We’re excited to welcome Jason Alexander (no, not that Jason Alexander) as our new vice president of engineering.

From today’s press release:

ShopSavvy Names Jason Alexander Vice President of Engineering

Veteran entrepreneur and leader has more than 15 years of experience guiding development teams.

ShopSavvy, the leading mobile shopping assistant, today announced that it has named Jason Alexander vice president of engineering. In this role, Alexander will lead the company’s engineers who write the code used by more than 11 million ShopSavvy users.

“Jason has had significant experience and an impressive record of achievement in leading development teams at companies like Match.com and Telligent,” said Alexander Muse, co-founder and CEO of ShopSavvy. “He will serve an important role in coordinating the efforts of our developers as we continue to expand ShopSavvy’s capabilities and enhance the user experience.”

Prior to joining ShopSavvy, Alexander served as director of development, fraud prevention, for Match.com, where he consolidated the company’s fraud operations and developed fraud prevention strategies resulting in two patents. Before Match.com, Alexander served as director of technology for D Magazine Partners.

Alexander is best known for co-founding Telligent, the enterprise collaboration and community software company. As Telligent’s chief technology officer from 2004 to 2009, Alexander helped grow the company to 150 employees and raise $20 million in Series A financing from Intel Capital.

Alexander began his career with AudioNet/Broadcast.com, the company that Mark Cuban later sold to Yahoo. He attended the University of North Texas, where he studied computer science.

Matt Weathers, our VP of Product, gave an interview to Mobile Commerce Daily on the ShopSavvy-Spotzot deal for an article that ran today.

For those who’d like more detail on the deal, here’s the full Q&A from that interview:

MCD: What is the strategy behind adding this new feature to ShopSavvy? Why did the two companies decide to partner?

Matt: ShopSavvy’s mission is to give power to consumers so they can make informed shopping decisions. When a user opens our app to get information on a product, one of the top questions they have is, “Are there any deals on this item?” Immediately after that, their question is, “Are there any other deals nearby or in this same category?” With Spotzot’s data and our search experience, we are now able to quickly answer those questions. We look for an exact deal or similar deals.

For example, a mom shopping for diapers is likely to be interested in special baby-care deals. If deals are available, we can present those deals immediately to the consumer without any additional work on her part. She does not need to walk around the whole store looking for sales, or find and flip through a Sunday circular.

MCD: What is the user experience like? Walk through how deals are presented to ShopSavvy users.

Matt: There are several ways we are using Spotzot deals. Three examples:

1. Sam is buying some softball and tennis gear for his daughter. He uses our app to scan the barcode of a baseball glove. We detect that his location at the time of the scan is near a retailer with a 20% sale on sporting goods. In addition to online prices, local prices, and reviews, we will be able to display that sale information. The dad then goes to the store next door to buy the glove and some other items. That retailer benefits by driving foot traffic into the store.

2. Lisa, a college student, is buying school supplies at an office supply store. She scans a toner cartridge. We not only give her price and review information, but we will also tell her how many deals on office products are available in that store. She can browse through the deals right on her phone rather than walking around. She finds a great sale on desk organizers. The retailer benefits by selling more items.

3. Betty has just bought a purse at a shopping center. As she leaves the store, she wonders if there are any deals at other stores in the shopping center. She opens the ShopSavvy app and goes to the deals tab. We present a list of stores nearby that have deals. She can browse through them rather than walking to each store. She finds a great sale she didn’t know about, and goes to the retailer to buy some clothes. She gets a deal. The retailer benefits from the additional foot traffic.

MCD: What kinds of targeted deals does the app give? Can you provide examples?

Matt: The sales change as often as daily or hourly. Spotzot updates them frequently. Here are a few available through Spotzot right now:

Office Depot: Get $20 off when you purchase $79 of HP Ink
Macy’s: Up to 50% off on women’s shoes
Sports Authority: $25 off any purchase $100 or more
Barnes and Noble: $5 off a purchase of $50 (for members)
Gap: 60% & above off on women’s tops

MCD: Why are deal apps important to the shopping experience? Why are deals through ShopSavvy better than most deal apps?

