From Spindle’s own blog post about its acquisition:

We’ve spent the past two and a half years building a product that helps you answer the question: “What’s happening nearby right now?” Every time we’ve experimented and looked beyond local discovery, we’ve been amazed by the breadth and quality of content shared on Twitter. By joining forces with Twitter, we can do so much more to help you find interesting, timely, and useful information about what’s happening around you.

Spindle had raised about $2.3 million in funding from investors such as Polaris, Greylock, Lerer, SV Angel and others.

The local discovery app worked by using the social data from Twitter and Facebook to implicitly discover events, happenings and locations around a user, through its app. Presumably with the new service Twitter will launch, it will then use Spindle’s tech and talent to build similar functionalities into either the main Twitter app, or launch a separate Twitter-branded local discovery app.

Disclosure: Lerer Ventures, an investor in Spindle, is also an investor in Skift.

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By 2016, 80% of the roughly 200 airlines participating in the SITA/Airline Business IT Trends Survey.plan to offer mobile boarding passes through their own apps, up from the current 53%., the survey found.

And the use of third-party apps for mobile boarding passes is slated to be the norm for 62% of global airlines by 2016, up from the current 21% of carriers, the survey found.

Airlines thus are showing no qualms about in a sense outsourcing the distribution of their mobile boarding passes to companies such as Apple, Samsung and Google, and passengers are getting more convenience as their boarding passes through these apps will pop up on their smartphones when they reach the environs of the airport.

In other mobile developments, while a majority of airlines currently offer mobile check-in and flight search, over the next three years a majority of airlines will add missing bag reporting (60%) and rebooking capabilities (63%), the survey found.

Both missing bag reporting and rebooking capabilities, if they are handled adeptly through mobile offerings, will save travelers lots of wasted time at the airport or on the phone trying to get relief from customer services agents.

The post Mobile boarding passes ramping up in Apple Passbook, Samsung Wallet and Google Now appeared first on Skift.

SimpliFlying's Shashank Nigam, speaking earlier today at SITA's Air Transport IT Summit in Brussels, Belgium. / SITA Online

SimpliFlying CEO and founder Shashank Nigam believes airlines should offer free, onboard Wi-Fi, and that many of airlines and airports are laying their marketing on too thick and clumsily in social media. Nigam presented his views at SITA’s 2013 Air Transport IT Summit outside Brussels today, and Skift caught up with him afterwards.

Skift: You believe airlines should start offering free, on-board Wi-Fi. Why is that?

Nigam: I have a very strong opinion about that. The paid Wi-Fi model right now just breaks. With a $12 fee, neither do you get enough adoption as it’s only around 5%, and that’s not enough to make any money off that. And neither do you provide any sort of customer experience enhancement. So decide: Do you want to make money? Then charge $50 for it. Or do you want to provide a customer service, and then provide Wi-Fi for free.

And, when you provide it free, there are lots of revenue opportunities. Imagine every plane as a marketing node in the sky where you are able to market tours to people flying to Chicago, the boat tours. And people traveling back home from Chicago, you can market grocery shopping. And on every purchase you might make 1%, on Amazon.com, for example. So work with partners, and see how you can leverage this. And, one airline is doing this very well. Mango Airlines in South Africa is using its free Wi-Fi for a customer service. They partnered with Vodacom, which gives them the revenue, and it is a very good ecosystem.

Skift: At one point you mentioned that airlines and airports should get off of Facebook and Twitter because they don’t really listen to passengers anyway. What did you mean by that?

Nigam: When I said stop doing that I meant stop doing it as you are doing it right now, which is marketing and addressing the guy on the couch tweeting about you just as much as the the number one frequent flyer who is often ignored just because he doesn’t have as many Twitter followers as the guy on the couch. So airlines should really be refocusing their effort toward customer service, ancillary revenue, and loyalty rather than just generic marketing.

Skift: How does mobile play into these efforts?

Nigam: Mobile is critical. You can’t have a QR code on a bus and when you scan it you go on a full website because, guess what? People are going on their mobile phones to scan. Mobile is critical; 70% access Facebook through mobile so why not your website.

Skift: Which airlines and airports are doing an especially good job in social and mobile and which ones are failing in their efforts?

Nigam: When it comes to customer service, I would Turkish Airlines is doing well, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and, of course, we know about KLM. KLM does a phenomental job in terms of brand engagement. They are launching a new Facebook game where you can manage your airline company. You can buy planes, buy slots, manage landings, things there. It is really engaging. KLM does it well. In Asia you have the likes of Air Asia; which is very proactive. Even others like Cathay Pacific, Royal Brunei Airlines, i.e. legacy carriers are doing very well.

