I learned of SCVNGR's new spin-off, LevelUp, via TechCrunch. I am interested in LevelUp because it crosses a number of the new business models that I believe point toward the future of commerce and which can *only* thrive in a world filled with smartphones.

Briefly, LevelUp:

The goal of LevelUp, says SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatsch, is to offer the immediate distribution and new customers afforded by the daily deal sites, while simultaneously maintaining the long-term engagement that location-based games are usually better at. Priebatsch says that the big deal sites will often lead to a “one-and-doner” phenomenon, where businesses attract a flood of new customers eager to get in on a deal, and then watch as those customers never come back. LevelUp wants to fix that.

Clever. In the various smartphone business models I track, this cuts across several:

• Boring is Death: we are turning everything into a game. Everything. Shopping (and business discovery) will be no exception.
• Virtual is Real: back when magazines like Wired were getting started, you had these cyber-Rastafarian type dudes telling us we'd all be jacking into some "virtual reality." Wrong. We are porting the virtual into our reality. Not the other way around.
• Think Locally Scale Globally: LevelUp is a great example of this concept. Build a business that can satisfy a particular need, via the smartphone, in this case coupons and business location and commerce, and figure out a means of scaling this globally. Though LevelUp does not have the distribution yet, this concept appears in theory to leverage this business model.

I am trying to find time to commit to regularly updating the SMARTPHONE BUSINESS DIRECTORY. This is a listing of businesses and business models that can *only* thrive in a smartphone world.

This girl is a woman now. She's learned how to live...

You want more details on the AOL - Huffington Post acqui-merger, you have come to the wrong place. I'll say this: good for both of them. AOL, by the sheer grace of a benevolent God, still makes money off of dial-up. If they are not going to return those profits to stakeholders, buying up web content is probably the next best thing, given their skill set. Years ago I read a book about Picasso. It was by Arianna Huffington. Pretty sure it's the same woman who started Huffington Post. I don't know how much money or time she put into the site but if *anyone* offers $300 plus million for a content site, take it and run.

So, wise move by both.

But I don't think this will work. The time for "aggregating eyeballs" as the beautiful people say has, I think, come and gone. There's money in it, sure, but it's a never ending battle to get more eyeballs, more clicks, more page views; diminishing returns. Just last week I wrote that Michael Arrington should make sure he gets first rights to buy back TechCrunch -- for pennies on the dollar -- because the whole eyballs strategy is morphing; limiting its potential. Yes, those who can establish a 'beachfront' property on the web can command premium ad dollars. And there will likely always be products, like Toothpaste or Hollywood films where lots of ads, repeated over and over, help spur sales.

Nonetheless, that big 'portal' of content, visited by millions everyday, is no guarantee of success (measured in terms of actual return on investment). THe future is the smartphone. We are viewing more and more content on these tiny screens. The smartphone is integrated with our location, our relationships, our needs at that moment. I am sure there will always be millions of people who wake up on a Monday that want to check out the 'must read' article on the Black Eyed Peas performance on the Super Bowl. But that will soon become secondary to content that is recommended to us by our smartphones, because our smartphone knows where we are, who we are chatting with, what our 'status' is, what time of day it is and what we have been doing up to this point.

Information wants to be monetized. AOL and Huffington Post have done well with this deal. Because neither had other legitimate options. BUt I think the smartphone will alter what we read, where we go (on the web) and what we focus on. These sites built for page views and eyeballs are going to decrease in relevance, which means they decrease in holding our attention, which means they decrease on the power of ads. Time for a new model.

The New York Times looks at how our web reading is shifting, and ways money can be made off this trend.

These tools make it easier for people to read Web articles how, when and where they want, often dispensing with publishers’ carefully arranged layouts and advertisements. One popular tool, Readability, strips articles to the bare minimum of text and photographs with a single click. But now, Readability wants to give something back to publishers.

