WO2011139643A1

WO2011139643A1 - Management of promotions propagated through social and mobile networks

Info

Publication number: WO2011139643A1
Application number: PCT/US2011/033826
Authority: WO
Inventors: Lee Wang
Original assignee: Groumo, Llc
Priority date: 2010-04-25
Filing date: 2011-04-25
Publication date: 2011-11-10

Abstract

Social media services, and the users of social media services, may be engaged by promoters and/or merchants in a manner that creates a benefit for all involved. Messaging management, subscriber acquisition, and customer relationship management may be intelligently automated to suit merchant resources and optimize productive interactions. Social media users may be suitably motivated to assist in message and/or offer propagation at least in part by providing an environment in which independent effort is fairly rewarded. Local and hyper-local merchants may strengthen relationships with local mobile social media users in a manner that affordably encourages repeat business and customer loyalty. Flexible point of sale options enable rapid local adoption. Furthermore, social media users may initiate engagement with merchants, providing a demand to which merchants merely need assent.

Description

Management of Promotions Propagated Through Social and Mobile

Networks

CROSS-REFERENCES TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

[0001] This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/327,694, filed April 25, 2010, titled "System and Methods of an Online Marketing Management Application for Social and Blogging Networks," having Attorney Docket No. 93225-803738, U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/408,909, filed November 1, 2010, titled "System and Method of Viral Promotion for Social Affinity," having Attorney Docket No. 93225-803528, and U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/439,761, filed February 4, 2011, titled "System and Method for a Social Mobile Shopping Application Generating Sales Transactions and Measurable Customer Loyalty to Sellers," having Attorney Docket No. 93225-803818, the contents of which are hereby incorporated in their entirety by reference.

BACKGROUND

[0002] Social and blogging online networks, such as Twitter® and Facebook®, have become increasingly popular among online and mobile users. As a result, promoters

(businesses and individuals alike) who intend to market their products, services or interests have started to identify these popular consumer destinations as a new and potentially valuable online and in-real-time interactive consumer engaging and messaging channel.

[0003] Real-time and direct interactivity, and socially-based viral content propagation are some characteristics that differentiate social and blogging networks from other online communication channels that are more static or mainly one-way (from promoter to audience), e.g., direct mail, web site, email. This differentiation is amplified on so-called micro- blogging sites such as Twitter® that facilitate short and more frequent and often real-time messaging exchange, forwarding and sharing among participants. It can be a challenge to both socially and virally promote messages and also create and grow social users' affinity and loyalty to the promoter.

[0004] To fully leverage the power of micro-blogging for effective marketing and sales, sellers (businesses or individuals who intend to sell) typically engage at least the following management tasks: subscriber acquisition, messaging post management, and feedback capture and response (i.e., customer relationship management or CRM). However, manually managing these tasks in a "do it yourself (DIY) fashion across extended hours of operation (even "24x7") can present multiple challenges. Sellers may not have the required expertise, cycles, or commitment for overcoming these challenges before they can achieve a desired level of marketing and sales on this online interactive channel. This gap, between the realtime potential to promoting the business and the ability to be there all the time, can be particularly severe for smaller businesses, for example, due to knowledge and resource constraints.

[0005] Some service providers sell certificates and/or coupons for businesses based on "collective buying power" (e.g., Groupon®, LivingSocial™). Typically, these service providers operate online e-commerce sites with consumer subscribers (via email or other communication means). Consumers may come to the site to buy per-paid certificates that can be used later in local stores (or online stores as well). Such sites can collect a large number of subscribers to which to market pre-paid daily deals. Customers can purchase a priori discounted certificates during a promotion period, and such a certificate can be used for the stated discount when making a qualified purchase during the redemption period. , Such a promotion may require a minimum number of customers, below which no one gets the discount. One negative side of this model is that customers prepay for certificates and a large percentage of customers (e.g., 40%) may not go to the business due to variety of reasons to not to redeem their purchases certificates. From a promoter's perspective, selling certificates typically goes through a web page that is hosted by the service provider. Social promotion of certificate buying on sites such as Twitter® and Facebook® is optional. In this model, promoters may use social network as a means (along with others, typically email) to land people on the certificate buying web page. However, growing promoter's presence and strengthen his or her social affinity to social network users are not the goals or agenda from this type of collective-buying-power marketing.

[0006] Social and blogging online networks, such as Facebook®, Twitter®, Foursquare™ have furthermore become increasingly popular among online and mobile users (e.g., mobile users using respective web sites and/or mobile applications) to share and exchange shopping information in real time and in location proximity (e.g., on mobile applications and location- aware browsers). A function of these sites, in the shopping area, is for customers to share consumable shopping information (such as specials, coupons, offers, deals).

[0007] Although a shopping offer can be found and shared on both social network sites such as Facebook® and on group shopping sites such as Groupon®. A difference between them is when/whether a consumer has to pay for the offer. On some social sites, offers (e.g., "Deals" on "Facebook® Places" that can be discounts) are free for consumers to take online. A consumer is able to take the deal to the store (via mobile application) and use it. In contrast, on some group shopping sites (e.g., Groupon®), a user is required to pay up front (i.e., pre-pay) for a deal, typically at a discounted price as advertised on the site, then he or she can spend the face value (typically greater than the amount he or she pre-paid) in the store. In this document, a pre-paid offer is sometimes called a certificate.

[0008] From a merchant's perspective, conventional social and group shopping models can have issues and drawbacks which are often reflected in their respective shopping mobile applications (apps) (e.g., mobile handset configuration and/or associated remote facilities). A social shopping app may track a "check-in" event by captured device location and time. A "check-in," if captured and if captured correctly, may merely correspond to a "visit" to a store (such as a book store), but not necessarily a purchase from the merchant (e.g., the consumer may just read some books but not buy one). By using conventional mobile apps such as the "Facebook® Places" or Foursquare™ mobile app, one can visit a store for the number of times to meet the loyalty requirement and earn the loyalty reward, without making any actual purchases. Also, due to mobile device detection accuracy, one may fake a check- in by just being in geographic proximity to the store and not necessarily within the store. Further, in physical places, such as multi-story enclosed shopping malls, a mobile device may not even be able to detect the device location, due to the inaccessibility or loss of accuracy of GPS (Global Positioning System) and other location determination signals (such as mobile carrier's location detection).

[0009] In contrast, group shopping service providers (e.g.., Groupon®) sell certificates online (this is why such providers may be classified as e-commerce sites) typically for offline/local merchants at discounted prices. The provider's revenue is collected fully online when consumers pay for these certificates before any actual certificate-redeeming purchases are made in store. The purpose of Groupon®-like businesses is to online sell as many certificates as possible. They do so by using so called "group" selling tactic. To optimize the group effect, they typically sell one certificate per day (or no more than a few certificates) per local area to a large number of subscribers, who are loyal to the service provider. Each day the provider posts a new deal from a new merchant. With a large subscriber base, the provider has the power to press the daily merchant to give a certificate that sells at a large discount (typically 50%-90% off at face value). Often times, such a certificate is a loss leader to the merchant (who may hope, for example, to have repeat customers from this selling his or her certificates). Since subscribers may be loyal to the service provider, they look for their email and on provider's web site for daily deals. In today's model, a consumer may buy one certificate at 50%-90% off an actual purchase from a merchant via provider's service and may use it before it expires (such as in 6 months or in a year). He or she may buy another certificate from another merchant tomorrow, and so on. It may be that such group shopping is beneficial for the provider and for consumers but not to merchants ultimately providing goods and services. For example, many consumers using such certificates do not necessarily become repeat customers to merchants. In fact, as customers become loyal to the daily offers posted by the provider, they may be more likely to go to a store's competitor when the competitor posts a deal. In other words, customer loyalty to merchants may be hurt instead of getting strengthened by group shopping.

[0010] Another issue often inherent to group shopping is low degree of merchant coverage. By definition, "group" shopping providers market one or limited number ofdaily deals to a large group of consumers in a local area. In other words, it may be important for the consumer-to-merchant ratio to be as high as possible to press selected merchants to give high- discount deals. Further, to sell as many certificates as possible from the daily merchant, providers often attempt to be highly selective in choosing the right merchant for each day (as the provider can often realistically have only about 300 merchant clients for a year in a sizeable local area). The merchants chosen are typically established and popular businesses whose deals of the day are likely to appeal to many consumers. Numerous local merchants, especially "hyper-local" or neibhorbood businesses, thus are often left out in the group shopping.

[0011] Low degree of merchant participation in group shopping also causes another problem on the consumer side. Because of the local nature of group shopping sites, consumers are often provided deals that, in some sense are local (for example, because they are from a merchant in the same city as a consumer), but not local enough or useful enough that the consumer would be enticed to take the deal. Accordingly, the homogeneous "one deal a day" to tens of thousands of consumers suffers a disadvantage in this regard.

[0012] Another problem with today's group shopping is that certificate purchase and redemption may occur in different media. For example, a consumer may purchase a redeemable certificate on a provider's web site using a credit card, and later either print out the purchased certificate on paper, or show the purchased certificate on a mobile device for redemption. At redemption, the certificate accepting merchant may be required to log on to his merchant account on the provider's web site (or using the merchant version of the provider's mobile app) to input or scan in the unique certificate number. This process is cumbersome, thereby rendering merchant participation with a group shopping provider undesirable in this respect.

[0013] Loyalty shopping mobile apps such as Cardagin™ and Cardbank™ have an ability to store multiple physical membership cards or punch cards in a single mobile application. They can bring shopping convenience to consumers over plastic or paper cards that otherwise would have to be physically carried, e.g., in a wallet or purse. When in-store purchases are tracked, loyalty shopping mobile apps may prompt mobile users for rewards when required purchases have been made. Some of these apps may also allow users to download mobile coupons to these "virtual cards" that can also be used in store.

[0014] One issue for such providers is an ability to accurately and timely track actual in- store purchases for their mobile app users. Some of these apps (e.g., Cardbank™) are, in many ways, basically electronic version of the cards that can be scanned at merchant point- of-sale. In this scenario, loyalty shopping mobile app providers typically integrate with and thus rely on a store's point-of-sale data system to obtain in-store purchase transaction data accurately and timely in order to count qualified purchases toward loyalty rewards for their mobile users. Merchant POS or transaction system-dependency, reliability and timeliness may be an inherent issue for these providers. Another drawback is that such mobile apps often cannot work in stores from which they cannot obtain transaction data. To overcome this drawback, some loyalty shopping mobile app providers (e.g., Cardagin™) require merchants to install specialized hardware in store which can hinder market adoption and create on-going maintenance and support cost to the provider.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0015] Various embodiments in accordance with the present disclosure will be described with reference to the drawings, in which:

[0016] Fig. 1 is a schematic diagram depicting aspects of an example computer network environment in accordance with at least one embodiment;

[0017] Fig. 2 is a schematic diagram depicting aspects of an example marketing management application (MM A) in accordance with at least one embodiment;

[0018] Fig. 3 is a schematic diagram depicting further aspects of the example marketing management application (MMA) in accordance with at least one embodiment; [0019] Fig. 4 is a schematic diagram depicting aspects of an example social entrance message in accordance with at least one embodiment;

[0020] Fig. 5 is a schematic diagram depicting aspects of an example RSVP invitation landing page in accordance with at least one embodiment; [0021] Fig. 6 is a schematic diagram depicting aspects of an example offer in accordance with at least one embodiment;

[0022] Fig. 7 is a flowchart depicting example steps for validating an RSVP in accordance with at least one embodiment;

[0023] Fig. 8 is a flowchart depicting example steps of a virally propagated offer lifecycle in accordance with at least one embodiment;

[0024] Fig. 9 is a schematic diagram depicting aspects of an example social promotion management system in accordance with at least one embodiment;

[0025] Fig. 10 is an entity relationship diagram depicting aspects of example entities utilized by a loyalty shopping mobile application (LSMA) in accordance with at least one embodiment;

[0026] Fig. 11 is a user interface diagram depicting aspects of an example LSMA user interface in accordance with at least one embodiment;

[0027] Fig. 12 is a user interface diagram depicting further aspects of the example LSMA user interface in accordance with at least one embodiment; and [0028] Fig. 13 is a flowchart depicting example steps for consumer-to-business (C2B) social merchant acquisition in accordance with at least one embodiment.

[0029] Note that the same numbers are used throughout the disclosure and figures to reference like components and features.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0030] Social media services, and the users of social media services, may be engaged by promoters and/or merchants (the terms are used interchangeably herein) in a manner that creates a benefit for all involved. Messaging management, subscriber acquisition, and customer relationship management may be intelligently automated to suit merchant resources and optimize productive interactions. Social media users may be suitably motivated to assist in message and/or offer propagation at least in part by providing an environment in which independent effort is fairly rewarded. Local and hyper-local merchants may strengthen relationships with local mobile social media users in a manner that affordably encourages repeat business and customer loyalty. Flexible point of sale options enable rapid local adoption. Furthermore, social media users may initiate engagement with merchants, providing a demand to which merchants merely need assent.

[0031] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computerized online marketing management application (MMA) may effectively automate challenging marketing

management tasks such as messaging management, subscriber acquisition, and customer relationship management for businesses and individual sellers. The MMA enables sellers to effectively conducting online marketing and sales campaigns on powerful social and blogging networks while minimizing their time and efforts needed.

[0032] In addition, the MMA, used by a plurality of sellers and communicating with a plurality of online users on connected social and blogging sites, may be configured as an open and far-reaching community marketing and advertising system that leverages the collective power of sellers and online subscribers of sellers. In this community marketing configuration, sellers and other entities can be advertisers, and the MMA can break the seller account boundary and is capable of delivering advertisements to online subscribers who subscribe (e.g., fans or followers of) sellers through the MMA.

[0033] The MMA may be used by a plurality of business and individuals who intend to sell products and services (i.e., that are sellers) on social and blogging online networks. The MMA can automate large-volume and precise content syndication and may publish syndicated content in a destination-user-optimized fashion, together with seller-provided content. The MMA may automate follower (subscriber) acquisition effectively on

social/b logging destination sites. As a customer relationship management channel, the MMA may, in real time, monitor user feedback related to the seller from managed destinations accounts. The MMA is capable of auto responding to the user feedback as well as escalating feedback that needs human attention to designated seller and service provider personnel. Accordingly, the MMA may facilitate a goal of giving busy business owners an effective online tool that can be easily used to execute critical online marketing tasks via social and/or blogging channels. These social market and sales tasks, now automated on MMA with the right level of human control, otherwise could require heavy investment, time (24x7) resource, or expertise that some businesses do not have or cannot afford. [0034] In addition to managing accounts, delivering content and conducting effective marketing to managed destination accounts, the MMA may be configured to enable sellers and 3rd-party advertisers to have their ads and "advertised content" delivered to a plurality of targeted destination accounts (e.g., cross marketing, or community/group marketing) with an expectation of being propagated to a much wider audience beyond any single destination account. It becomes possible for sellers who are using the MMA in this configuration to earn an income from advertisement (ad) revenue sharing with the MMA service provider.

Accordingly, the MMA in this configuration may act as a technology platform foundation for a social marketing and advertising ecosystem. [0035] To fully leverage the power of social network for effective promotion, promoters may utilize a virally-propagated offer system and/or method (VPOS) for a type of audience promotion that leverages and benefits from the real-time content viral propagation on these social networks. The VPOS may enable a way to socially and virally promote messages on social networks as well as to create and grow social users' affinity and loyalty to the promoters. The VPOS may incorporate, or be incorporated by, the MMA. Alternatively, or in addition, the VPOS may operate independently of the MMA.

[0036] The VPOS may exploit one or more online social networks throughout a promotion cycle, from invitation delivery, invitation RSVP, social and viral offer propagation, to offer in-store redemption. A customer may receive a promotion on a social network via viral propagation and accept the offer on the social network. The offer need not be a pre -purchase of a discounted certificate. The VPOS may facilitate customers with respect to forwarding and sharing the promotion to their social circles. The VPOS may track the forwarding and sharing actions, as well as responses from these actions, and may reward those customers who forwarded or shared offers on social network with benefits based on their action and/or responses. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the VPOS enables promoters to define tiers or ladders of benefits in the promotion, for example, at a group level based on the number of customers who have accepted the offer and at an individual level based on personal referrals on the social network. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the VPOS enables the promoter to privately deliver the offer to each customer who accepted the offer on social network channels, and may further track the redemption of the offers in store.

[0037] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a secure, convenient, scalable mobile transaction tracking system and/or method using consumer's mobile device may be provided, which works for merchants without a point-of-sale data integration or specialized in-store electronic hardware that requires on-going support and maintenance. From a psychological perspective, group shopping may have a benefit of enticing consumers to stores and/or to make purchases with pre-paid certificates. However, conventional loyalty mobile apps, in this regard, may have limitations corresponding to plastic or paper cards that they replaced. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a loyalty shopping mobile app (LSMA) is enabled that can inject the pre-paid concept into loyalty shopping. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the LSMA may embrace social and viral information sharing and propagation to provide social shopping benefits.

[0038] The LSMA may facilitate, and/or correspond to, a system and/or method for a social mobile shopping application that can directly generate sales transactions as well as measurable customer loyalty to sellers. In accordance with at least one embodiment, drawbacks and shortcomings inherit in existing social, group, and loyalty shopping applications may be overcome. For example, in contrast to conventional social shopping apps, the LSMA may overcome a lack of an ability to directly generate sales to merchants and a lack of an ability to directly tie loyalty rewards to actual resulting in- store purchases. In contrast to conventional group shopping apps, the LSMA may enable an end-to-end consumer experience on a single mobile app, from one-click in-app certificate purchase to mobile in-store certificate redemption. The LSMA may overcome other problems of conventional group shopping, for example, the LSMA may strengthen consumer loyalty to merchants and may service a broader range of businesses, such as hyper-local and

neighborhood businesses with smaller business radius and/or lower ticket value.

[0039] In contrast to some conventional loyalty shopping apps that are electronic versions of physical loyalty cards or punch cards, the LSMA may facilitate a concept of service- managed pre-paid mobile certificates that can be purchased conveniently via a single click in- app and be redeemed directly on a mobile device at each qualified purchase towards a loyalty reward. In addition to traditional per-purchase e-coupon and cross-purchase cumulative e- loyalty, the LSMA may facilitate an e-certificate dimension that is both per-purchase (use one at each purchase) and cross-purchase.

