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Predictions for 2009

January 6, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I just posted Josh Catone’s Top 15 Stories of 2008 on my blog a few minutes ago and then stumbled upon his predictions for 2009, I figured this was worthy of posting as well. 

I think that Josh has hit the nail on the head again w/ this article.  I share his belief that technologies like Twitter and Facebook can’t be ignored by developers going into 2009.  We owe it to our clients to provide them with the best tools to tap into these social networks.

It’s that time of the year again. As we noted earlier in the week, nothing is more fun for tech bloggers than looking ahead to next year and trying to predict the future. Prediction posts are an annual tradition in the blogosphere, and we enjoy doing them.

So below are eight prognostications for the new year in web tech. Of course, if you saw our list of 2008’s top stories, you’ll know that reality is often too wacky to predict — and that A LOT happens in a single year. Remember to check out how we did with last year’s predictions, as well. And let us know in the comments what you think 2009 has in store for the web.

Note: I use the corporate “we” in this post, but these predictions are really just my own and not those of anyone else at SitePoint. So, don’t blame them for the terrible lack of foresight!

1. Twitter gets a business model.
Twitter has a bunch of different options when it comes to monetization. Targeted ads in the Twitter stream based on what you tweet about, built in micro payments, charging high volume users, charging developers to use the API, etc. Twitter may try some or all of these options, but we think the most likely path to monetization is in corporate accounts. When SitePoint ran our highly successful and well publicized book giveaway via Twitter, it was only really made possible because we were able to get on Twitter’s white list and send a large number of direct messages without being blocked. Prior to getting on that list, things didn’t go nearly as smoothly. That’s the sort of added functionality that only corporate accounts would likely need, and that Twitter could charge for.

2. Lifestreaming gets big, but not via FriendFeed.
FriendFeed made a huge impact over the past year among the early adopter crowd, but lifestreaming hasn’t quite made its way into the mainstream. People are just now beginning to regularly use enough social services at once — YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Digg, blogging — that aggregation will start to make sense. In 2009, it will be commonplace to publish your online life in a single stream, but it will be done via Facebook.

3. The Web OS will really start to become a reality.
The Web OS race is on. In 2009 we’ll start to see the vision really begin to coalesce from major players like Adobe (Flash, Flex, AIR), Google (Chrome, Gears, Native Client), and Microsoft (Silverlight, Live Mesh), among others.

4. Some really great stuff will come out of Yahoo!, but it won’t be enough to save them.
Yahoo! has been doing some awesome stuff by opening up their search results and most popular pages and applications by making them more social and giving developers more hooks. That’s the sort of thing that will ultimately make the web a better place, but unfortunately it won’t be enough to save Yahoo! on Wall Street. Their stock will continue to slide, unless they sign a big search deal with Microsoft or sell their search business outright to focus on the content/platform side.

5. Chrome will take at least 5% but not more than 10% of the browser market by year’s end.
Google’s browser, now out of beta and being actively promoted by Google, will take at least 5% of the browser market by year’s end and as much as 10%. IE will continue to decline with both Chrome and Mozilla Firefox on the scene, but Chrome will actually cause Mozilla’s growth to stall, and will probably even steal some market share from Firefox once it supports extensions.

6. Microsoft Office will make people comfortable with web applications.
When Microsoft pushes out a web-based version of Office, users in the mainstream will finally start to become comfortable will web apps. Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets apps have certainly already pushed a fair number of people in that direction, but Microsoft will have a vastly bigger impact on the adoption of web applications by mainstream users. Their software + services vision will emerge in 2009 as the clear future of software.

7. Facebook takes over the web.
Well, not literally. But Facebook will continue to grow in size worldwide, and will finally over take MySpace as the biggest social network in the US. A lot of the cool web applications that early adopters love, such as FriendFeed, will reach the mainstream as features of Facebook, and Facebook Connect will help spread the Facebook brand by entangling it with other popular sites on the web that people know and trust. The company will also expand their search deal with Microsoft and make web search integration more prominent and more powerful. For many users, Facebook will become their default search engine in 2009, and this will pave the way for an IPO in 2010.

8. Palm will surprise everyone at CES
Palm’s new entry into the smartphone market will be very impressive. The Nova operating system will look like something that could challenge Android, Blackberry, and the iPhone in the mobile market, but success will depend on the hardware.

 

SitePoint » What’s On Tap: Predictions for 2009

Filed Under: E-Commerce, Social Media / Web 2.0, Web Development, Web Hosting, Wireless

Top 15 Stories of 2008

January 6, 2009 By 3 Comments

I am a big fan of SitePoint, they not only put out some great resource books for web developers and hosting companies, but they also have a great list of contributors that post some great content. 

I was reading their newsletter today and found the Top 15 Web Tech Stories posted by Josh Catone and thought that it was worthy of reposting. This is definitely a comprehensive look back at the year 2008 and all that we saw happen within our industry and kudos to Josh for putting together a great piece.