“We were never about stripping ads or being an ad blocker,” said Richard Ziade, who created the original Readability tool as well as the second-generation version. Instead, he said, his team has been wondering: “Can we come up with a mechanism to make the experience of reading on the Web better, but also support content creators and publishers?”

Readability is one of many services experimenting with the future of reading. A wave of applications, including Pulse, Flipboard and My Taptu, are responding to changes in how people prefer to read on the Web, putting articles and blog posts into cleaner or more attractive visual displays. Nate Weiner, founder of Read It Later, a Web and mobile service that saves articles to be read offline, said there was a larger shift under way, one that mirrors the move to digital from print. Instead of thumbing through the newspaper over breakfast, he said, people like to read articles from many sources on their commutes or in the evening, often using mobile devices.

“On the Web, it’s not that people aren’t willing to pay small amounts for things; it’s that there is no easy way to pay,” he added. “If a service like Readability comes along and makes it easy, I think people will be willing to pay.”

Does information want to be free? Please. Do I sell cartoon balloons in town? No, I don't. And information does not want to be free. Ever. Only the deliberately ignorant believe otherwise. If you give information away, you better have a means of making even more money based on information gleaned from giving away that other information. Or perish.

Information wants to be parsed, aggregated, packaged, accessed, distributed, secreted and a host of other things, but it always wants to be monetized. Anywhere information is free, it is so only because no one has yet figured out, or has the tools, to extract more value from that information then someone else has by giving it away. Which is why two events from this weekend reveal the potential far-reaching opportunities, and the destructive power, built upon business models that know when to charge for information, how much, and why.

First, we learned that Android surpassed Nokia/Symbian in smartphone sales this past quarter (Q4 10). The smartphone is the computer. Despite its billions, its bureaucracy, its past, Google was smart enough and flexible enough to realize that they had to *thrive* on the smartphone if they were to have a future. Part of that strategy was to buy and re-build and give away Android. The net effect of this, I suspect, will be to ensure that all Android handset makers see their profit margins on devices grind down toward zero. Plus, I'm not convinced this is even the best strategy for Google. Perhaps all the money and people and resources would serve them better if they focused exclusively on Google services that would work great on all smartphone platforms. But make no mistake. Google does not give away Android, nor Google Maps, nor voice search nor email, etc. etc. etc. out of the goodness of their heart, which I'm not even sure they have. They give away these streams of information because they can make far more money, for now, by charging others (advertisers) for other information.

That other information is you, obviously, and your searches and your emails and your location and trips, etc. etc. etc. It is extremely doubtful that anyone will best Google in these various services, at least during this decade. Meaning that Google can continue pouring money into these services and into Android, keeping it free while making even more money on other information. And likely ensuring the destruction of Nokia, whose operating system probably is not as good and who cannot give it away to any handset makers, in like numbers, because they do not have information that is as valuable as Google. Until they do, there will be no hope for them. They are doomed. Unless, of course, they or some other company or group of companies figures out how to extract more value from the pieces of Google's information stream that Google currently does not charge for. Until then,

The other announcement this week was that Amazon was planning to roll out a subscription-based video streaming service. At launch, the service will be avaiable -- for free -- to Amazon Prime subscribers. This is a direct attack on Netflix. It was Netflix that beat the cable companies and television networks at their own game. These old-school dynasties know a good deal about each of their end users. But there was so much more to learn. Pumping out a batch of content is fine, but there are opportunities to optimize this information, which Netflix has done better than anyone. What movie do I want to watch -- right now. On what device? What do I want to watch, at any time, and in ranked order? Who, exactly, are my favorite performers? No sci fi channel or comedy channel or soap opera channel, which vomits out content, can compete with this.

Netflix has a great brand, a great distribution model. But the information enabled them to usurp many in the industry and they are now the leader in streaming premium content. And have an exceptional valuation for this. A competitor could attempt to undercut Netflix; charge 25% less, for example. Possible, but given all that valued information Netflix possesses, this probably will not succeed. A competitor will have to offer similar services at essentially zero cost.