[0040] In accordance with at least one embodiment, secure in-store real-time redemption tracking on a single consumer mobile device is enabled, without a need for unreliable, expensive, and/or limited data, software or hardware integration or installation with a merchants' point-of-sale (POS) systems. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the LSMA may be compatible with mobile technologies such as near field communication (NFC), as well as consumer phone only, phone-to-card, phone-to-phone, and phone-to-POS redemption methods. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the LSMA may facilitate phone-to-POS payment methods with certificate redemption included as part of a purchase transaction.

[0041] The LSMA may also facilitate social and sharing aspects of information and events throughout a promotional workflow, for both consumers and merchants. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the LSMA may leverage computer-facilitated social networks to promote, encourage, and/or reward on both sides of merchandising parties, within the LSMA as well as beyond out to other online and social network destinations.

[0042] In accordance with at least one embodiment, the LSMA facilitates a distinct consumer social mobile shopping experience. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the LSMA may facilitate discovery of a number of merchants and/or certificate packs that are available in a location around him or her. His or her buying decisions may be facilitated and/or influenced by these low-purchase-value packs. The LSMA may further facilitate quick and secure purchases with easy in-app mobile payment. He or she may be billed conveniently, for example, directly to his or her mobile carrier. The LSMA may further facilitate sharing of a user's favorite merchants and his or her favorite or bought packs with friends, including friends using the LSMA as well as friends using social network sites such as Twitter® and Facebook®.

[0043] When an LSMA user is in close proximity with a merchant location, the LSMA may reminds the user to redeem the one or more certificates in one or more packs. At the merchant location, for example, in store and/or at the point of sale, the user may show the certificate to a cashier on his or her mobile device. The cashier may securely enter the user's personal merchant redemption code (MRC) and/or place an associated NFC card close to the mobile device. In either case, the LSMA may capture the redemption using the mobile device, and may later prompt the redeeming user to make another trip to the store and/or merchant location to redeem a next certificate or to claim loyalty rewards. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the LSMA enables and encourages a user to share out certificate redemption or rewards to his or her friends using the LSMA and other social networks. A user may also join fans clubs of his or her favorite merchants. In such a club, the user may share shopping experiences with his or her fans and with merchants, again using the LSMA and other social networks. The LSMA and merchants can set up referral and other type of group rewards so the user gets additional benefits, including fund injection to the user's wallet, by influencing friends with respect to purchases from the user's favorite merchants. [0044] In addition to and/or as an alternative to conventional service provider operated direct sales and marketing efforts to acquire merchants as service provider customers, in accordance with at least one embodiment, such merchants may be acquired at least in part by mobilizing socially active consumers on prevalent social network destinations (such as Facebook®, Twitter®) such that the socially active consumers virally create true demands of the target merchant's products or services (such as a mobile voucher pack or "MVP" in accordance with at least one embodiment). In accordance with at least one embodiment, the service provider's role includes facilitating and incentivizing such a social marketing and sales campaign, conducted at least in part by consumers (e.g,. a campaign that results in a consumer-demanded promotion being offered by the merchant). The provider may further help accelerate the viral propagation of the demand (e.g., by utilizing its MMA system), communicate the demand created to merchants and help close the merchant acquisition. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a consumer-to-business (C2B) merchant acquisition that is facilitated by the service provider may be enabled. [0045] Throughout this description, reference is made to particular social media services and/or applications characterized by computer-facilitated communications among users in one or more defined relationship networks (sometimes called "social network graphs").

Examples of such applications include Facebook®, Twitter® and Foursquare™. Such references are solely for illustrative clarity and, in accordance with at least one embodiment, may be substituted with any suitable social media service, application, system and/or method.

[0046] Fig. 1 depicts an example computer network environment 100 in accordance with at least one embodiment. The example environment 100 includes multiple clients 102-108 communicating over a network 110 with a set of social media applications 112-1 14 and a propagated promotions management system 116. The ellipsis between the client 104 and client 106 indicates that any suitable number of clients 102-108 may connect to and communicate through the network 110. Examples of clients 102-108 include personal computers, laptop computers, tablet computers, mobile phones, handheld messaging devices, mobile computing devices, computing devices, and suitable consumer electronics. The network 110 may include any suitable networking components such as routers, switches, hubs, firewalls, and computing devices, connected in any suitable communications topology. The network 110 may utilize any suitable communications media including wired and wireless, and may incorporate and/or be incorporated by a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN) and/or the Internet. [0047] The propagated promotions management system 116 may include a user interface layer 118, an application layer 120 and a data storage layer 122. Although Fig 1 depicts three such layers 118-122 or "tiers", the system 116 may include any suitable number of layers. Each layer 118-122 may include a suitable set of computing resources configured to implement the functionality of its layer. For example, each set of computing resources may include one or more servers connected by networking components. The user interface layer 118 may include any suitable user interface components such as web servers. The data storage layer 122 may include any suitable data storage components such as volatile and nonvolatile computer-readable media, dedicated data storage servers, and databases. [0048] The application layer 120 may include a marketing management application

(MMA) module 124 configured at least to automate challenging marketing management tasks such as messaging management, subscriber acquisition, and customer relationship

management for businesses and individual sellers. The application layer 120 may further include a virally-propagated offer (VPOS) module 126 configured at least to socially and virally promote messages on social networks as well as to create and grow social users' affinity and loyalty to promoters. The application layer 120 may further include a loyalty shopping mobile app (LSMA) module 128 configured at least to embrace social and viral information sharing and propagation to provide social shopping benefits. The application layer 120 may further include a consumer-to-business (C2B) merchant acquisition module 130 configured at least to mobilize socially active consumers on prevalent social network destinations (such as Facebook®, Twitter®) such that the socially active consumers virally create true demands of target merchant's products and/or services.

[0049] Example MMA User Roles and Workflow

[0050] An MMA (e.g., incorporating or incorporated by the MMA module 124) may directly interface with business owners (e.g., sellers) and service provider's seller account managers or support/service personnel. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the MMA system may communicate with Twitter® system via a Twitter® application programming interface (API). End users of Twitter® may access Twitter® content and follower invites and the like published via the MMA by the sellers accounts via Twitter® 's own web and mobile user interface (UI), Twitter® API, or 3rd-party applications.

[0051] To start, the MMA may create a Twitter® account and assign the account credentials to an account manager (AM), and can invite the business owner to co-manage the Twitter® account (AKA destination account). A business owner can further invite his or her designated personnel to join the co-management team for his or her Twitter® account.

Accordingly, the MMA may provide a co-management UI (e.g., on web, mobile) that allows the account manager, service/support personnel, the business owner of the seller, and seller personnel designated by the owner to access the created Twitter® account and perform designated tasks by user roles assigned to each of them on MMA.

[0052] The MMA account management user roles may include: administrator, editor. An administrator can fully manage the destination Twitter® account and can perform tasks such as editing seller account credentials, creating/updating destination (e.g., Twitter®) account profiles. An administrator may have all rights that an editor has. An editor does not have the Twitter® account management privileges. But he or she can post messages to the assigned Twitter® account and may respond directly to Twitter® messages on the provided MMA UI.

[0053] On the MMA UI, editors of the Twitter® account can post and respond to posts (called tweets in Twitter®'s terms) by users who subscribe (called followers in Twitter®'s terms) tweets from the said Twitter® account. Meanwhile, the MMA may run a content syndication system that automatically generates proper posts (e.g., formatted messages) and publishes at the right time and frequency to destination accounts that it manages, for example, in accordance with a set of publication policies. Similarly, the MMA may accommodate follower management both manually by account admins and editors on the MMA UI and/or in an automated fashion via a built-in Follower Acquisition system. [0054] The MMA may brings multi-degrees of efficient co-management capability to its managed destination (e.g., Twitter®) accounts via a single point of user interface and a set of automated systems. The MMA may enable one or more of:

1. A plurality of managed destination social and blogging accounts it, e.g., accounts on Twitter®; 2. A plurality of management roles for destination accounts, e.g., administrator, editor;

3. A plurality of management account user mix, such as members from the seller (further mixed by owner and employees) and from the service provider (further mixed by account manager and service/support personnel);

4. A plurality of tasks managed for destination accounts, e.g., destination account and profile management, content posting, follower acquisition, responding to posts by followers and other destination users; and 5. A plurality of means of task and management execution, e.g., manual operation via MMA UI and automated operations by built-in computerized systems.

[0055] The MMA may utilize computer system automation to accomplish a number of 24x7 market and management tasks on destination accounts (e.g., Twitter®) that it manages. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the automated services may optimize social and blog marketing efficiency to sellers who are using the MMA, while also optimizing the requirements and needs on cost, resource, time, and expertise from sellers. The MMA may further enable and encourage the seller and his or her team to interface via the MMA UI directly with the destination account (e.g., Twitter®) users on an as-needed basis. At least in part by constantly monitoring its managed destination accounts, the MMA automated services are capable of detecting direct communication needs from destination users, and generating notifications and alerts to the seller team. The seller team may directly communicate with destination users with the MMA UI.

[0056] The MMA may further enable and encourage the seller team to use the MMA UI to publish business information and personalized messages that do not exist on public online sources. Seller posts may include offers, coupons, discounts, personal messages from the owner. The MMA may feed these direct messages from the seller into automated posting service and manage them together with content it collected via its automated syndication service to optimize the effectiveness of content, manually generated by the seller or automatically collected by the syndication.

[0057] The MMA can be a valuable customer service and management channel for a seller as it may, in real time, capture and allow the MMA or seller to respond to destination users' opinions, feedback, and input about seller's products, services, or offerings. To reduce a message processing load by the seller, the MMA is also capable of providing a first-tier Feedback Capture and Respond (lst-Tier FCR) service to the seller by responding to destination users directly via a combination of automated and manual support service. The seller may be forwarded with a copy of the lst-Tier FCR correspondence. In this configuration, the seller team owns the 2nd-Tier FCR, who are responsible to communicate with captured destination users on feedback that cannot be answered by the 1st Tier FCR. [0058] Example MMA Architecture and System Components

[0059] The MMA may contain one or more of the following components:

1. Application Account Management (AAM) 2. Destination Account Management (DAM)

3. Follower Acquisition (FA)

4. Content Syndication (CS)

5. Content Publisher (CP) 6. Feedback Capture & Respond (FCR)

7. MMA User Interface (MMA UI)

8. Destination Interface (DI)

[0060] Fig. 2 depicts an example MMA 200 in a data-centric distributed system architecture in accordance with at least one embodiment. As with other systems described and suggested herein, the depiction of the MMA 200 in Fig. 2 is illustrative or a particular embodiment and other systems within the scope of the present disclosure may be configured differently than illustrated and described herein. For example, components of the MMA 200 may be combined and, in various embodiments, a MMA in accordance with the present disclosure may include more or fewer components than explicitly disclosed herein. [0061] The MMA 200 may interface with one or more of the following parties directly or, as with other systems described and suggested herein and variations thereof, indirectly: a. Seller: business owner, and designated team members 202 b. Provider team members 204 c. Destination System (e.g., Twitter®) 206 d. Internet data communication 208.

[0062] An MMA UI 210 (e.g., web, mobile) is the human interactive interface of the MMA 200 that interfaces with at least seller users 202 and provider users 204. The seller users 202 and provider users 204 may be connected to the MMA via the internet 208 or another network (not shown in Fig. 2). [0063] An Application Account Management (AAM) 212 allows an application administrator via the MMA UI 210 at least to create, update, manage, and delete seller's business accounts on the MMA 200. The AAM 212 may also enable account administrators to designate and manage account editors. This component may also control account credentials and validate login attempts. The AAM 212 uses AAM DB 214 as the application account data storage. [0064] The AAM 212 may also fill and maintain a Seller Profile DB 216 that is shared with a Content Syndication (CS) system 218. When a seller application account is created by AAM 212, the system may also ask for pertinent business profile information. Business data collected in a seller profile may include but is not limited to: 1. Business name, logo, address, contact information;

2. Business location and serving radius, time zone and business hours;

3. Business web site address;

4. Business communication subscriptions, such as email;

5. Addresses of existing business social accounts/pages: such as Facebook® fans page; 6. Links or inbound syndication of promotions/coupons/reviews;

7. Manually entered information: description, products/service keywords; and/or

8. Inventory data, manual or syndicated, such as product catalog, lunch/dinner menu.

In accordance with at least one embodiment, the collected profile data may act as seed data for Content Syndication 218. [0065] When the business profile collection process is completed, the Content Syndication (CS) 218 system may be notified. In response, the CS 218 may create a new syndication job for the seller account that starts to run continuously. A CS 218 syndication job scouts the Internet 208 and/or other content sources including email such as a merchant's own email newsletter for relevant information about the seller, starting from the data points collected in the seller Profile in 218. The CS 218 job may do the scouting recursively until relevant information about the seller is exhausted. The CS 218 may process, clean, and save the collected content data to the Content DB 220. Each syndication job in the CS 218 may be run repeatedly and each time the content delta (e.g., the changed content) may be stored in the Content DB 220. Each content piece in the Content DB 220 may be assigned a

Relevancy Score (RScore) to the seller that may correspond to an importance measure of the content piece to the seller's business. RScore's contributing parameters may include freshness (when the content piece was published on the Internet or was collected by the syndication job), significance to the business (e.g., as indicated by a seller), popularity of the content (e.g., as indicated by a content popularity service), urgency (e.g., offer to expire), and positive-ness to the business (e.g., as indicated by a seller and/or by an attitude score). For example, the attitude score may be a component of the RScore and/or determined based on kewords, rules, and/or semantic analysis of content. In accordance with at least one embodiment, attitude scoring comprises classification of content into one of multiple attitudinal categories including "positive," "negative" and "don't know." The CS 218 system may also be directly connected to the MMA UI 210 that enables seller account users with editor privilege or above to write directly to Content DB 220.

[0066] In accordance with at least one embodiment, the Content Publisher (CP) 222 is another automated system of the MMA 200. The CP 222 may take content entries from Content DB 220 and/or content created by authorized users, schedule them, and push them with schedule to a Post DB 224. The Post DB 224 contains scheduled messages in the correct format for a Destination Interface DI 226 that calls suitable interface (e.g., an API 248) of a destination site (such as Twitter®) to publish the message to the destination. The DI 226 may also collect a publishing status via a destination site interface and report the publishing status back to the CP 222. The post status may also be stored in the Post DB 224 for each posted content entry. [0067] Roles that the CP 222 may be responsible for include: post scheduling, post formatting, posting, and/or post tracking (e.g., response tracking, schedule and post optimization), and posting follow-up (e.g., escalation). For each seller, the CP 222 may scan entries stored in the Content DB 220 and schedule them based at least in part on relative RScore. Scheduling may be optimized based on captured social user response (e.g., to correlate with post views and/or link clicks). For each schedulable entry, CP 222 pushes it to the Post DB 224 into a posting queue for the corresponding destination account. In the queue, each entry is assigned with a publishing schedule that is a plurality of Date/Time pairs from now into the future. In accordance with at least one embodiment, an entry is posted N times at dates and times corresponding to the N Date/Time pairs in the queue for that entry. [0068] At the time a content entry is pushed to a publishing queue, it may need to be formatted by the CP 222 to meet the publishing requirements of the target destination site. For example, a post to Twitter® can contain characters with a max length of 140 characters. Often times, web and multimedia content, for example, needs to be stored elsewhere on the internet (or world wide web) and be referenced, for example, with a web address linking to it. Further, web address links (e.g., uniform resource locators or URLs) may need to be shortened to avoid post length violation. Beyond physical format requirements from destination sites, the CP 222 is also capable of reformatting the content entry with "human touch," e.g., rephrasing the entry with a personal flavor so that it sounds like spoken by the seller (e.g., automatically using substitute phrases specified by the seller). Further, the CP 222 may be configured so that each repeat of the same post will have some format/phrase variation (e.g., phrase order variation and/or alternates selected from a list specified by the seller).

[0069] When a clock time matches a Date/Time pair in the Post DB 224, the CP 222 may invoke the DI 226 with the post in its final post-able format for the specific destination site, along with other information such as the account credentials of the destination account the post is intended to be published to. In response, the DI 226 may call the corresponding destination site's API or another publishing mechanism to post the given content entry. The DI 226 may capture the publishing status (e.g., success/failure with reason, destination timestamp) and return that to the CP 222. CP 222 may also work with Stats & Reporting 238 to track posting results, social users' response to the post (such as views and link clicks). In at least one embodiment, CP 222 may also have the capability of analyzing tracked response data and progressively optimizing the post schedule and/or the content format to optimize the effectiveness of the message. The CP 222 may handle the corresponding posting follow-up (such as repost, or escalate the issue to the MMA administrator) based on the business logic configured.

[0070] Follower Acquisition (FA) 228 is another automated component in the MMA 200 that may run a continuous FA job for each destination account managed in MMA. Each FA job may, in real-time, search a destination user base via the DI 226 with a set of user search criteria, and invite each qualified destination user to follow (subscribe to) the seller's destination account. The FA 228 may, in an automated fashion, synthesize and continuously optimize or update a set of destination user search criteria for each seller by analyzing the corresponding seller profile and content entries in Seller Profile DB 216 and Content DB 220, respectively. The FA 228 also allows administrators of the seller account to update or specify additional user search criteria (including location, keywords or search terms, and post time or recency) via the MMA UI 210.

[0071] As one simplified example, for a seller Garlic Jim's Gourmet Pizza at Eastgate located in Bellevue, WA with zip code 98007, the FA 228 may generate the following Twitter® follower search criteria: (Twitter .User . Location, <= , 15 miles of zip code 98007) AND (Twitter. Post .Text, Contains, "Pizza" OR "Garlic Jim" OR

"Gluten Free" OR "Take out" OR "Pepperoni") AND

(Twitter. Post .DateTime, <=, 7 Days) [0072] For each managed destination account, the FA 228 may store the search criteria in use in a Follower DB 230. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the Follower DB 230 also stores the list of destination users the FA 228 has invited as well as the invitations themselves, the invite times, and the search criteria used for each invitation. Via the DI 226, the FA 228 may also collect and store in the Follower DB 230 a response to each invitation, such as whether accepted, rejected, no-response, and at when. The destination users' responses may be used to decide whether to send invitations again. In addition to the automated follower acquisition process, the FA 228 may enable seller MMA account users, with proper privilege, to manually manage followers (such as conducting per-user invite, reject) via the MMA UI 210. Based on the induced intelligence from multiple data points, including the MMA UI 210, the Seller Profile DB 216, the Content DB 220, and the Follower DB 230, the FA 228 is capable of automatically and continuously optimizing the search criteria to improve the acceptance ratio for the seller. For example, the FA 228 may correlate search criteria and/or one or more suitable classifications of search criteria with historical invitee acceptance ratios, and prefer search criteria and/or search criteria in one or more classifications correlated with historically high invitee acceptance ratios.

