Americans Elect, a platform that set out with the hope of becoming the first online presidential primary in U.S. history, has failed to field a candidate for the 2012 race to the White House.

None of the 52 possible candidates — not even popular mavericks such as Rep. Ron Paul and Gov. Buddy Roemer — gathered enough support to make it to the online convention process scheduled for June, per the platform’s rules. Americans Elect had previously delayed the convention, reportedly because of the unusually long Republican primary.

Ileana Watchel, the group’s national press secretary, announced in a statement Thursday afternoon that Americans Elect would not alter its procedures any further to accomodate the current top candidates.

“Americans Elect, from the outset, has been a rules-based process, with the rules publicly available and open to debate by the delegates,” wrote Watchel. “The rules, as developed in consultation with the Americans Elect delegates, are clear.

“As of this week, no candidate achieved the national support threshold required to enter the Americans Elect Online Convention in June. The primary process for the Americans Elect nomination has come to an end.”

Americans Elect is not a political party, but rather a vehicle for getting presidential and vice presidential candidates on ballots nationwide through a process that lived almost entirely online.

The idea, according to the organizers, is to capitalize on the Internet’s ability to connect like-minded people to disrupt the two-party system and revolutionize how the American political system works.

“The number-one goal is to produce a presidential ticket of great quality that wouldn’t normally be able to run under the party primary [structure],” Chief Technology Officer Josh Levine told Mashable in February.

Americans Elect has thousands of participants and a line on the ballot in 29 states for the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

Users can support either “declared” candidates, who acknowledge they’re running on the Americans Elect ballot, or “draft” candidates, who haven’t made that decision.

The top declared candidate is former Louisiana Governor Buddy Romer, whose campaign went all-in on Americans Elect after failing to make headway in the Republican nominating contest. The top draft candidate is Ron Paul, who is still running for the Republican nomination.

SEE ALSO: Buddy Roemer Wants to Be the Internet’s First Presidential Candidate

Some, including Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig, have hailed Americans Elect as a solution to what they view as a broken political system. Others have expressed concern about its funding sources.

CEO Kahlil Byrd announced the failure of any one candidate to pass the threshold on Tuesday. However, he added that the organization’s leadership would take two days to discuss whether to alter the process. A statement he released read in part:

. . .as of today, no candidate has reached the national support threshold required to enter the ‘Americans Elect Online Convention’ this June,” read Byrd’s statement. “Because of this, under the rules that AE delegates ratified, the primary process would end today. There is, however, an almost universal desire among delegates, leadership and millions of Americans who have supported Americans Elect to see a credible candidate emerge from this process. Americans Elect will announce the results of [our] conversations on Thursday, May 17.

Do you think an entirely-online political primary could work in the future? Tell us why or why not in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, pagadesign

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Everyone’s talking about the Facebook IPO — and for good reason.

Facebook is currently valued at around $100 billion, though it made less than $4 billion in revenue last year. Still, if the social network with more than 901 million users plays its cards right, it could be the world’s first $1 trillion company by 2014.

The Facebook IPO is slated for Friday. New investors can potentially buy around 421 million shares of Facebook stock at $38 a pop.

The big question is: should you buy Facebook stock while it’s hot? Multiple financial experts told us no — at $38 per share, the stock is overpriced.

Former NYU Stern School of Business finance professor Kenneth Froewiss believes adding Facebook to a portfolio early on is risky for experienced pros and investment amateurs alike. It’s like playing the lottery, he says.

“Even for those individuals with above-average net worth, purchasing shares at an IPO, especially a ‘hot’ one that has been widely hyped, is rarely a good idea,” Froewiss says.

“Might someone on occasion reap a tremendous windfall by doing so? Yes, but then again, on occasion someone wins the lottery. That does not make the lottery a great investment in general.”

Factors that can affect Facebook stock are legion. The current excitement about the company’s stock market debut doesn’t guarantee long-term interest or success.

“In my experience this stock and its IPO has seen more enthusiasm than any other I have seen over my 40 years of investment experience,” says Lewis Altfest, Ph.D., CEO of NYC-based Altfest Personal Wealth Management.

The social network’s success or failure may lie in its ability to conquer the mobile space — which is growing faster than the company is adapting. Post-IPO, Facebook will have to ramp up its mobile ads to push profits.

Facebook reported $205 million in the first quarter of 2012 — down from December’s high of $302 million. “Revenue in the last quarter was actually off quarter-to-quarter,” Altfest says. “They have to deliver revenue growth. Over a longer period, they will have to deliver earnings.”