Which should not be possible. After all, information wants to be monetized. Yes, but maybe someone else possesses information that may be worth even more, at leats to them. Amazon hopes that they can make more money than lose by adding customers to their Amazon Prime service, and by offering them more opportunities to access the Amazon service, buy from them and their partners.

Could Amazon wipe out Netflix? Could Android completely destroy Nokia? Yes. And both because they have made the competitor's information less valuable, and their's more valuable, sometimes by making it available for free, sometimes by charging for it. Facebook is free. If, for example, it's free information -- our individual and collective social graph -- ultimately becomes more valuable to advertisers, all those great 'free' services Google offers will go away. Because the 'free' information services they provide us are delivering more value to advertisers. Once that is changed, that information will have to be charged for, monetized.  But because of other revenue streams, it becomes difficult to ever know how much your information is worth, how much a competitor's information is worth, how much its value will change even over the short-term.

I do not know how this will play out or where it will end. It is obvious that information wants to be monetized, but that, no surprise, some information is more valuable to others. The scary part for every business, it seems, is this value is constantly shifting. Some new information stream or business model or funding opportunity enables someone to come along and make it impossible for you to continue charging for something, or not charging for it. Even giving away information is under direct assault.

As more people get smartphones, and join in the real-time smart social mobile web, these changes in value and funding sources and improved methods of monetization and newer ways of parsing and packaging information are likely to accelerate into hyperdrive. It may become impossible to hold onto any business or business model, at least in the digital realm, for more than a handful of years.

The smartphone wars will spare no one.

File under: Business model: values equal profits

I have a car with a keyless remote. This wasn't an option I purchased. In fact, I don't think I ever heard of it. And, when I first took possession of the vehicle, I was among those certain that keyless remote was a gimmick, a trifle; nothing bad, but, really, pointless.

Completely wrong.

I love it. I can't go back to a car that doesn't have it. Yes, digging through my coat pocket or jeans for my keys, whether arms are full of groceries or not, is a pain in the ass. It is absolutely unnecessary. The fact that my car can sense the key is somewhere on my person, and unlock, is a tiny tiny detail that has improved my life. I wil never purchase a car that doesn't have this feature. I don't understand what took car makers so long to offer this. And for the life of me, can't comprehend why not every single car maker doesn't make this standard on every single vehicle.

My wife, though is worse. Having become liberated from rummaging through her bag to find keys, she now takes it *personal* that not every car company offers this feature on every car they make. How little they must think of her, she presumes, by not offering keyless entry.

And that is today's metaphor for Apple. Sometimes, in the purchase of a big piece of expensive equipment, that we will use everyday, we forget that we will actually *use* it everyday. After we have paid our money. After we have compared miles per gallon, engine sizes, handling. There are still a thousand or more details that validate the purchase, that make our lives better. That engender our loyalty to the brand.

You don't improve on minor features, that likely have zero impact on the buying decision, through trial and error. You improve upon them by caring. In a big, cold, fast-moving, anonymous world, caring matters. In fact, I think caring will matter even more as the world gets even bigger, even colder, even faster.

File under: Boring is Death

I'm reading an article in HBR magazine on "the death of the middle manager".

The technology revolution has brought us a lot—dramatic improvement in what we know about customers and how we interact with them, markedly better information for making decisions, the ability to work through virtual teams scattered around the globe. But its unseen legacy might be something much more fundamental: It has changed the very nature of how people work. One consequence seems clear: The classic job of the middle manager will soon disappear.

Soon? You mean it hasn't already?

Actually, no. Forget Silicon Valley (start-ups), small businesses. bootstrapping. There are thousands and thousands and thousands more still large and extremely large companies and all are littered with middle managers and others whose value is internally focused -- and thus, nearing extinction.