[0073] The MMA 200 may further include a Feedback Capture & Respond (FCR) 232 component. The FCR 232 may directly connect to the Feedback DB 234 and utilize it as data storage. In real time, FCR 232 may scan and analyze posts and user communications on each managed destination account via the DI 226. The FCR 232 may utilize a collection of search criteria to find relevant posts and messages for this purpose. As a simplified example, FCR 232 may use the following to collect posts on Twitter® about Garlic Jim's Pizza store: a. Posts containing seller destination account name (such as @GJEastgate on Twitter®); b. Posts containing seller product and service brands, names, and keywords (such as "Garlic Jim", "Pizza"); and/or c. Direct messages to the seller's destination account by the destination user (such as Twitter® DM).

[0074] The FCR 232 may connect to the Seller Profile DB 216 and the Post DB 224 and utilize data intelligence (e.g., with respect to search term relevance or with sementic analysis) to generate and update feedback search criteria on a real-time basis. The FCR 232 may also be directly connected to MMA UI 210 so that the destination account administrator can manually enter or edit feedback search criteria. [0075] The FCR 232 may store collected feedback entries ("feedbacks") from the destination site into the Feedback DB 234 and, in accordance with at least one embodiment, may flag each feedback entry with one of the following:

1. No Respond - a feedback not requiring response. 2. Auto Respond - a feedback for which the FCR 232 can generate a response and post back to the destination site automatically. One example of an Auto Respond-able feedback is a positive review of the seller's products or services that is worth being forwarded or broadcast to a wider audience on the destination site. Another type of Auto Respond-able feedback is questions regarding seller's business for which the MMA 200 has answers. For example, the FCR 232 is capable of posting back answers regarding business directions, hours, or scheduled events (as long as answers have been collected by the Content Syndication CS 218).

3. Manual Respond - a feedback that the FCR 232 escalates to a lst-tier FCR support team. For example, a feedback that is deemed by FCR 232 as negative or a feedback that requires response, but for which an automatic response cannot be determined. A lst-tier FCR support term member may utilize the MMA UI 210 to review the feedback post and respond to the post directly if possible. The FCR 232 may directly post the response from the lst-tier support to the destination user and log the communication to the Feedback DB 234. The lst- tier support person may forward the feedback to a designated seller person and/or 2^nd tier support team when he or she does not have an answer. Examples of feedback questions that may be suitable for manual response include: "Do you deliver pizza to a certain location beyond your specified radius?" "Do you have this particular car part in stock and how much?" "Would you consider using Brand A window instead of your advertised Brand B for a remodeling?" The FCR 232 may be configured to detect the 2nd-Tier support (e.g., the designated seller person) response to the destination user, and may generate one or more alerts to a 2nd-Tier support team if the anticipated response is not detected within one or more corresponding timeframes. The FCR 232 may in real-time receive forward posts from 1^st tier support and facilitate one-to-one communication with an individual customer on a destination network and/or through the MMA 200. [0076] In the FCR 232, the feedback flagging rules may be implemented as a multi-exit decision tree that is trained with stored seller content together with past feedback/response pairs logged in the system. The rule set may be continuously optimized and/or updated by learning from a FCR support log in the Feedback DB 234. A destination account manager (DAM) 242 may manage aspects of destination accounts such as authentication credentials. The DAM 242 may utilize a DAM DB 246 as data storage.

[0077] The MMA 200 may further include a logging and auditing component 236, a statistics and report component 238, a billing component 240. As will be appreciated by one of skill in the art, functionality of these components may be provided by conventional, commercially available products that may be integrated into the MMA 200. Any of the components of the MMA 200 may communicate with any others of the components.

[0078] Example MMA With Community Marketing

[0079] When a plurality of sellers are using the MMA 200 to manage their own destination accounts for their own marketing efforts, it is possible to augment the MMA 200 with community marketing features to leverage the collective power of seller accounts the MMA 200 is managing to conduct cross-marketing and to reach destination users of managed seller accounts.

[0080] Fig. 3 shows an example MMA 300 that enables such community

marketing/advertising. The MMA 300 of Fig. 3 may incorporate any suitable components of the MMA 200 of Fig. 2.

[0081] The MMA 300 may include an Ad Management (AdM) 302 module. Each seller account administrator can use the AdM 302 via the MMA UI 210 to decide whether to participate in one or more community marketing programs. He or she joins a program by becoming (1) an Ad Sender and/or (2) an Ad Receiver. By definition, an Ad Sender is an MMA seller account that is entitled to send advertisements to other sellers' accounts that are also Ad Receivers. An Ad Receiver designation means that a seller's account can receive advertisements from other parties with Ad Sender status. In this way, an advertisement from an Ad Sender can be posted to a plurality of Ad Receiver accounts thus reaching a wider audience.

[0082] In the MMA 300, an Ad Receiver may correspond to an MMA seller account that owns one or more destination accounts. However, an Ad Sender may or may not be an actual MMA seller (who has a seller account on MMA). The MMA 300 is capable of receiving advertisements from 3rd-parties who are not using the MMA 300 for managing any destination accounts. These users are called "external" Ad Senders, such as a business that does not have any social/b logging destination sites or does not use the MMA 300 to manage any of them. An external Ad Sender can also be a 3rd-party ad network, for example. [0083] The MMA 300 may include an Ad Sender DB 304 and an Ad Receiver DB 306. The Ad Sender DB 304 and the Ad Receiver DB 306 may be directly connected to the AdM 302. The Ad Sender DB 304 may store Ad Sender account information. The Ad Receiver DB 306 may store Ad Receiver account information. An Ad Receiver and/or Ad Sender account may be linked to a corresponding seller profile account, when such an ad account is not external to the MMA 300.

[0084] The MMA 300 may further include an Ad Syndication component (AdSyn) 308. The AdSyn 308 may enable external Ad Senders (e.g., non-MMA sellers) to register their Ad Sender accounts and send their ad data to the MMA 300, e.g., via a programmatic interface such as an API. In addition to the MMA UI 210 through which a seller with Ad Sender status can create ads manually in the MMA 300, the AdSyn 308 allows volume internal Ad Senders (who are also MMA sellers) to send ad data to the MMA 300 programmatically.

[0085] An Ad Sender account in the Ad Sender DB 304 may contain at least the following ad targeting information: 1. Ad Receiver Preference. The Ad Sender may instruct the MMA 300 to target his or her ads to Ad receiver accounts qualified, for example, a. By ad receiver location, b. By ad receiver business category, c. By ad receiver product or service name, d. By ad receiver profile keywords, e. Ad receiver blacklisting;

2. Post preference. The Ad Sender may instruct the MMA 300 to deliver his or her ads as direct response to posts qualified, for example, a. By post keywords; and 3. Follower preference. The Ad Sender may instruct the MMA 300 to deliver his or her ads to those followers qualified, for example, a. By follower profile, such as name, location, keywords in description.

An Ad Sender can further elect to combine or group available targeting capabilities for his or her ads. [0086] Alternatively, or in addition, instead of manually deciding targeting preferences, an Ad Sender can check an "Intelligent Targeting" option that instructs the MMA 300 to select the targeted ad receivers, posts, and/or followers based at least in part on a content analysis of the advertisements, for example, with respect to relevance of advertisement content. [0087] An Ad Sender account stored in DB 304 may also contain ad pricing and billing information. Ad pricing is typically given by Cost per Mille (i.e., a thousand) impressions (CPM), Cost per Click (CPC), or another industry measure. An Ad Sender account may also define ad delivery parameters such as (1) upper limit by day or month, in terms of deliveries or budget, (2) delivery start date/time, end date/time, on/off dates, days of week, day parts. THe MMA 300 may determine an optimal delivery schedule, when an Ad Sender does not define any/all of these preferences, for example, with respect to a number of impressions for a given budget.

[0088] With the AdM 302, for example, manually via the MMA UI 210 or

programmatically via the AdSyn 308, an Ad Sender may create one or more advertisements that get stored in the Ad Inventory DB 310 in its native format (which may need to be reformatted by CP 222 before delivered to particular destination sites). Each advertisement can be associated with a set of delivery and pricing preferences similar to that described above with reference to an Ad Sender account. When empty, the MMA's ad target intelligence (e.g., with respect to ad relevance) or the Ad Sender's preferences may be used for ad targeting and delivery to destination accounts and users. In accordance with at least one embodiment, another way of creating an advertisement is to flag a content entry in the Content DB 220 or the Post DB 224 as an ad.

[0089] A seller utilizing the MMA 300 may interact with the AdM 302 to create his or her Ad Receiver account that gets stored in the Ad Receiver DB 306. An Ad Receiver account may contain and/or be associated with at least the following ad reception preferences (similar to ad target preferences in format for Ad Senders):

1. By location proximity;

2. By time proximity; and

3. By content proximity, including, a. By business category, b. By product/service names, and c. By keywords.

[0090] An Ad Receiver account may also specify ad volume control such as maximum number of ads per day the seller allows his or her destination account or user to receive. An Ad Receiver may also elect to have the MMA 300 control one or more ad reception parameters for his or her account, for example, in accordance with a set of configured ad reception policies.

[0091] An Ad Server (AdServ) 312 may generate a delivery schedule for each ad in the Ad Inventory DB 310. The ad delivery schedule may include the ad itself, one or more destination accounts (and/or target posts, and/or followers) to which to deliver, time of delivery or deliveries, and other information needed to make actual ad deliveries. In accordance with at least one embodiment, ads are delivered in a same and/or similar format as content posts. In accordance with at least one alternate embodiment, ads may be delivered in formats different from content posts.

[0092] The AdServ 312 may perform a sequence of logical steps such as those described below to identify target destination entities that match with the delivery preferences of each ad:

1. Set the delivery preference of a given ad a to be AP(a), i.e., the delivery preference explicitly associated with the ad a. If AP(a) is empty (e.g., ad a has no explicitly associated delivery preference), then set AP(a) to be that of the corresponding Ad Sender's delivery preference. If AP(a) is still empty, then set AP(a) to be that of the system default or deducted (e.g., derived based at least in part on previous or popular settings).

2. For each possible delivery destination account d, set the ad destination reception preference DP(d) to be that of the destination account. If DP(d) is empty, then set DP(d) to be that of the system default or deducted (e.g., derived based at least in part on previous or popular settings).

3. Let IP(a,d) to be an intersection of the preferences AP(a) and DP(d). When IP(a,d) is not empty, then given delivery destination account <i is a qualified target ad delivery entity of ad a.

4. A delivery volume control algorithm is run against existing qualified destination entities for ad a. The end result may be that some previously qualified target delivery entities with low IP(a,d) score may be disqualified, when the delivery volume is reached. 5. A reception volume control algorithm is run against ads qualified for each destination entity d. The end result may be that some ads previously qualified to delivery to a destination but with low IP(a,d) score may become disqualified.

6. When still qualified, the ad a is pushed to Post DB 224 into the publish queue for destination account d, together with IP(a,d) .

7. CP 222 does actual scheduling and publishes ad a to destination account d, along with regular content posts and other ads that are in the same publishing queue.

[0093] An Ad Tracker (AdTrack) 314 may interface with the DI 226 and collect ad delivery and user response data from destination sites. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the data collected is stored in an Ad Fulfillment DB 316 that may be used by an Ad Billing & Report component (AdBR) 318. The AdBR 318 may generate performance and billing reports utilizing ad performance data from the Ad Fulfillment DB 316, together with advertiser information from the Ad Sender DB 304, ad information from the Ad Inventory DB 310, and any suitable ad performance and billing related data. The ad performance and billing reports may be viewed through the MMA UI 210 and can be transmitted programmatically via AdSyn 308. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a conventional Billing component 240 may be utilized to conduct ad sender billing and ad receiver revenue sharing.

[0094] Viral Promotion for Social Affinity [0095] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a VPOS promotion may contain one or more sets of promotional messages, including: (1) Social Entrance Messages (e.g., social entrance message 402 as shown in Fig. 4), (2) a "respond please" (RSVP) invitation landing page (e.g., an RSVP invitation landing page 500 as shown in Fig. 5) and (3) the Offer (e.g., the offer 602 as shown in Fig. 6). Each set may have one or more varying creative copies. Typically an entrance 402 is formatted to be delivered to a specific social network and typically contains a link (or another form of action-through) leading to the RSVP invitation landing page. Format permitting, an entrance may incorporate the RSVP invitation.

[0096] Fig. 4 depicts an example entrance message 402 in Twitter® message (tweet) format, containing a link 404 to an RSVP invitation. The link 404 may be personalized to track click-throughs by individual users.

[0097] Fig. 5 depicts an example RSVP invitation 500. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the RSVP invitation 500 may include: (a) a heading 502, (b) a redemption period 504, (c) a redemption location (e.g., offline location or link to an online store) 506, (d) a tiered social benefits disclosure 508, (e) an RSVP period and conditions 510, (f) an RSVP action place such as a button 512, and/or (g) a VPOS offer issuance date 514. As shown in Fig. 5, the example RSVP invitation 500 announces a discount offer that can be redeemed at the Cartridge World store location 506 between the redemption period 504 November 15 and December 31, 2010. It further announces a tiered discount schedule 508, such that the more followers RSVP (e.g., respond to) this invitation, the more discounts each qualified RSVP user receives. In this example, the promoter further announces that the RSVP period 510 runs from November 1 to November 14, 2010 and mandates that anyone responding to this invitation is required to be a Twitter® follower of promoter's Twitter® account. On this invitation landing page, a user is required to click the "Yes I Want It" button to RSVP 512. Later in the same invitation, the promoter states in block 514 that the actual offer (the discount level that is determined by how many followers respond to the offer) will be produced and issued privately on Twitter®, to qualified followers on November 15, 2010. [0098] Example steps depicted in Fig. 7 may be performed, for example, by the VPOS module 126 of Fig. 1 (with Twitter® as the example social channel) when an RSVP action 702 such as a RSVP button click is captured on a landing page. First, the VPOS module 126 may log the RSVP event together with captured referral data at step 704. At step 706, the VPOS module 126 may identify the referring Twitter® follower. Identifying referrers may allow a promoter to set up individual offer benefit level tied to social referral actions by

Twitter® followers. For example, in addition to group benefits everyone gets from the total RSVP count, the promoter of the sample RSVP invitation in Fig. 5 may configured the VPS module to facilitate fulfillment of the following statement (and the like) on the landing page 508: "Get additional 1% off for each of your first 10 friends who RSVP this offer from your Twitter® recommendation!"

[0099] At step 708, the VPOS module 126 may check whether the user that clicked the RSVP button 512 is a Twitter® user. If it cannot be determined whether the user is a Twitter® user, at step 710, the VPOS module 126 may prompt the user to authenticate with Twitter® (for example, using Twitter® supported OAuth utility. If the user fails to authenticate, a procedure incorporating one or more of the steps of Fig. 3 may exit 718, and the user is not qualified for the offer. Once the button-clicking user authenticates with Twitter®, the VPOS module 126 may capture his or her Twitter® account information and progress to step 712, where it may be determined whether he or she is a follower of the promoter's account on Twitter®. If he or she is already a follower, the procedure may progress to step 714. Otherwise, the VPOS module 126 may invite the user to follow the promoter on Twitter®, for example, directly from the landing page by clicking a "Follow" link (not shown in Fig. 2). If the user accepts this invitation and starts to follow the promoter, the procedure may progress to step 714. Otherwise, the procedure may exit 718, and the user will not receive the offer. In this example VPOS social promotion, benefiting users are required to both have an account on Twitter® and to follow the promoter on Twitter®. This VPOS promotions may therefore directly grow the promoter's social affinity.

[0100] At step 714, the VPOS module 126 may log the success of this RSVP action for this user. Together with the referring user data captured at step 706, the VPOS module 126 may add one count to the total RSVP number for group-based discount as well as adding one count to the referring user's referred RSVP count for his or her additional and individual- based discount. At step 716, a personalized social RSVP entrance message may be generated for the current user containing uniquely coded links to an RSVP landing page (sometimes called "referral links") for the same VPOS promotion. The user can share out these entrance messages (sometimes called "social referral messages") to his or her social circle. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the referral links enable referral tracking, at least in part. When some of his or her friends RSVP to the invitations sent from the user, the same steps depicted in Fig. 3 may be performed for this user, but this time treating the user as an offer referrer. [0101] Fig. 6 depicts an example VPOS offer creative 602, in Twitter® direct message (DM) format. In this example, a Twitter® user who RSVPed (e.g., responded to) the invitation of this promotion and followed the promoter on Twitter® will receive such an offer at the announced offer issuance date-time. The VPOS module 126 may deliver an offer like this one privately, from promoter's Twitter® account directly to this user's Twitter® account. The offer may further contain a personalized offer code 604 that the promoter can use to uniquely identify and enforce one-time redemption of the offer creative 602 at his or her point of sale. The promoter may also specifies the final discount level in the offer creative 602, which may also be individually calculated, as a function (e.g., a sum) of a group discount (e.g., as determined by number of social RSVPs) and an individual discount (e.g., as determined by number of individually based social efforts such as RSVPs from his or her referrals). The offer creative 602 may also specifies other information that is relevant to redemption such as means of redemption (print, present in mobile device, verbally mention, etc.), redemption period (start and end dates), and/or redemption location. The example VPOS offer creative 602 in Fig. 6 is depicted in its final form in Twitter® DM format. Alternatively, or in addition, a VPOS offer creative can be a full-blown web page. In this case, instead of delivering the offer as a DM, the DM a Twitter® RSVP follower receives will be an offer entrance that contains a personalized link leading to the offer web page.