Altfest advises average consumers wait at least six months. He warns in the following weeks after the IPO, demand will cause stock prices to stay high, which is normal for an IPO debut. But it may eventually fall.

“Even in stocks there are laws of gravity,” he says. “Take a deep breath and come back in six months.”

Joshua Gans, professor at University at Toronto’s School of Management, advises people do nothing instead. “All of the uncertainties surrounding Facebook will not get resolved in the six months,” Gans says. “We’ll only know a decade from now whether it has a permanent place in the economy like Microsoft.”

Microsoft traded at $22 per share at its IPO in 1986. Now it’s $61 per share.

SEE ALSO: Facebook Meets Wall Street: How the IPO Stacks Up With Tech’s Titans

“There’s a scenario where Facebook clearly becomes the next Google or Apple, but there’s also a scenario where it simply does not and it ends up more like Yahoo,” Gans tells Mashable.

A safer alternative is buying into an index fund such as the S&P 500 instead of buying Facebook shares directly. Owners of an index fund can reap the benefits of the entire stock index doing well — without suffering sudden losses when a company’s stock tanks.

“Facebook will eventually be included in that, and it will be part of an index fund and you can buy it that way,” Gans says.

Some financial experts see Facebook as a good buy now. Lubos Pastor, finance professor at the University of Chicago, says it’s financially beneficial for investors to buy shares at IPO price. After the price of public shares rise, users have “historically earned subpar returns”, he says.

“However, the poor average post-IPO returns have been driven mostly by small firms, so it is quite possible that a large firm like Facebook will turn out to be a good investment,” Pastor says.

What do you hope Facebook has in store after going public? Sound off in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, blackred, Infographic by Statista

More About: Business, Facebook, facebook ipo, Social Media

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If you’re interested in buying HTC’s new flagship Android phone the One X or the brand new EVO 4G LTE for Sprint, you may be waiting a while.

Shipments of both phones has been delayed in U.S. customs due to a “review of shipments that is required after an ITC exclusion order.”

The ITC exclusion order in question dates back to last year when HTC was accused of violating 10 Apple patents. A judge ruled in favor of Apple on two of those claims, and handed down a limited exclusion order at the end of last year prohibiting devices that infringed on the patent from being imported into the U.S.

The patent infringement in question in this case is giving users the ability to click on a phone number on a webpage or email to call that number. In an official statement HTC acknowledged the issue and indicated it is working with customs officials on getting the handsets in stores.

“We believe we are in compliance with the ruling and HTC is working closely with customs to secure approval. HTC One X and HTC EVO 4G LTE have both received enthusiastic support and we appreciate customers patience as we work to get these products into their hands as soon as possible.”

While the court ruling came down last year, it only started being enforced on April 19 -– the idea being that the court was giving HTC time to comply with the order. Even if the phones are in compliance with the ITC ruling they would still need to be inspected before they could be sold.

The HTC One X was released on May 6 on AT&T and is currently labeled as “out of stock” of AT&T’s website.

The EVO 4G LTE was expected to be released on Sprint on May 18. While Sprint has acknowledged that the phone is delayed it has not, however, given a date that customers who order the phone -– or those just interested in buying it – can get the device.

Delivery of pre-ordered phones are on hold. U.S. customers who don’t want to wait can cancel their existing order by calling 866-789-8292.

Each phone in the One line has received enthusiastic positive reviews. The One line also includes the HTC One S, which is currently available –- and not being held by customs -– on T-Mobile.

More About: apple, att, htc

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Dan Wilkerson is a social media project manager at LunaMetrics, a Google Analytics certified partner that also specializes in social media, search engine optimization, and PPC. You can follow him on Twitter @notdanwilkerson or at @LunaMetrics.

For years now, marketers, businesses and, well, everybody have touted QR codes as the next big thing. That’s largely because QR codes offered a glimmer of the future, a way to bring physical interactions into the much more malleable (and trackable) digital space. But despite the overwhelming push by marketers to stick a QR code on anything they are publishing, marketing, and eating (yes, eating), there’s been increasing skepticism about its real-world use.

The skeptics have some pretty good facts on their side. In 2011, a Forrester Research study pegged adoption of QR codes by U.S. adults at 5%, up from a meager 1% the year before. Then, in April, a Temkin Group study found that only 24% of U.S. adults are using these codes, a statistic that is a little encouraging but still tepid. These figures coupled with some serious dismal marketing anecdotes might make you think QR codes are ineffective, and you’d be right. Here’s why.