Matt: When users are shopping, one of the most important questions, especially in today’s economy, is price: “Am I getting a good deal?” ShopSavvy has been revealing online and local prices for items for almost three years now. A deal is basically a temporary and conditional change of price. Now we can give users full pricing information so that they can really save money.

The difference is most deal apps only provide deal information and the consumer has to sift through thousands of deals by category or retailer. With our app, the user is already using it to get information on items they are actually considering buying. We use that information to display only the deals that the consumer is likely to be interested in.

Additionally, most shoppers don’t remember to open deal apps, in the same way that most consumers don’t think to go find the deal circular. By contrast, several million consumers are already using our app to get pricing and review information when they shop.

MCD: Where do you see the future of mobile going with shopping apps?

Matt: Consumers are realizing that their smartphones can give them a huge edge when shopping, but they do not want to go to multiple apps, slow websites or sift through overwhelming deal data. Shopping apps that deliver powerful and timely information to consumers in a simple way will earn their trust. In turn, merchants are realizing that apps with high consumer usage provide an avenue to reach consumers in a highly targeted way. We are focusing on this trend by helping users make shopping decisions and merchants reach those consumers.

I have always appreciated the Marine Toys for Tots program each year. This afternoon I was wondering how we (i.e. ShopSavvy) might be able to leverage our platform to help collect toys in October, November and December and distribute them as Christmas gifts to needy children around the country. I had an idea.

What if anytime one of our users scanned a toy we suggested they buy a second one using ShopSavvy – one that would be shipped to their local Marine Corps Reserve Unit for distribution through the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation. I know from personal experience I have bought toys for the program, but never actually delivered them to a drop off location. Toys for Tots Foundation, hat do you think?

We could even partner with someone like Walmart who might agree to match toy donations made by ShopSavvy users by sending a SECOND toy. Walmart, what do you think?

I’ll keep you posted on the progress of this idea. If you have contacts with anyone at the Marine Corps, Toys for Tots or Walmart that might be able to help please pass along this post (or send me their contact info).

Regards,
Alexander Muse, CEO ShopSavvy Inc.
8350 N Central Expressway Suite 250
Dallas, TX 75206
214.550.2003
amuse@shopsavvy.mobi

One of the problems with most deal apps is that people never think to open them while they’re in stores. ShopSavvy users are different, however, as they generally use their app whenever they are comparison shopping. Through our new partnership with Spotzot, ShopSavvy can now serve these users highly targeted deals, delivered while they shop.

Here’s today’s press release:

ShopSavvy Partners with Spotzot to Give More Targeted, Timely Deals to Mobile Consumers

Smartphone users are delivered the deals, coupons and sales they want – when and where they want them.

ShopSavvy, the leading mobile shopping assistant, has joined forces with Spotzot, the primary source for mobile deals, to help merchants and brands connect with consumers by providing highly targeted deals.

By partnering with Spotzot, ShopSavvy will deliver the deals, coupons and sales information most relevant to its users, based on their location and demonstrated shopping interest. ShopSavvy users will receive the most relevant deals within 500 feet of their location.

“When consumers go shopping, most don’t think to open deal apps, which can be overwhelming and painful to navigate,” said Matt Weathers, vice president of product for ShopSavvy. “Also, people don’t just wake up in the morning and say ‘Let’s find some deals.’ They shop for items they actually need and want. Along the way, they seek the best prices and deals. Users already use the ShopSavvy app to get price and review information. Now, with Spotzot’s data, we can serve them deals that relate to exactly where they are standing and what they want at that moment.”

ShopSavvy’s partnership with Spotzot provides users with the most comprehensive catalog of in-store offers and coupons available at locations across the United States. Shoppers can spot deals before or while visiting more than 400,000 retail locations, including 1,000 major malls and outlets.

“ShopSavvy helps retail merchants and brands reach consumers while they shop in stores,” said Jim Schreitmueller, Spotzot co-founder and vice president of sales and marketing. “When consumers scan products on ShopSavvy, Spotzot’s deal search engine reveals discount offers and coupons valid in the store where the consumer is shopping, in nearby stores and available from retailers’ online stores, ensuring consumers get what they want at the best available price.”

Spotzot was selected from more than a dozen vendors because it offered ShopSavvy the most structured, accurate and comprehensive deal inventory available.