2008 was an eventful year on the web. From Yahoo! spurning Microsoft to Google launching both a browser and a cell phone (sort of), there was a lot to write about this year. Even though I only started writing about web technology news for SitePoint starting in July, I’ve actually been writing about this stuff all year. So it was fun and interesting to take a look back at everything that’s happened this year on the web, and try to pick out the top 15 stories. Below are my selections, along with plenty of links to further reading material to keep you busy. It’s a lengthy post, but it was a long and action packed year.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy reading this year-end recap as much as I did creating it. Let us know if any big stories were left off the list that you think should have been included by leaving a note in the comments at the end of this post. These are presented in no particular order (but numbered for readability).

1. The US Presidential Campaign

The Internet played a huge role in the presidential election in the United States in 2008. No only did more people than ever turn to the web for election information, the Internet also allowed candidates to raise incredible amounts of money from small donors and build powerful grassroots networks that were never before possible. US President-Elect Barack Obama in particular was able to build a campaign on the back of this emerging political long tail and energize people who were not easily reachable using previous methods of organizing and fundraising.

The second episode of the new SitePoint Podcast was dedicated to the effect of the Internet on electoral politics.

2. Yahoo! Turns Down Microsoft

On February 1, 2008 Microsoft made a $44.6 billion takeover offer of Yahoo!. A couple of week’s later Yahoo! would reject that offer — a move that might go down in the annals of company history as their second worst decision (the first being not buying Google in 2002 for $5 billion) and ultimately led to CEO Jerry Yang stepping down in November. Yahoo! tried to sign an advertising deal with Google a few months later that would have outsourced their search ad sales to the more popular search engine, but that went south when the US Department of Justice got interested in the potential antitrust implications.

Rumors still run rampant about Microsoft potentially coming to the table again, purchasing just a piece of Yahoo!, or offering their own search advertising deal, but one thing is for sure: Yahoo!’s market cap is now less than half of what Microsoft offered to spend to acquire the company.

3. Apple’s iPhone App Store is a Huge Success

iPhone debuted the App Store for their iPhone device in July of 2008 and it has been an undeniable success. Analysts predict that next year the App Store will be a $1.2 billion business for Apple, and we reported in August that many developers are doing quite well writing software for the phone platform full-time.

The iPhone platform now has over 10,000 applications, but we’ve wondered how many of them are worth your time and money. More importantly, we’ve wondered if the Apple model for the App Store is really good for consumers. Closed platforms like Apple’s, in which one company is the ultimate gatekeeper, are ultimately a bad thing for the web.

Regardless, iPhone users should not miss our list of 5 awesome iPhone productivity apps.

4. Google Delivers Android

Not content to let Apple have all the mobile fun, at end of last year Google launched Android, their open source mobile phone operating system. In September of this year, the first Android phone arrived, in the form of the T-Mobile G1, manufactured by HTC.

The phone hasn’t been quite the iPhone killer that pundits hoped for, but it is certainly one of the most compelling phones on the market, and because Android is open source, more “Google phones” from other handset manufacturers are sure to follow.

5. Google Releases Chrome Web Browser

The mobile web isn’t the only place Google was getting “Googley” this year. The Mountain View, California-based search giant surprised everyone in September by releasing their own web browser. Called Chrome, the open source web browser is based on the WebKit rendering engine and left beta earlier this month. Though still very rough around the edges, Chrome has already garnered as much as 1% of the browser market worldwide in just 3 months, a number that we expect to rise as important planned features — such as extensions — are added.

Chrome is specifically designed with web applications in mind, and as we’ve discussed, it is an important part of Google’s 3-pronged Web OS strategy. Along with Gears (offline data store) and Native Client (local CPU resources for web apps), Chrome gives Google a compelling platform for the delivery of web applications.

However, Chrome might be coming at the expense of Firefox, which Google has long supported. At the very least, the release of Chrome has complicated Google’s formerly warm relationship with Mozilla.

6. Microsoft Plans to Bring Office Online — Finally

Starting sometime in 2009, Microsoft will finally begin to offer a web-based version of Office. That’s a huge departure from their previous attitude toward web applications, and a somewhat surprising development considering what a cash cow the Office line of products has been for Microsoft. It is, however, in line with the new future that Microsoft has been talking up in which both the client and the cloud play complimentary roles.

“I contend it makes no sense to try to push [lots of data and processing] up the wire [to the cloud, just] so that it can come back and talk to you,” Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie told Technology Review in September. “And so, ultimately, that leads us back to what I call this composite platform, where you’ve got a balanced set of roles between what you expect the cloud to provide and what you expect the clients to provide themselves.”

In Microsoft’s vision of the future of software, web services and web-based applications rely on local client software to get more intensive processes done. That’s a future that isn’t all that different from the one that Adobe is also working toward.

7. Economic Recession

In December, the United States’ National Bureau of Economic Research officially admitted that the US has been in a recession since December 2007. The effects of that recession have been felt worldwide, including in the tech industry where over 110,000 jobs have been lost since October.

That’s some depressing stuff, and it’s putting a damper on my holiday spirit, so we’ll not spend much time on it. But if you were one of the unfortunate people who lost their job or have found yourself a few clients short as a result of the economic crisis, be sure to check out our 10 essential tips for landing your next job, as well as our list of 20 places to find your next web dev job. Also don’t miss our 12 killer ways to make extra income on the web.

