Posts Categorized: Mobile analytics

Big Businesses: Start Thinking Like Silicon Valley or Fail

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If a company wants to stay relevant, they need to become more like Bay Area start-ups, not less.

If you want to stay relevant, you need to become more like a Bay Area start-up, not less.

In his Disruptions column for the The New York Times, Nick Bilton criticized Silicon Valley start-ups for creating tech products that lack mass market appeal.

In essence, he argued that the high concentration of engineers in the Valley has resulted in an “echo chamber” of ideas geared toward solving “mundane problems” that don’t exist for the rest of world. Bilton called out a couple of companies as examples, including BlackJet, an “affordable private jet” provider.

His main gripe seems to be that the services offered by these start-ups aren’t scalable or sustainable business models.

While it’s hard to argue that private planes will ever be a viable form of transportation for anyone but the wealthy, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that this echo chamber of ideas is a bad thing either—especially for industries that exist outside the San Francisco Bay Area start-up scene.

In my Kontagent Konnect 2013 keynote, I examined the future of technology as it relates to business and consumers. And one thing is certain: mobile and data will be what drives the customer experience. For everything from banks and retailers to travel companies and even the health care industry, mobile will become essential to doing business.

So what does all of this have to do with this so-called “echo chamber”? Continue Reading…

What Smart Companies Know About Creating Impactful Metrics for Mobile Apps

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Kontagent kScope - mobile analytics - SGNToday SGN announced the acquisition of Mob Science. What a great move for Chris, Josh and the whole team! I discussed the acquisition with the Peter Delevett from the San Jose Mercury News for a story he filed entitled,
MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe looks to profit from Zynga’s downfall.”

During the interview, Peter asked me to describe the differences between creating app mechanics for social apps versus that of mobile apps. This is a question we answer every day at Kontagent and we know now what smart app developers and marketers need to do to create amazing experiences. Specifically, we recommend that: Continue Reading…

Using Data to Build Mobile Apps? You’re Probably Doing It Wrong

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You all already know that mobile is poised to become the dominant digital platform. For consumers the world over, it’s the first place they go to for information, commerce, entertainment and more. That much isn’t a mystery. The big question is what do mobile businesses need to do to create apps that resonate with customers?

It’s a tough question for sure, but answering it is key to dominating the $25 billion app market. Kontagent President and Chief Science Officer Josh Williams recently gave his insights into how companies can do it. Continue Reading…

The 5 Biggest Pain Points for Mobile Banking

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Mobile Banking Analytics - KontagentI just attended and presented at the Mobile Banking and Conference Summit in Miami. Now in its seventh year (mobile banking existed in 2006?!?), the conference was an exploration of how financial institutions are being influenced by, and taking advantage of, the mobile channel and mobile technology. A few hundred attendees, including mostly high-level executive, product, technology and marketing folks were there.

I must say, going to the conference, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Having worked for so long with so many early adopting companies (ooVoo, JackThreads, eHarmony, EA, Halfbrick Studios) in traditionally more early adopting industries (gaming, mobile commerce), I didn’t have high expectations about the content or the networking. My assumption was that banks are slow to adopt new technologies, and so mobile would be no more than a bell and a whistle.

I was wrong. Continue Reading…

Get Stuff Done Faster—with the Power to Make Sense of Mobile Customer Data

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Kontagent kScope - Kontagent kSuite DataMine 2.0Work smart, not hard. That’s always the goal. Especially while your competitors are going to market and iterating at breakneck speed.

These days, we’re all crazy busy. And we all spend more than enough time on tasks that we know to be time drains, wishing for smarter and faster.

Kontagent has set out to simplify, improve and empower your workflow. With the upgraded kSuite DataMine, we answered the call from our customers, many of whom asked for added functionalities. So, we’re really excited to roll out improvements and know they will make making sense of your data even more pain-free.

“We’ve been able to dramatically cut down the time it takes to make data-driven decisions on our app development cycles,” said Linda Lee, Head of Data and Monetization, PLAYSTUDIOS.