Spotzot is currently delivering deals to ShopSavvy’s Android smartphone users, with the service expected to be deployed on iPhone next month.

About Spotzot

Spotzot is a mobile deal search platform that helps merchants and brands reach millions of consumers and drive them into retail stores and restaurants. Based in San Jose, California, Spotzot is the #1 source of location-based, in-store promotions and coupons featuring richly tagged offers from the top 750 retail chain operators valid at more than 400,000 locations across the U.S. Spotzot’s unique deal content attracts consumers with high intent and enables merchants and brands to display timely and contextually relevant ads and offers to shoppers by location. The company distributes its content through leading mobile shopping app publishing partners that include eBay/Milo (in-store shopping), ShopSavvy (comparative local/online shopping), Shopkick (retail shopping rewards), CardStar (virtual merchant loyalty cards), Geodelic (local deals / discovery) and others. For more information about Spotzot, visit www.spotzot.com.

About ShopSavvy

ShopSavvy is the leading mobile shopping assistant, with more than 20 million downloads and 11 million current unique users. ShopSavvy empowers smartphone users to quickly and seamlessly locate, research and buy products at the point of sale. When users scan a barcode or input a product name, they discover where the item is sold locally and online, where it’s in stock and at what price. ShopSavvy aggregates product data, deals, ratings and reviews from retailers, partners and its own users to provide the most comprehensive source of information and advice for mobile shoppers anywhere. For advertisers, ShopSavvy delivers “hyper-relevant” deals, promotions, warranty offers, and other UPC/GPS-targeted content to consumers. For more information, visit http://shopsavvy.mobi.

From today’s press release:

ShopSavvy Now Available in Nokia’s Ovi Store

Top shopping app for smartphone users can also be found on the iPhone, Android and Windows 7 platforms.

ShopSavvy, the leading mobile shopping assistant, announced today that it is available for download by Nokia smartphone users in the Ovi Store. The store enables Nokia users in 180 countries to access apps and boasts more than 6 million downloads daily.

“Last year, Nokia integrated ShopSavvy into its augmented reality browser for S60 devices. Recently, they approached us to add ShopSavvy to the Ovi Store, one of the most popular app stores outside the United States,” said Alexander Muse, CEO and co-founder of ShopSavvy. “This is a great opportunity to expand ShopSavvy usage in Europe and around the world.”

ShopSavvy is compatible with S60 and Symbian^3 devices. The free app can be accessed at the following Ovi Store link: http://store.ovi.com/search?q=shopsavvy.

ShopSavvy currently has more than 11 million unique users on iPhone, Android, Windows 7 and Nokia smartphones.

What is cool about Amazon? 1-Click purchases. What is not cool about Amazon? Their prices are often higher than other retailers (in ShopSavvy they are only the best price 6% of the time). What if you could scan a product with ShopSavvy and find the best prices from online and local retailers (Amazon included) and buy the product with 1-Tap inside of the app? That is what we call quick pay and it is now live for iOS users in Florida.

With the second version of quick pay you can skip the website and buy from any retailer from inside of ShopSavvy. Want to give it a try? Remember this is a VERY limited version of the feature. Here are the details/limits:

- Limited Retailers: Barnes & Noble and Buy.com
- Limited Users: Florida and iOS Only
- Early Version: Super-Beta (the official release version fixes a number of issues)

The process is fairly simple. The first time you use quick pay you can add your credit card info as well as shipping information and from then on you can buy with 1-Tap. By removing all of the inertia we hope that quick pay will make saving money even easier. I have been buying books and office supplies with quick pay for the last few weeks and it works great.

If you live in Florida and what to try it out, just start scanning books and/or consumer electronics and you should see an option to buy with quick pay. Let us know what you think. Everybody else? We should have everything ready to launch nationwide on the 29th (Apple might take a few days to accept the app, but Android will be available immediately).

