- Pokemon GO gets ads - could be next big marketing tool for retailers: Pokemon GO, a mobile game that has rocketed to the top of Apple Inc and Android app stores in record time, looks set to challenge young internet companies which specialize in increasing foot traffic for small businesses and may end up playing a role in major brands' marketing, according to industry experts. The augmented reality game from Japan's Nintendo Co Ltd, where players walk around real-life neighborhoods to hunt down virtual cartoon characters on their smartphone screens, has more than 65 million users in the United States just seven days after launch. That is more users than Twitter Inc, and the game is already helping local restaurants, coffee shops and small retailers to attract new customers. L'inizio Pizza Bar in Long Island City in New York claims its sales jumped 75 percent over the weekend by activating a "lure module" feature that attracts virtual Pokemon characters to the store, thereby tempting in nearby players. The store's manager spent $10 to have a dozen Pokemon characters placed in the location, according to a report in the New York Post. That sort of instant effect is a potential threat for Groupon Inc, LivingSocial Inc, Foursquare and other relatively new companies which have revolutionized online marketing for small businesses in the last few years.
- Zendesk’s “Automatic Answers” taps machine learning, AI to generate bot-style email responses: Chat bots have ballooned in popularity in recent months, and now we’re seeing some interesting examples of how that technology, where computers interact and respond to human requests, is being used to solve other problems. Today,Zendesk is taking the wraps off “Automatic Answers”, a service for businesses to reply to emails from customers without ever having a human employee get involved. Automatic Answers is not your average, run-of-the mill email autoresponder. The service was built using a machine learning platform that Zendesk’s in-house teams of data scientists and engineers, which are based out of Melbourne, Australia, have been developing on for a while now. That machine learning platform was first announced last year and it also powers a service Zendesk announced last October, Satisfaction Prediction, which is able to monitor customer-company interactions to — as its name implies — determine whether the customer is getting what she or he needs. The machine learning/AI element means that the responses in Automatic Answers are not only reading and responding specifically to what you the customer is asking, but it is technically getting smarter with each response (and presumably using a bit of Satisfaction Prediction to figure out if it’s getting it right). Automatic Answers will work first in email because, as Zendesk’s VP of product Sam Boonin tells me, “Even in a world of customer services embedded in every communication channel from social to web to phone, email still represents the majority of interactions that are coming in.”
- No more Tesla buyback guarantee as company cuts price of Model X: Tesla Motors Inc has ended a program that guaranteed the resale value of its cars, and lowered the starting price of its Model X crossover, the high-profile electric vehicle maker said on Wednesday. The discontinuation of the buyback program, as of July 1, allows Tesla to free up cash that had been set aside to buy back Model S cars after three years at a value of at least 50 percent of the base purchase price. The changes come after Tesla warned earlier this month it will miss its vehicle delivery target for a second consecutive quarter.It faces other challenges, including a regulatory investigation of its Autopilot technology following a May 7 fatal crash and more scrutiny of its financials after a proposed merger with SolarCity Corp. Within the next 12 months, Tesla has disclosed it could pay a maximum of $192.4 million to cover resale value guarantees on 4,209 vehicles. That amounts to a maximum liability of $45,711 per car, although Tesla could offset payouts by reselling repurchased vehicles. Tesla valued the total liability created by the resale value guarantee at $1.58 billion as of March 31, according to its latest quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, up over 20 percent since the end of 2015. The program, begun in 2013, was intended to help Tesla control its secondary market and reassure buyers purchasing vehicles using its novel technology that resale values wouldn't drop substantially. A Tesla spokesperson said the program was discontinued to "keep interest rates as low as possible and offer a compelling lease and loan program to customers." In effect, Tesla is now doing what most established auto makers do: allow market forces to set trade-in values.
