On-The-Go Mobile Coupons: Almost As Cool As Minority Report. Not Quite As Creepy.
In the Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report (yes, I make some reference to it about once a week), there’s a scene in which John Anderton (Tom Cruise’s character) is walking through an urban retail center and his eyes are getting scanned as he moves, which is serving up custom greetings and deals from retailers. It’s both creepy and cool. But that movie is set in 2054, we’re not there yet. But AT&T had a demo at its Tech Showcase today that is inching closer to that. As you can see in the video below, the idea behind AT&T’s system is that you can walk around a city with a phone in your pocket and get alerted when a nearby retailer has a deal for you. Users of Foursquare and soon Loopt will recognize this concept , but AT&T’s idea is a bit different. By using AT&T’s network as the bridge to be constantly updating your location (assuming, of course, you opt-in to such a feature), these retailers are able to push these coupons to your phone via SMS. Currently, something like Foursquare requires that you “check-in” to a place to see that there is a deal there or nearby. Naturally, this could get very annoying to a consumer if they don’t like the place offering the deal, but customization is the key to this. A user could, for …
More….
Related posts:
- Speaking Of Creepy Location Features: Google’s Opt-Out Latitude Alerts The past couple of days have seen some brouhaha...
- At Foursquare Venues, The Mayor Eats For Free Foursquare , the geo-location based check-in game, just announced...
- Location-Based Mobile Social Network Centrl Integrates Web App, Adds First Real-Time Location-Based Messaging System “Location” has been one of the most frequently used...
- Yelp Enables Check-Ins On Its iPhone App; Foursquare, Gowalla Ousted As Mayors When you think of the idea of “checking-in” at...
- Let’s Talk: Ztail Scores Deal With A Top Mobile Phone Retailer One of the more frustrating things about shopping for...