Techcrunch had a piece on Sunday describing how startups were using Hadoop so I thought I might share our experiences with both Hadoop and Cassandra. Up and until 9 months ago ShopSavvy was a strictly MySQL shop.  Pricenark (our backend system) ran exclusively on MySQL and stored only the bare minimum amount of information we needed to return prices to our users. Even though we were delivering 10s of millions of retailer pages with ShopSavvy, the amount of data that we kept from each query was minimal. In order to maximize ShopSavvy’s capabilities going forward, we needed to make the most out of every drop of our data.  We needed a storage system that could keep long histories of offers, prices, product information, scan information, geo-location data, and merchant data while maintaining 100% uptime in a very write-heavy environment.  On top of just simple storage we needed a way to run algorithms over the expanse of data that we already owned in log files and MySQL, as well as all of the historical data we would soon be storing.

Looking at our requirements for our data processing platform we very quickly settled on Hadoop to do our bulk processing. Before storing any new data, we needed to go through the log files that ShopSavvy had been storing for nearly 2 years.  These files had amounted to nearly 500 million lines of logs that included each of our users scans, searches, licensee app usage, and very valuable geolocation data.  It was clear that Hadoop would be a great fit for processing this kind of data.  Hadoop specializes in processing massive amounts of loosely organized data through a distributed environment of commodity hardware; and has a great track record with processing log files.

Being a startup we don’t have the budget for top of the line machines with lots of cores, tons of drives, and lots of ram; but we do have the budget for lots of lesser powered machines.  Using hadoop we are able to get the most out of our budget.  We are able to string together slightly older server hardware to process all of our data in a scalable fashion, getting the most out of every piece of hardware. Since hadoop clusters are easy to add to we can easily add more machines to the cluster when we have the budget!

We also quickly settled on Cassandra for our storage technology. Looking at our options in the space, Cassandra was easily the most stable and mature project for storing massive amounts of data and retrieving it quickly.  Cassandra offers high write throughput, data replication, elasticity, multi-language API and a great track record with large data.

With Cassandra we don’t have to worry about data loss if we lose a machine, or running low on capacity when we store more data than we expected; we can simply add more machines or repair the ones that go down.  This is a huge advantage to a small team like ours.  We don’t have a dedicated ops team to manage all of our servers and we can’t afford any downtime in an environment where you should be constantly prepared to show your product.

Cassandra also integrates well with Hadoop processing.  We are able to pull data from any time period and any size quickly into Hadoop to provide us with analytical insights into our business.  We can schedule hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly jobs to tell us where our business is heading and what our users are doing.  Cassandra gives us quick access to all of our data in a quick and concise way that we can depend on.

By storing every little piece of information inside of Cassandra and processing it with Hadoop, we are able to provide a lot more value to our users and quickly develop new products. In a short amount of time we have been able to develop capabilities such as keyword search, image matching, related products, geographic analysis, automated daily reporting, price history analysis and charting,  user history tools for customer service, investor charts and reports, device syncing,  non real time data scraping, top scanned products, and trend analysis.

ShopSavvy has won its share of awards since our launch in 2008. In fact, we received our first major honor — winning the Google Android Challenge — before the app was even commercially available.

Most of the recognition we’ve received has come from within the technology or mobile space, from the Crunchies to Under the Radar, SXSW Interactive, Macworld and the Mobile World Congress. We even got to speak before the French Senate in Paris as one of 10 global winners in the Netexplorateur digital innovation awards.

Now, it looks like the broader retail world is taking notice of ShopSavvy. We were named a finalist in the 2011 Online Retail Awards for overall achievement in mobile experience.

Here’s today’s press release:

ShopSavvy Named Finalist in 2011 Online Retail Awards

Top shopping app cited for overall achievement in mobile experience for retail consumers.

ShopSavvy, the leading mobile shopping assistant, has been named a finalist in the overall achievement category for mobile in the 2011 Online Retail Awards (ORAs), the only international awards dedicated to recognizing the excellence of website and mobile experiences provided to retail customers. ORA winners will be announced in August.

“ShopSavvy has disrupted the relationship between local and online retail in a fundamental way – a fact that more and more retailers and brands are acknowledging and embracing,” said Alexander Muse, CEO and co-founder of ShopSavvy. “We are grateful to be named an ORA finalist, which reflects this important shift in the retail landscape.”

ShopSavvy empowers its more than 11 million active users to locate, research and buy products at the point of sale. ShopSavvy aggregates product prices, deals, ratings and reviews from retailers, partners and its own users to provide the most comprehensive source of independent information and advice for mobile shoppers anywhere.

