It would be wise not to read too much into those McKinsey numbers, however: virtually all of the available evidence shows media consumption in print continues to decline, particularly with younger audiences, and as a result advertising revenue is disappearing as well. Media companies need to adapt to that fact, rather than trying to pretend it isn’t happening.

According to a post by Rick Edmonds at the Poynter Institute, the research came from a presentation by McKinsey principal Michael Lamb at a recent conference of the International News Media Association in New York. Lamb said that based on data from a number of sources, about 35 percent of the time consumers spend on news consumption is devoted to newspapers and magazines, while TV accounts for about 41 percent and smartphones and tablets account for only about 2 percent.

In other words, the research seems to show that while digital devices account for more than half of the total time that consumers spend with media in general — and about 10 times more than the amount of time they spend with newspapers and magazines — the amount of time they spend with “legacy” platforms expands dramatically when looking specifically at news consumption.

Time spent is not the only important metric

Although Edmonds notes that there isn’t much research out there to confirm McKinsey’s conclusions (apart from a Nieman Journalism Lab post in 2009 that saw Martin Langeveld try to dig into some readership numbers for newspapers), he says that other researchers he contacted thought that the numbers were probably “not far off” — in part because of the “lean back” form of consumption that print media involves, where users often spend hours with a cup of coffee and a paper.

Edmonds also argues that encouraging advertisers to look at these kinds of time-spent numbers might help newspapers and magazines improve their appeal, since time spent is a big factor in where advertisers spend their money. As he puts it:

“The time-spent metric suggests that there is more life in legacy formats than raw audience numbers and falling print ad revenues would imply. Since the ‘dying industry’ meme is part of print’s problem with advertisers, this could be incorporated in a case for the medium’s continued relevance.”

Unfortunately for publishers who might see this as reason for unbridled optimism, however, Edmonds goes on to note that the time-spent numbers “do not solve the basic advertising problem of vanished monopoly pricing power and strong competition from a wide range of targeted digital marketing options,” and that while users may spend less time overall with digital platforms when consuming the news, these shorter digital sessions “may be a more efficient way of consuming news.”

For most, the news occurs elsewhere

I think Edmonds puts his finger on one major problem: namely, the fact that for many news consumers, the “lean back” experience simply isn’t necessary any more. As research from the Pew Center has shown, large numbers of consumers are getting their news from aggregators such as Google News or Yahoo News — or possibly from newer solutions such as Prismatic and Circa and Flipboard — because they don’t have either the time or the inclination to go to a single newspaper source, or read in print. Is a lack of efficiency really a selling point for legacy print publications?

That’s not to say the “lean back” experience doesn’t still have value for many news and media consumers, but the other painful fact is that most advertisers aren’t specifically looking to advertise to news consumers — they want specific demographic segments or topic-specific shoppers, or other kinds of targeting that legacy publishers can’t offer, and they want engagement or “time spent” across a range of content types, not just news.

As Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker has repeatedly suggested in presentations about the evolution of the digital-media marketplace, advertisers are moving to where the puck is going to be — not where it is now. And according to virtually all of the available evidence, even from McKinsey itself, that means mobile and social and other platforms, not print. Publishers can either try to convince advertisers that they are wrong about this move, or they can try to adapt to it.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Arvind Grover

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I recently met up with my friend and one-time business partner, Steve Lee, who is product director on the Google Glass project, and before that, ran product management on Google Maps for Mobile. Other than a quick tour of the device, Steve basically let me dive in, so as to experience Glass with a beginner’s mind. I won’t bother reviewing the basic capabilities and specs, which have been covered exhaustively already. Instead I want to focus on some of the points that are in debate, and whether I believe that Glass is destined to succeed.

Glass is translucent; designed to be invisible

In “Waves of Power,” David Moschella shows how new disruptive industries begin as verticals, since the complete product solution requires one provider to deliver the whole enchilada. The new industry continues on this path until the solutions finally reach the “good enough” stage, when the larger trend becomes horizontal orientation, so as to achieve ubiquity, commoditization and the broadest possible ecosystem. (In passing, one can see the battle between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android in this light.) The endgame, so to speak, is that the technology becomes persistent, embedded and ever-present to the point of being “invisible.”

It’s a paradoxical concept to be sure. On the one hand, the technology is everywhere; how can it be invisible? On the other, it’s because it’s everywhere that we no longer think about it as exceptional – and, equally, grand solutions can anticipate and incorporate its ever-presence.

