A blog all about cell phones!

The numbers of mobile consumers using their devices to either make purchases online or compare prices while in stores to get a better deal elsewhere is growing at a rapid clip. Now they have a fun new tool to aid their shopping and gift-giving, whether they’re using iPhones, Droids or used cell phones.

Karma, Facebook’s first purchase as a public company, helps users find suitable gifts, create personalized cards and notify recipients of the purchases via Facebook, text message or e-mail. The start-up – and Facebook – are obviously aiming for a place in the emerging social gift-giving business, which has attracted millions of dollars in venture capital in recent months.

From the LA Times piece: “We’ve been really impressed with the Karma team and all they accomplished in such a short time,” a Facebook spokesperson told The Times in an email. “This acquisition combines Karma’s passion and innovative mobile app with Facebook’s platform to help people connect and share in new and meaningful ways.”

In a world of increasingly virtual connections, many of us know birthdays and how to reach one another only through our Facebook link. Karma seems to capitalize on the limits of our incomplete contacts by allowing users to alert friends and family about their gift via text, email or Facebook.

Karma lets the recipient choose the flavor, color or style and offers them the option to either exchange it or donate the value to charity. And if the gift is exchanged, they spare the giver’s feelings — they’ll never know unless the recipient says something.

Payment is sought only after the recipient accepts the gift and provides a shipping address. Gifts are shipped by the next day, according to Karma. 

“Over the last year, we’ve built a new e-commerce platform from the ground up,” founders Lee Linden and Ben Lewis wrote on the company blog. “We’ve been honored to partner with amazing brands to create a curated catalog of products. We made those products instantly giftable in a brand new way. And we harnessed the power of Facebook’s social network to ensure you never miss a chance to show someone you care.”

Here at HQ, where we talk on refurbished used cell phones and use music to propel us through the work day, we’re almost always grooving out to Spotify. Which is why we found this piece from Mobile Marketer pretty fascinating. Seems a Spotify executive gave a keynote at the International CTIA Wireless 2012 conference and said the company is constantly working to uniquely position itself in the mobile space.

Talking during as part of the, “Building the Future of Mobile Music” keynote session, co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek defined the company’s mission as “giving users access to music that also supports the artist.” Spotify’s users average about 10 minutes of music listening per day (apparently we’re way above the mean at around 6 hours a day). Many of those are listening to music via Spotify on their mobile devices, and the service’s integration with Facebook last September only increased that trend.

And then there’s apps, as well. To keep up with its growing tanks of tech-savvy consumers, Spotify has also launched a number of apps. “These mobile apps have really been built up from the ground up because of social,” Ek was quoted as saying. “It shows that we’re innovating and investing in mobile.”

We’ve noticed that the people who spent years mocking “gamers” have now succumbed to games’ online cousins: social networking. Even our Aunt Ada, never a fan of anything electronic, can’t wait to get home to check out what’s happening on Facebook, and once she gets the app on her iPhone, watch out! Who knows if she’ll even be able to drive without checking her Wall (ah, the terms that have become part of our dialogue lexicon, from tweet to friending to Wall).

Seems the numbers show there are lots of Aunt Adas burning minutes on their mobile devices these days. Says a piece in Mediapost.com, “Since the dawn of the smartphone, games have dominated consumers’ mobile minutes. In the past year, however, new research shows that social networking has risen to rival gaming on a per-minute basis.”

The proof? Flurry compared the average time smart phone users spent across app categories between the first quarter of 2011 and 2012, and found that gaming dropped by 4% — down to 24 minutes per day — while social networking increased by 60% — up to 24 minutes per day. Peter Farago, the firm’s VP of marketing, told the site, “We take the rise in social networking apps as a signal of maturation for the platform — As game demand may be hitting its saturation point, consumers are also discovering other apps, namely social networking.”

For those of us who peddle phones, this is good news. Because the more popular social networking becomes on smart phones, the more smart phones people will want. And, those of us who happen to sell used cell phones can offer a the Aunt Adas of the world a great deal – a smart phone that’s been lightly used and is Just as adept at calls and apps as a brand new iPhone – at half the price.

We can count on seeing continuing growth based on the current trends. Flurry found huge growth in year-over-year social networking app usage. Time spent increased by 60 percent, and the total time spent on smart phone apps among consumers  went from 68 to 77 minutes, a jump of 13 percent.

Ever joked around about how someday soon, we’ll all have cellular devices – or at least microchips — implanted in our arms? Well, the following trend is yet another example of how close we’re getting to that kind of sci-fi reality. According to this story in All Things D, there’s an array of tiny gadgets that serve both as adornment and mobile device.  They’re called, “wearables.”

To whit: “Google co-founder Sergey Brin was recently spotted wearing a prototype from Google’s “Project Glass.” People you know may even be wearing sensor-laden wristbands like the Nike+ Fuelband or sneakers like the Adidas adizero F50, which track your speed and workout stats. The military is prototyping dual-focus contact lenses with data displays, while university students experiment with clothing that reacts to our emotions. Nokia has filed a patent for a vibrating tattoo that could alert you when someone calls or texts you — the ultimate wearable.”

A vibrating tattoo. Wow. Next, it’s going to be a vibrating chip inserted into your brain.  In the meantime, we’ll use “wearables” to achieve various goals in fitness, navigation, social networking and media. Just imagine, a brave new world in which the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity can scream at you from your earrings, or your belt can track your abs’ firmness or flab…Sounds fun, right?! Yeah, we’re not too sure, either. It’ll be a while until the niche trend goes mainstream – likely not until they improve battery life and the price point dips – and in the meantime, we’re content to talk on our used cell phones and leave the pundits on the laptop and the old-school television.

If you’re one of those consumers who has yet to switch to a smart phone – perhaps you use an older generation flip phone and rarely text, much less attempt to navigate the web on a mobile device – you’re being targeted by special ads from RadioShack. Starting late last year, the retailer began running ads on the Verve Wireless network encouraging people with older devices to visit their nearest RadioShack. And, by using Verve’s highly-visible location banner, the ads alert users to the location of the RadioShack nearest them right at the same time they were viewing the ad. Clever, eh?

This is all part of a broader strategy to spur RadioShack’s mobile phone sales by targeting people whose contracts are soon to be expiring.”Forty percent of their sales comes from mobile devices,” Elizabeth Elliott, senior associate and mobile consultant at Mindshare Chicago, which handled the media buy for RadioShack, told ClickZ. “So we figured if we can communicate to a person on a mobile device knowing that device has been in the market for 18 months or more, we can assume that they may be ready to renew their phones sooner rather than later.”

While it’s not a bad marketing strategy, consumers may be better-served by instead visiting a shop that buys, refurbishes and sells used cell phones. Often, these shops have a wider variety of devices and brands at lower prices, and consumers can still select from relatively recent devices and operating systems. Those who have stuck with the old versions for so long are likely not attached to having the very latest iPhone, and since they can get most of the same functions on a lightly used one for cheaper, that may be the way to go. Besides, let’s be honest: When’s the last time you saw a wildly diverse selection of goods at RadioShack?