Obama's economists missed what voters plainly saw - San Francisco Examiner

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Facebook Offers Local Deals for Mobile Users - New York Times

People who use Places, Facebook’s location feature, will see a yellow icon indicating that a redeemable deal or coupon is available nearby. They can then use the application to “check in” at the store or restaurant and show their phone’s screen to an employee to claim their deal.

“We’re enabling merchants to push deals out to their existing customers and hopefully attract new customers,” said Tim Kendall, director of monetization at Facebook, during a press event at the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif.

Mr. Kendall said Facebook would not charge businesses directly to list coupons and special deals through the mobile application. Instead, businesses can purchase advertising to publicize their offerings on Facebook, he said.

One of Facebook’s first partnerships involving the new Deals feature is with the Gap. The company outlined a campaign offering a free pair of jeans to the first 10,000 users who check into their local Gap store using Facebook’s mobile application.

Facebook also plans to work with nearly two dozen major chains like H&M, 24-Hour Fitness and McDonalds for special offers. But eventually all merchants and small businesses with a Facebook Places page will be able to offer deals.

“It starts to solve an age-old problem that local businesses have always had,” said Emily White, director of local at Facebook. “They’ve been told they need to be online. But it hasn’t always been clear what the benefit is. That’s what this deals platform allows. It’s turning those fans, those visitors, those eyeballs into real dollars, real people and real business.”

Local retailers will be able to offer several different kinds of deals, including one-time offers and loyalty rewards, as well as “friend deals,” for those who check in and “tag” multiple friends. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook, said it would be difficult to defraud the system because people will be required to be present at a store in order to redeem the coupon.

To start, the new feature is available only through the Facebook iPhone application. Android users can find local deals through a dedicated mobile Web site.

Facebook’s deals program borrows heavily from location-based social networks like Foursquare, Loopt and Gowalla, which have long been experimenting with similar ways to offer rewards and deals on cellphones.

Facebook’s large user base, which exceeds half a billion people, gives the company a clear advantage over smaller competitors that have only just begun to gain traction, said Ray Valdes, an analyst at Gartner.

“Facebook is now the largest photo-sharing site on the Web and the largest invite service on the Web,” he said. “Getting into the local deals business might have the same effect. Competitors will have to maneuver in order to not be at a disadvantage and get squashed.”

Facebook’s announcement also places the company more squarely in Google’s line of sight, as both companies battle to be the primary hub for both businesses and consumers on the Web. In recent months, Google has taken steps to bring more small businesses online and help users find those businesses more easily.

Analysts say the two companies are competing to tap the market for mobile advertising and search, which is still in its infancy. For retailers, the Facebook feature offers the chance to establish online connections with real-world customers and learn more about them.

Another advantage Facebook has over Google is a way to exploit the social connections of its users. As they cash in on deals, alerts are published to their Facebook news feeds, alerting people in their network to the offer and broadening the number of people who know about it.

“Each of these announcements may seem like a small thing, but it adds to the centrifugal force that Facebook has in the evolving modern Web,” said Mr. Valdes.

Mr. Zuckerberg said the announcement aligned with Facebook’s larger goal of building a social Web that, increasingly, is also mobile.

To illustrate the point, he said 200 million people were now using Facebook through its mobile application, a threefold increase since last year.

“Think about Android and iPhone,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “This is a much bigger footprint than that. The only bigger platform is the mobile Web itself.”

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No winners yet in Senate races in Alaska, Washington - USA Today

The new Senate will remain under the control of a slimmer Democratic majority. That much is known.However, it could take days — or weeks — to call winners in at least two unresolved races in Alaska and Washington.

In Colorado, with about 97% of the vote counted, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet declared victory Wednesday over Republican challenger Ken Buck, who did not immediately concede.

"We are still looking where returns need to be reported, as well as provisional ballots before making any decisions," Buck said in a written statement Wednesday.

Despite Bennet's apparent victory, the GOP picked up at least six seats that will give Republicans at least 47 seats in the 100-member body, as the as the nation awaits the results of the undecided contests.

The most complex of the undecided races is in Alaska, where state officials Wednesday are just beginning to review thousands of ballots cast as part of an unusual write-in campaign waged by incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski against Tea Party-supported candidate Joe Miller.

Although the 41% write-in vote so far exceeds the 34% for Miller, the state has yet to determine how many of the write-in ballots were cast in the name of Murkowski, who launched the campaign after losing the Republican primary to Miller.

Alaska Division of Elections Director Gail Fenumiai said Wednesday that officials were "formulating" a plan to count the write-ins. She declined to say how long the count could take. Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell told the Associated Press that the actual count will begin next week in Juneau.

Miller campaign spokesman Robert Campbell said the process could likely take "a couple of weeks."

Robert Campbell said the campaign has assembled a legal team to oversee the review to "make sure all the ballots abide by the rules of the Division of Elections."

"Previous write-in campaigns in Alaska have demonstrated that as much as 5% to 6% of returned ballots have not met the standard to be counted as a valid vote," Miller said in a written statement.

"At this point, without a single write-in ballot counted, Lisa Murkowski has no claim on a victory ... In short, this campaign is not over."

Murkowski spokesman Steve Wackowski said the campaign was "encouraged" by the volume of write-in votes.

"We're very confident, but we're not declaring victory," he said.

In Washington state, incumbent Democratic Sen. Patty Murray was holding a small lead over Republican challenger Dino Rossi, but hundreds of thousands of ballots were left to be counted.

Rossi, a real-estate investor and former state senator, has twice lost races for governor.

Washington Secretary of State spokesman David Ammons said Wednesday that up to 1 million ballots may be left to count and 14,000 votes separate the two candidates.

About one-third of the outstanding votes, Ammons said, are believed to be from Seattle's King County, which traditionally favors Democrats.

"It's close," Ammons said. "I'm sure both sides are out there spinning their paths to victory. It should be clear by the end of the week."

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