Take for instance the evolution of social mores around cellphones. Every day on my morning bus ride to work, virtually everyone is peering into some device, immersed in another world – a concept that once would have been considered rude and shocking. Similarly, I recently endured a ride near a phone-yapping lawyer who was advising a prospective client on their legal rights – casually and unconcerned, within full earshot of others. This is the new normal.

I think that in the not very distant future, the new forms of interactions that come from using Google Glass – or a very close version of them – will not only be accepted, but commonplace. Google Glass is going to be the NEW, new normal.

Designing a new kind of native experience

To further the point, many have suggested that wearing Google Glass out in public will carry a negative stigma, implying rudeness at a minimum, and privacy invasion at worst. My gut tells me that those people are flat out wrong for two reasons. One, that particular cow has already left the barn (my morning bus ride is emblematic of this truth.)

Two, Google got the design ethos exactly right. It’s a device that is designed for everyday use, but also an adornment that is designed to look good when worn as an accessory. For instance, I never post pictures of myself in my articles, yet I specifically wanted to post a picture of myself wearing Glass:

Why? I think it looks good in the same way a merino wool Zegna sweater looks good.

That in itself is a key narrative: Google has taken the ultimate in geekery and made it feel cool.

The hard technical problems solved

In the age of mobility, connectivity and apps, native experiences will flower and bloom prodigiously. Seen in this light, Google Glass is a credible new flower, growing a little bit every day. So is it ready for prime time? In the continuum from alpha to beta to mass-consumer ready, I’d call it a pretty advanced beta.

The bottom line is that it’s clear Google has solved the hard technical problems, the way they think about the complete solution is well thought out, and I can see a clear segmentation path for how they will take this to market.

As such, if you believe that using your voice, simplified touch actions and augmented visuals is a logical native modality for being social, creative, curious or communicative, then Glass is worth a look.

That brings me to the screen, which is neither obtrusive nor ineffective. It’s there when you need it, and it works. That’s analogous to being embedded to the point of invisibility – until, you have a native moment, and then Glass is at the ready. That in itself is a triumph.  Moreover, its voice-directed interface, interaction with smartphones (for 3G service) and touch controls are mightily impressive.

What is a bit pedestrian, though, is the experiential richness of the actual services that you can access through the system’s card like screens – both Google’s and third party ones. For the device to evolve from missionary to mission-critical, this is the area needing the greatest improvement (although, to be fair, we are at the earliest of days of Glass as a developer platform).

The road to mainstream

For me, the key variables start with pricing. The Explorer release is $1500, which obviously targets a very select niche. I can easily see such a device going for $600-800, since there is no carrier subsidy to lean on. Positioned as a fashion accessory at that price point, Glass should grab a Louis Vuitton-esque slice of the market. That’s single-digit millions of units annually. It’s not until such a device gets to $300 or less when one can expect tens of millions of devices selling annually. But in a five-year horizon, that scenario is not hard to see playing out.

I haven’t yet decided if Glass is a device that I would use everyday all the time, or on spot occasions. Then again, who says I need to? This is more about viability and heartbeat, and the fact that there are lots of jobs for such a device in personal, interpersonal, and industry vertical job categories.

On this front, my eyes don’t lie.

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For those who may not have used it, Waze — which won our Launchpad event at Mobilize in 2009 — provides real-time information about everything from road closures and accidents to traffic backups and police speed-traps. The information is superimposed on a scrollable map, and there are also a number of social features built in, which allow users to see and share information, including messages, with other drivers. Waze even provides gas-price data.

Facebook wants to acquire mobile users

If Facebook does acquire Waze for $1 billion, as reported by Israeli media outlets like Calcalist and Ynet, it would be one of the biggest acquisitions the social network has ever made, rivalling the purchase of mobile photo-sharing service Instagram (which signed a deal for $1 billion but actually wound up being acquired for $750 million due to a drop in Facebook’s share price). And the rationale for the deal would be much the same as it was for Instagram — namely, acquiring and holding onto mobile users.

As my colleague Erica Ogg explained when the Apple rumors were floated earlier this year, Apple would also make a good fit for Waze, in part because the company’s mapping app is seen by many as an also-ran to Google’s more feature-rich service — which is why there was such an outcry last year when Apple suddenly cut off Google and switched iOS users to its own maps.