However, despite the HBR proclamation, 'the every nature of work' doesn't necessarily change as fast as it should. For example, think of how few companies, and how many regulations and tax rules, still prevent telecommuting. Still stop new mothers from putting in 18 hours a week. Still rely on traditional forms of conduct, like meetings, project plans, org charts and the like. Problem is, as much as we should escape from the gravitational pull of 20th century management, as much as business needs to be liberated from its past, it's actually hard to achieve. Culture is significant, yes. However, a large part is because the very technology that is destroying markets, creating new business models, and increasing efficiency, possibly making the middle manager a dinosaur, is also fostering uncertainty. The vacuum of uncertainty always breeds bureaucracy, management, hierarchical decision-making in business.

But what if we could drop in a new technology or platform that fills in this vacuum? One that would be better? Cheaper? Funner? Yes, funner.

I wonder if Foursquare, or Gowalla or SCVNGR or some manner of location-based service might fit the bill.

Think about it. If everyone in your company is on a (semi-private) location-based network, work knows where they are. Forget 'face time'. Workers could check in with the swipe of ther iPhone. They could collaborate. What's more, they could compete for rewards (financial and otherwise). Just like we have with existing companies. Departments could compete against one another, or work together. This could be accomplished not via a series of top-down management-sanctioned workflows, but via a richer, more open-ended Grand Theft Auto experience (without the raping and killing, preferably). The business could start with a series of fun, virtual tasks explicity designed to guide a group, or individual worker to achieve some desired goal; be it sales, websit visits, software bug fixes. Similarly, they could lose points for failing to reach the next level of the 'game'. This location-based gaming service could be placed on every worker's smartphone. And it could be designed to be the new middle manager. Check-ins. Getting status. Sharing. Rewards. Punishments. Levels. Points. Badges. Only, with much better, richer data, allowing anyone to see what anyone else is doing at any time, at any place. This may even build greater cross-department interactions.

Like any new virtual game or smartphone location-based service, like Foursquare, even new hires could jump right in and legitimate achievement, regardless of tenure, is what determines the winner. Plus, uncovering pitfalls, sharing power-ups, leaving behind 'breadcrumbs' could make for a leaner, meaner, more hyper-aware corporation. Seems like a nice transition; one allowing the larger business to effectively move from its current management-heavy status, to one that is more disbursed, online, participatory and possibly far more collaborative. What do you think?

I hear people talk about eventually placing a 'gaming layer' onto what individuals do. The big frontier, in my view, is to build this game layer into work. Smartphones plus location-based services like Gowalla and Foursquare may usher this change in once and for all -- and quicker then we might expect. While these location-based services (LBS) start-ups are focused on building an information/virtual/gaming/data layer on top of location, maybe one of them should switch gears. Instead, build that layer on top of a corporation and its mission, then let any worker, anytime, at, yes, any location, check-in and play. Or, if that's too much, the corporation and LBS company can jointly design challenges, rewards, tasks and check-ins (contests and games) exclusively for workers. LBS for marketing, for giving 5% off your next purchase to the first ten to check in is, well, boring. And I'm not convinced that's where the big money is.

The current low-end Xbox 360 with Kinect, a solid game console, can be yours for $299.99 from Amazon. I think Apple should price iPad 2 at this same price. Yes, I think Apple should declare war on Microsoft's one (semi-) success of the 21st century.

iOS, which runs iPad, has proven itself to be a top-notch gaming platform. No, you won't get the kind of Black Ops experience on an iPad or iPhone like you can on an Xbox, but you can get something more, something different. There's more games made for iOS than any gaming platform in history. Plus, as Apple gets the wannabe social Game Center working, as they sell another million more Apple TVs, or more, and another 15 - 50 million iPads, there's no end of when and where and on what screen and against whom, at any time at any place you can play one of 100,000 games. Play against the machine, your friends, or strangers. Throw in FaceTime on iPad 2 and you further enhance the experience. Fact is, iPad is a gaming machine. Priced right, it can become the best selling gaming machine available.