Skift: You were talking about KLM and its Facebook game, but that doesn’t really enhance the passenger experience, right?

Nigam: I think it’s a full spectrum. Until now airlines have overdone the branding engagement and marketing side of things. There is a need to balance it with the passenger experience. For example, KLM has Meet & Seat. You can sit next to a LinkedIn or Facebook friend or make introductions. KLM, I would say, is balanced, but most airlines are not. They just just do the marketing stuff or run a contest. But, guess what? If you are a low cost carrier and you give away an exit row, and Emirates might come along and give away a first class suite with a shower free, how do you compete with that? So you really must look at who your customers are, what they are doing, and how you can add value to their experience through social media.

Skift: You mentioned that Qatar Airways is doing some really interesting things in its apps from a passenger experience standpoint?

Nigam: I believe Qatar Airways has the prototype iPad app with augmented reality included in it. You can actually point your iPad out of the window and look at what’s beneath and possibly learn more about it on Wikipedia, and even book a hotel perhaps in that place, which may or may not be a partner hotel. You can can also schedule your movies, you can schedule your in-flight experience. In two hours I want to have my meal, and in the next two hours I want to watch a movie and this information is potetially communicated to the flight attendant.

Skift: Which airlines or airports really stick out as needing to get their social media act together?

Nigam: Some European ones, which have been very erratic in terms of tweeting. Ryanair is one which publicly refuses to be on social media and says we don’t care about customers. Our price is the product and because of that people will come to us.

Skift: But Ryanair is successful anyway even without social media.

Nigam: Yes, because there is always a new bunch of backpackers who want to go to Valencia for a few days.

Skift: But you don’t think Ryanair’s social media abstinence is an effective long-term strategy?

Nigam: No. You have to go where your customers are. These days 70% of travelers are logging onto Facebook while they are traveling. They are not going to airline.com. Hence you should be be on Facebook in order to engage them while they are traveling rather than just doing promotions when they get back.

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TripAdvisor has acquired airport information app GateGuru, and now has the airport and airline experience all covered since it purchased SeatGuru in 2007. No price was disclosed.

GateGuru’s apps provide information about airport layouts and amenities while SeatGuru provides intelligence about airline seats.

“Flying is often an essential part of a trip and we have continually developed our suite of flights products, from the pricing and availability search on TripAdvisor, to our award-winning SeatGuru.com, with seat maps and more,” said Steve Kaufer, TripAdvisor CEO. “GateGuru nicely complements our existing flights products and we look forward to working with the GateGuru team as they continue to manage the GateGuru app and add great functionality to the TripAdvisor mobile experience.”

So far this year TripAdvisor has acquired vacation rental site Niumba in Spain, photo app TinyPost, flash sales site Jetsetter, and cruise site CruiseWise.

Founded in 2009, GateGuru had raised about $1.3 million in funding.

The GateGuru team will operate out of New York and report to Brian Saltzburg, who leads the SeatGuru team.

Look for TripAdvisor to consolidate GateGuru and SeatGuru into a single brand as it is slated to do later this month with SniqueAway and Jetsetter, which TripAdvisor acquired several months ago.

There was no such rhetoric today about maintaining both the GateGuru and SeatGuru brands in TripAdvisor’s announcement today about the GateGuru acquisition.

Disclosure: Tom Glocer and Amol Sarva, investors in GateGuru, are investors in Skift as well.

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The question now is whether the United States government pushes back and forces Google to give back its new toy.

Waze is yet another one of those blockbuster deals for a technology company with little or no revenue that makes you jealous. Five-year-old Waze has just 110 employees, so Google appears to be paying almost $10 million per employee. As for profits, Waze’s chief executive, Noam Bardin, has said, “This is Silicon Valley. We don’t talk about those things here.” Right.

The post There may be traffic ahead for Google’s acquisition of Waze appeared first on Skift.

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To hear investor Fred Wilson tell it, Foursquare’s heavily-publicized struggles have nothing to do with their product or their ability to raise funds. The real problem? Foursquare hasn’t done a good job communicating its killer use case: “maps with people in them.”

“It’s not really about the check-in anymore. It’s about ‘maps with people in them.’ And you don’t get ‘maps with people in them’ from Google, and you don’t get ‘maps with people in them’ from Apple, and you don’t get ‘maps with people in them’ from Nokia. You get ‘maps with people in them’ from Foursquare.

The post Foursquare’s real value lies in building maps made of people appeared first on Skift.

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Screenshot / Pensa

Not so long ago, we featured a Pensa concept that we called a rest stop for the urban age–a system called Street Charge that could attach to any sign, then top off cellphone batteries through a solar panel (all while providing a convenient ledge for your coffee).