But while Apple would be a good fit, and Facebook has its own reasons for wanting a service like Waze, I think Google would be the real loser if it went to either of these companies, for the simple reason that Google Maps is a big part of the company’s mobile appeal — at least for me, and I would suspect for many others. My reliance on Google Maps was one of the reasons why Apple’s move irritated me and helped push me towards the Android platform, and Waze is good enough that it could help either Apple or Facebook leap-frog Google.

Google has the most to lose

I’ll admit that I was somewhat skeptical about the value of Waze until I tried using it on a long drive from Florida to Toronto earlier this year. I had looked at the service a few times, but it didn’t have a lot of data or users in Canada (it now has about 45 million users worldwide) and I didn’t see the appeal of the social elements. But when I started using it during this long drive, its utility quickly became obvious — and I stopped using Google Maps altogether.

I’m not yet sold on the ability to connect with other users through the app (unless they are friends already, which would make sense if you were on a trip together), but being able to see at a glance where there is a traffic jam — and even what speed people are going who are stuck in it — and where there’s a speed trap or a police car on the roadside was hugely useful. The gas price data also came in handy more than once.

Google Maps also has traffic data, and it is also based on real-time information, which comes from other users of the service who have their GPS location turned on. It is pretty accurate — but I don’t find it nearly as useful as Waze. I didn’t think enough people would take the time to enter information about things like traffic or speed traps into Waze to make it useful, but I was wrong. And Google doesn’t seem to have any plans to try and duplicate that, since it is more focused on automating that whole process, in typical Google fashion.

There’s no sign that Google has shown an interest in acquiring Waze, but I think the company would be stupid not to at least consider trumping Facebook’s offer. It could wind up losing its way, and a bunch of mobile users to boot.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Dunechaser and Waze

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This isn’t a new idea, but it was revitalized by Buzzfeed’s Katie Notopoulos in early April, who suggested people pick a teen and find out what kids are up to on Twitter these days. The hashtag took off, and if you haven’t searched for the results recently, you should.

My teen hates school because you have to wear pants there. I love my teen. #followateen—
Choire Sicha (@Choire) April 12, 2013

#followateen update 2: he's upset about being placed into remedial english next semester. He also spelled remedial wrong. Good luck, teen!—
Brandon (@BrandonTCX8) December 30, 2011

Not sure I understand the #followateen hashtag. Are people really following random teens? How do you find one to follow?—
Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 30, 2013

(Sometimes the teens even catch on.)

My teen says she's pretty sure my deer tweet is about her, and she's pretty sure she doesn't know me. #followateen—
Meaghan O'Connell (@meaghano) April 13, 2013

Aside from making fun of random teenagers, the growth of the hashtag can actually teach us a good deal about teens, social media, and our weird relationships with the internet. Here are five things I actually learned from #followateen:

Life is a lot harder for teenagers in 2013

When Timeline came out last year, I went back and deleted a lot of old wall posts, and I was shocked by the volume of bad photos and inane thoughts my friends and I posted. (i.e., “Do you have a copy of the math homework?” or “OMG lacrosse practice was so hard today.”) At the time, I thought that teenagers had probably learned from my generation’s early adoption and over-sharing, and that today’s teens had stopped posting as many inane, personal moments online. Surely they’d come to realize that everything they post on the internet is public and searchable forever.

Hahahaha. No.

Scrolling through posts from teens on Twitter this week, it became clear that they have not stopped posting personal, intimate details of their lives online for anyone to search, and if anything, they’re posting even more. As someone who went through high school missing one of my front teeth (don’t ask), I cringe for the future selves of these teens who will wish they’d posted a little less for the public to see. And in my (pretty recent) day, we didn’t even have Instagram or Tumblr.

PROMMMMM TOMORROWWW CANTTT WAITTTTT 😁😘😍😙—
May29th™ (@TiiAHBHOO) May 03, 2013

I have 6 school days left in my senior year and I just got my first detention ever for leaving gym class early. Ha. #whatajoke—
ʝαє∂єи вαяℓσω (@jaebarlow) May 03, 2013

im grounded, so i guess i will just make some vines—
jason orcutt (@jason_orcutt) May 03, 2013

#followateen is the future

You can lament those selfies and poor grammar on Twitter all you want, but how teens are using social media like Twitter today is likely going to have an impact on what we’ll all be using ten years from now. Companies like Facebook and Twitter are struggling to build advertising networks and continue to add new users, but data has shown that many of those new users are actually coming from older generations, as kids are being drawn to new sites like Snapchat, Vine, Wanelo, Tumblr, and Instagram.