But wait. A gaming machine? I've told you before that iPad is (secretly) a business device, designed for what I term 'communal computing':

First, we must think of the computer (PC). It may not be very personal, but it is made for the individual. Same goes for the laptop. Same for a netbook. Same for a smartphone, in fact. The iPad, however, is *communal*. Actually, more than that. The iPad is at once both personal and communal. This has never before existed in computing and it is the combination of price and form factor that makes it so. The iPad is another Apple trebuchet that will destroy barriers, gates, walls and re-make the current state of computing. Beginning in the workplace.

We do not need another personal computing device. We need a collaborative computing device. Work is changing. Technology is changing. And only the iPad offers communal computing. At work, we collaborate, more and more. The iPad is designed for this. It turns on instantly, it's highly intuitive, fully loaded, no training required and, as it's not personal per se, encourages being passed around. As the price continues to fall, iPads can be placed in every meeting room, every open space of every company. You can place them at the receptionist's desk, in waiting areas. At the doctor's office, you can fill in your information then hand it off to the next patient. At the restaurant you can use one to review the menu and stay occupied as you wait for a table, then pass it to the group that just walked in the door. The possibilities are limited only by computing, the web, work, interactivity and collaboration. In other words, awesome possibilities.

If this is so, if iPad is designed as a new-era collaborative business computing device, then why focus on Xbox and gaming?

On a quarterly numbers basis, the answer's easy: because the opportunity is there. Multi-billions are spent on gaming and gamers and grandmothers alike have availed themselves to Apple's iOS to play all manner of games. This becomes even more so as we transition from stand-alone gaming devices to multi-function always-on smartphones. On these mobile devices we play, we play against others, we play against locations, we play against strangers. Maybe not as immersive, true, but constant and everywhere. Plus, as we build avatars, gain points, complete tasks, find others to compete against, the mobile device supports a richer experience when we finally go home and fire up the 'immersive gaming box'.

Only, I think the potential for 'gaming' is much greater. Much, much more. And I'm leaving it up to Steve Jobs to make it happen. Because, right now, no one seems better positioned or capable.

Steve Jobs wants to make great hardware. But, he also wants to make great hardware that destroys the existing order of things. He still views himself as the pirate, as the one who takes down the old world order. I'm beginning to wonder if iPad, not iPhone, offers Jobs his best shot at this. Especially as I consider iPad 2. A lower-priced, higher-powered, more functional iPad -- the iPad 2 -- can accelerate Apple's efforts at upending...

• gaming
• what we watch on television
• how we interact with the (multiple) screens in our home
• how (and why) we create and interact with our surroundings
• the way we collaborate at work
• how we enable our customers to interact with us

This is all being done, now. But it's in the very early stages. Apple is upending gaming, pushing Wintel PCs off-balance, destroying individual companies, like Nokia, sucking up the profits in the smartphone industry, rocking carriers off their quasi-monopolistic perch, forcing cable MSOs to re-think their strategies, demanding makers of content to optimize for iOS, creating thousands of new app development houses...and making a lot of people rich.

But that's not enough. That doesn't change the 'order' of things. It merely shifts them in Apple's favor. The iPad, however, may shift the very order of things. It does this through its unique combination of business computer + gaming platform + collaborative computing device. Jobs is building a device that *fundamentally* alters work. And by this, I do not mean, swap PCs for iPads. I do not mean enable us to work 24/7 from any location, for example. I mean *fundamentally* alter work itself. That's gotta keep Apple and Steve Jobs focused on their 'pirate' mission, for sure.