We definitely wish you luck in finding a new job in 2009!

8. OpenID Gains Traction — Sort Of; So Does Facebook Connect

OpenID won some huge partners over the past year. Most impressively, Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft are all now OpenID providers. Unfortunately, that’s as far as their integration of the single sign-on standard has gone — none of them have taken the plunge to become relying parties. Further, they have each implemented OpenID in their own way creating a single sign-on war (they each want to be the de facto identity provider for the web), that is ultimately bad for consumers in our opinion.

Perhaps worse news for OpenID: according to Yahoo! research most people still have no idea what it is. And, Facebook might just eat OpenID’s lunch.

Facebook Connect, which was announced in July, is a single sign-on solution that on some level competes with OpenID. What gives is an advantage is that Facebook Connect comes with your social graph data.

“Because Facebook Connect is not just a registration system, but also a marketing channel with a built-in audience of 130 million monthly active users (according to Facebook), this program will crush competing registration systems,” wrote CNET’s Rafe Needleman about Facebook’s system. “Sites will adopt Facebook Connect for two reasons. First, their users are already actively using it; millions of users have OpenID log-ins and don’t even know it. And second, because it’s not just a registration system, it’s that marketing channel. Self-interest (on the part of site owners) wins over philosophy. Facebook gets that. That’s why it wins.”

9. The Price of Music is Now … Free?

Radiohead’s name-your-own price release of their album In Rainbows last fall set the stage for the price of music to start a decent toward zero in 2009. The success of Radiohead’s gimmick encouraged other bands to follow suit. REM streamed their new album for free on iLike, and Pennywise put their album on MySpace, as did Oasis.

But the most famous free release from 2008 was from Nine Inch Nails. Trent Reznor — who had previously experimented with alternative album release schemes with Saul Williams, a slam poet whose album he produced — put out not one, but two new albums for free on the web.

By selling value-adds, such as signed copies and deluxe DVD editions of the albums, Reznor was able to still make a considerable amount of money by self-publishing his music online and giving it away for free. Likely, he also garnered some new fans to support NIN’s 2008 tour due to the all the attention and awareness that the word “free” commands. Though Reznor had a lot of help from major labels in building his group of core fans, his success at giving away a free album was on some level a confirmation of Kevin Kelly’s theory of “true fans,” which states that artists can make a living from a small group of die-hard fans.

10. Professional Video Content Fights Back

According to comScore, Hulu — a joint venture between Fox and NBC that offers professionally created content — cracked the list of the top 10 video sites on the web in July in the tenth spot at 88 million views. A few months later in October? Hulu is now sixth and streaming 235 million videos in the US each month.

Think that worries Google? You betcha. YouTube is still way out in front, dominating the online video market with almost 40% of all video views at over 5.3 billion, but the average length of the videos that users are watching is up from 2.7 minutes per video in July to 3 minutes in October. The likely reason: Hulu.

Clearly, people are responding to professionally created content. People are becoming so used to getting their TV content on demand, via web sites like Hulu and DVRs, that we think on demand will be television’s future. Not wanting to be left behind as long-form, professional content shifts to a web distribution model, YouTube began supporting full-length video content in October.

Remember, YouTube initially rose to its dominant position on the back of professional content (like viral Saturday Night Live clips such as “D*ck in a Box”) that were uploaded to the site. Everything old is new again.

11. Firefox Hits 20% Market Share

In June, the popular Firefox web browser released its third version with the goal of setting a world record for most downloads in a 24 hour period. They definitely met that goal with a super impressive 8 million downloads over the first day of release.

More impressively, though, Firefox hit 20% browser market share for the first time over a couple of weeks in October, and has since stayed there. Unfortunately, once extensions arrive for Google’s Chrome, Firefox might start to see those numbers slip. And their relationship with Google is already starting to turn, as we noted earlier in this round up.

12. DRM Almost Dies … Almost

DRM is still here, but it’s a lot closer to dead at the end of 2008 than it was at the end of the 2007. In January, the final hold out among the major labels from Amazon’s DRM-free music store, Sony-BMG, gave in and decided to start selling music on the service without the burden of DRM. That said, Apple’s iTunes, which controls about 70% of the digital music market, still only has DRM-free tracks from one major label (EMI).

That’s less encouraging, since it has now been more than a year and a half since Steve Jobs wrote in a treatise on digital rights management: “If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store.”

However, Apple is apparently in talks with the other three major labels about offering DRM-free tracks via iTunes. Those talks may or may not come to anything, but clearly, the labels are open to selling DRM-free music, since they all now do it via companies like Amazon, MySpace, and Napster. What remains to be seen is what the labels want more: the ability to frustrate Apple (whom they don’t want controlling their digital sales channel) or pleasing their customers.

Looked at from that perspective, we’re less confident that DRM will die completely in 2009. Oh, but we’re so close!

13. Reading is Back! We Hope

The stats on reading don’t look good. Our attention spans are rapidly approaching zero, and that’s bad news for books. Or is it? Starting at the end of last year a curious thing happened: eBooks suddenly became cool. The reason? The November 2007 launch of Amazon’s Kindle eBook reader.

Amazon is projected to sell a billion dollars worth of Kindles by 2010. But the real eBook success story of 2008 might be the iPhone. As we reported in October, the iPhone and its cadre of eBook applications, is actually the most popular eBook reader. eBooks are so hot, that even Nintendo wants in on the action, and Sony is planning a huge marketing blitz in airports, train stations, and bookstores in an attempt to capitalize on Kindle shortages.

2008 might be remembered as the year that reading became cool again and books started going digital in earnest.

14. Yahoo! Gets Really Open

When it comes to Yahoo!, 2008 will be remembered in one of two ways: either as the year that the company put the final few nails in its coffin by rejecting Microsoft’s $44.6 billion takeover offer, or as the year that it began to claw its way back to the top by opening itself up to third-party developers.

First, Yahoo! launched SearchMonkey, a platform that allows developers and site owners to use structured data to enhance search results. Then came the Build Your Own Search Service, which opened up Yahoo!’s search infrastructure and allowed developers to create their own search mashups (including powerful custom site search applications).

Most recently, Yahoo! announced a brand new development platform on top of its super popular email application and MyYahoo! start page. Yahoo! is enacting its extremely ambitious plan to rewire their entire network of sites from the inside out to be more open and provide more hooks for developers. Incidentally, that’s close to what I advised that they should do a year and a half ago.

15. Everyone Has their Heads in the Cloud

The buzzword of 2008 was without a doubt, cloud computing. Early in 2008, the aggregate bandwidth of all companies using Amazon’s AWS cloud infrastructure services surpassed that of Amazon’s own sites. Amazon is a top 10 property worldwide, which means that a lot of sites are now putting their faith in Amazon’s back end services.

As is the theme of everything else on the web, if you have success, Google will eventually decide that they too want a piece of the action. 2008 saw Google become interested in offering developers cloud-based infrastructure services. In April they launched App Engine, their own cloud-based infrastructure service. According to venture capitalist Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures, App Engine is the only true cloud computing platform. For now, App Engine only supports the Python language for development, but Google plans to add support for another runtime in 2009.

Microsoft is also getting in on the cloud computing buzz, preparing a Software as a Service release of Office (as we noted earlier in this round up) and talking up their client + cloud future. However, for all the talk of the cloud, desktop apps will remain important. Why? Because the cloud will go down. That’s why companies like Yahoo!, Adobe, Microsoft, and perhaps even Google think that the future of Rich Internet Applications will very much involve the desktop.

 

SitePoint » The Top 15 Web Tech Stories of 2008

Filed Under: E-Commerce, Search Engines, Social Media / Web 2.0, Web Development, Web Hosting, Wireless Tagged With: , , , ,

Wal-Mart Website Issues

December 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I was out of state visiting family over the holidays but still managed to catch wind of this one on CNBC black friday.  It appears that Wal-Mart’s website went down due to heavy traffic and slow pageload times. There are no estimates as to how much revenue was lost during the outage but with wal-mart.com being the 21st most popular website on the web, you can assume that it’s considerable.  Here’s an excerpt from BizReport.com regarding the outage:

While many of the big stores experienced high traffic and a small amount of disruption, even Amazon.com shut down for 15 minutes, Wal-Mart came out the worst hit.

Linda Blakley, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said, “Due to a higher-than-anticipated traffic surge, we made the decision to shut down the site temporarily. The site is open for business and the problem resolved.”

Wal-Mart’s problems began early in the day. At 4.30am EST visitors were already experiencing blank pages and delays. By midday a virtual sign was tacked to their virtual door advising people to “come back later”. Not a great start to the holiday season for the 21st most popular website in the U.S.. By 2.00pm the site was up and running again, but with a noticeable delay.

Amazon.com’s problems began at around 11.00am EST when they offered the first 1,000 customers to buy an Xbox a bargain price of $100, compared to the usual retail price of around $300. The Xbox sold out in 29 seconds.

“We saw dramatically more traffic than what we anticipated,’’ Amazon spokesman Craig Berman said on Friday.

Ben Rushlo, senior manager of competitive research at Keynote Systems Inc., said retailers get better each year bracing for the volumes, but they also make their sites increasingly complex, adding 360-degree views of products and other features. Nonetheless, with the exception of Wal-Mart, online retailers were generally performing well.

“There were a few glitches here and there, minor problems,” Rushlo said.

Heavy Traffic Weighs Down Wal-Mart Website – E-commerce – BizReport

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Cyber Monday

December 1, 2008 By 2 Comments

Did you know that 84% of online retailers will be running major promotions today (the Monday following Thanksgiving)?  Due to the  economic downturn we find ourselves in this holiday season some of these retailers are depending on strong holiday sales for their mere survival.  It is for this reason I think that this years online promotions should be sweeter than ever before!