You and I don’t use Twitter the same way

When I log on Twitter, I find people talking about the latest tech news, debating the proper way to report corrections to tweets, and LOLing at internet trends like #followateen. I bet the average age of the people I follow is 30. But searching for teen-esque hashtags and scrolling through the resulting posts was an incredible reminder that Twitter is entirely what you make of it, and that my experience on the network probably looks nothing like yours.

It’s easy to forget when everyone becomes so accustomed to his or her personal feed that this is true. I would guess that there’s far less disparity in people’s different Facebook and Instagram experiences, because those social networks are much more dictated by the design of the sites and the types of content people can post. But on Twitter, you create your own adventure.

Twitter is totally creepy, whether or not you #followateen

Yes, it can be super creepy to #followateen on Twitter and treat that teen like a zoo specimen for observation. But Helena Fitzgerald of The New Inquiry points out that, really, following a teen and reporting back on the hilariousness of their lives is no different than most of our Twitter relationships, where we follow people and retweet them and view their tweets as news; especially when most of them never follow us back. Humans are curious about other people by nature, and Twitter plays up that curiosity in ways that can be creepy but also completely entertaining.

Stupidity on the internet is certainly not confined to kids

Lest the adults get too full of themselves and their superiority over the teens, the emergence of the #followanadult hashtag on Friday serves as incredible reminder that adults can be just as predictable and boring online as the teens are.

Growns who think teen tweets are dumb (#followateen) should see their fellow adults'. Today we dare to #followanadult. Join us won't you?—
Rookie (@RookieMag) May 03, 2013

#followanadult my adult is posting articles about divorce, punctuated by wiz khalifa lyrics.—
m.h. (@zefzefmeredeath) May 03, 2013

my adult gets a text, email and phone call from Walgreens when his prescription is ready. He thinks this may be overkill. #followanadult—
shannon (@shansperl) May 03, 2013

@tavitulle My adult's corporate employer is planning an office-wide Harlem Shake parody. #followanadult—
Kirsten Reach (@KirstenReach) May 03, 2013

my adult is out of kombucha #followanadult—
Tavi Gevinson (@tavitulle) May 03, 2013

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Well, we may have gotten a preview of that recently with Jawbone’s acquisition of BodyMedia (Disclosure: the author’s company, Comcast Ventures, is an investor in BodyMedia). Coming on the heels of Zeo closing the doors on its innovative sleep tracking device, is it possible the pendulum is already swinging from proliferation and expansion to consolidation in just four short months since CES?

I think it’s still too soon to make that call, but clearly market leaders like Jawbone are looking forward, identifying what still needs to be solved in this category, and acting strategically. It’s going to be a land grab for the right talent, intellectual property and data that can help.

Below are three key components that companies in the wearable technology segment still need to address in order to produce positive results for today’s consumers and stay relevant:

1. Accuracy and efficacy: The core sensing technology for many of these products is a three-axis accelerometer of the same sort found in our smartphones. A lot can be inferred from one sensor, but having a multitude of sensors sharpens the accuracy of what we think the body is doing. That’s why we are seeing additional sensors such as heart rate, skin temperature, galvanic skin response and heat flux becoming more prevalent in these devices. It’s also critical to appreciate the increased order of magnitude in difficulty when going from one sensor to multiple sensors.  Sensor fusion is the future, but sensor fusion is hard.  Only true data scientists need apply.When dealing with personal health, “close enough” is not good enough, and this class of product could be leading its consumers astray. The healthcare industry is accustomed to conducting clinical studies and publishing research findings. While that model is perhaps a little heavyweight for fitness trackers, there is still room for greater transparency on the accuracy and efficacy of these devices. Simply put, accuracy shouldn’t be in the eye of the beholder, and can only be achieved by benchmarking against voluminous amounts of data over a sustained period of time. In order to establish and justify widespread consumer trust, there needs to be independent analysis against gold standards, shared in a public setting.
2. The right form factor for the occasion: At CES 2013, we witnessed new wristbands from Fitbit and Fitbug (Disclosure: see below), new forearm bands from Scosche and Wahoo, new clip-on units from Withings and GeoPalz, and new watches from Basis and Mio. The technology has also moved to T-shirts, headbands, hats and shoes and BodyMedia showed off a more jewelry-like form factor. Clearly there’s a lot of experimentation with form factor going on, and the question remains whether one dominant type will emerge that rules them all, or if instead manufacturers evolve to a product line strategy with a SKU that accompanies each corresponding daily activity.We’re accustomed to changing our clothes during the course of the day, so some would argue it’s not unreasonable to think we may some day adopt the habit of change our assemblage of devices, too. But a strong case can be made too that passive tracking may be the preferred long-term model over premeditated, active tracking – we’ve all witnessed too many New Year’s resolutions fall by the wayside to assume otherwise.
3. Coaching and counseling: At its core, all these devices encourage behavioral change in an individual to lead a more active, healthy lifestyle. Any weight loss or fitness professional will tell you that maintaining a behavioral change is extremely difficult and so when left as a solo endeavor, the chances of long-term success are less than promising.Thus several companies have wisely paired their products with fitness services to increase consumers’ chances for success: Philips Active Link is available to Weight Watchers members, BodyMedia is a long-standing partner with 24 Hour Fitness, and Fitbit collaborates with Retrofit. Incorporating the use of these devices in a larger, more holistic program makes a lot of sense and may become the predominant model of engagement in the future. For sure, the data scientists can make the data dashboards coming off of these apps more intuitive, more actionable, more DIY, but the successful system of tomorrow may just need to expand its scope into “services” such as coaching and counseling.

We are experiencing more consumerization of healthcare and this class of technologies engenders more knowledge and more transparency. For this category to have the long lasting affect we all hope for, however, the technology needs to evolve beyond simply measuring calories burned or steps walked. The market winners and losers are starting to take shape.

Disclosure: Fitbit is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

Michael Yang is Managing Director of Comcast Ventures. 

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While there is something undeniably creepy about the Google Now service, I have to admit that it is also very useful — so much so that I couldn’t imagine going on a trip without it. I’m already imagining how it and other kinds of “anticipatory data” services (including Google News updates) might work through Google Glass.

Useful information when you need it

It’s not that Google Now is really all that revolutionary, in the sense of being surprising or magical or having whiz-bang special effects: it just collects a broad range of information about you and your activity from your search history, your calendar, your email, web services you are signed into, and so on, and then uses that to show you information that is relevant to what you are doing or where you happen to be (Google recently introduced it for iOS as well as Android).

In a way, that could be part of the reason Google Now is so appealing — it doesn’t try to impress you, it just works silently in the background, in more or less the way you would expect it to. That in itself is something to be grateful for.

The first time I noticed myself depending on it (or at least noticing how useful it was), came when I was getting ready for my flight to Italy: sliding upwards from the home button on the Nexus 4 showed a series of Google Now “cards,” and the first one said that my flight had been delayed by an hour. Since I was panicking at that point about how much I still had to do before leaving for the airport, that information was incredibly helpful. I could take a bit more time and relax.

Meanwhile, the second Google Now card showed the traffic on the highway and told me that I should probably give myself more time than usual to get to the airport — and when I got closer to the time of my departure, a third card showed my boarding pass information, including boarding time and the gate number (Google Now got that info from my calendar, but it also supports scannable boarding passes for a limited number of airlines).

Not revolutionary, but evolutionary

Again, none of this information was specific to Google Now, or derived magically by Google search trickery: I could have easily found out about my flight being delayed by using a service like FlightStats, or by checking the website for the airline or the airport itself — and I could have checked the traffic on any number of sites. But the point is that doing these things would take time, and I was already pressed for time. Seeing it all displayed in front of me in a simple way, without me having to do anything, was exactly the kind of thing a virtual assistant is good for.

Google Now continued to perform this kind of function while I was travelling (once I got a local SIM card, of course, so that I wouldn’t get robbed by my carrier for roaming charges). It told me that my connecting flight in Munich was on time, which allowed me to prepare for possibly not making my connection — and once I arrived in Italy, it informed me of the weather, the traffic from the airport in Rome, and also showed me photos of nearby sights that I might want to visit.

