It's so small you can make it part of your packaging!

What's the primary use case for a beacon? Inside GPS >> push an ad? What's the growth of beacon usage? Is it primarily US or international?

"alerting a staff member of a users presence" - this. Imagine Open Table providing restaurants with data on the full life-cycle of a user, from search to interest to being seated (and at what table). They could in turn tie that data and the resulting review to who the server was at that table as well as what the user ordered, not just what they took a picture of. Who knows whether restaurants would be able to leverage such data, but the idea of it is interesting.

@dannynewman Looks awesome, and excited to see the prices on these coming down fast! Right now the bulk order is the same price as the starter kit though. Even when I put in 10,000 , the $/beacon was still $12

we've done quite a lot of experimentation & prototyping w/ beacons this past year at IDEO. our work has centered not around employees being notified of the presence & location of a user, but rather an environment responding, accordingly, to the user. i.e. how might my environment surface relevant information for me or respond, accordingly, to my needs or preferences w/o me having to dig into my pocket & open an app. apps listen for beacon events at all times — even when closed & not backgrounding — so user interaction is not required. (also, congrats on the product launch, danny!)

I think the *primary* use case is context for an app/user. How close is user X to beacon Y. This creates a lot of really interesting use cases. There are user facing scenarios as well as examples that look at real world analytics of pathing, dwell time, repeat visits, etc. The early and obvious uses are pushing ads/messages to phones as someone comes into proximity of a beacon. "$1 off Ritz Crackerfuls" as you walk down the cracker aisle. Another interesting use is non user facing, not sending a push notification, but instead alerting a staff member of a users presence. You walk into the electronics section and a staff member gets a notification "Micah has just entered the electronics section, he loves new gadgets". Like you mention, indoor location is another HUGE area for this tech. You can create indoor positioning, wayfinding, and routing over any number of floors, something that GPS just can't do. (we do a lot of this in malls, stadiums, etc.) Where we see the biggest growth right now is "real world attribution". Micah was researching a product online, and then went to a retail store 2 days later. Or Micah saw this ad, and came into the restaurant 4 hours later. The last year beacon usage has grown significantly. Late 2013/early 2014, brands and retailers were testing things out, small proof of concepts. By the middle of the year though, they started doing full on rollouts and I see this continuing to accelerate both in the US and internationally.

Thanks Burton! Let's definitely chat about what you guys are up to, I'd love to hear more. I think you will be especially interested in some of our work around changing digital displays (TV's, jumbotrons, etc.) and even audio (what songs should be playing) for this individual or current group of people in this location at this time. Also doing cool stuff around pre-ordering where customer orders go in at the appropriate time to keep hot items hot and cold items cold. Customers can then just walk right in and pick up their order, and the payment is processed, all without a customer taking out their phone. Lets chat soon!

We're super excited about this new beacon design! We released our "commercial grade" Model X (5 year battery life, weatherproof, secure) beacon earlier this year and have tons of great feedback and huge deployments. We also heard that people wanted a super tiny beacon they could use in displays, packaging, attach it backpacks and laptops, etc. So we listened and built the Model O! I'd love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions.