Who is the mobile shopper and what are they doing? Those are couple of the questions Molly Garris, Manager, Digital Strategy, Arc Worldwide, tried to answer with research last fall. The agency found about half of the 18 to 64-year-old mobile users it surveyed were mobile shoppers. Of these about 40% were light shoppers and 10% were heavy. The latter use apps at least once a week are into trying everything from check-ins to barcodes. They also skew male and toward iPhone users. Light shoppers skew female and toward other devices like Android and BlackBerry. So among the takeaways, …

For all the buzz created by social media, a new study shows retailers may be barking up the wrong tree: ForeSee Results reports that social media drove just 5% of visitors to retail websites. On the other hand, "promotional emails, search engine results, and even advertising are more influential," it says. In fact, the study found that more traditional marketing techniques not only generated more traffic, they also they deliver better-quality customers. "Some of the most satisfied site visitors arrived at the site because of previous familiarity with a brand, promotional emails, word-of-mouth, and product review websites," it says in …

Despite plenty of bad weather, consumers shopped up a storm in January, giving stores plenty of good news. Kantar Retail reports that same-store sales grew by 4.9% in January, compared with the somewhat ho-hum gain of 3.2% in December. And the International Council of Shopping Centers, which tracks a slightly different group of stores, says its index grew by 4.8%. Experts say the stronger-than-expected results for some stores—on the heels of disappointing December, which followed a hot November--suggest that this recovery may continue to lurch along in this up-a-little, up-a-lot fashion for some time. "It's been volatile and …

What can consumers expect from Honeycomb -- Google's forthcoming mobile platform designed specifically to dethrone Apple's iPad? For one, smarter widgets, reports GigaOm. "These information-at-a-glance apps are based on collections of data, which can be grouped and there are several new navigation methods supported," the tech blog writes. "Expect to see more information faster, without opening up an app, as a result." Improved notifications are also on the way. "Gone is the pull-down notification shade used by earlier Android versions." What's more, Honeycomb will boost the graphics capability of consumers' tablets (and potentially other mobile devices) with its new …

AFCV Holdings has agreed to buy publicly traded Answers.com for $127 million. A Summit Partners portfolio company, AFCV is paying more than double Answers’ initial pricing of $5 per share when it made its IPO back in 2004. The Israel-based Answers.com hosts a varied selection of Q&A forums on its website, as Vator News points out. Its WikiAnswers product lets users pose questions to the community, which anyone can answer, edit, while ReferenceAnswers is a forum where questions are answered by editors. Video Answers maintains a library of some 200,000 videos in more than 200 categories, allowing users to …

Don't think of Microsoft as a social standout? Well, according to the software giant, its Windows Live Messenger is now responsible for driving over 2.8 billion minutes of Facebook. What's more, the volume of Facebook chat powered by Windows Live Messenger has almost doubled since Microsoft first shared usage statistics in November 2010, when the figure was at just 1.5 billion minutes. "The number of Messenger customers who have connected Messenger to Facebook has grown over 75% to nearly 18 million people," boasts Windows Live group program manager Piero Sierra. What's more, as Softpedia notes, Microsoft is expecting Messenger …

Condé Nast-owned social media service Reddit just broke the billion monthly page-view barrier. "That's up 300% from a year ago and a 20% increase from just last month," according to Mashable. To be exact, Reddit racked up 1,000,404,480 page-views last month. All those page-views, meanwhile, were generated from just 13.75 million absolute unique visitors, which accounted for a total of 68.11 million visits. "A big reason why Reddit can generate so many pageviews from so few people is that the average person checks out 14.7 pages per visit and stays on the site on average for 15 minutes and …

WPP's Mindshare unit just announced a restructuring of its management team in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), splitting the region's leadership into three distinct teams, reporting to Global CEO Dominic Proctor. The regional leaders, respectively, are: Christof Baron, Jed Glanvill, and Ton Schoonderbeek. All are current Mindshare execs.

Advertising for TV station Web sites grew 14% to $1.4 billion in 2010, according to a Borrell Associates report commissioned by the Television Bureau of Advertising. The report finds that online revenues now represent 6% of the gross revenues of the average local broadcast TV station, up from 3.5% three years ago. The report projects that TV stations will see their online ad sales grow 17% in 2011.

Hard Rock International has named Brian Klein head of marketing for Hard Rock Hotels & Casinos. He will oversee Hard Rock Hotels & Casinos brand and individual properties, and report to John Galloway, VP and CMO, Hard Rock International. Most recently Klein was regional director of marketing for Hyatt Hotels Corporation overseeing field marketing, including development of regional and local marketing strategies and management of tactics. Hard Rock International’s Hotels & Casinos segment comprises 15 hotels/casinos worldwide.