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My 2 featured articles for the week ending Nov. 18, 2005:

Archived blogs for the week of November 14, 2005

1043 - November 17, 2005 - 10.08 AM EST

Number of Internet shoppers growing

According to a new research brief published by Coremetrics, the number of Internet shoppers who buy goods on eCommerce sites continues to grow, and many of those users browse and purchase during their work day, on company time.

Surprisingly, according to the study, the biggest increases in Internet shopping for the past two years were seen in office supplies and stationery, electronics, photos and photo supplies, home furnishings, prescriptions and greeting cards, jewelry and watches.

Browsing at online retailer sites has increased almost a full hour over the past two years. In 2003, the average shopper spent 2.4 hours shopping online, the 2005 survey records an average 3.1 hours per week.

Twenty-one percent of shoppers count purchases from Internet sites as part of their overall shopping, not a supplement to in-store buys. That's a six point increase over 2003.

Posted on Businessblog™

1042 - November 16, 2005 - 3.30 PM EST

Google helping eCommerce shoppers

Safa Rashtchy, research analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co. says "Google will be a Craigslist on steroids, a very potent and dangerous challenge to where eBay wants to go".

Google would like Internet users to search to acquire anything from anyone and anywhere.

While eBay has brought millions into online commerce, it is still too complicated for sellers who balk at the listing process and for buyers who don’t want purchase from someone located far away, he adds.

Craigslist Inc.’s CraigsList.com has pioneered a new form of e-commerce, which Rashtchy and others call “e-commerce 3.0,” that connects consumers with sellers of products and services in local communities.

Posted on Businessblog™

1041 - November 16, 2005 - 10.32 AM EST

Yahoo launches Shoposphere

Yesterday, Yahoo launched its beta version of its social commerce site, the Shoposphere. The site will allow users to browse listings of products, called "Pick Lists," that other users have created, as well as integrate the service with Yahoo's other social software offerings.

The search engine in recent months has branched out into social networking, with the purchase of Flickr in March and its Yahoo 360 Web log service. Shoposphere users will be able to share their lists in a variety of ways, including through the Web site itself, throughout Yahoo Shopping, and via e-mail. RSS feeds of Pick Lists can also be generated that friends and family can subscribe to.

"We believe the community of shoppers is one of the best sources for product information and advice," Yahoo Shopping product manager David Beach said. He noted that the application would evolve to become "a hub for other types of user-generation content."

Posted on Businessblog™

1040 - November 15, 2005 - 7.20 AM EST

Smarter.com expands in Japan and China

Yesterday, Smarter.com announced the launch of new comparison shopping search engines in Japan and China. Smarter.com is the first U.S. comparison shopping search engine to launch in both Japan and China.

It is also the first comparison shopping search website to be available in the three largest Internet markets by number of users, in the U.S., China and Japan. “Our objective in both Japan and China is to help consumers make smarter buying decisions about which products to buy, and which retailers to buy those products from.

We believe that Asia represents a huge growth opportunity for Smarter.com, and we are prepared to invest substantial resources to become market leaders in both China and Japan,” said Harry Tsao, co-founder of Smarter.com.

Japan is widely acknowledged as the second largest online shopping market in the world, while China has the potential to become the country with the largest online audience in the world, surpassing the U.S. within five years.

Posted on Businessblog™

1039 - November 14, 2005 - 4.53 PM EST

Yahoo intensifying its war against Google

Yahoo wants to increase its fight against Google, and is now focussing on social media, a phenomenon that allows users to create their own entertainment and share it with anyone else. Yahoo's conversion to social media was largely caused by its March acquisition of Flickr, a rapidly-growing photo-sharing site.

Flickr has 1.5 million users, who have uploaded more than 60 million photos to the site. Some 80 percent of those photos are public, meaning that anyone can look at them, and more than half have been "tagged" with user-created labels, making them searchable.

To use Flickr is to belong to the culture of participation sweeping the Web -- where you write your own blog, produce your own podcast, and post your personal photos for all to see. For new parent Yahoo, Flickr is helping to ignite a larger strategy by providing it with fresh insights into how it might leverage its existing relationships with its 191 million registered users.

What would happen if Yahoo could form deep, lasting, Flickr-like bonds with all its users -- and get them to apply tags not just to photos, but to the entire Web? For one thing, the company could make a lot more money. More rabid users mean more ads and more premium subscriptions such as Flickr Pro, whose users pay $25 a year to take their photo-uploading allowance from 20 megabytes to 2 gigabytes a month.

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Such user fees account for 13 percent of Yahoo's revenues. Together, ads and fees added up to $3.8 billion in revenues and $1.2 billion in profits for the first nine months of this year. It's a strategy that comes right from the top. Social media "is going to be a gigantic piece of what we do," says Yahoo CEO Terry Semel.

"I don't think old media is what people are going to spend most of their time doing on the Internet. This paradigm needs its own inventions, its own methods, its own way to go forward."

That doesn't mean Yahoo is ignoring traditional mass media -- quite the opposite, in fact -- but when it comes to the future of social media on the Web, Semel is winning praise for being one of Silicon Valley's savviest CEOs. You can read more on how Yahoo is trying to steal market share from Google here.

Posted on Businessblog™

1038 - November 14, 2005 - 1.51 PM EST

Seekport relaunching its search engine in Europe

Seekport is re-launching its search engine in five European countries. In the process, it is introducing a number of new extra features.

Seekport users in Germany, the UK, Spain, France and Italy can now focus their search on news, blogs and specific reference material. Or, they can do a search for pictures and a variety of products.

In addition, the site can display results from several search areas simultaneously in separate columns, with results from these different categories now identified by display icons. Seekport has also introduced a preview window that lets users take a brief look at individual search results without having to exit the results page. It is also possible by a single click to view all hits simultaneously in preview format.

Posted on Businessblog™

Copyright © Serge Thibodeau 2005. All rights reserved.

All views and opinions expressed on this blog are those of Serge Thibodeau only and are not representative of any company listed. All slogans, trademarks, text or logo representation used or referred to on this blog are the property of their respective owners.