[0102] In accordance with at least one embodiment, there may be a convenience factor associated with VPOS-type social promotion redemption. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a consumer may present the offer electronically at the point of sale by showing the offer on his or her mobile phone with an intuitive and easy-to-use mobile application such as a conventional Twitter® application and/or mobile phone app. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a hard copy or print version of the offer is not required. Further, the VPOS module 126 may incorporate, facilitate and/or interact with a secure mobile application for promoter to use at the point of sale to validate and enforce one-time use of each offer code or creative presented in store.

[0103] In Fig. 8, a workflow in accordance with at least one embodiment is described. A VPOS social promotion campaign may contain two phases, for example, an RSVP Phase 802 followed by a Redemption Phase 804. To start a VPOS social promotion campaign, a promoter may send RSVP invitations to an initial set of social users at step 806. For example, the initial set of social users may include the promoter's Twitter® followers, Facebook® fans, and/or social user who have subscribed to the promoter's content. For example, an RSVP invitation can be a social entrance message such as a Twitter® tweet that contains a link leading to a RSVP invitation web page. As another example, the RSVP invitation can be a full blown invitation, self contained.

[0104] In accordance with at least one embodiment, after the initial distribution, those who received the RSVP invitation are enabled and encouraged to share out the invitation further to social users in their social circles. This is the RSVP invitation social propagation step 808. During a VPOS promotion campaign, the promoter may direct tie social users' affinity to his or her business on online social networks at least in part by (1) mandating social eligibility for RSVP, such as that a user must follow the promoter on Twitter® and/or (2) creating both group and individual incentives in the offer so that some social users will promote the offer in a voluntary and viral fashion for the promoter and for his or her own personal benefits. (Step 810). A group incentive may be a tiered discount structure where a base discount (e.g., all RSVP users get the same) goes up with the number of RSVPs, and an individual incentive may be a tiered or proportional discount structure where additional discount (added up to the base discount) is calculated based on number of RSVPs as a result of this user's social recommendations and referrals. A computerized VPOS Promotion Management System (e.g., the VPOS module 126 of Fig. 1) may facilitate and track RSVP and social referrals at both group and individual level.

[0105] In the Redemption Phase 804, the VPOS module 126 may generate a VPOS offer 812. The offer may contain a social entrance message creative with a link pointing to the offer's landing web page. Alternatively, or in addition, the offer may include a single and self-contained creative of the offer itself. The offer link or the offer code may be

personalized to individually track offer redemption. The VPOS module 126 may deliver offers in its social-network-conforming creative copies to qualified RSVP social users, such as Twitter® users who follow promoter and have RSVP the offer during the RSVP phase. In accordance with at least one embodiment, offers may be delivered privately via social network channels in 814, to those who are qualified to receive them.

[0106] A social user who receives a VPOS offer may redeem it within the specified redemption period at the promoter's business 816. Examples of promoters include a physical store and an online business. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the system and/or method may be configured to be agnostic to any particular means of redemption, as long as the means is supported by the promoter and advertised in the offer. For example, a VPOS offer may be redeemed by a social user just by mentioning the personalized offer (or non- personalized offer if desired by the promoter) to a sales clerk at a point of sale. The offer may be redeemed by presenting the offer electronically, for example, by showing the offer on a mobile device at the point of sale, by bringing a printed copy to the point of sale, or in the form of a pre-purchased certificate. At step 816, the promoter may enforce one-time- redemption of offer, for example, by promotion code or by the redeeming customer's social network ID/name.

[0107] Fig. 9 depicts an example computerized VPOS Social Promotion Management System (SPMS) 902 configured to interface with at least two types of entities including: a plurality of promoters 904 and a plurality of consumers (consumerl 906 and consumer2 908 for illustrative purposes). The VPOS Social Promotation Management System may incorporate and/or be incorporated by the VPOS module 126 of Fig. 1. A Promoter Service 910 may provide an interface to promoters 904 that presents a UI (web, mobile) and manages data connectivity with promoters 904. This service 910 may be connected to a Promoter DB 912 that stores promoter related data, including promoter account information. Internally, the Promoter Service 910 may connect to any suitable management services in order to complete needed functions for promoters. Similarly, a Consumer Service 914 may provide an interface to social consumers 904, 908 and may be connected to a Consumer DB 916. Internally, a Consumer Service 914 may be connected to any suitable system management services in order to complete consumer-related tasks.

[0108] Via the Promoter Service 910, the promoter 904 may interact with an Invitation Service 918 to create an RSVP invitation with one or more creative copies (in either entrance/landing pairs or a single form), such as the ones depicted in Figs. 4-5. RSVP invitations and associated creative copies may be stored in an Invitation DB 920 and associated with corresponding promoter accounts stored in the Promoter DB 912. The promoter 904 may also utilize an Invitation Management component 918 to create a delivery schedule for each RSVP invitation. Such schedules may be stored in an Invitation Delivery DB 922, and associated with the corresponding invitation in the Invitation DB 920. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the RSVP invitation delivery schedule may include and/or correspond to a set of tuples, each containing a delivery date time, a creative copy, a list of social users, a format such as delivering a direct message format (Fig. 4) facilitating a delivery of the RSVP invitation to the specified persons and/or user accounts, at the specified time on the specified social network in the specified format. Promoters can access the SPMS 902 to fully manage invitation, creative copies, and delivery schedule.

[0109] When a scheduled invitation delivery datetime (e.g., a scheduled deliver time on a scheduled delivery date) is about to come up, the Invitation Management component 918 may send a suitable set of information to the Consumer Service component 914, which in turn may deliver a specified RSVP Invitation 924 to the list of social users at the specified time. The Consumer Service component 914 may also capture a delivery status from destination social network services and report that back to the Invitation Management component 918. Promoters can further use the Invitation Management component 918 to define suitable repeat and error processing rules regarding RSVP invitation delivery based at least in part on messages received and/or events detected by the SPMS 902.

[0110] After Consumer 1 906 receives the RSVP invitation 924, he or she may decide to click on the RSVP button if he or she wants to receive the advertised offer. The Consumer Service 914 may capture this RSVP Event 926 and run RSVP logic (e.g., as described above with reference to Fig. 7) to mandate social affinity of this user to the promoter and determine whether to accept this RSVP or not. The Consumer Service 914 may utilize the Consumer DB 916 to store needed information and log data about this consumer. After processing the RSVP Event 926, the Consumer Service 914 may send information about this RSVP event to the Invitation Management component 918, which in turn may save the data into an

Invitation RSVP DB 928 and may conduct its own process or analyses on the stored data about collected RSVPs. As described above with reference to Fig. 7, Consumerl 906 may share out the offer invitation to another Consumer2 908. Both consumers may trigger RSVP events that may be processed as described.

[0111] After the RSVP phase ends, an Offer Management Service 930 may calculate offer benefits for each qualified RSVP follower (taking Twitter® as the example here). Depending on the benefit rules stated in the RSVP invitation, the actual benefit (such as discount) in the final offer may be determined by one or more of the following: (a) group benefit tier and (b) individual benefit tier. These tiers may be combined (e.g., summed) to calculate the final benefit level for each individual RSVP user. As a next step, the Offer Management Service 930 may generate the actual offer 940, which is may be associated with multiple creative copies (for offer delivery) that are generated at the same time. A copy of an offer creative may contain a personalized redemption code or link, personalized message, and/or a personalized benefit level, for example. Both the VPOS offer and associated creative copies may be stored in an Offer DB 932, for example, with foreign key relationship to VPOS invitations and RSVPs. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a template approach with embedded variables for personalized attributes may be utilized, and have advantages including saving of storage space and/or processing time. In this case, the actual offer tweets are generated on the fly using the attributes data at the offer delivery time.

[0112] Along with offer and offer creative copy generation, the Offer Management Service 930 may also generate an offer delivery schedule in accordance with the advertised offer delivery date time in the corresponding invitation. Such offer delivery schedules may stored in an Offer Delivery DB 934. In accordance with at least one embodiment, an offer delivery schedule may include a set of tuples, each containing, for example: a delivery datetime, an offer creative, a destination address and/or destination service and user ID pair, and any suitable attributes that enable the SPMS 902 to deliver the offer in the specified format to the specified person on the specified social network at the specified time.

[0113] The Consumerl 906 may redeem the received offer at a promoter's point of sale 936. At that time, the Consumerl 906 may present the offer code (e.g., in the offline store scenario) or click on the offer link (e.g., in the online store scenario) to a promoter's POS system or to personnel 938 using any of the supported redemption means as stated in the offer. The promoter's POS system and/or personnel 938 may capture the promotion code and/or the personalized link, determine the validity of the code and check for one-time use if a promotion code or link is specified to be for a single purchase. The SPMS 902 may publish a public POS API with which a promoter's point of sale systems may integrate. Alternatively, or in addition, the SPMS 902 may provide an intuitive web/mobile UI configured at least to enable promoter's personnel, at the post of sale, to report the redemption code to the SPMS 902, and through which the SPMS 902 may report back to the point of sale whether this redemption code is valid, unique, and/or one-time used.

Redemptions may be recorded in the Offer Redemption DB 942.

[0114] In accordance with at least one embodiment, the SPMS 902 may facilitate an online viral promotion service and system that mandates and grows consumer social affinity to the promoter on today's online social networks. With tiered and personalized benefit structure in the offer that may reward both group-level and individual-level viral and social promotional efforts, the SPMS 902 may facilitate a way of promotional marketing on social networks that gets both sales and social affinity for the promoter, while creating tangible benefits such as discounts or savings to consumers. For example, a point-of-sale discount for a consumer may be based at least in part on (e.g., be a linear combination of) one or more of group viral effort (e.g., total offers accepted) and individual viral effort (e.g., total offers accepted as a consequence of tracked propagation activity by the consumer). Alternatively, or in addition, the consumer may earn non-discount awards or social decorations (e.g., titles) based at least in part on (e.g., be a linear combination of) one or more of group viral effort (e.g., total offers accepted) and individual viral effort (e.g., total offers accepted as a consequence of tracked propagation activity by the consumer). [0115] Social Mobile Shopping With Measurable Customer Loyalty

[0116] As used herein, a mobile application ("mobile app" for short) is a component of a consumer mobile device that may be configured with a set of instructions executable by one or more processors of the consumer mobile device. For example, the set of instructions may include instructions corresponding to statements of one or more suitable computer programming languages. In local shopping, a benefit of a mobile app over printed coupons/offers may be "mobile presentation and/or redemption", where a user brings the mobile device running the mobile app to the store and is able to show the offer and/or redeem the shown offer with the cashier (regardless whether it is a social offer (not paid) or a group offer (pre paid)). [0117] A shopping mobile app may also give consumers other benefits, including location and time proximity determination, where the mobile device owner can be alerted with proper offers/certificates based at least in part on device location and current time. The shopping mobile app may further provide individualized promotion (e.g., pack buying recommendations or "tailored offering") based on location and time (e.g., store hours, certificate's time range such as 3-5pm Happy hours) and/or a user's given preferences and/or data-mined knowledge about individual customers based on and/or related to the customer's past interaction with the app and/or a purchase/redemption log. [0118] Consumer shopping mobile apps may incorporate one or more of the following features:

1. Store and offer discovery, by shopping category, keywords, location, and/or time (e.g., location and/or time proximity to a user of the mobile shopping app);

2. Detailed store information, contact and navigation help, e.g., phone, map/directions; 3. Detailed offer information: discount, terms and conditions, valid period/expiration, multi- use or single use, etc.;

4. Store/offer alert (push mode) - prompt user a relevant or accepted offer or store when time/location proximity meets the selection criteria;

5. Offer acceptance - some apps do require an online or mobile "acceptance" action on the offer before it can be redeemed in store, such as a "click", a "check in", an "accept it", a "like it", a "share", a "buy (pre pay)", etc.;

6. Save the selected store or offer for easy future retrieval and use;

7. Redemption information: how to redeem this offer - may support "showing the offer to cashier", "scan the shown barcode (ID or 2D) at POS", "ask cashier to type in the offer code"; and

8. Social sharing - sharing the offer or store to your friends.

[0119] Some social shopping mobile apps track mobile device user's foot traffic into a store (sometimes called a "check in" event), for example, by matching captured device location and time to the known location and business hours of a store. A shopping app may further show a discount offer, a reward, etc. for the consumer to redeem in store. Mobile apps may also track the number of check-ins by the same user and may display a loyalty reward (such as a free coffee) in the mobile app when a pre-determined number of check-ins (aka visits) to the store is made. Via a social mobile app, a merchant may post a social offer where a reward or discount may be given to one/some/all of the mobile app users when they check in. In addition, a social shopping app may support other forms of offers such as to allow a merchant to donate funds to a charity for each qualified consumer check-in. [0120] In a group shopping scenario, a consumer pays a service provider at a discounted price and purchases a certificate online for a higher face value. The consumer then prints out the certificate and takes it to the store for redemption. The certificate may be imprinted with a unique barcode or a unique alphanumerical number. To redeem, the cashier may scan the barcode or input the certificate number to a merchant's point-of-sale system or on a mobile shopping service provider's web site. Alternatively, or in addition, a merchant may download and use a provider's group shopping mobile app and present the consumer certificate in electronic form in the mobile app when the consumer is in store for redemption. The redemption process may be same or similar, regardless of whether the certificate is shown in a paper form or in the electronic form.

[0121] In accordance with at least one embodiment, the loyalty shopping mobile app (LSMA), may provide one or more of the following features:

1. Enable a mode of pre-paid shopping that triggers repeat purchases with each participating merchant and grows measurable loyalty to these merchants; 2. Facilitate an end-to-end consumer mobile shopping experience, enabling in-app certificate pack purchase and in-store mobile certificate redemption;

3. Accurately and timely track in-store purchases, using a consumer mobile device in a manner extensible with respect to advancing mobile technology; and

4. Bring in seamless social sharing and viral propagation with respect to both shopping information and shopping funds, within and beyond the mobile shopping app.

[0122] Different from some group shopping providers, instead of creating a consumer base that is loyal to the provider, the LSMA may facilitate creation of a consumers base who are loyal to merchants and receive rewards from them. The LSMA may sell to consumers a series of pre-paid certificates (interchangeably called a "certificate pack" and a "mobile voucher pack" or "MVP" herein) at a price discounted by the pack. A consumer buying a certificate pack may consume bought certificates in sequence via the LSMA at any time before the pack expires. Once certificates in the pack are used and redeemed, the consumer may be entitled to a loyalty reward offer from the merchant. The LSMA may facilitate an end-to-end mobile shopping experience that enables one-click in-app certificate purchase. [0123] The LSMA may precisely track actual in-store purchases by means including capturing certificate redemption on consumer mobile device. The LSMA may thus bring to a merchant a reliable and/or true measure for consumer loyalty. By selling pre-paid packs to consumers, the LSMA may facilitate a pushing of consumers to make purchases at store and/or point of sale locations in addition to visiting the store locations. The LSMA may enable and encourage fund reward and sharing. For example, based on actual individual and social purchase behavior, a consumer may get rewarded by the LSMA provider or merchants with shopping fund rewards that can be used, for example, to purchase certificate packs. The LSMA may also facilitate funds or MVP transfer (e.g., gifting) to a user's social circle.

[0124] The LSMA may track purchases on a consumer mobile device. The LSMA may be independent of data, hardware, or software integration with merchant point-of-sale systems. The LSMA may facilitate pre-paid shopping and may effectively push consumers to make loyalty purchases .

[0125] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a consumer mobile device may become integral to a shopping experience. For example, it may become a challenge to ask consumers to manage a pack of certificates in a paper form, for example, where a consumer is required to save the paper certificates and remember to bring the right certificate to the store for redemption over the offer period (such as 6 months or a year). The LSMA may facilitate certificate management including: which have been used, which one is the next for redemption, when to claim loyalty rewards, and the like. Certificates in a purchased pack may be available for redemption in a group of related consumers such as a family or team. For example, a set of phones in a "friends and family" group may redeem associated packs as well as earn and/or claim rewards.

[0126] The LSMA may facilitate capture of resulting in-store purchases precisely, securely, conveniently, and in an extensible way. The LSMA may conveniently track a resulting purchase via a certificate in-store redemption. A consumer may redeem an offer by verbally mentioning it (code or offer itself) to the cashier, by showing a printed copy, and/or by showing the code and/or offer in an electronic form (such as on his or her mobile device). In response, the cashier may input or scan the code or number of the coupon, offer, and/or certificate into the merchant's point-of-sale system. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the LSMA may facilitate secure and convenient redemption and capture directly on the consumer's mobile device in the consumer's LSMA. [0127] In accordance with at least one embodiment, the LSMA mobile app may support multiple types of certificate redemption methods, including:

[0128] 1. Merchant Redemption Code (MRC [0129] The LSMA may issue a unique secret code (for example, 4 digits long) to each merchant and/or their sales clerk. A certificate or a loyalty reward may be displayed with the LSMA at the time and location when the consumer is in store (e.g., pushed to the screen by the LSMA service based on location/time proximity or pulled to the screen by the consumer manually) for making a purchase. The LSMA may display a secure input box for the cashier to type in the MRC and ask the consumer to hand over the mobile device to the cashier. The cashier may take the device and type in the MRC (e.g., typing in the code like a password with **** shown on mobile screen). In this scenario, redemption verification may be further secured by checking for a match between device time/location and the registered merchant location as well as offer hours and valid period.

[0130] 2. Redemption via Near Field Communication (NFC)

[0131] NFC is a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices over within about 10 centimeters (3.9 in) distance. NFC supports at least two communication modes: a) Passive Communication Mode: The Initiator device provides a carrier field and the target device answers by modulating the existing field. In this mode, the Target device may draw its operating power from the Initiator-provided electromagnetic field, thus making the Target device a transponder. b) Active Communication Mode: Both Initiator and Target device communicate by alternately generating their own fields. A device deactivates its RF field while it is waiting for data. In this mode, both devices typically have power supplies.

[0132] In accordance with at least one embodiment, PVC cards (or other suitable forms such as keychains) embedded with powerless NFC chips may be issued to merchants and/or their sales clerk. Each embedded NFC chip may be pre-coded with an MRC. In this scenario, on a NFC-enabled mobile device (such as Google®'s "NEXUS S" phone), instead of showing the secure MRC input box, the LSMA mobile app may prompt consumer to ask the merchant to redeem the shown certificate or loyalty reward by using the merchant's NFC card. The cashier then just simply places his or her NFC card in close proximity to consumer's mobile phone. When the NFC card is close enough to the consumer's phone, the LSMA may read in the MFC code securely from the card.