These latter aspects were also very useful for someone visiting a foreign country: I didn’t have much use for them while I was at home, but they instantly became much more important when I was travelling. Like the flight information or traffic, I could have found that content myself by doing a web search — but it was much handier to have it displayed for me automatically. And I started to imagine what it might be like to simply look at something like the Colosseum with Google Glass and have information about it appear in front of my eyes. Geeky? Yes. But also hugely useful.

The privacy tradeoff is worth it

The part that clearly disturbs some people about Google Now is the data collection that is involved in making it work: the tracking of your web searches, your calendar appointments, your location via GPS, the photos you have posted, the flights you are preparing to take, and so on. There’s no question that this is invasive — and some users will undoubtedly decide that it’s not worth the tradeoff, and choose to keep the information to themselves. I think the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

Are there ways Google could use this information that I might not like? Of course there are. But I trust that Google is aware enough of the dangers — both legal and commercial — of engaging in that kind of behavior that they will avoid it. While some may choose to see Google’s ambitions in this area as evil, I think the company’s goal remains the same: to provide services that encourage users to spend more time on the internet and produce more data that improves Google’s search and/or advertising algorithms. And I am okay with that.

In return for providing some anonymized data and behavior patterns, I get access to a personalized assistant that is not only more unobtrusive than any human version would be, but is also faster and completely free. That’s a pretty good bargain.

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The company reported $219 million in net income and non-GAAP net income of $312 million, which translated to earnings per share of $0.12.

Mobile advertising revenue as a percentage of total ad revenue hit 30 percent in the first quarter, compared to 23 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 and 14 percent in the third quarter. That growth on mobile is crucial for Facebook, which has been seeing pressure from Wall Street to show that in can perform on mobile, where users are increasingly headed. This quarter, ad revenue was $1.25 billion or 85 percent of total revenue, almost identical to last quarter’s 84 percent, but still down from the 86 percent in the third quarter.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized mobile app installs as a bright spot for the company, noting that it makes sense for mobile ads to send users to other apps, just as web ads send users to desktop sites.

“This type of ad just makes sense to me on mobile,” he said.

The company touted its performance and growth on mobile during the fourth quarter, but that growth in users has only continued into 2013. The company saw 751 million mobile monthly active users as of March 31, 2013, up from 680 million in December, and representing an increase of 54 percent over the the previous year.

Facebook saw total monthly active users hit 1.11 billion as of March 31, 2013, an increase of 23 percent increase over last year. Daily active users hit 665 million on average for March, compared to the 1.06 billion monthly actives and 618 million daily actie users reported in December 2012. And as previously reported, Instagram hit 100 million monthly active users in February.

In the company’s earnings call, Zuckerberg specifically mentioned Instagram’s growth, something he was less vocal about last quarter.

“I’m really proud of how Instagram is going,” he said. “Kevin and his team made incredible progress since last april, and the Instagram community is growing even faster than the Facebook community did when it was this size.”

And tellingly, since everyone is looking to see when Facebook will begin to earn money from the Instagram acquisition, Zuckerberg mentioned that they’re looking at different ways to give businesses opportunities on the photo-sharing app, not ruling out mobile ads.

“It’s something we’re thinking about,” he said.

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The service that lets you pull together some friends and meet new people for drinks will be dramatically lowering the time involved in setting up an outing with the launch of the company’s iPhone app on Tuesday and on-demand meet-ups rolling out to different cities. No longer will you have to wait two weeks to bring two friends and meet three friends at a bar through the app. Soon you’ll be able to get a Grouper going within the hour.

There have been no shortage of next-generation dating apps launching recently, with a variety of companies trying to help millennials find other people through their smartphones. And most of these, like Grindr or Tinder, are already mobile and location-based. But Grouper CEO Michael Waxman said the company will add the benefits of mobile while maintaining the central premise of the app that’s made it so popular. Namely, that people want to meet other people without the label of a date, with the comfort of friends along for the night, and without the creepy factor of photo-based apps.

“If Tinder’s a game, we’re the anti-game. If Tinder is playing Hot or Not and messaigng back and forth, we’re like, let’s cut the BS and be humans and share a drink and see if there’s anything there,” Waxman said. “It’s still the hardest thing and also the most valuable part of the equation.”

