Holiday Shoppers To Spend More Of Their Budgets Online
More people will continue to choose to buy their gifts online this holiday season, citing convenience, time saving and price as the primary reasons for shopping on the Internet, according to a new survey from Nielsen Online.More than half (53%) of consumers say price is the reason to buy online, compared to 46 percent last year. Convenience is also a major factor for shopping online with 76 percent of consumers citing the ability to shop 24 hours a day and 74 percent saying it saves them time when they shop online.
Don’t Write Online Advertising’s Obituary Just Yet
Despite the prophecies of some online media moguls, online advertising isn’t looking that bad off. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP announced today that Internet advertising revenues have reached nearly $5.9 billion for the third quarter of 2008. That’s up 11% from the previous year.
PC Magazine Says Goodbye To Print
Since PC Magazine is for the tech crowd the announcement that the publication (can’t call it a magazine anymore I guess) would cease printing a hard copy and be a strictly online operation isn’t a surprise.
Attorney General Sues A Washington SEO Firm
An attorney general is suing a Redmond-based e-commerce service providing company, which had faltered on its promises of bringing up Web Traffic for a number of small businesses, driving many customers to file complaints. Attorney General Rob McKenna reportedly stated that, “When it comes to Internet search results, every small business wants to pull a high ranking. Merchants hoping to increase their online sales paid thousands of dollars to Visible.net and Captures.com but didn’t always receive the top listings and other services they were promised.”
Facebook, MySpace Beneficial To Teens
Teens who use social media such as MySpace and Facebook are not just wasting time, they are in fact developing important social and technical skills online, according to new research from the MacArthur Foundation.
Where Twitterers Go to Complain
Kvetch is a site that displays "Kvetches," or funny complaints that are sent to it via Twitter. One "Kvetch" is displayed at a time on the site’s home page, and you can either give it a thumbs up or thumbs down.
Google’s Lively Receives A Death Sentence
So much for the idea of a second Second Life. Lively, launched by Google this July, has already been deemed something of a failure, and the search giant’s issued a notice that it will more or less kill the collection of virtual rooms at the end of December.
Yahoo Glues Together Relevancy
Yahoo has released the beta version of a new service called Yahoo Glue. What Yahoo Glue does is piece together results from different popular sites and bring them to you on one page. For example, a search for an NFL team will bring up results from Wikipedia, Yahoo Sports (including stats, rosters, schedules, etc), YouTube, Yahoo Maps, Yelp, Flickr, Yahoo Groups, and Yahoo Answers.
Do You Have a Problem with Live Blogging?
Barry Schwartz posted something of a rant at Search Engine Roundtable after an unnamed blogger attacked the site’s live blogging coverage of PubCon:
Net Neutrality A Likely Reality In 2009
Once the election smoke has cleared, Congress appears poised to pass Network Neutrality legislation. With promises from the Obama campaign about upholding neutrality principles, any remaining FCC opposition will be left standing out on a weak limb.