Muse said ShopSavvy is rapidly developing advertising and strategic relationships with major retailers.

“As of this month, Best Buy is a ShopSavvy advertiser, and we have previously partnered with Sam’s Club among other retailers,” Muse said. “As advertisers fully grasp the power of UPC/GPS-targeted ads, which serve marketing messages based on a consumer’s specific location and buying intent, ShopSavvy’s impact on the retail sector will continue to grow.”

Now in their third year, the Online Retail Awards comprise 22 retail sector category awards, six overall achievement awards and a Prix d’OR winner. This is the first year the competition has included an overall achievement award for mobile websites and consumer-facing apps. Expert judges, chosen from the worlds of retailing, advertising and marketing, vote independently for the best online retail experiences in each category.

ShopSavvy has teamed with vertical ad network Longboard Media to market the most targeted advertising available today — AdOns, which are served to smartphone users using UPC/GPS intent pairs, which are determined based on the user’s demonstrated location and purchase intent.

Best Buy has launched the first campaign under the ShopSavvy/Longboard partnership, encouraging users who scan Back-to-School items to purchase their entire checklist from Best Buy.

Here’s the press release:

ShopSavvy Teams with Longboard Media to Connect Brands with Mobile Consumers

Top shopping app joins vertical ad network to deliver hyper-relevant advertising campaigns to smartphone users.

ShopSavvy, the leading mobile shopping assistant for iPhone and Android users, and Longboard Media, the leading vertical advertising network representing premium shopping, product review and retail publishers, announced that they have joined forces to offer highly targeted ad campaigns to major brands and retailers though ShopSavvy’s AdOns platform. AdOns enable advertisers to deliver hyper-relevant, UPC/GPS-targeted messages to mobile consumers at the point of highest purchase intent, as they stand in a retail store with a potential purchase in hand.

The first AdOns buyer secured by Longboard Media is global retailer Best Buy. The campaign is currently running with feature offers, local store inventory, and branding content delivered when ShopSavvy users scan specific products as part of a Best Buy Back-to-School promotion.

“We are pleased to be part of Longboard Media’s premium ad network, which recognizes that shopping sites represent the highest value to advertisers among online publishers,” said Alexander Muse, CEO and co-founder of ShopSavvy. “Longboard has helped advertisers to see the full potential of ShopSavvy’s highly targeted location/intent pair advertising. Because advertisers know the user’s specific location and buying interest, ShopSavvy is commanding rates well north of $500 CPM.”

“We are extremely excited to be working with ShopSavvy. We have yet to find a more targeted consumer than a person in-store or driving around looking for specific products, which is what ShopSavvy delivers to advertisers,” said Jim Barkow, Longboard Media, CEO and co-founder. “We are already seeing a very large interest in ShopSavvy’s targeted programs from large retailers, brands, and credit cards across all different product categories. Advertisers are looking to engage with consumers in a mobile environment and are impressed by the app’s ability to drive local sales and increase transaction value. We anticipate that the market for AdOns will grow exponentially as more brands become aware of this opportunity.”

About ShopSavvy

ShopSavvy is the leading mobile shopping assistant, with more than 20 million downloads and 11 million current unique users. ShopSavvy empowers smartphone users to quickly and seamlessly locate, research and buy products at the point of sale. When users scan a barcode or input a product name, they discover where the item is sold locally and online, where it’s in stock and at what price. ShopSavvy aggregates product data, deals, ratings and reviews from retailers, partners and its own users to provide the most comprehensive source of information and advice for mobile shoppers anywhere. For advertisers, ShopSavvy delivers “hyper-relevant” deals, promotions, warranty offers, and other UPC/GPS-targeted content to consumers. For more information, visit http://shopsavvy.mobi.

About Longboard Media

Longboard Media is the leading Shopping Vertical ad network providing direct sales, ad serving and monetization to leading shopping publishers and online Retailers. With more than 25 premium shopping publishers and Retailers, Longboard Media reaches over 55M consumers each month across hundreds of product categories. Longboard Media offers a transparent and a publisher-centric model set up to provide reoccurring value to our publisher base. Longboard Media works with brand marketers to target consumers in the consumer funnel with engaging and powerful advertising experiences. http://www.longboardmedia.com