I have been watching several online retailers over the past few months pretty closely such as Ebay, Overstock.com, Amazon, and Buy.com.  These websites alone make up a huge part of the e-commerce equation and have also built a reputation as having the most heavily discounted prices online.  It’s simply where people go to find the lowest prices.

Given that I am predicting these websites to do better than average this year I have been advising all of my clients to get their products into these systems.  Ebay will allow retailers to sell their items on their popular auction website as new with “buy it now” price listings, as will Amazon.com.  The other websites like Overstock.com and Buy.com may be a little harder to get your products into though. 

I have also advised a few friends who have online retail operations to get their products listed in product aggregation portals as well, examples of these type websites are Shopzilla, etc.

I had all intentions this weekend of writing a post dedicated to Cyber Monday and where to find the best deals this holiday season but when I ran across Mark Sullivan’s article in PC World I decided to just repost that here instead.

The Monday after Thanksgiving could be a bargain hunters’ heyday this year, and you don’t even have to leave the house. Not to be outdone by the brick-and-mortar retailers’ Black Friday sales, online retailers will be offering deep discounts the following Monday, December 1, a day that’s called “Cyber Monday.”

Last year, consumers spent $733 million on Cyber Monday, and it’s expected to be even bigger this year. According to a survey by online shopping site Shopzilla for the National Retail Federation’s Shop.org, nearly 84 percent of online retailers plan to have a Cyber Monday promotion on December 1. That’s up from just 72 percent last year and zero percent in 2005, says Shop.org executive director Scott Silverman.

(Silverman’s organization actually invented Cyber Monday in late 2005 as a gimmick to jump-start online sales in the holiday season. The media soon hyped it, and while it’s not the biggest online shopping day of the year, it has certainly caught on among e-tailers.)

And there is evidence to suggest that online retailers will be trotting out even sweeter deals this year to compete for their share of consumers’ 2008 holiday spending, although that spending is expected to be much smaller than last year, which set a record for online shopping. “Retailers this year will be very aggressive pricing-wise and promotion-wise,” says TigerDirect VP of business development Bruce Matthews. “Cyber Monday was the biggest day of the year for us last year–bigger than Black Friday,” he adds.

I suggest visiting three types of sites–Cyber Monday sites, tech retailer sites, and deal aggregation sites–on December 1 to find the best prices.

Before Cyber Monday, check out GottaDeal.com, which posts “leaked” Black Friday and Cyber Monday ads from many online tech retailers. Even better, you can also lurk at the site’s Forum to find out about newly announced Cyber Monday deals as they come in. “I expect the online retailers to be sending an avalanche of info over the next 2-3 days and I’ll be adding everything to that forum for our members to discuss,” GottaDeal founder Brad Olson writes in an e-mail to PC World.

On the Big Day, stop by Shop.org’s CyberMonday.com which posts a load of information on, and links to, the day’s online deals.

Most Major Retailers Running Deals

You can also visit online retailers directly to get the deals straight from the horse’s mouth. Here’s what we know so far about the discount plans of major online tech retailers for Cyber Monday:

NewEgg.com: A representative says NewEgg.com will indeed be running Cyber Monday deals, and that shoppers should sign up for the NewEgg newsletter to find out about the deals in advance. Just type in your e-mail address at the site, and they’ll send you the tip sheet.

TigerDirect: The company is not divulging brand names, but promises to have deals on HDTVs (a 32-inch HDTV for $450, a 40-incher for $700), and on PCs, notebooks, GPS gear, cameras, printers, components, and more. Tiger Direct’s Matthews says customers will be saving anywhere from $100 to $300 on each deal.

BestBuy.com: A PR person tells me they’re planning a two-day Cyber Monday sale that begins Sunday. Best Buy isn’t divulging the details of the sale, saying only that it will offer free shipping “across several product categories.”

Overstock.com: A spokesperson says the company will be offering free shipping site-wide, special discounts on TVs, and an “extra 10 percent off” cameras and camcorders.

Dell.com: Dell will be holding a sale on home PCs and peripherals on December 1, featuring PC’s as low as $300. No further information is available until the day of the sale.

Staples.com: The site will be offering deals on selected Envision HDTVs, Hewlett-Packard PCs, Xerox printers, Magellan GPS systems, Nikon digital SLR cameras, and numerous accessories.

Kmart.com: You’ll find TomTom and Magellan GPS navigation systems heavily discounted. The site will offer free shipping on orders of more than $29.

Target.com: A spokesperson says that Target.com will be offering free shipping on more than 60,000 products (including some electronics), starting November 30 and ending December 13.

Buy.com: This site will have sales on at least one HDTV ($1000 off one 52-incher, brand unknown), and on GPS navigation systems and various PC peripherals, plus deep discounts on some printers. For many of these items, it will throw in free shipping as well.

Check Out the Deal Sites

It’s a also good idea to check out a few deal aggregator sites on Cyber Monday. Hundreds of these sites out are there now, but these are the ones I think do the best job with tech stuff:

Finally, A Little Advice

When bargain hunting on the Web for tech products (or anything else), it’s very important to do your homework, not just to find the best prices out there, but to make sure that the “bargain price” you’re getting is based on a real–and not an inflated–list price. Twenty-five percent off a list price that’s already been jacked up 25 percent isn’t much of a deal. For more information and tips on online tech shopping, see our Senior Editor Denny Arar’s take on the subject.