[0133] In accordance with at least one embodiment, the LSMA may have advantages including: 1. Wide participation of businesses (the terms "businesses," "merchants" and "sellers" are used interchangeably in this application), big and small. The LSMA may be particularly advantageous for hyper-local small businesses with lower sales transaction value, smaller transaction volume/customer base, and/or smaller business radius. 2. Wide participation of consumers with individually tailored offers. The LSMA may provide a consumer with a significant volume of offers associated with locations nearby the consumer and may recommend to this consumer offers that are relevant to his/her shopping preferences and behavior.

[0134] The LSMA may incorporate in-app mobile payment support, eliminating a need to go to a web site to purchase. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the LSMA may enable targeted last-minute, just-in-time, and/or at-place marketing of merchant offers. The LSMA may facilitate one-click purchasing and may charge the bill directly and conveniently to device's mobile service carrier and/or settle the bill with any suitable payment instrument. In accordance with at least one embodiment, purchases may be enabled independent of a need for consumers to input their credit card information on the mobile device.

[0135] The LSMA may allow a wide variety of sellers to participate with mobile selling and redemption of MVPs . For example, suppose a neighborhood hair salon has a regular price of $15 on an adult hair cut. This business may offer a pack of 12 mobile certificates for a year's use, each with a face value (redeemable value) of $3 and can be purchased at $1. The sales price for this pack is thus $12 for a total value of $36. That is a certificate discount of 67% against the face value. However, very different from daily deals from group shopping, these certificates are likely not loss leaders for the merchant as the total price for each hair cut is $15. So for each hair cut, the discount, when an LSMA mobile certificate is used, will be at $2 off against $15, which is 13%. The LSMA may thus enable merchants to offer affordable discounts to attract repeat customers, and create a sustainable marketing service to participating merchants, big or small.

[0136] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a fund account (called the LSMA wallet) may be maintained for each consumer, accessible via the LSMA. A consumer may purchase certificate packs using funds from his or her LSMA wallet. Funds may be transferred to the LSMA wallet via in-app mobile payment. The LSMA service provider may also reward selected consumers by adding funds to his or her wallet, for example, based at least in part on his or her customer referrals, his or her total number of purchases on the LSMA and/or the like. A consumer may also transfer funds from his or her wallet to a friend's account including as part of a gift. Adding social and viral reward directly to a spendable fund account, combined with shopping information sharing and propagation, may make the LSMA a sticky mobile app and/or an enjoyable consumer social shopping experience. [0137] Logical LSMA Data Entities and Relationship

[0138] In accordance with at least one embodiment, the LSMA may utilize a logical Pack data entity that contains a plurality of member Certificate entities and may further contain a Loyalty Reward data entity. Fig. 10 depicts an example set of such entities, as well as interrelations among the entities. A Pack 1002 is the unit of certificate package that a consumer buys from the LSMA. A Pack 1002 may also contain a plurality of Sales Time

Period entities that define the time periods during which the pack is on sale to consumers. A Pack 1002 may also have a plurality of Redemption Time Period entities, during which the Pack's member certificates and loyalty rewards are redeemable. A Pack 1002 is further associated with one or more Merchant 1004 entities. A Merchant 1004 is a physical location or an online place that the Pack 1002 can be redeemed. A Pack 1002 may further contain content and creative elements such as Title, Description, Multimedia (Images, Videos and such), Terms & Conditions, etc.

[0139] Although described in a mobile context, in accordance with at least one

embodiment, Pack 1002 certificates may be utilized outside of the mobile context. For example, Packs 1002 may pertain to goods or services provided by online (e-commerce) merchants. Aspects of both LSMA and C2B still apply although a physical store location becomes less relevant. For example, a Consumer 1014 may be notified (e.g., by email, SMS) of an available Pack 1002 that is relevant to the Consumer's 1014 interests.

[0140] Associated with the Pack 1002 entity, there may be a My Packs entity. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a consumer can manually save a Pack 1002 to My Packs. When he or she purchased a Pack 1002, the purchased Pack 1002 gets stored to My Packs automatically. My Packs is a collection of favorite packs the consumer has purchased or saved and support quick retrieval and sharing of them.

[0141] A Certificate 1006 data entity may contain Face Value and Sales Value data elements. The Face Value is the redeemable value. The Sales Value is typically a discounted value, as compared to the Face Value, and is how much a consumer pays to use it. Each Certificate 1006 may have an ordered Number. When a Pack 1002 has Numbers on member certificates, a consumer can use them by their Number order. A Certificate 1006 may contain a plurality of Redemption Time Period 1014 data entities. It is further defined that a

Certificate 1006 can be redeemed when the redemption time is valid at Pack 1002 and Certificate 1006 levels, i.e., the redemption time must fall in a Pack's Redemption Time Period and a Certificate's Redemption Time Period. Further, for cross marketing purpose involving multiple merchants, a Certificate 1006 may be associated with a plurality of

Merchant 1004 entities. In an embodiment, if a Certificate 1006 comes with some Merchants 1004, it can be redeemed at these Merchants 1004 (not at Merchants 1004 specified at the Pack 1002 level). A Certificate 1006 may further contain content and creative elements including Title, Description, Multimedia (e.g., audio, video), and Terms & Conditions. [0142] In a Pack 1002, a member Loyalty Reward 1008 data entity quantifies the reward a consumer can claim after he or she has redeemed member Certificates 1008. A Loyalty Reward 1008 may contain content and creative elements including Title, Description, Multimedia, and Terms & Conditions. These elements can be used to well define a variety of rewards, including non-monetary rewards (such as "Get a free cup of coffee!") or monetary rewards (such as "Take $5 off on your next purchase!"). Note that the LSMA logical data entities are extensible. Loyalty Reward 1008 is an extensible data structure that can be extended to enable other types of loyalty rewards when necessary. For example, we may extend the Loyalty Reward 1008 with a PackDiscount entity, which further contains a NextPack pointer and a Discount monetary or percentage element. PackDiscount says that this consumer can get Discount amount off on his or her purchase of NextPack after he or she has redeemed Certificates 1006 of the current Pack 1002. Similar to Pack 1002 and

Certificate 1006, a Loyalty Reward 1008 entity may contain its own Merchant 1004 entities. In accordance with at least one embodiment, when there are one or more Merchant 1004 entities associated to a Loyalty Reward 1008, a consumer can claim the Loyalty Reward 1008 from the specific Merchant(s) 1004 at the Loyalty Reward 1008 level. Allowing merchant association to Loyalty Reward 1008 entity opens doors for cross marketing. In addition, the service provider can act as a Merchant 1004, for example, the LSMA may reward consumers directly. A Loyalty Reward 1008 may further be associated with a plurality of Claim Time Period entities. Therefore, Loyalty Reward 1008 can be claimed when (1) Certificates 1006 in the Pack 1002 are redeemed and (2) the captured claim time falls in Pack's Redemption Time Period and this Loyalty Reward's 1008 own Claim Time Period (if latter exists).

[0143] In addition to above types of loyalty reward that are given from merchants and claimed by consumers, LSMA, in an embodiment, is extensible to accomondate 3^rd parties who can be a reward giver or receiver. For example, the merchant offering a Pack may include a loyalty reward "I will donate $5 to Red Cross." In this example, merchant is the giver of the reward and Red Cross is the receiver who will receive the $5 donation, once a consumer has redeemed all his/her Certificates in a Pack.

[0144] An LSMA Merchant 1004 data entity may include a physical location or an online place where associated Packs can be redeemed. The Merchant 1004 entity may include typical business data elements such as Name, Logo, Tagline, Description, Location, Contact Info, Web Site, Phone, and/or Fax. It may also contain a plurality of Merchant Time Period entities that collectively define its business hours. When a Merchant 1004 is associated with some Merchant Time Periods, the redemption time validation of a Certificate 1006 and the claim time validation of a Loyalty Reward 1008 may add the Merchant 1004 level check against given Merchant Time Period entities. In other words, a Certificate 1006 or a Loyalty Reward 1008 may be redeemable during stated business hours.

[0145] A Merchant 1004 entity may be associated with a plurality of Seller 1010 data entities. A Seller 1010 can be either of an Owner Type or of an Associate Type (and extensible to include other types when necessary). An Owner Seller 1010 is the business owner of an associated Merchant 1004 entity and the LSMA may give this owner

administrative rights with respect to the Merchant 1004 data entity. A Merchant 1004 must have at least one Owner Seller 1010 but may have multiple Owner Sellers 1010. An Owner Seller 1010 can own multiple Merchant 1004 entities (such as multiple locations of a chain store). An Owner Seller 1010 can create and manage a Pack 1002 and publish it to owning Merchant 1004 data entities. The Owner Seller 1010 can also create and manage one or more Associate Sellers 1010 for each owned Merchant 1004. Different from an Owner Seller 1010, an Associate Seller 1010 cannot manage Merchants 1004, Packs 1002, or Sellers 1010 by default. [0146] Each Seller 1010 may be associated with a unique Merchant Redemption Code (MRC) 1012, such as a 4 digit code, that the Seller 1010 is authorized to use for in-store certificate and loyalty reward redemption. An Owner Seller 1010 can add or remove an Associate Seller 1010 as well as associate or disassociate Sellers 1010 to any of his or her owned Merchants 1004. Further, the Owner Seller 1010 can create, change, activate or revoke MRCs 1012. A Seller's 1010 redemption right can be enabled or revoked at any time by an Owner Seller 1010 having authority of the Seller 1010. A Seller 1010 is authorized to redeem Certificates 1006 and Loyalty Rewards 1008 using his or her assigned and active MRC 1012 at Merchant 1004 location(s) with which the Seller 1010 is associated. LSMA may further use location/time proximity to qualify an MRC Certficicate redemption, that is, an MRC redemption will not be successful when the captured redemption event happened out of Merchant's premise or happened when the store is not open.

[0147] The LSMA may further include a Consumer 1014 data entity. A Consumer 1014 entity may include the following elements about a physical consumer: (Nick)Name, Mobile Number (login ID), AltLoginlDs (email, others), Password (securely stored), Sign Up DateTime, and Status (e.g., active or inactive).

[0148] In accordance with at least one embodiment, there may be a Consumer-Pack 1016 combo entity (i.e., an association of two or more data entities) that is created when a

Consumer 1014 buys a Pack 1002. It may contain a reference, such as a pointer, to the buying Consumer 1014 and another to the bought Pack 1002. It may, in addition, contain a Purchase Record consisting of a Purchase Time and a Purchase Value. Over time, when a Consumer 1014 redeems a Certificate 1006 or Loyalty Reward 1008 of the Pack 1002, the redemptions may be recorded in the Consumer-Pack 1016 entity with a Redemption Record that consists of one or more references, such as a pointers, to the Certificate 1006 or Loyalty Reward 1008 entity redeemed, captured Redemption Date Time, captured Redemption MRC 1012, and/or Redemption Status Code (success, or failure code). The Consumer-Pack 1016 combo entity may be useful in a number of user scenarios. For example, this entity may be utilized to determine the correct Pack 1002 (e.g., matching a nearby merchant), the next Certificate 1006 or Loyalty Reward 1008 (e.g., matching a nearby merchant), or a summary of benefits such as total savings to push to the screen when a Consumer 1014 is in the location and time proximity of a Merchant 1004 with which the Pack 1002 or a Certificate 1006 is associated.

[0149] In accordance with at least one embodiment, for a Certificate 1006 or Loyalty Reward 1008 redemption to be validated by the LSMA, it must pass one or more of the following checks:

(1) being redeemed at the right Merchant 1004 (e.g., mobile device location matches the known location of a Merchant 1004 in the LSMA);

(2) from the right Pack 1002 (e.g., the LSMA may check whether the Certificate 1006 or Loyalty Reward 1008 belongs to the Certificate/Loyalty level Merchant 1004, or to a

Merchant 1004 at the Pack 1002 level);

(3) at the right redemption sequence (e.g., the LSMA checks whether the preceding

Certificates 1006 have been successfully redeemed in the Pack 1002); (4) at the right Merchant 1004, Pack 1002, Certificate/Loyalty Reward Time Periods (e.g., check device time against related Time Periods);

(5) redeemed by the right Seller 1010 (e.g., check captured MRC 1012 to infer Seller 1010 and check Seller's 1010 rights (active, invoked) and association with Merchant 1004); and (6) meeting Pack 1002 and Certificate/Loyalty Reward Terms & Conditions (e.g., infer from the validated MRC 1012 that the Seller 1010 has agreed to authorize this redemption, and further infer that the Seller's 1010 agreement to redemption indicates that Terms &

Conditions are met for this redemption).

[0150] In the LSMA, each Wallet 1020 data entity may be associated to a unique Consumer 1014. A Wallet 1020 may contain Settings, History, and Summary sub data entities. A Consumer 1014 may set his or her authorizations on fund injection and pack payment methods in Settings, including but not limited to: mobile one-click carrier payment authorization, credit card charge authorization, bank account charge authorization. The Consumer 1014 may also set his or her authorization to transfer funds to other Consumers 1014. Every time this Consumer 1014 has a fund injection, pays for a Pack 1002, or does a fund transfer, the LSMA may record the action in the History of the Wallet 1020 with Status and DateTime stamp, along with other needed information. The Summary sub-entity provides an always-current report on the Wallet 1020 such as the fund balance.

[0151] In accordance with at least one embodiment, the LSMA enables and encourages user (consumers and merchants included) interaction, communication, and information sharing on the LSMA and beyond. The LSMA may maintain a Comm 1022 (i.e.,

communication) dimensional data entity that lists supported online and social network destinations, for example, the LSMA itself, Email, Twitter®, Facebook®, Foursquare™, and the like. A Consumer-Comm 1018 combo may be maintained for each Consumer 1014 that lists online and social communication channels this Consumer 1014 has authorized the

LSMA to use. For example, a Consumer 1014 may link the LSMA to his or her Twitter® account and Facebook® account after respective authorization in his or her Consumer-Comm 1018 entity.

[0152] As one example, as recorded in Consumer-Comm 1018, suppose a Consumer 1014 has added his or her Twitter® account and has authorized the LSMA to use his or her Twitter®. Then upon each time when a consumer purchased a Pack 1002, redeemed a Certificate 1006, claimed a Loyalty Reward 1008, the LSMA is able to in real time send tweets to this Consumer's 1014 Twitter® account and/or send direct messages (DMs) about these events to one or more of the Consumer's 1014 followers on Twitter®. Social messages may contain unique referral links to each sending consumer. When a Twitter® user or follower of the Consumer 1014 signs up with the LSMA, makes a pack purchase, redeems a Certificate 1006 and/or claims a loyalty reward based on a referral as tracked by originating referral link click, the sending consumer may be rewarded by the LSMA and/or merchant for additional benefits, including: adding funds to his or her wallet, adding discounts to his or her pack purchase price, and/or adding discounts to the face value at purchase time. These personalized and differentiating benefits to individual consumers can be done on a mobile device. [0153] The LSMA may also maintain a Merchant-Comm 1024 combo that records authorized online and social channels for merchant's communication and social networking. For example, when a Merchant 1004 authorizes the LSMA to use his or her Twitter® account, his or her Twitter® account credentials and the authorization information may be recorded in his or her Merchant-Comm 1024. The LSMA may then be able to tweet and send direct message based at least in part on merchant events such as when the merchant publishes a Pack 1002.

[0154] Further on the social aspect, there are Consumer-Consumer 1026 (sometimes called Friends 1026) and Merchant-Consumer 1028 (sometimes called Fans 1028 or Club 1028) combo entities. As their names indicate, the LSMA may register social connections among consumers and between merchants and consumers.

[0155] Through the LSMA, a Consumer 1014 A can invite another Consumer 1014 B to be his or her friend. Upon Consumer 1014 B's invitation acceptance, Consumer 1014 A is allowed to share information in real time via his or her social channels as defined in

Consumer-Comm 1018 to Consumer 1014 B, provided Consumer 1014 B has corresponding accounts in these channels. A Friends 1026 entity contains references, such as pointers, to

Consumer 1014 A and Consumer 1014 B and may include the invitation record, and start and end date time within which they are/were friends.

[0156] A Fans 1028 data entity connects merchants with consumers. On the LSMA, a Consumer 1014 can add himself to a Merchant's Fans 1028 club. A Fans 1028 entity may record the start and end times during which a Consumer 1014 is/was a fan of a Merchant's. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a Merchant 1004 may communicate to individual consumers in his or her fans club utilizing his or her communication channels as authorized in Merchant-Comm 1024. Similarly, a consumer can also communicate directly using his or her Consumer-Comm 1018 channels to the merchant that he or she is a fan of or as well as sharing information across members of the fans club.

[0157] Further, with existence of the Fans 1028 entity, our Pack 1002 entity can be extended with a Target group element, which is either a list of Consumers 1014 or a pointer to the Merchant's Fans 1028 club. In addition, the Target may accommodate additional Fans 1028 clubs for cross marketing purposes. When the Target element is set for a Pack 1002 entity, the LSMA will market the Pack 1002 to the consumers in the Target group, via authorized Comm 1022 channels for each Consumer 1014 in the group, and will allow Consumers 1014 in the Target to purchase and redeem the Pack 1002. With this extension, the LSMA enables targeted marketing as instructed by Merchants 1004.

[0158] In accordance with at least one embodiment, an Event 1030 extensible dimensional data entity defines events in the LSMA workflow that can be shared. Consumer 1014 events may include:

1. "I Downloaded the LSMA";

2. "I Found a Merchant";

3. "I Found a Pack";

4. "I Joined a Merchant Club";

5. "I Bought a Pack";

6. "I Redeemed a Certificate";

7. "I Claimed a Reward";

8. "I Invited a Friend";

9. "I sent you a Pack," and

10. "I sent you money to buy packs". [0159] Merchant events may include:

1. "I published a pack";

2. "You <or Number of consumers> have bought the pack";

3. "You <or Number of consumers> have redeemed certificates"; and

4. "You <or Number of consumers> have claimed rewards". [0160] An Event 1030 may contain an Event Type (for merchant, for consumer) and an Event Name (one of the above listed).

[0161] Associated with the Event 1030 entity, there is a Message Template 1032 data entity that may contain references, such as a pointers, to an Event 1030, a Comm 1022 channel, and one or more message template(s) for this Event 1030 on this Comm 1022 channel. For example, the Message Template 1032 may store a tweet template and a direct message template for "I bought a Pack" event that can be sent to a user's Twitter® account when this event occurs.