Previously, users would gather up two friends for a Grouper, and it could take up to two weeks to be paired with another group of three for a night out. Unlike photo-based apps, you’re not picking someone based on their profile photo — you and your friends are blindly matched with another friend group via the Grouper algorithms. And then a Grouper staff member would sign off on the match, which affected the time it took to create the pairs. Each Grouper participant pays a fee which covers the first round of drinks at a bar picked for you (and has provided the company with a solid business model, Waxman said).

The company has been working to streamline this process and get people together faster, bringing the time from weeks down to days, and Waxman said that adding a mobile app is the final piece of that puzzle that will bring the total time down to a matter of hours. And for participants, they won’t be tied to the desktop anymore, although they could previously get SMS notifications while they were out.

“It’s really Grouper as it was meant to be. We started on the desktop web because we could iterate more quickly. But for meeting people in the physical world, the phone makes more sense,” said Waxman, who notes that he met his own girlfriend on Grouper. “From the map of where you’re going, to messaging back and forth with the Grouper concierge through the app, there are just a ton of ways it can make Grouper better.”

The new iPhone app will be available to all users beginning Tuesday when it hits Apple’s app store, providing iPhone users with features like maps and messaging right away. But the on-demand Grouper feature that creates dates in under an hour will be rolling out more slowly as the company prepares to meet demand in different cities. Waxman said the app has been growing tremendously, and while he didn’t disclose registered or active users, he said Grouper is now running in 20 different American cities and has plans for more.

“We’re really inpspired by apps like Uber, where you press a button and something great happens. But we think that meeting three cool people is better than a car.”

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Cleveland-based UrbanCode’s software helps automate the production and delivery of new applications in a way IBM said is aligned with its own SmartCloud and Mobile First initiatives. Terms of the deal were not disclosed but the company’s 50 employees will now be part of IBM Software’s Rational group, according to IBM Software director of marketing Randy Newell.

According to IBM’s statement, UrbanCode will work nicely with IBM’s Worklight mobile application development platform:

” … by combining UrbanCode software with the IBM MobileFirst Worklight technology, businesses can now author and deploy an application for any mobile device in hours, versus a previous multi-day timeline. The UrbanCode solution also works with traditional applications including middleware, databases and business intelligence.”

Legacy IT giants like IBM are trying to find ways to strip out overhead of the development process, particularly for mobile and cloud apps, in order to better compete with leaner, more nimbler startups. For example, last August, BMC, which competes with IBM in systems management tools, bought Varalogix to bolster its devops story.

IBM applies devops concepts to the whole software life cycle including planning, development, testing, deployment, monitoring and feedback phases, Newell said. UrbanCode fits into the deployment piece of the cycle , while IBM’s acquisition of Greenhat in January fills in a testing check box and its buyout of Tealeaf in May 2012, figures into the feedback module.

IBM, the 100-year-old IT giant that has managed to stay relevant by changing when needed, is really focusing on cloud and mobile — and the middleware to power those efforts — to such an extent that it is reportedly thinking of selling off its server business to Lenovo.

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Co-founders Leo Tenenblat and Tom Tobin both worked in product management on analytics at Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) giant Salesforce.com, where they saw the value of pushing out clear information to salespeople’s mobile devices.

With AppMesh, updates sync quickly between the iPad app and iPhone app. And if an app goes offline, it will sync and replicate to the Amazon Web Services public cloud once it goes back online. Users can export Salesforce data to the apps, although importing back to Salesforce is not currently possible. Android versions are planned. The apps automatically take note of salespeople’s emails and phone calls to potential clients. It also arranges email in different ways — by the size of the deal, by the time the deal opportunity closes and so on. The apps are free for teams of up to five people, and prices are determined on a case-by-case basis for larger user groups.

The AppMesh application for iPad lets salespeople track meetings, sales opportunities and emails.

The product is similar in some respects to Tylr Mobile, a startup that’s still in stealth mode. Meanwhile, some startups, such as Crushpath and Selligy, offer mobile apps for tracking sales relationships, and others, such as Yesware, deal in optimizing salespeople’s email boxes but not with mobile apps. There are also startups that aim to make the best of email but don’t draw from sales apps, such as Taskbox and Mailbox, which Dropbox acquired.

On top of that, it’s possible Salesforce itself could roll out more sophisticated features. After all, Salesforce plans several announcements around mobile offerings this year. Then again, Salesforce could move to acquire AppMesh or Tylr Mobile. The deal would make sense, because the products are intended to solve a real problem for salespeople.

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