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1. Worthless Content

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From a marketing perspective, QR codes offer obvious value and they’re easy to create, cheap, trackable, and open up a world of possibilities for consumer-product interactions. From the consumer side, however, the value is not as clear. Scanning a code is cumbersome and costs the consumer time and effort. Plus, its value is unknown. Worse still, 90% of the time it’s a link to a website not optimized for mobile. Now you’ve frustrated the consumer and wasted their time, which creates negative sentiment.

This is why you must provide the consumer with a valuable reason to scan the code. Consider a significant discount, the first chapters of a book, a free drink at the bar, even a space-specific YouTube video. What you don’t do is use it as a link to your website or Facebook page. That will only annoy your customer.

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2. Consumer Awareness

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The biggest problem that QR codes have is that consumers consistently have demonstrated that they don’t have a clue what they are. An ArchRival study of college students found that out of 534 of our nation’s best and brightest, 78.5% didn’t know how to scan a QR code.

Marketers are so excited by the potential and intrigued by the concept that they’ve totally forgotten that consumers are not marketers. Marketers watch ads, click sponsored tweets, and yes, scan QR codes because they have a natural curiosity and passion for brand marketing. But the average consumer needs a marketer to outline to them what action it is they are supposed to take. When it comes to a QR code that means tell them what it is.

Consider including a simple list of instructions with a recommended app spelling out how to use the code itself. If you coupled that with compelling content, you’ll introduce consumers to the concept of QR codes as well as how to take advantage of them.

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3. Value as a Medium

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The other consideration that is often ignored is the intrinsic value of the code as a piece of media itself. More often than not, QR codes are used as a simple link to a company website or specific landing page. The thought process being that it saves users the trouble of entering a complicated URL. This would be true if all a user had to do was wave their device over the code.

However, let’s consider the user’s side of things. In order to scan a barcode, a user has to: 1. Get out their phone; 2. Unlock their phone; 3. Boot the app; 4. Get the code in focus and scan it. This is assuming they already have an app that scans barcodes. For most users, it’s faster to just search Google for whatever the code is giving them a shortcut to.

To address this issue, use a six-to-ten-second guide as a rule of thumb for determining usefulness. If you’re not saving your target at least that much time, scrap the code.

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4. Location, Location, Location

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Location is another important consideration. QR codes are showing up everywhere, on everything, with seemingly zero thought about context. (For some interesting use-cases, check out WTFQRCODES.) For instance, besides being impossible to scan, QR codes on highway billboards are dangerous and waste valuable visual real estate. A shortened URL, especially one created with a vanity URL shortener, would be easier and more effective.

Likewise, QR codes on company vehicles don’t really make much of an impact either, and those are mostly going to be parked directly outside of your business anyways. And QR codes on subway ads are useless too since there’s no data connection for users to load your page. The examples only get stranger from there.

The best solution is to walk through your implementation in a real-world scenario to make sure it will actually be useable.

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5. Aesthetics

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QR codes are ugly. Worse still, they’re indistinguishable from codes used for industrial purposes. So a code on a product can be misinterpreted as a tracking barcode instead of a marketing outlet. The good news is they don’t have to be ugly.

With a little Photoshop, you can round off the corners of the ugly blocks, giving a sleek feel to the code, and it will still scan. You can also generate codes with up to 30% redundancy, meaning you can remove 30% of the code and instead put your company logo or information about what it unlocks directly into the code. Use a URL shortener to make the code even more manageable and trackable in tools like Google Analytics.

There are some limitations to this, since certain parts of codes are integral and can’t be deleted, but it really opens up the creative opportunities for some awesome design work. Better still, you can delete portions of the code to shape it into something else entirely, like a letter in your brand name, or even your logo. The gist is you can make it pretty.

So now you know why your QR codes are a failure and how to fix them. Of course, many are quick to point out that NFC devices are on the horizon and will probably displace these ugly little blocks. Given the encouraging uptick in adoption and the low cost of implementation of QR, however, there’s reason to believe that they will become much more relevant before NFC is fully implemented. The guidelines above will help you make the most out of that opportunity.

1. Flying QR Codes

"Look! In the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life!"

Click here to view this gallery.

Do you think QR codes have a place in a marketing plan? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

More About: contributor, features, mobile marketing, online marketing, QR Codes

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