[0162] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a Pack 1002 can be added with these data elements: a Minimum Purchase Cap and a Maximum Purchase Cap. The Pack 1002 will be active and redeemable when more Consumers 1014 than the Minimum Purchase Cap have bought the Pack 1002 before the Sales Time Period expires. The LSMA will not allow additional people to purchase a Pack 1002 if it has been purchased by the maximum number of consumers as defined in Maximum Purchase Cap. [0163] In accordance with at least one embodiment, group/referral purchase may provide benefits to a referrer. For example, the Pack 1002 may include and/or reference a Group Count element and a Referrer Discount element. Meanwhile, the LSMA may further produce a unique pack invitation link or code and encourages consumers to pass his or her link or code around to other people within the LSMA and beyond into external social network destinations. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the LSMA is able to capture the link or code use and trace Pack 1002 purchases to originating referrers. For example, a Merchant 1004 may specify a Group Count of 4 and a Referrer Discount of $10. This means that when a Consumer 1014 has referred 4 purchase of the Pack 1002 that he or she has purchased, this referring Consumer 1014 will receive $10 credit back to his or her Wallet 1020 (alternatively, adding this $10 to the face value of a Certificate 1006 when he or she redeems).

[0164] In accordance with at least one embodiment, users without suitable mobile devices may print out paper certificates, imprinted with unique certificate codes, and other necessary merchant and redemption information. In this case, the LSMA will ask merchants to use its web site or its merchant version of the LSMA to submit the unique certificate number. On mobile devices, in addition to using a dedicated the LSMA mobile app, one may also use generic mobile communication technologies such as short messaging (SMS or "text") to send certificate information to purchasing consumers for redemption. [0165] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a merchant may utilize a NFC-enabled phone (instead of an MRC 1012 code or an NFC card) running a merchant version of the LSMA for phone-to-phone redemption. When the merchant NFC phone is placed close to the consumer's NFC phone, while both are running the LSMA mobile app (merchant and consumer versions respectively), a secure MRC 1012 code transmission may occur from the merchant's phone to consumer's phone. When an NFC or another type of mobile payment Point of Sale system is established in store, the LSMA may facilitate phone-to-POS certificate and rewards redemption. Further, in addition to or instead of certificate-only redemption, the LSMA may facilitate the consumer paying for goods or services directly with funds from his or her LSMA mobile wallet at a mobile-to-POS enabled point-of-sale system, with the certificate face value subtracted from the sales price.

[0166] LSMA Workflows

[0167] The description now turns to workflows in accordance with at least one

embodiment. The workflows reference different LSMA user roles. [0168] Example Owner Seller Workflow utilizing the LSMA:

1. A Seller 1010 signs up and creates a Seller's 1010 account on the LSMA (web site or mobile app).

2. The Seller 1010 may authorize the LSMA to access his or her social accounts.

3. The Seller 1010 may create one or more Merchants 1004 and become the owner of the Merchants 1004.

4. The Seller 1010 may send invites to other people to co-own his or her Merchants 1004.

5. The Seller 1010 may create some associate Seller 1010 accounts and assign them to owned Merchants 1004.

6. The Seller 1010 may create and manage MRCs 1012 for himself, his or her co-owners, and his or her associates.

7. The Seller 1010 may memorize MRC 1012 and/or receive MRC NFC cards for himself, his or her co-owners and his or her associates from the LSMA.

8. The Seller 1010 may create Packs 1002 and associate them to owning Merchants 1004.

9. The Seller 1010 may publish Packs 1002. 10. The Seller 1010 may authorize redemption of purchased Certificates 1006 and Loyalty Rewards 1008.

[0169] Example Co-Owner Seller Workflow utilizing the LSMA:

1. The co-owner may follow invites to sign up for an Owner Seller 1010 account associated to Merchant 1004 accounts to which he or she has invitations.

2. The co-owner may authorize the LSMA to access his or her social accounts.

3. The co-owner may create new Merchants 1004 and become the 1st owner of them.

4. The co-owner may create some associate Seller 1010 accounts and assign them to owned Merchants 1004. 5. The co-owner may create and manage MRC 1012 for himself, his or her co-owners, and his or her associates.

6. The co-owner may memorize MRC 1012 and/or receive MRC 1012 NFC cards for himself, his or her co-owners and his or her associates.

7. The co-owner may create Packs 1002 and associate them to owning Merchants 1004. 8. The co-owner may publish Packs 1002.

9. The co-owner may authorize redemption of purchased Certificates 1006 and Loyalty Rewards 1008.

[0170] Example Associate seller Workflow utilizing the LSMA:

1. The associate may receive an MRC 1012 code or receive an MRC 1012 NFC card from an owner.

2. The associate may authorize redemption of purchased Certificates 1006 and Loyalty Rewards 1008.

[0171] Example Consumer 1014 Workflow utilizing the LSMA: 1. The consumer may sign up for an LSMA consumer account. 2. The consumer may authorize the LSMA to access his or her social accounts.

3. The consumer may discover Merchants 1004 and Packs 1002, for example, via browse, keyword, category, and/or proximity (time and/or location). 4. The consumer may join merchant clubs and save favorite Packs 1002 to My Packs 1002 1006.

5. The consumer may purchase a Pack 1002.

6. The consumer may make a purchase, redeem a mobile Certificate 1006 and/or claim a Loyalty Reward 1008 at a store location (offline or online).

7. Repeat step 6 until the Certificates 1006 in the Pack 1002are redeemed and the Loyalty Reward 1008 has been claimed.

[0172] In above workflows, the LSMA enables event sharing and referral on all steps possible. [0173] Note in the above workflow steps, revenue generation and sharing are omitted for clarity. Different embodiments may implement revenue generate/sharing differently. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the LSMA may collect funds from consumer Pack 1002 purchases and may split the sales revenue with publishing Merchants 1004.

[0174] Consumer Mobile Application Portion of LSMA [0175] Fig. 11 and Fig. 12 depict aspects of an example mobile app portion of the LSMA in accordance with at least one embodiment. In Fig. 11 we show the list of packs close to current device location, the pack details page that prompts user to purchase, and the 1 -click mobile in-app payment page. Fig. 12 further shows the in-store page of a pack that has been purchased for redemption (to redeem the 3rd certificate), the merchant redemption page where a cashier will simply type in his or her MRC code, and a social page where a consumer is sending messages about his or her pack purchase event to his or her audience (including his or her friends and his or her merchant that he or she is a fan of) on Twitter® and on the LSMA itself.

[0176] Consumer-to-Business (C2B) Social Merchant Acquisition [0177] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a C2B merchant acquisition is described, related to acquiring merchants for mobile voucher pack (MVP) offers. Reference is made to Fig. 13 which depicts example steps for C2B social merchant acquisition in accordance with at least one embodiment. Although MVP is used to illustrate C2B social merchant acquisition, other forms of consumer promotions may be marketed as well. [0178] 1. Provider MVP Proposal Creation. [0179] In this step 1302, the service provider may publish one or more candidate MVP proposals for social consumers to choose from. An MVP proposal may correspond to an actual MVP plus additional attributes that can be requested by a consumer and be sent to a merchant. An MVP proposal should be attractive to consumers and also be acceptable to merchants (as as examples shown in Fig. 11- Fig.12). A consumer may desire to use the contained vouchers (interchangeably called "certificates" herein) to save when shopping at the merchant. The consumer may also desire to share and recommend the MVP proposal to their friends on social network and via word-of-mouth. The MVP proposal should also be acceptable to the target merchant, for example, the MVP proposal may be crafted to ensure that the merchant will make money (i.e., be profitable) on each MVP voucher redeeming sale.

[0180] In accordance with at least one embodiment, an MVP proposal may include one or more of the following: a. Merchant Information, such as merchant name, merchant address. The service provider may provide a list of target merchants (each may be associated with a sublist of MVP proposals) for a consumer to choose from. b. MVP information, such as number of vouchers, unit voucher sales price, unit voucher redemption (face) value, and redemption period. The values for these attributes may be fixed by the service provider in a proposal. The reward definition may be left empty for the merchant to fill when the merchant accepts this MVP proposal. c. Consumer information, such as social network account from which this consumer is sending this proposal to the merchant. For example, it could be the Facebook® account when a consumer is using service provider's application on Facebook® building the MVP proposal. Depending on provider's privacy policy, personal-identifiable information (PII) of individual merchants may be withheld from the target merchant. [0181] The service provider may further allow consumers to create their own MVP proposals from scratch and/or with business intelligence assistance from the service provider such as allowing consumers to make a proposal based on the most popular MVP from the target merchant or from the business category of the target merchant in the past.

[0182] 2. Consumer MVP Request Creation [0183] In this step 1304, a consumer may choose an MVP proposal (and/or create his/her own if allowed) and fill it with proper information about the merchant and about him/herself. For example, the C2B module 130 of Fig. 1 may receive the consumer's selection from the set of candidate proposals established at step 1302. A consumer can create an MVP request on a plurality of online and mobile places, including but not limited to, provider's web site, provider's mobile application, on prevalent social network destinations such as on

Facebook® (for example, via a provider's application running on Facebook®). The provider may establish a set of MVP proposal policies controlling establishment and activation of MVP proposals. The set of MVP proposal policies may include one or more policies controlling a degree to which candidate MVP proposals are customizable by consumers. At step 1306, it may be determined whether the candidate MVP proposal selected at step 1304 is customizable. If so, a procedure incorporating step 1306 may progress to step 1308.

Otherwise, the procedure may progress to step 1310. At step 1308, one or more

customizations of the candidate MVP proposal may be received. For example, the C2B module 130 may receive and apply the customizations to the candidate MVP proposal selected at step 1304 in accordance with the set of MVP proposal policies.

[0184] The consumer sends this MVP proposal to the provider, for example, by clicking the Request button on provider's MVP Facebook® application. At step 1310, the selected MVP proposal may be established as an active MVP proposal, accessible to users of one or more social network destinations.

[0185] 3. Consumer MVP Request Sharing and Follow

[0186] On supported social channels and destinations, the service provider further facilitates and encourages consumers to share out their MVP requests to their social followers/fans. On each social destination, provider may provide simple mechanism for consumers to share and forward their requests to their friends, such as by posting an MVP request on consumers Facebook® accounts via a pre-cooked messaging template.

[0187] Upon receiving a shared or forwarded MVP request, a social friend of a consumer requester may decide to follow the request. It is intended that a follower be entitled to the same MVP with benefits, once the requested MVP is granted by the merchant. The service provider may track the MVP request (at step 1312) following action and collects followers on its web site, on its mobile application as well as on prevalent social network destinations such as Facebook® and Twitter®. As an example, a "Like It" button click on Facebook® can be defined as a follow action and a fan of the requesting customer on Facebook® who clicked on the like button becomes a follower to this requester.

[0188] A follower may further share the followed MVP request to his/her social friends. A follower A will also become a requester when one or more of his friends follow, due to A's sharing effort. This may correspond to viral propagation of an MVP request. At step 1314, it may be determined whether the MVP proposal is ready to be communicated to one or more associated merchants. The C2B module 130 (Fig. 1) may make the determination in accordance with the set of MVP proposal policies. For example, the set of MVP proposal policies may specify that the MVP proposal has been propagated to a threshold number of social network destination users before the MVP proposal is communicated to the associated merchant(s).

[0189] 4. Provider Merchant MVP Requesting

[0190] On behalf of all consumers who requested the MVP (via a direct request or a follow), the provider may communicate to the target merchant about these requests (at step 1316). The provider's MVP request management system may forward the requested MVP from requesting customers (possibly with only aggregated information such as total request count for privacy protection, or with the list of requesters' social accounts, privacy policy permitting) to the merchant owner or decision maker via known contact means, such as by email, by phone, by short message texting on mobile phone, by a post on the merchant's Facebook® account, and/or by a tweet to the merchant's Twitter® account. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the service provider may forward to a merchant each request and follow in real time as it occurs and may also send aggregated total requester/follower consumer count to the merchant periodically. [0191] 5. Merchant Sign-up and MVP Grant

[0192] Upon receiving consumer MVP request(s) from the service provider and seeing the number of consumers who requested it, the merchant may decide to grant the MVP to these consumers. The service provider helps the merchant to sign up for a business account with the provider and to grant the requested MVP via a plurality of means ranging from face meeting, phone support, to merchant self-registration on provider's web site. As one self- registration example, the merchant who receives an MVP request can simply gets on to provider's web site or provider's Facebook® application and click on the Grant button next to the request.

[0193] In response to the grant action from a merchant, the service provider's computerized system goes ahead to create a business account for this merchant (if this merchant does not have a business account with the provider yet). In the next, the merchant is allowed to view the MVP as requested and may also update it with additional attributes to make the offer complete and/or make it more attractive to customers. For example, the merchant may be able to raise the unit voucher face of the requested MVP, and/or to add a free loyalty reward, and the like. Merchant customizations of the MVP proposal may be received at step 1318, for example, by the C2B module 130 of Fig. 1.

[0194] Once the MVP in request is reviewed, updated, and granted by the merchant, the service provider may publish the final MVP (at step 1320) and notify its requesting consumers. These consumers who have requested the MVP before grant can immediately start to use the MVP to save when shopping with this merchant.

[0195] 6. Incentives to MVP Requesting Customers and Followers

[0196] In accordance with at least one embodiment, the service provider may reward requesters and their followers (who asked for the MVP before it was granted) with one or more of the following monetary benefits: a. Requesters each uses the MVP granted for free; b. Followers each uses the MVP granted for free; and/or c. Requesters each further receives credits valued at the MVP sales value multiplied with the number of followers this requester had on this MVP. Assume an MVP granted has a sales price of $6 and a requester of this MVP had 5 followers for it. In this example, our requester earned $6 x 5 = $30 credits towards his/her purchases of any MVPs from the provider (or next MVPs from the merchant who granted this MVP, depending on provider's program policy). Such incentives may be enforced by the service provider at step 1322. [0197] After an MVP is granted, it goes into the sales period. Non-requesting consumers who bought the MVP in the sales period may have to pay the full sales price for their copies of it.

[0198] In accordance with at least one embodiment, C2B social merchant acquisition may incentivize active social consumers to nominate merchants with whom they would like to shop. Consumers may be further incentivized to virally campaign for their own MVP requests to get followers from online social network. Beyond the monetary incentives described above, the social MVP request may be accelerated by a desire to share out and recommend a too-good-to-pass deal to friends, especially when the merchants involved are those known to and trusted by the recommender. Other component systems in Fig. l, e.g., MMA, VPOS, LSMA, may be used to further acceleate the organic C2B social acquisition. [0199] In accordance with at least one embodiment, C2B social merchant acquisition may have multiple benefits. For example, it may be a scalable and expedited go-to-market approach that simultaneously covers a variety of addressable markets, big and small. In C2B acquisition, consumers are more likely to nominate merchants and to follow requests from merchants with whom they desire to do business. On the other side, the likelihood of a merchant granting an MVP request may go up with the number of requesting consumers. Based on these likelihood factors, acquired merchants and MVPs (other types of consumer offers as well) may be of high quality, for example, in terms of consumer popularity and consumer demand. [0200] To request an MVP or follow an MVP request, a consumer may sign up for an account with the service provider. Hence, the C2B merchant acquisition may also act as a consumer social acquisition method.

[0201] It will have to be noted here that there exist other embodiments of the C2B social merchant acquisition. Further, in addition to or in place of selling MVP, other B2C products or services sold by businesses may be acquired using C2B social acquisition.

[0202] Summary

[0203] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 1 for social marketing management is described. The method 1 includes: establishing a set of search criteria corresponding to users of at least one social media service that have one or more desired characteristics; searching a database of users maintained by said at least one social media service to obtain information corresponding to the users of said at least one social media service that have the one or more desired characteristics; and sending subscription invitations to at least a subset of the users of said at least one social media service that have the one or more desired characteristics based at least in part on the obtained information.

[0204] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 2 according to method 1 is described, wherein the set of search criteria comprise at least one search criterion specifying a desired geographical location of users of said at least one social media service. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 3 according to method 1 or 2 is described, wherein the set of search criteria comprise at least one search criterion specifying one or more desired words in a social media communication by users of said at least one social media service. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 4 according to method 1 , 2 or 3 is described, wherein the set of search criteria comprise at least one search criterion specifying a desired timeframe of a social media communication by users of said at least one social media service.

[0205] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 5 according to method 1-3 or 4 is described, further including: receiving subscriptions corresponding to at least a portion of the subscription invitations; and updating the set of search criteria based at least in part on a number of received subscriptions and a number of sent subscription invitations. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer- implemented method 6 according to method 1-4 or 5 is described, further including: receiving subscriptions corresponding to at least a portion of the subscription invitations; and scheduling at least one post to each of the received subscriptions.

[0206] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 7 according to method 1-5 or 6 is described, further including: receiving subscriptions corresponding to at least a portion of the subscription invitations; searching a set of web sites or other content sources to obtain a set of information relevant with respect to at least one merchant that established the set of search criteria corresponding to users of said at least one social media service that have the one or more desired characteristics; and scheduling at least one post to each of the received subscriptions having content based at least in part on the set of information relevant with respect to said at least one merchant. [0207] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 8 according to method 1-5 or 6 is described, further including: receiving subscriptions corresponding to at least a portion of the subscription invitations; searching content generated by users of said at least one social media service to obtain a set of information relevant with respect to at least one merchant that established the set of search criteria corresponding to users of said at least one social media service that have the one or more desired

characteristics; and scheduling at least one post to each of the received subscriptions having content based at least in part on the set of information relevant with respect to said at least one merchant.

[0208] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 9 according to method 8 is described, wherein searching content generated by users of said at least one social media service to obtain the set of information relevant with respect to at least one merchant comprises flagging content generated by users in accordance with a set of flagging rules implemented at least in part as a trained decision tree. [0209] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 97 according to claim 1-8 or 9 is described, wherein establishing the set of search criteria comprises generating, updating or optimizing the set of search criteria based at least in part on merchant information collected online, user generated content collected online, or merchant generated content. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer- implemented method 98 according to claim 1-9 or 97 is described, further comprising generating promotional content based at least in part on a set of content syndication sources and sending the promotional content to said at least a subset of the users. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 99 according to claim 98 is described, wherein generating the promotional content comprises receiving content associated with a store location over a network. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 100 according to claim 99 is described, further comprising determining a merchant associated with the promotional content based at least in part on a pre-registered phone number participating in a communication of the promotional content. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 101 according to claim 98, 99 or 100 is described, wherein the promotional content is sent according to a schedule based at least in part on analysis of tracked data including post views and/or click- throughs.