A lot of people will be getting up early and fighting the crowds at the mall for that special deal on Black Friday. With everything you know now, you can spend Friday at home finishing off the turkey, and do your gadget shopping at work on (Cyber) Monday morning.

A ‘Cyber Monday’ Tech Shopping Primer – PC World

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Shopping Discounts on Twitter

November 30, 2008 By 2 Comments

If you are like me, you are probably going to spend some time over the next few days doing some Christmas shopping online.  If so, I have stumbled onto something pretty cool inside the Twitter social network, just follow couponer and they will keep you up to date w/ the latest specials and discounts from many of the top tier online retailers. 

Just today I see that there are discounts on Sears.com, Guitar Hero 3, The Gap, Eastbay, Sony, Wine.com, and one of my wife’s favorites, Duck Duck Goose!  Oh, and kudos to these online retailers for doing what they can to make the most out of social networking!

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Tips For Online Retailers

November 20, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Mike from Webpronews posted some great tips he picked up from  Yahoo Search Marketing for online retailers that are looking to attract shoppers this holiday season.  I was actually considering publishing chapter 2 to a post I did last year that had some suggestions for our e-commerce clients but I think that Mike did a great job with this…

With the official holiday shopping season beginning next week, U.S. retailers expect “Black Friday” (November 28 this year) sales will grow 1.2 percent.

For “Cyber Monday” the first Monday after Thanksgiving, retailers expect to see growth of 2.4 percent, according to a study from BDO Seidman.

Online sales are projected to grow 8 percent and gift card sales are expected to grow 5.1 percent.

The Yahoo Search Marketing Blog has some good tips for retailers looking to attract shoppers this holiday season.

1. Call out any special holiday deals. Users always respond to things like discounts, coupons and sales, but the holidays and the current economic downturn make a good deal look even better.

2. Highlight lower-priced items when possible. If the price is right, things that may have once seemed like impulse purchases may now be irresistible to consumers looking to score a sweet last-minute deal online.

3. If you offer free shipping, be sure to include that in your ad copy. Free shipping is an extremely popular (if not the most popular) incentive for consumers, so if you offer it-even with restrictions-be sure to let your customers know.

4. Stress the ease and convenience that online shopping offers over the traditional mall shopping experience. Be very direct in stating how consumers can save time, money, fuel and hassle by buying online, rather than schlepping to pricey, crowded shopping destinations.

Tips For Online Retailers Preparing For Cyber Monday

Online retailers should also focus on site search to help customers navigate their site more easily.

Other things online retailers can do are take advantage of product video and customer reviews, which can give shoppers more information when making buying decisions.

“As budget-focused consumers begin holiday shopping, many are starting on the web to look for gift ideas and research products,” said Helen Malani, Shopzilla’s Online Shopping Expert.

“Whether they make those holiday purchases online or in stores, the Internet will have a tremendous influence on holiday sales this year.”

Tips For Online Retailers Preparing For Cyber Monday | WebProNews

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Ads On Social Networks

November 3, 2008 By 1 Comment

Advertising on Social Networks is something that I have been following pretty closely because I see so much potential there.  Turns out my hunch on social media advertising that I posted a few months back has turned into a reality, it works. 

Did you know that 40% of consumers have made purchases based on advertising they saw on social media websites, that’s incredible. With that being said I need to state for the record that in the social arena my money is on Facebook, I am all in.  Their social platform is open to developers which makes it more appealing to me as a business owner but it’s also gaining ground on MySpace by leaps and bounds in terms of users.  I am not saying stop your Google or Yahoo advertising either, I am just saying add Facebook to your arsenal too!! 

If you are a website owner and are considering adding social networks to your advertising budget this next year, please drop me a line, I would love to discuss your strategy with you, I think that this is an arena that I can help you out in because I am a student of social networking and have some ideas that I don’t think are out of the bag yet. 

I was reading a post by Mike Sachoff on Webpronews this weekend and decided to repost it here.  He references a recent report by Razorfish group in his post.

Forty percent of consumers have made a purchase based on advertising they saw on a social media site, and 76 percent said they were comfortable with advertising on social networks, according to a new report by Razorfish.

“Connected consumers embrace social media, are actively building and refining their own trusted personal networks and are rapidly dabbling with emerging communication offerings like Twitter,” said Garrick Schmitt, Razorfish Group Vice President of Experience Planning and FEED editor.

“We find that consumers are more open to advertising as part of their everyday experience than commonly assumed.”

The report found that 65 percent of connected consumers say that retail loyalty programs influence purchasing decisions.

Loyalty services like Amazon’s Prime or Best Buy’s Reward Zone are key for retailers to do well in the competitive online environment.

Web sites that offer personalized recommendations strongly influence connected consumers. Over half (65%) said that they have made a repeat purchase on a site that featured an automated recommendation based on their previous purchase.

Schmitt said that 60 percent of consumers use widgets on Web sites, and close to half watch videos on their mobile devices.