“With kSuite DataMine, many team members across our organization—from marketing to product—are able to analyze their data and shift gears quickly to meet their specific KPIs. In the past, they’ve had to rely on analysts to run their queries and this often slowed things down. We’re now able to save hours daily, and can instead use that time to focus on our strategic business goals and objectives.” Continue Reading…

14 Big Data Startups You’re Going to be Hearing a Lot More About

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Kontagent kScope - Mobile AnalyticsKontagent is featured in Business Insider:
14 Big Data Startups You’re Going to be Hearing a Lot More About
by Kevin McLaughlin

For all the hype around “big data”—or tech that crunches through massive amounts of emails, tweets, video and other files to find useful information—some startups aren’t yet making tons of noise.

That’s probably not going to be the case for much longer.

Startups that got funding a couple of years ago are starting to get some serious momentum. Others are still in stealth mode, busily putting the finishing touches on potentially game changing tech.

And VCs are eagerly backing their efforts.

“What’s interesting about big data is that it’s going to be a formidable investment area for many years to come. It’s not like in 18-24 months I’ll say hey, the big data wave is over,” Ping Li, general partner at VC firm Accel Partnerstold us last February.

Read the full story here.

Zynga Cuts 18% of Workforce, Shifts to Mobile. Is It Too Late?

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Zynga CEO Mark Pincus announced today that the gaming company will cut nearly one-fifth of workforce as financial struggles continue (Courtesy: Jim Wilson/The New York Times)

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus announced this week that the gaming company is cutting nearly one-fifth of its workforce as financial struggles continue. (Courtesy: Jim Wilson/The New York Times)

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus announced this week that the gaming company is laying off 18 percent of its workforce. Pincus says the move, which includes cutting 520 positions and closing LA and NYC offices, allows Zynga to reshift its focus to mobile platforms where its players are spending more time.

The scale that served us so well in building and delivering the leading social gaming service on the Web is now making it hard to successfully lead across mobile and multiplatform… Mobile and touch screens are revolutionizing gaming. Our opportunity is to make mobile gaming truly social by offering people new, fun ways to meet, play and connect.

We think it’s a good move for Zynga. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you know mobile is growing like wildfire, becoming the backbone by which people consume content.

“Mobile apps are today where social apps were in the maturity phase five years ago,” said Josh Williams, Kontagent’s president and chief science officer. “The moves that Mark and his team made, while painful, are necessary if they are to have a chance at building a dominant mobile app company akin to what they did with Facebook.”  

Yet, 75 percent of business leaders admit to not having a well-defined mobile strategy for 2013. Most of them still consider this new channel as an add-on, retrofitting their Web strategies to fit mobile. That’s really troubling because, as Zynga has shown us, it doesn’t work that way.

Our team of engineers and data scientists work with hundreds of developers who are also faced with the challenge of transitioning from the social Web to mobile. We’ve found that it’s really a different ball game. We know that: Continue Reading…

Kontagent Konnect 2013: Beyond Mobile Analytics and Platforms

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KK2013: Khan Academy’s Ben Kamens: From Meaningful Data to Meaningful Decisions

Welcome back from Memorial Day weekend! In case you missed it, last week we hosted our second annual Kontagent Konnect 2013.

Hundreds of mobile leaders joined us in San Francisco for two days of discussions on the future of mobile, and share lessons they’ve learned from using data and mobile analytics to create lasting customer experiences on this new platform.

Be sure to sign up for our Kontagent Konnect 2013 executive brief. We’ll go much more in depth on all the sessions; it’s slated to go out next week. For now, here are highlights from KK2013. We hope you’ll be able to apply what you learned to your own business immediately. Continue Reading…

How Caesars, GEICO and the Oakland A’s Used Data to Disrupt Their Market

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Innovation mobile analytics - KontagentDavid Gutierrez will be a speaker at Kontagent Konnect 2013 in San Francisco on May 20-21. Register now–space is limited.

There’s a lot of talk about the need for companies to be more data-driven in their decision making process. It’s a mantra that’s often repeated throughout the mobile industry. But what does being “data-driven” actually mean?

Most of you already know the basic concept of data-driven decision making. In essence, it entails tracking and analyzing your data in order to guide your business decisions. While this is an accurate description, it doesn’t tell you much about what data can really do for your business. Incorporating data-driven decision making throughout your organization can raise your revenue, customer loyalty and any other business goal dramatically, especially for those of you in the mobile space.

You don’t have to look very far to find examples of data-driven decision making success stories. Caesars Entertainment, GEICO and the Oakland Athletics are just a few examples of organizations that have used data-driven decision making to change the course of their businesses for the better. So what did they do exactly and how can you replicate their success? Continue Reading…