[0210] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 102 according to claim 1-9 or 97-100 is described, further comprising real-time capture of user- generated content relevant to a merchant, attitude scoring of captured content and association of captured content with an attribute label. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 103 according to claim 102 is described, wherein the attribute label is selected from a set of attribute labels including positive, negative, neutral and unknown. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 104 according to claim 1-9 or 97-103 is described, further comprising semantic analysis of the captured content to determine whether the captured content includes a statement or a question. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 105 according to claim 104 is described, further comprising searching for an answer to the question in a content database utilizing at least a portion of question as search terms. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 106 according to claim 1-9 or 97-105 is described, further comprising faciliting merchant-user direct feedback response communication. [0211] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computerized system 10 for social marketing management is described. The computerized system 10 may be configured to, at least, perform the steps of methods 1-9 or 97-106. In accordance with at least one embodiment, computer-readable media 11 having collectively thereon computer-executable instructions that configure one or more computers is described. The computer-executable instructions of computer-readable media 11 may be configured to collectively, at least, perform the steps of methods 1-9 or 97-106.

[0212] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 28 for viral promotion propagation is described. The method 28 includes: sending a message to a first set of subscribers through a social media service, the message associated with an offer; receiving, responsive to the message, an indication of acceptance of the offer from at least a subset of the first set of subscribers; sending a personalized message to each of the subset of the first set of subscribers (e.g., who accepted the offer), the personalized message associated with the offer; and receiving an indication of acceptance of the offer from at least one subscriber outside the first set of subscribers, the indication of acceptance of the offer associated with at least one of the subset of the first set of subscribers, sending a personalized message to at least one subscriber ouside the first set of subscribers.

[0213] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 29 according to method 28 is described, wherein the received set of indications are generated responsive to interaction with web links. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 30 according to method 28 or 29 is described, wherein each personalized message comprises a web link uniquely associated with the subscriber of the subset of the first set of subscribers to which the personalized message is sent. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 31 according to method 30 is described, wherein the indication of acceptance of the offer from said at least one subscriber outside the first set of subscribers is generated responsive to interaction with the web link uniquely associated with one of the subscribers of the subset of the first set of subscribers.

[0214] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 32 according to method 28, 29 or 30 is described, further including sending another personalized message to each of said at least one subscriber outside the first set of subscribers to further propagate the offer. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 33 according to method 28-30 or 32 is described, further including determining at least one personalized parameter associated with the offer based at least in part on a number of received indications of acceptance associated with a corresponding personalized message. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 34 according to method 33 is described, wherein said at least one personalized parameter comprises a discount on a product or service associated with the offer, and the discount is increased from a base discount associated with the offer as a function of at least the number of received indications of acceptance.

[0215] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computerized system 35 for viral promotion propagation is described. The computerized system 35 may be configured to, at least, perform the steps of methods 28-34. In accordance with at least one embodiment, computer-readable media 36 having collectively thereon computer-executable instructions that configure one or more computers is described. The computer-executable instructions of computer-readable media 36 may be configured to collectively, at least, perform the steps of methods 28-34.

[0216] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 49 for local mobile transactions is described. The method 49 includes: generating, for a user, a certificate pack including a plurality of certificates associated with at least one merchant, the plurality of certificates having a sequence and being associated with at least one time period (e.g., a sales period), and a loyalty reward; redeeming, in response to verification codes received from at least one location associated with said at least one merchant, each of the plurality of certificates in accordance with the sequence and said at least one time period; and generating, for the user, the loyalty reward in accordance with said at least one time period.

[0217] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 50 according to method 49 is described, wherein each certificate is associated with a monetary face value honored by said at least one merchant. In accordance with at least one

embodiment, a computer-implemented method 51 according to method 50 is described, wherein the certificate pack is generated for the user responsive to a purchase associated with a transaction value less than the collective face value of the certificate pack. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 52 according to method 49 or 50 is described, wherein said at least one time period includes a time period associated with each certificate within which the certificate is redeemable. [0218] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 53 according to method 49, 50 or 52 is described, wherein at least one of the verification codes is received through a mobile device of the user. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 54 according to method 53 is described, wherein the mobile device is a mobile phone. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer- implemented method 55 according to method 53 or 54 is described, wherein said at least one merchant manually enters said at least one of the verification codes with an input device of the mobile device of the user. [0219] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 56 according to method 53 or 54 is described, wherein the mobile device of the user receives said at least one of the verification codes from said at least one merchant in accordance with a near field communication (NFC) protocol. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 57 according to method 49, 50 or 52-56 is described, further including providing, to the user, an indication of one or more certificate packs associated with at least one merchant location in geographical proximity to the user. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 58 according to method 49, 50 or 52-57 is described, further including causing a message associated with a certificate redemption event to be published through a social media account of the user. [0220] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 129 according to claim 49-50 or 52-57 is described, wherein said at least one location includes at least one physical location or at least one network location. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 130 according to claim 49-50, 52-57 or 129 is described, wherein redeeming at least one of the plurality of certificates comprises executing at least one financial transaction associated with said at least one of the plurality of certificates from a mobile device. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer- implemented method 131 according to claim 49-50, 52-57 or 129-130 is described, wherein execution of said at least one financial transaction involves communication with the mobile device using near field communication. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 132 according to claim 130 or 131 is described, wherein execution of said at least one financial tranaction includes adjusting a price of a good or service in accordance with said at least one of the plurality of certificates.

[0221] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 133 according to claim 49-50, 52-57 or 129-132 is described, further comprising generating, for the user, a reminder message with respect to unredeemed ones of the plurality of certificates or with respect to the loyalty reward. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 134 according to claim 133 is described, wherein the reminder message is generated with a timing or frequency based at least in part on proximity in terms of time or location with respect to a store location, hours of operation of the store location, hours during the unredeemed ones of the plurality of certificates are valid, or an expiration of the unredeemed ones of the plurality of certificates or the loyalty reward.

[0222] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computerized system 59 for local mobile transactions is described. The computerized system 59 may be configured to, at least, perform the steps of methods 49-58 or 129-134. In accordance with at least one embodiment, computer-readable media 60 having collectively thereon computer-executable instructions that configure one or more computers is described. The computer-executable instructions of computer-readable media 60 may be configured to collectively, at least, perform the steps of methods 49-58 or 129-134. [0223] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 79 for social merchant acquisition is described. The method 79 includes: establishing a certificate pack proposal responsive to an indication of a proposing user, the certificate pack proposal associated with a merchant; tracking viral propagation of the certificate pack proposal to a plurality of users in at least one social network; communicating the certificate pack proposal and at least one characterization of the viral propagation to the merchant; and establishing a certificate pack in accordance with the certificate pack proposal responsive to an indication by the merchant.

[0224] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 80 according to method 79 is described, wherein the certificate pack proposal specifies a plurality of certificates each associated with a monetary face value to be honored by the merchant and a purchase price less than the collective face value of the certificate pack. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 81 according to method 79 or 80 is described, wherein said at least one characterization of the viral propagation includes a number of the plurality of users in said at least one social network to which the certificate pack proposal has been propagated. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 82 according to method 79, 80 or 81 is described, wherein the indication of the proposing user comprises a selection of the certificate pack proposal from a plurality of certificate pack proposal options.

[0225] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 83 according to method 79-81 or 82 is described, wherein the indication of the proposing user further comprises a customization of the selected certificate pack proposal. In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computer-implemented method 84 according to method 79- 82 or 83 is described, further including rewarding each of a subset of the plurality of users that participated in the viral propagation based at least in part on a degree to which the propagating user participated in the viral propagation.

[0226] In accordance with at least one embodiment, a computerized system 85 for social merchant acquisition is described. The computerized system 85 may be configured to, at least, perform the steps of methods 79-84. In accordance with at least one embodiment, computer-readable media 86 having collectively thereon computer-executable instructions that configure one or more computers is described. The computer-executable instructions of computer-readable media 86 may be configured to collectively, at least, perform the steps of methods 79-84. [0227] Any of the software components, processes or functions described in this application may be implemented as software code executed by one or more processors using any suitable computer language such as, for example, Java, C++ or Perl using, for example, conventional or object-oriented techniques. The software code may be stored as a series of computer-executable instructions, or commands on a computer-readable storage medium, such as a random access memory (RAM), a read only memory (ROM), a magnetic medium such as a hard-drive or a floppy disk, or an optical medium such as a CD-ROM. Any such computer-readable storage medium may reside on or within a single computational apparatus, and may be present on or within different computational apparatuses within a system or network. Further, any such computer-readable medium may be non-transitory. [0228] All references, including publications, patent applications, and patents, cited herein are hereby incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each reference were individually and specifically indicated to be incorporated by reference and/or were set forth in its entirety herein.

[0229] The use of the terms "a" and "an" and "the" and similar referents in the

specification and in the following claims are to be construed to cover both the singular and the plural, unless otherwise indicated herein or clearly contradicted by context. The terms "having," "including," "containing" and similar referents in the specification and in the following claims are to be construed as open-ended terms (e.g., meaning "including, but not limited to,") unless otherwise noted. Recitation of ranges of values herein are merely indented to serve as a shorthand method of referring individually to each separate value inclusively falling within the range, unless otherwise indicated herein, and each separate value is incorporated into the specification as if it were individually recited herein. All methods described herein can be performed in any suitable order unless otherwise indicated herein or clearly contradicted by context. The use of any and all examples, or exemplary language (e.g., "such as") provided herein, is intended merely to better illuminate embodiments of the invention and does not pose a limitation to the scope of the invention unless otherwise claimed. No language in the specification should be construed as indicating any non-claimed element as essential to each embodiment of the present invention.

[0230] Preferred embodiments of the invention are described herein, including the best mode known to the inventors for carrying out the invention. Variations of those preferred embodiments may become apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art upon reading the specification. The inventors expect skilled artisans to employ such variations as appropriate, and the inventors intend for the invention to be practiced otherwise than as explicitly described herein. Accordingly, embodiments of the invention include all modifications and equivalents of the subject matter recited in the following claims as permitted by applicable law.

Claims

WHAT IS CLAIMED IS: 1. A computer-implemented method for social marketing management, comprising:

establishing a set of search criteria corresponding to users of at least one social media service that have one or more desired characteristics;

searching a database of users maintained by said at least one social media service to obtain information corresponding to the users of said at least one social media service that have the one or more desired characteristics; and

sending subscription invitations to at least a subset of the users of said at least one social media service that have the one or more desired characteristics based at least in part on the obtained information.

2. A computer-implemented method according to claim 1, wherein the set of search criteria comprise at least one search criterion specifying a desired geographical location of users of said at least one social media service.

3. A computer-implemented method according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the set of search criteria comprise at least one search criterion specifying one or more desired words in a social media communication by users of said at least one social media service.

4 A computer-implemented method according to claim 1, 2 or 3, wherein the set of search criteria comprise at least one search criterion specifying a desired timeframe of a social media communication by users of said at least one social media service.

5. A computer-implemented method according to claim 1-3 or 4, further comprising:

receiving subscriptions corresponding to at least a portion of the subscription invitations; and

updating the set of search criteria based at least in part on a number of received subscriptions and a number of sent subscription invitations.

6. A computer-implemented method according to claim 1-4 or 5, further comprising:

scheduling at least one post to each of the received subscriptions.

7. A computer-implemented method according to claim 1-5 or 6, further comprising:

receiving subscriptions corresponding to at least a portion of the subscription invitations;

searching a set of web sites or other content sources to obtain a set of information relevant with respect to at least one merchant that established the set of search criteria corresponding to users of said at least one social media service that have the one or more desired characteristics; and

scheduling at least one post to each of the received subscriptions having content based at least in part on the set of information relevant with respect to said at least one merchant.

8. A computer-implemented method according to claim 1-5 or 6, further comprising:

searching content generated by users of said at least one social media service to obtain a set of information relevant with respect to at least one merchant that established the set of search criteria corresponding to users of said at least one social media service that have the one or more desired characteristics; and

9. A computer-implemented method according to claim 8, wherein searching content generated by users of said at least one social media service to obtain the set of information relevant with respect to at least one merchant comprises flagging content generated by users in accordance with a set of flagging rules implemented at least in part as a trained decision tree.

10. A computerized system for social marketing management comprising a follower acquisition component configured to, at least:

maintain a set of search criteria corresponding to users of at least one social media service that have one or more desired characteristics; search a database of users maintained by said at least one social media service to obtain information corresponding to the users of said at least one social media service that have the one or more desired characteristics; and

send subscription invitations to at least a subset of the users of said at least one social media service that have the one or more desired characteristics based at least in part on the obtained information.

11. A computerized system according to claim 10, wherein the set of search criteria comprise at least one search criterion specifying a desired geographical location of users of said at least one social media service.

12. A computerized system according to claim 10 or 11, wherein the set of search criteria comprise at least one search criterion specifying one or more desired words in a social media communication by users of said at least one social media service.

13. A computerized system according to claim 10, 11 or 12, wherein the set of search criteria comprise at least one search criterion specifying a desired timeframe of a social media communication by users of said at least one social media service.

14. A computerized system according to claim 10-12 or 13, wherein the follower acquisition component is further configured to, at least:

receive subscriptions corresponding to at least a portion of the subscription invitations; and

update the set of search criteria based at least in part on a number of received subscriptions and a number of sent subscription invitations.

15. A computerized system according to claim 10-13 or 14, wherein the follower acquisition component is further configured to, at least:

schedule at least one post to each of the received subscriptions.

16. A computerized system according to claim 10-14 or 15, wherein: the follower acquisition component is further configured at least to receive subscriptions corresponding to at least a portion of the subscription invitations; and

the computerized system further comprises a content publisher component configured to, at least: search a set of web sites or other content sources to obtain a set of information relevant with respect to at least one merchant that established the set of search criteriacorresponding to users of said at least one social media service that have the one or more desired characteristics; and

schedule at least one post to each of the received subscriptions having content based at least in part on the set of information relevant with respect to said at least one merchant.

17. A computerized system according to claim 10-14 or 15, wherein: the follower acquisition component is further configured at least to receive subscriptions corresponding to at least a portion of the subscription invitations; and

the computerized system further comprises a feedback capture and response component configured to, at least:

search content generated by users of said at least one social media service to obtain a set of information relevant with respect to at least one merchant that established the set of search criteria corresponding to users of said at least one social media service that have the one or more desired characteristics; and

18. A computerized system according to claim 17, wherein searching content generated by users of said at least one social media service to obtain the set of information relevant with respect to at least one merchant comprises flagging content generated by users in accordance with a set of flagging rules implemented at least in part as a trained decision tree.

19. One or more computer-readable media having collectively thereon computer-executable instructions that configure one or more computers to collectively, at least:

maintain a set of search criteria corresponding to users of at least one social media service that have one or more desired characteristics;

search a database of users maintained by said at least one social media service to obtain information corresponding to the users of said at least one social media service that have the one or more desired characteristics; and send subscription invitations to at least a subset of the users of said at least one social media service that have the one or more desired characteristics based at least in part on the obtained information.

20. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 19, wherein the set of search criteria comprise at least one search criterion specifying a desired

geographical location of users of said at least one social media service.

21. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 19 or 20, wherein the set of search criteria comprise at least one search criterion specifying one or more desired words in a social media communication by users of said at least one social media service.

22. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 19, 20 or 21, wherein the set of search criteria comprise at least one search criterion specifying a desired timeframe of a social media communication by users of said at least one social media service.

23. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 19-21 or 22, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least:

24. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 19-22 or 23, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least:

schedule at least one post to each of the received subscriptions.

25. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 19-23 or 24, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least:

receive subscriptions corresponding to at least a portion of the subscription invitations; search a set of web sites to obtain a set of information relevant with respect to at least one merchant that established the set of search criteria corresponding to users of said at least one social media service that have the one or more desired characteristics; and

26. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 19-23 or 24, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least:

receive subscriptions corresponding to at least a portion of the subscription invitations;

27. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 26, wherein searching content generated by users of said at least one social media service to obtain the set of information relevant with respect to at least one merchant comprises flagging content generated by users in accordance with a set of flagging rules implemented at least in part as a trained decision tree.

28. A computer-implemented method for viral promotion propagation, comprising:

sending a message to a first set of subscribers through a social media service, the message associated with an offer;

receiving, responsive to the message, an indication of acceptance of the offer from at least a subset of the first set of subscribers;

sending a personalized message to each of the subset of the first set of subscribers, the personalized message associated with the offer; and receiving an indication of acceptance of the offer from at least one subscriber outside the first set of subscribers, the indication of acceptance of the offer associated with at least one of the subset of the first set of subscribers.

29. A computer-implemented method according to claim 28, wherein the received set of indications are generated responsive to interaction with web links.

30. A computer-implemented method according to claim 28 or 29, wherein each personalized message comprises a web link uniquely associated with the subscriber of the subset of the first set of subscribers to which the personalized message is sent.

31. A computer-implemented method according to claim 30, wherein the indication of acceptance of the offer from said at least one subscriber outside the first set of subscribers is generated responsive to interaction with the web link uniquely associated with one of the subscribers of the subset of the first set of subscribers.

32. A computer-implemented method according to claim 28, 29 or 30, further comprising sending another personalized message to each of said at least one subscriber outside the first set of subscribers to further propagate the offer.

33. A computer-implemented method according to claim 28-30 or 32, further comprising determining at least one personalized parameter associated with the offer based at least in part on a number of received indications of acceptance associated with a corresponding personalized message.

34. A computer-implemented method according to claim 33, wherein said at least one personalized parameter comprises a discount on a product or service associated with the offer, and the discount is increased from a base discount associated with the offer as a function of at least the number of received indications of acceptance.

35. A computerized system for viral promotion propagation, comprising: an invitation management component configured at least to send a message to a first set of subscribers through a social media service, the message associated with an offer; and

a consumer service component configured to, at least:

receive, responsive to the message, an indication of acceptance of the offer from at least a subset of the first set of subscribers; send a personalized message to each of the subset of the first set of subscribers, the personalized message associated with the offer; and

receive an indication of acceptance of the offer from at least one subscriber outside the first set of subscribers, the indication of acceptance of the offer associated with at least one of the subset of the first set of subscribers.