“The uptake of widgets, mobile devices and social media tells us that marketers need to design experiences for consumers across a world of fragmented digital media,” he said.

Ads On Social Networks Drive Purchases | WebProNews

Filed Under: E-Commerce, Social Media / Web 2.0 Tagged With: , ,

Frustrations for eBay Sellers

November 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment

With the economy in the situation that it’s been for the past 2 or 3 quarters I have been paying close attention to eBay.  My reasoning is simple, people have not been able to put back money this past year like they have in previous years due to high gas prices, rising mortgages, and a host of other reasons.

With this theory in mind going into the biggest shopping season of the year, I can’t help but believe that buyers are going to hit the web searching for the best deals out there.   eBay has become known to the web community as the one stop shop for everything under the sun with the most highly discounted prices.

I look for companies that are heavy discounted online retailers like eBay, overstock.com, and buy.com to do very well this year with others retail giants like Wal-Mart, Target, and others will see a drop in their 4th quarter sales.  There you go, you heard it here first.

With this theory in mind I thought it would be beneficial to repost an article I ran across from Chris Crum of Webproworld about eBay’s top 10 issues according to their sellers.  It’s no secret that eBay has implemented a lot of changes over the past year or so, while some have been good, others have been unpopular with the eBay seller community.

An Extensive Look at the Peeves

At the beginning of the year, eBay announced some changes it was bringing in with its new CEO John Donahoe. The changes spoke of things like “Detailed Seller Ratings (DSR)” and “discounts for sellers.” To some, the changes didn’t sound like anything to be concerned about, but some saw  through the plan and noticed other phrases in there, like “removal of bad feedback for buyers” and saw the potential for smaller businesses to be shut out. This is a notion we are seeing proven accurate months later.

BusinessWeek took a look at some real-world examples of businesses being affected by eBay’s policy changes and the frustrations that have plagued sellers. WebProNews has covered such frustrations in the past as well (that also includes payment policy changes and a boycott of the site by sellers). After scouring the Internet, reading various articles and comments, and even contacting some sellers first-hand, I have put together the following list of the top ten things that sellers are frustrated with about eBay:

  1. Management
  2. Feedback Policy
  3. Small Businesses Get Shut Out
  4. Lack of Communication
  5. Payment Policies
  6. Fees/Lack of Profitability
  7. Unwarranted Account Suspensions
  8. The Buyers Themselves
  9. Glitches
  10. Lack of Innovation

It’s hard to truly give an accurate ranking of these problems in terms of significance, and technically there is a fair amount of overlap with issues under each category. It suffices o say that they are each significant. Sellers have spoken, and these are the issues they have with eBay.

1. Management
I’m going to place management above all because, ultimately, it is where the rest of the frustrations stem from. Many of the negative comments I have read (and about 98% of those have been negative) have pointed the finger squarely at eBay CEO John Donahoe who took office shortly before these changes came about. Some noted a significant decrease in stock since he stepped in as well. In fact, a BusinessWeek reader even pointed to a petition that has been created, calling for Donahoe’s termination.

2. Feedback Policy
This is really the one that is getting most eBay sellers fired up. Buyers can leave feedback on sellers, but sellers can’t leave feedback on buyers. Out of the sellers that I personally contacted (that got back to me), all but one of them agreed that eBay’s feedback policy, which changed in May, is their biggest frustration.

One seller responded, “Allowing buyers to give neg feedback w/o recourse. Without leverage i.e. return Negative feedback. This keeps ignorant buyers from learning how [to] work out differences – ‘expressing how they feel’. Mistakes are made. Some ‘new’ buyers just give Neg FB w/o contacting [the] seller about exchange[s], returns or refunds.” I have also seen people cite buyers’ lack of understanding about shipping costs leading to negative feedback.

Another respondent said: “The most frustrating thing about selling on ebay is the complete disregard of SELLER’s RIGHTS.” He then directed me to this site, which is dedicated to creating awareness about eBay’s policy changes, and illustrates the DSR system (pictured below). “The FEEDBACK SYSTEM Penalizes Sellers who do not have at least a 4.6 Rating in ALL 4 areas,” that seller noted. “I have been selling on ebay since 2002 and have NEVER had so much trouble with them!!!” I have an excellent record & I still get LOWERED SEARCH STANDING & HIGHER FEES!! THE SYSTEM IS NOT FAIR FOR SELLERS AT ALL ANYMORE!!!”

3. Small Businesses Get Shut Out
BusinessWeek’s article was about this very topic. It looked at a few small businesses that lost their ability to sell on eBay, in large part due to the feedback issue, but that is not the only thing affecting the little guys. Another part of this is eBay’s deal with Buy.com, which some people indicate is prioritizing merchandise from that site over their own. Combine that with the charges that small businesses must incur for selling through eBay, and profitability slides. There seems to be a common theme resonating among sellers, saying that eBay has basically sold out. They’ve gone too corporate and are no longer appealing to the little guys.