Following the concept’s release, Pensa received a lot of interest in making Street Charge a reality. And now, through a partnership with solar company Goal Zero and AT&T, Street Charge will be installed in 25 locations across New York City, then repositioned two more times over a three-month run.

The post NYC tests free mobile-charging stations at 25 spots this summer appeared first on Skift.

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The problem with many travel inspiration startups is not clumsy UX, ugly designs, or foolish founders, but that it is inherently impossible to commoditize spontaneity, surprise, and delight.

Even if you could, any well-traveled soul knows that you wouldn’t really want to.

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Foursquare has partnered with Samsung for My History, a new feature that will provide users with infographics based on their check-in histories.

The individualized heat maps are branded with Samsung’s logo for its latest high-end smartphone the Galaxy S4 and features a tab titled “The Next Big Thing” in which users can receive recommendations on places to visit based on where they’ve checked in before. The partnership is worth seven figures for Foursquare, according to an executive familiar with the terms.

Foursquare declined to comment about the specifics of the financial arrangement. Samsung did not immediately return a request for comment.

Foursquare users can access My History at foursquare.com where they can watch their entire check-in history — which dates back to 2009 for the app’s first users — unfold in fast forward. A play-pause button at the bottom of the screen allows to users to stop the experience and note certain behaviors such as distance between subsequent check-ins and when they checked into a certain location. The infographic can also show users how much times they spent in coffee shops versus bars among other comparisons.

My History is the latest instance of Foursquare incorporating more advertising into its service and allowing marketers more access to its location data. Foursquare is currently running an HBO-branded Game of Cones contest in New York City, for example. Whichever of the participating ice cream shops accrues the most check-ins by June 21 will be awarded the “Iron Cone” a la the Iron Throne from HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

Samsung began working with Foursquare at South by Southwest (SXSW) this February when the electronics manufacturer promoted Samsung charging stations on the app.

Ads for My History will appear within Foursquare once the company rolls-out its “post-check-in” ads in the coming weeks. Those ads will be served to users once they check into a specific location.

Foursquare has recently been under pressure to prove it can generate revenue that will justify its $760 million valuation. The company earned $2 million in ad revenue in 2012, but has started developing new ad products this year — including paidFoursquare promotions for small businesses and letting marketers use its data to target users elswehere on the web.

My History, then, is not just a way for Foursquare users to understand their own habits, but a glimpse into one of the ways Foursquare can package its users’ location data when pitching marketers.

This story originally appeared on AdAge, a Skift content partner.

Additional links from AdAge:

• Southwest Airlines Reviews Digital Agency Business
  
• A Peek Into Starwood Hotels’ Marketer Immersion Program
  
• Embattled Cruise Line Carnival Launches Media Agency Review
  

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Everything's obsolete on this hotel table, or soon will be. By Rafat Ali

At least the public payphone is dying a public death, right in front of everyone, in the streets. The one in that hotel room is still there, sitting on that bed-side table along with the quaint paper pad and alarm clock, atrophying from disuse, used only as a glorified intercom to order room service and talk to front desk, and little else.

Unlike the hullaboo about the coming death of the hotel room service, which may all be going the self-serve way if you believe the hype over the last week or so, no one’s shedding a tear about the hotel phone. And as the din everywhere asks for free wifi at hotels, no one’s asking anything out of that phone.

No one cares.

Part of why it came to this is obvious: the world moved away from wired phones and became mobile. The early decline started when calling cards became popular in 90s and early part of 2000s, and continued with the rise of mobile phones.

Another part is hotels brought it upon themselves, making the phone systems complex (dial 9 for outside line, anyone?), bleeding expensive ($3 for a local call, $ pray-it-isn’t-too-bad for a long distance, $ you’re-crazy-to-try-this for international calls) and unnecessary tinkering with consumer behavior (have you tried checking a voicemail on that phone ever?).

Even more crazy, hotels even now charge by the minute, or start charging after a certain number of rings even if ultimately the call didn’t go through.

As usage dropped, hotels stopped caring about the hotel phones too, as a source of revenue. It now costs more for hotels to maintain these phones than the revenue they get out of them.

And not just the phone, they’re now focusing on raising room rates, instead of trying to upsell the users on ancillary fees of all kinds, including food and beverage services and even the overpriced mini-bars.

Another contributory factor: with the rise of digital comes price transparency, where every hotel fee can be tracked, compared and complained about in big ways, in forums, in social media, in consumer travel advice columns, and above all, on Tripadvisor.

The days of overpriced are over. Why would anyone cry over that?

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