36. A computerized system according to claim 35, wherein the received set of indications are generated responsive to interaction with web links.

37. A computerized system according to claim 35 or 36, wherein each personalized message comprises a web link uniquely associated with the subscriber of the subset of the first set of subscribers to which the personalized message is sent.

38. A computerized system according to claim 37, wherein the indication of acceptance of the offer from said at least one subscriber outside the first set of subscribers is generated responsive to interaction with the web link uniquely associated with one of the subscribers of the subset of the first set of subscribers.

39. A computerized system according to claim 35, 36 or 37, wherein the consumer service component is further configured at least to send another personalized message to each of said at least one subscriber outside the first set of subscribers to further propagate the offer.

40. A computerized system according to claim 35-37 or 39, further comprising an offer management component configured at least to determine at least one personalized parameter associated with the offer based at least in part on a number of received indications of acceptance associated with a corresponding personalized message.

41. A computerized system according to claim 40, wherein said at least one personalized parameter comprises a discount on a product or service associated with the offer, and the discount is increased from a base discount associated with the offer as a function of at least the number of received indications of acceptance.

42. One or more computer-readable media having collectively thereon computer-executable instructions that configure one or more computers to collectively, at least:

send a message to a first set of subscribers through a social media service, the message associated with an offer; and receive, responsive to the message, an indication of acceptance of the offer from at least a subset of the first set of subscribers;

send a personalized message to each of the subset of the first set of

subscribers, the personalized message associated with the offer; and

43. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 42, wherein the received set of indications are generated responsive to interaction with web links.

44. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 42 or 43, wherein each personalized message comprises a web link uniquely associated with the subscriber of the subset of the first set of subscribers to which the personalized message is sent.

45. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 44, wherein the indication of acceptance of the offer from said at least one subscriber outside the first set of subscribers is generated responsive to interaction with the web link uniquely associated with one of the subscribers of the subset of the first set of subscribers.

46. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 42, 43 or 44, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least, send another personalized message to each of said at least one subscriber outside the first set of subscribers to further propagate the offer.

47. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 42-44 or 46, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least, determine at least one personalized parameter associated with the offer based at least in part on a number of received indications of acceptance associated with a corresponding personalized message.

48. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 47, wherein said at least one personalized parameter comprises a discount on a product or service associated with the offer, and the discount is increased from a base discount associated with the offer as a function of at least the number of received indications of acceptance.

49. A computer-implemented method, comprising: generating, for a user, a certificate pack including a plurality of certificates associated with at least one merchant, the plurality of certificates having a sequence and being associated with at least one time period and a loyalty reward;

redeeming, in response to verification codes received from at least one location associated with said at least one merchant, each of the plurality of certificates in accordance with the sequence and said at least one time period; and

generating, for the user, the loyalty reward in accordance with said at least one time period.

50. A computer-implemented method according to claim 49, wherein each certificate is associated with a monetary face value honored by said at least one merchant.

51. A computer-implemented method according to claim 50, wherein the certificate pack is generated for the user responsive to a purchase associated with a transaction value less than the collective face value of the certificate pack.

52. A computer-implemented method according to claim 49 or 50, wherein said at least one time period includes a time period associated with each certificate within which the certificate is redeemable.

53. A computer-implemented method according to claim 49, 50 or 52, wherein at least one of the verification codes is received through a mobile device of the user.

54. A computer-implemented method according to claim 53, wherein the mobile device is a mobile phone.

55. A computer-implemented method according to claim 53 or 54, wherein said at least one merchant manually enters said at least one of the verification codes with an input device of the mobile device of the user.

56. A computer-implemented method according to claim 53 or 54, wherein the mobile device of the user receives said at least one of the verification codes from said at least one merchant in accordance with a near field communication (NFC) protocol.

57. A computer-implemented method according to claim 49, 50 or 52-56, further comprising providing, to the user, an indication of one or more certificate packs associated with at least one merchant location in geographical proximity to the user.

58. A computer-implemented method according to claim 49, 50 or 52-57, further comprising causing a message associated with a certificate redemption event to be published through a social media account of the user.

59. A computerized system comprising at least one component configure to, at least:

generate, for a user, a certificate pack including a plurality of certificates associated with at least one merchant, the plurality of certificates having a sequence and being associated with at least one time period and a loyalty reward;

redeem, in response to verification codes received from at least one location associated with said at least one merchant, each of the plurality of certificates in accordance with the sequence and said at least one time period; and

generate, for the user, the loyalty reward in accordance with said at least one time period.

60. A computerized system according to claim 59, wherein each certificate is associated with a monetary face value honored by said at least one merchant.

61. A computerized system according to claim 60, wherein the certificate pack is generated for the user responsive to a purchase associated with a transaction value less than the collective face value of the certificate pack.

62. A computerized system according to claim 59 or 60, wherein said at least one time period includes a time period associated with each certificate within which the certificate is redeemable and a distinct time period associated with the certificate pack during which the loyalty reward is available.

63. A computerized system according to claim 59, 60 or 62, wherein at least one of the verification codes is received through a mobile device of the user.

64. A computerized system according to claim 63, wherein the mobile device is a mobile phone.

65. A computerized system according to claim 63 or 64, wherein said at least one merchant manually enters said at least one of the verification codes with an input device of the mobile device of the user.

66. A computerized system according to claim 63 or 64, wherein the mobile device of the user receives said at least one of the verification codes from said at least one merchant in accordance with a near field communication (NFC) protocol.

67. A computerized system according to claim 59, 60 or 62-66, wherein said at least one component is further configured to, at least, provide, to the user, an indication of one or more certificate packs associated with at least one merchant location in geographical proximity to the user.

68. A computerized system according to claim 59, 60 or 62-67, wherein said at least one component is further configured to, at least, cause a message associated with a certificate redemption event to be published through a social media account of the user.

69. One or more computer-readable media having collectively thereon computer-executable instructions that configure one or more computers to collectively, at least:

70. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 69, wherein each certificate is associated with a monetary face value honored by said at least one merchant.

71. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 70, wherein the certificate pack is generated for the user responsive to a purchase associated with a transaction value less than the collective face value of the certificate pack.

72. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 69 or 70, wherein said at least one time period includes a time period associated with each certificate within which the certificate is redeemable and a distinct time period associated with the certificate pack during which the loyalty reward is available.

73. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 69, 70 or 72, wherein at least one of the verification codes is received through a mobile device of the user.

74. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 73, wherein the mobile device is a mobile phone.

75. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 73 or 74, wherein said at least one merchant manually enters said at least one of the verification codes with an input device of the mobile device of the user.

76. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 73 or 74, wherein the mobile device of the user receives said at least one of the verification codes from said at least one merchant in accordance with a near field communication (NFC) protocol.

77. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 69, 70 or 72- 76, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least, provide, to the user, an indication of one or more certificate packs associated with at least one merchant location in geographical proximity to the user.

78. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 69, 70 or 72- 77, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least, cause a message associated with a certificate redemption event to be published through a social media account of the user.

79. A computer-implemented method for social merchant acquisition, comprising:

establishing a certificate pack proposal responsive to an indication of a proposing user, the certificate pack proposal associated with a merchant;

tracking viral propagation of the certificate pack proposal to a plurality of users in at least one social network;

communicating the certificate pack proposal and at least one characterization of the viral propagation to the merchant; and

establishing a certificate pack in accordance with the certificate pack proposal responsive to an indication by the merchant.

80. A computer-implemented method according to claim 79, wherein the certificate pack proposal specifies a plurality of certificates each associated with a monetary face value to be honored by the merchant and a purchase price less than the collective face value of the certificate pack.

81. A computer-implemented method according to claim 79 or 80, wherein said at least one characterization of the viral propagation includes a number of the plurality of users in said at least one social network to which the certificate pack proposal has been propagated.

82. A computer-implemented method according to claim 79, 80 or 81, wherein the indication of the proposing user comprises a selection of the certificate pack proposal from a plurality of certificate pack proposal options.

83. A computer-implemented method according to claim 79-81 or 82, wherein the indication of the proposing user further comprises a customization of the selected certificate pack proposal.

84. A computer-implemented method according to claim 79-82 or 83, further comprising rewarding each of a subset of the plurality of users that participated in the viral propagation based at least in part on a degree to which the propagating user participated in the viral propagation.

85. A computerized system for social merchant acquisition, comprising at least one component configured to, at least:

establish a certificate pack proposal responsive to an indication of a proposing user, the certificate pack proposal associated with a merchant;

track viral propagation of the certificate pack proposal to a plurality of users in at least one social network;

communicate the certificate pack proposal and at least one characterization of the viral propagation to the merchant; and

establish a certificate pack in accordance with the certificate pack proposal responsive to an indication by the merchant.

86. A computerized system according to claim 85, wherein the certificate pack proposal specifies a plurality of certificates each associated with a monetary face value to be honored by the merchant and a purchase price less than the collective face value of the certificate pack.

87. A computerized system according to claim 85 or 86, wherein said at least one characterization of the viral propagation includes a number of the plurality of users in said at least one social network to which the certificate pack proposal has been propagated.

88. A computerized system according to claim 85, 86 or 87, wherein the indication of the proposing user comprises a selection of the certificate pack proposal from a plurality of certificate pack proposal options.

89. A computerized system according to claim 85-87 or 88, wherein the indication of the proposing user further comprises a customization of the selected certificate pack proposal.

90. A computerized system according to claim 85-88 or 89, wherein said at least one component is further configured to, at least, reward each of a subset of the plurality of users that participated in the viral propagation based at least in part on a degree to which the propagating user participated in the viral propagation.

91. One or more computer-readable media having collectively thereon computer-executable instructions that configure one or more computers to collectively, at least:

92. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 91, wherein the certificate pack proposal specifies a plurality of certificates each associated with a monetary face value to be honored by the merchant and a purchase price less than the collective face value of the certificate pack.

93. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 91 or 92, wherein said at least one characterization of the viral propagation includes a number of the plurality of users in said at least one social network to which the certificate pack proposal has been propagated.

94. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 91, 92 or 93, wherein the indication of the proposing user comprises a selection of the certificate pack proposal from a plurality of certificate pack proposal options.

95. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 91-93 or 94, wherein the indication of the proposing user further comprises a customization of the selected certificate pack proposal.

96. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 91-94 or 95, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least, reward each of a subset of the plurality of users that participated in the viral propagation based at least in part on a degree to which the propagating user participated in the viral propagation.

97. A computer-implemented method according to claim 1-8 or 9, wherein establishing the set of search criteria comprises generating, updating or optimizing the set of search criteria based at least in part on merchant information collected online, user generated content collected online, or merchant generated content.

98. A computer-implemented method according to claim 1-9 or 97, further comprising generating promotional content based at least in part on a set of content syndication sources and sending the promotional content to said at least a subset of the users.

99. A computer-implemented method according to claim 98, wherein generating the promotional content comprises receiving content associated with a store location over a network.

100. A computer-implemented method according to claim 99, further comprising determining a merchant associated with the promotional content based at least in part on a pre-registered phone number participating in a communication of the promotional content.

101. A computer-implemented method according to claim 98, 99 or 100, wherein the promotional content is sent according to a schedule based at least in part on analysis of tracked data including post views and/or click-throughs.

102. A computer-implemented method according to claim 1-9 or 97-100, further comprising real-time capture of user-generated content relevant to a merchant, attitude scoring of captured content and association of captured content with an attribute label.

103. A computer-implemented method according to claim 102, wherein the attribute label is selected from a set of attribute labels including positive, negative, neutral and unknown.

104. A computer-implemented method according to claim 1-9 or 97-103, further comprising semantic analysis of the captured content to determine whether the captured content includes a statement or a question.

105. A computer-implemented method according to claim 104, further comprising searching for an answer to the question in a content database utilizing at least a portion of question as search terms.

106. A computer-implemented method according to claim 1-9 or 97-105, further comprising faciliting merchant-user direct feedback response communication.

107. A computerized system according to claim 10-17 or 18, wherein establishing the set of search criteria comprises generating, updating or optimizing the set of search criteria based at least in part on merchant information collected online, user generated content collected online, or merchant generated content.

108. A computerized system according to claim 10-18 or 107, wherein at least one component is configured to, at least, generate promotional content based at least in part on a set of content syndication sources and sending the promotional content to said at least a subset of the users.

109. A computerized system according to claim 108, wherein generating the promotional content comprises receiving content associated with a store location over a network.

110. A computerized system according to claim 109, wherein at least one component is configured to, at least, determine a merchant associated with the promotional content based at least in part on a pre -registered phone number participating in a

communication of the promotional content.

111. A computerized system according to claim 108, 109 or 110, wherein the promotional content is sent according to a schedule based at least in part on analysis of tracked data including post views and/or click-throughs.

112. A computerized system according to claim 10-18 or 108-111, wherein at least one component is configured to, at least, capture user-generated content relevant to a merchant in real-time.

113. A computerized system according to claim 112, wherein at least one component is configured to, at least, determine an attitude score of capture content and an association of captured content with an attribute label.

114. A computerized system according to claim 113, wherein the attribute label is selected from a set of attribute labels including positive, negative, neutral and unknown.

115. A computerized system according to claim 10-18 or 108-114, wherein at least one component is configured to, at least, semantical analyze the captured content to determine whether the captured content includes a statement or a question.

116. A computerized system according to claim 115, wherein at least one component is configured to, at least, search for an answer to the question in a content database utilizing at least a portion of question as search terms.

117. A computerized system according to claim 10- 18 or 108- 116, wherein at least one component is configured to, at least, faciliting merchant-user direct feedback response communication.

118. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 19-26 or 27, wherein establishing the set of search criteria comprises generating, updating or optimizing the set of search criteria based at least in part on merchant information collected online, user generated content collected online, or merchant generated content.

119. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 19-27 or 118, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least, generate promotional content based at least in part on a set of content syndication sources and sending the promotional content to said at least a subset of the users.

120. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 119, wherein generating the promotional content comprises receiving content associated with a store location over a network.

121. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 120, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least, determine a merchant associated with the promotional content based at least in part on a pre -registered phone number participating in a communication of the promotional content.

122. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 119, 120 or 121, wherein the promotional content is sent according to a schedule based at least in part on analysis of tracked data including post views and/or click-throughs.

123. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 19-27 or 118-122, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least, capture user-generated content relevant to a merchant in real-time.

124. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 123, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least, determine an attitude score of capture content and an association of captured content with an attribute label.

125. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 124, wherein the attribute label is selected from a set of attribute labels including positive, negative, neutral and unknown.

126. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 19-27 or 118-125, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least, semantical analyze the captured content to determine whether the captured content includes a statement or a question.

127. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 126, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least, search for an answer to the question in a content database utilizing at least a portion of question as search terms.

128. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 19-27 or 118-127, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least, faciliting merchant-user direct feedback response communication.

129. A computer-implemented method according to claim 49-50 or 52-57, wherein said at least one location includes at least one physical location or at least one network location.

130. A computer-implemented method according to claim 49-50, 52-57 or 129, wherein redeeming at least one of the plurality of certificates comprises executing at least one financial transaction associated with said at least one of the plurality of certificates from a mobile device.

131. A computer-implemented method according to claim 49-50, 52-57 or 129-130, wherein execution of said at least one financial transaction involves communication with the mobile device using near field communication.

132. A computer-implemented method according to claim 130 or 131, wherein execution of said at least one financial tranaction includes adjusting a price of a good or service in accordance with said at least one of the plurality of certificates.

133. A computer-implemented method according to claim 49-50, 52-57 or 129-132, further comprising generating, for the user, a reminder message with respect to unredeemed ones of the plurality of certificates or with respect to the loyalty reward.

134. A computer-implemented method according to claim 133, wherein the reminder message is generated with a timing or frequency based at least in part on proximity in terms of time or location with respect to a store location, hours of operation of the store location, hours during the unredeemed ones of the plurality of certificates are valid, or an expiration of the unredeemed ones of the plurality of certificates or the loyalty reward.

135. A computerized system according to claim 49-50 or 52-57, wherein said at least one location includes at least one physical location or at least one network location.

136. A computerized system according to claim 49-50, 52-57 or 135, wherein redeeming at least one of the plurality of certificates comprises executing at least one financial transaction associated with said at least one of the plurality of certificates from a mobile device.

137. A computerized system according to claim 49-50, 52-57 or 135-136, wherein execution of said at least one financial transaction involves communication with the mobile device using near field communication.

138. A computerized system according to claim 136 or 137, wherein execution of said at least one financial tranaction includes adjusting a price of a good or service in accordance with said at least one of the plurality of certificates.

139. A computerized system according to claim 49-50, 52-57 or 129-138, wherein at least one component is configured to, at least, generate, for the user, a reminder message with respect to unredeemed ones of the plurality of certificates or with respect to the loyalty reward.

140. A computerized system according to claim 139, wherein the reminder message is generated with a timing or frequency based at least in part on proximity in terms of time or location with respect to a store location, hours of operation of the store location, hours during the unredeemed ones of the plurality of certificates are valid, or an expiration of the unredeemed ones of the plurality of certificates or the loyalty reward.

141. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 49-50 or 52- 57, wherein said at least one location includes at least one physical location or at least one network location.

142. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 49-50, 52-57 141, wherein redeeming at least one of the plurality of certificates comprises executing at least one financial transaction associated with said at least one of the plurality of certificates from a mobile device.

143. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 49-50, 52-57 or 141-142, wherein execution of said at least one financial transaction involves

communication with the mobile device using near field communication.

144. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 142 or 143, wherein execution of said at least one financial tranaction includes adjusting a price of a good or service in accordance with said at least one of the plurality of certificates.

145. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 49-50, 52-57 or 141-144, wherein the computer-executable instructions further configure the one or more computers to collectively, at least, generate, for the user, a reminder message with respect to unredeemed ones of the plurality of certificates or with respect to the loyalty reward.

146. One or more computer-readable media according to claim 145, wherein the reminder message is generated with a timing or frequency based at least in part on proximity in terms of time or location with respect to a store location, hours of operation of the store location, hours during the unredeemed ones of the plurality of certificates are valid, or an expiration of the unredeemed ones of the plurality of certificates or the loyalty reward.