Apple announced the iPad sometime in February.  Respondents were presented with the features and capability of the iPad before they were asked if they are keen on getting it.  The results showed that 4% respondent that they will most likely buy the iPad, while 9% answered somewhat likely.

Quite interestingly, the percentage of those who answered that they are most likely to buy the iPad is almost the same percentage as those who plans to buy it prior to the iPad’s launch. This means that after knowing about the specs and features of the iPad, those who wants to get it remains the same.

To make more meaning to their data, ChangeWave also compared pre-launch demand of the iPhone and the iPad and found that the pre-launch demand for the iPad is greater than the pre-launch demand for the iPhone.

Another interesting findings of the report showed that current Kindle and other e-book readers replied that they would have bought the iPad if it were already available when they purchased their current e-readers. So, this somehow shows how the iPad will affect sales of existing e-books since potential buyers might also consider getting the iPad instead.

So, let me now turn the table to you our dear readers. If you are planning to get an e-book reader, will you consider getting the iPad or the other e-book readers available in the market today?

Mobile Phone is the New Social Connector

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Ruder Finn, an independent PR company published some interesting findings of their new study – Mobile Intent Index. The study measures, well mobile phone users’  intent for accessing the Internet via their mobile devices.

According to the report, the average time spent by Americans on the mobile Internet is 2.7 hours. And what do they do during those times?  To socialize, manage their personal finances and push their advocacy.

Contrary to what we may have believed all along, mobile phone users do not access the Internet via mobile phones for educational purposes or for creative expression.  The study also found out that usage by gender and age differ. That is men access the mobile web to “escape” while women to “make others laugh.” Now that seems rather vague, right?

Another interesting finding of the report is the fact that immediacy is the major factor why users access the Internet via mobile.

“Our survey data shows that people use their mobile phones out of necessity for instant access to the Web whether it’s to conduct business with the most recent information or advocate on the spot on issues of pressing concern and breaking news,” said Marty McGough, director of Ruder Finn Insights

The study also highlights the fact that mobile phone apps are continously increasing with 61% of the respondents saying that they have downloaded an application at least once per month, and 36% of the respondents saying that they have downloaded applications from social networking sites at least once per month.

As a mobile connector, mobile phone access is used primarily to:

  • Instant message – 62%
  • Forward e-mails (58%), content (40%) and photos (38%)
  • Post comments on social networking sites – 45%
  • Connect to people on social networking sites – 43%

Interesting findings, right? So, which of these connectivity features do you do on your mobile phone?

Social Network Users are Predominantly Young Middle-Aged Folks

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First of, I really have to commend the folks at Royal Pingdom for coming up with such a comprehensive study on the demographics of social network users. It’s a pretty good study with just about enough statistics that will really give you a good grasp of who are really into social networking today. So, what do they find out? Majority of the social network users are predominantly middle-aged folks who belong to the 35-44, not that tech savvy youngsters that we may all have thought before this study.

The study took stock of site demographics information for the United States which they gathered using Google’s Ad Planner service and then made additional calculations to come up with their final data. The report includes age data of members from 19  social networking sites including -Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Friendster, Last.fm, Friendfeed, LiveJournal, Hi5, Tagged, Ning, Xanga, Classmates.com and Bebo.

So, some interesting highlights of the report include:

  • 25% of social network users belong to the 35-44 age group
  • 3% of social network users belong to the 65-older group
  • 65% of the users are in using Twitter and/or Facebook
  • Bebo and MySpace are both widely used by users age 17 or younger

Those were just some of the key findings of the report. If you want to learn more, just check out Royal Pingdom.

Meanwhile, what really puzzles me is the fact that if  the predominant users of Facebook are age 35-44 how come I still see tons of Mafia updates, senseless trivia questions, virtual gifts and other utterly unimportant stuff from my Facebook contacts?  Does this mean that Facebook users are into the site not for business and social networking purposes but rather to while away time?  Where is the maturity there, friends?