How, exactly? Truth is, right now I'm not completely sure. This is a concept I'm working with so I will admit upfront that it may not yet be fully realized. Bear with me. One of the business models I track, because it exists only in a smartphone world, with its anyplace, anytime, anyone, any group connectivity, I label "boring is death". We are on the cusp of a 'boring is death' world; where we will never allow ourselves to be bored. Smartphones (and tablets) make this so. There's always a website, a game, a book, a text, a conversation to be had, no matter the time or place. More and more, the combination of smartphones, real-time, any-place are fostering location-based service (LBS) such as Foursquare, for example. You check in to a place, say the neighborhood library (you do have one, don't you) and let others know where you are, maybe even 'compete' for points or status or rewards of some kind. Already, we are competing for better deals, better prices.

Similarly, the combination of smartphone plus mobile web plus LBS plus virtual services meet real-time social databases are enabling "augmented reality". This augmented reality (AR) lets us experience a real physical space in a deeper way, by overlaying personalized information on the view from our smartphone. When I walk the streets of Paris perhaps my smartphone overlays historical information, or gossip, or real estate data (or, a virtual point and shoot game where I take downt annoying French people, which we Americans are taught not to like). This can be fully personalized, or designed for a group; and it's always changing. It's a sort of game experience within our physical surroundings.

This combination of LBS, augmented reality and smartphones are bringing us to a world where boring is death. Only, I think even that I may be underestimating. It's not simply that this new world can create 'gaming' or competitions or interactions with other people and/or machines and/or surroundings during potential downtime. No, I suspect we will demand such services (and their progeny) to invade *all* our time and places. At home, at work. Wherever we take our smartphones, which is everywhere, we can play, interact and prevent ourselves from boredom. Perhaps something mundane like software QA can be turned into a highly competitive virtual reality game. Or, we determine if our company or our primary competitor 'wins' a client based on a series of proposals that become more and more game-like. The possibilities are endless. We will not only refuse to accept boredom while standing inside a crowded Metro car. We will refuse it in our work, our daily chores. This will ultimately remake business and employment and learning; everything we do.

'Boring is death' is a concept that will bleed into everything. For younger people, this will become normal. And if it is normal, it will fully invade the workplace. They will make this happen. Coding will be designed as a game. QA will be designed as a game. That's for starters. The simple stuff. Next, we compete in virtual simulations against another competitor to get the big contract. Then, we compete for that government contract, or for best-customer pricing. Everything becomes a game, a reality show. The possibilities are endless.

Resulting in a world of business unlike anything we have now, or have ever had.

And the iPad, invading the workspace, invading homes, re-working gaming could be the wedge that makes this happen. It's the only device on the horizon that potentially changes how business is done and how people work. The iPad is at once a gaming console, a business device, a personal computer, a collaborative tool; always-on, always with us (soon), that requires zero training, zero experience. Remaking work.

This is the real opportunity for Apple -- and potentially an even greater legacy for Steve Jobs; changing how work is done. Hell, changing how everything is done.

To get this revolution started, I suggest Apple accept my mundane advice and lower the price point on the iPad. This will help it go after and destroy the standalone game console all while the iPad invades more businesses. Of course, to do this, will mean Apple has to cut into its margins. Margin protection brings out the worst in Jobs -- always pulling down his grandiose schemes. But with Apple stock sky-high, more money in the bank than he ever dreamed possible, now's the time to strike.

Many people are not exactly sure what the purpose of an iPad even is. Media consumption? Blogging? A big smartphone? A gaming platform? A heavy Kindle?  A secondary laptop? Yes. It is all these things, though this is a very limiting view of the device. With a lower price and some minor tweaks, the purpose of the iPad, which is already pulling in profits for Apple, has yet to be realized. While multi-billion dollar companies are hurrying to build tablets to compete with iPad, they continue to focus on designing a *personal* device optimized for explicit tasks.

To his credit, Jobs , while building devices designed with a set of explicit functions in mind, always seeds them with a much larger purpose; one that cuts across multiple un-related markets and industries and devices and uses and demographics. And the iPad could be his crowning achievement. And, yes, it has the potential to change how the world works. I would definitely pay $299.99 for that.