Analytics

The story of this year's Dreamforce might best be told through the partner community and AppExchange, and that makes it a story about the platform. Appropriately enough, Salesforce teed up the platform topic in Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff's Tuesday keynote and the press conference immediately foll...

The U.S. government's Big Data initiative is sparking more investments in data management projects, especially those involving joint efforts between business and government. Under the sponsorship of the Obama administration initiative, the White House showcased more than 30 Big Data projects Nov. 12...

CRM technology often gets blamed for the failure of customer initiatives -- and sometimes it's deserved. In many cases, though, the technology works exactly as advertised -- as far as technology can work. Still, CRM is a discipline, not a technology -- the technology merely helps business scale up t...

Most mobile app developers today have the basics of e-commerce design down pat. Increasingly, they are now thinking about the psychology of the user and how that should be factored into a mobile site or app's design. That's where testing becomes essential. "The features and functionalities of smartp...

CRM technology is all about collecting data -- which means it should go hand-in-hand with the trend toward increased use of analytics. Often, though, what is analyzed is not what's important. In CRM, many of the most compelling data are hiding in plain sight, but businesses are looking elsewhere. Th...

Google is planning to compensate users for letting it monitor their behavior via a mobile app currently in development. The project is part of Google's Screenwise market research program, which was launched about a year ago, said Google spokesperson Andrea Faville. "We conduct this research with sma...

Facebook on Monday announced it was acquiring Onavo, a 3-year-old company that has developed a data compression technology for smartphones, among other things. Based in Israel, Onavo will give Facebook a foothold in a market known for its advanced tech talent base. Onavo's Tel-Aviv office will becom...

Constant Contact has rolled out enhancements to its platform, beefing up functionality in its reporting tools, customer tracking and reporting, and mobility options, as well as in a library tool designed to make storing and using content easier for users. The upgrades are a culmination of a lot of e...

I took a trip in the Wayback machine last week when I attended DataWeek at the invitation of Dun & Bradstreet. As you might recall, D&B is a data company that collects copious amounts of information about individuals and firms and then sells it for use in filling out profiles for business pu...

AOL on Monday launched a limited version of Gathr, which aggregates online services for subscription at discounts of up to 60 percent of what they would cost on their own. Monthly subscriptions to prebundled packages start at $15, and some come with a bonus $10 Amazon gift card. Alternatively, con...