4. Lack of Communication
Another common gripe is that the company will not communicate with sellers to their liking. If sellers have problems, they get the runaround. They get impersonal automated responses via email, or low-level employees if they make a phone call. They can’t get through to management. They can’t appeal their suspensions (which are often considered unjustified).

Another communication flaw some have cited is that once their account is suspended, they can’t even communicate with customers who may have already placed orders. This is not good for the buyer or the seller.

5. Payment Policy
Last month, eBay announced that they would no longer allow sellers to accept checks or money orders as payment. Well, sellers were not happy about this either. Most felt like that decision should be up to each individual seller. Many have chalked this up to the company simply wanting people to use eBay-owned PayPal.

Taking away options for payment can alienate some customers, and sellers know that and found the new policy unfair. eBay said they would accept PayPal, credit or debit card payments to the seller, ProPay, or “payment upon pickup” as possible payment methods. They claimed to update this policy to provide users with a more “secure checkout experience.”

6. Fees/Lack of Profitability
As I said, there is a lot of overlap in these and this ties into the small businesses getting shut out problem. But many users are having a hard time justifying paying the fees they must pay to use eBay as their selling platform. Fees cut into the profits they could otherwise be making by selling directly from their own store, or from another platform that doesn’t charge as much.

7. Unwarranted Account Suspensions
Apart from those who are seeing their accounts suspended based on their DSR, I have seen many claims that their accounts are deemed “security concerns” and suspended as a result, without any justification for this assessment. One person claimed their account was suspended for this reason when they had not even bought or sold anything through the site yet. They went to try to sell something, but their account was already suspended.

8. The Buyers Themselves
There seems to have been an increase in tension between buyers and sellers on eBay since their policy changes took effect. Buyers have been accused of lying to get away with cheating sellers by not paying for items while eBay does little to combat the problem. Others just don’t think they can reach the right audience with eBay. They consider eBay buyers to be the type that are looking for bargains, and for those looking to sell quality products at prices that aren’t necessarily discounted, will have a harder time selling those products.

9. Glitches
Some complain about technical glitches at eBay. A BusinessWeek reader mentioned a variety of them including store glitches, PayPal glitches, search glitches, DSR glitches, etc. Any company is bound to experience some hiccups from time to time, but those hiccups are going to be frustrating to users, and there’s not much that can be done about that other than trying to catch such glitches before customers do.

10. Lack of Innovation
Finally, some just don’t feel like eBay is doing much innovation anymore. There seems to be a general consensus that in eBay’s earlier years, the company was somewhat revolutionary and appealing to anybody who wanted to get rid of some “old junk.” As time has progressed, many sellers have become less impressed. eBay has made some acquisitions over the years like Skype and StumbleUpon, but these have had little if any impact on eBay the site.

In the End…
Not all eBay sellers are sitting idly by while they vent their frustrations. There have been a number of sites started dedicated to catering to those who feel cheated by eBay. Sites like Shopify, Wigix, SeeAuctions, EveryPlaceISell, and I’m sure many more. Sellers know that they have other options. Many have turned to Amazon for example, or have opened up their own eCommerce sites to sell directly.

But not everybody is anti-eBay, so let’s make that clear. The one person I contacted who didn’t cite feedback as their top frustration, actually said, “You know honestly there really isn’t that much frustration that goes on with selling on my end.  About the only part is mailing out items and them getting ‘lost’ in the mail.  That is about it.” eBay could hardly be to blame for that. This person’s business didn’t even appear to be particularly large.

I’m fairly certain that this person isn’t alone in her opinion of eBay either. Even though many people are upset with eBay’s practices, some still find it a useful place to do business and will likely carry that mentality with them into the holiday season as consumers look for good deals on gifts for their loved ones.

However, it is quite clear that the company has alienated a broad range of users. I can’t imagine that all of eBay’s management finds this acceptable. Will there be changes made? What will eBay do to win back customers? Or will they just continue to target new ones? What does the future hold for eBay?

Top 10 Frustrations for eBay Sellers | WebProNews

Filed Under: E-Commerce Tagged With:

Hackers Exploit DNS

August 6, 2008 By 1 Comment

Just saw this reported on CNN this morning.

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) — A giant vulnerability in the Internet’s design is allowing criminals to silently redirect traffic to Web sites under their control. Criminals sent Internet users in Texas to a fake Google site. The page’s program automatically clicked on ads. The problem is being fixed, but its extent remains unknown and many people are still at risk.

The gaping security hole enables a scam that targets ordinary people typing in a legitimate Web address. It happens because hackers are now able to manipulate the machines that help computers find Web sites.

If the trick is done properly, computer users are unlikely to detect whether they’ve landed at a legitimate site or an evil double maintained by someone bent on fraud.

Security experts fear an open season for virus attacks and identity-fraud scams.

“It’s kind of like saying, `There’s a bunch of money on the street. If you can get over there soon enough, you can get it,”‘ said Ken Silva, chief technology officer for VeriSign Inc., which manages the “.com” and “.net” directories of Internet addresses. “It’s something the industry is taking seriously. You’d be in a bad place if you weren’t doing something about it.”

The bug’s existence was revealed nearly a month ago. Since then, criminals have pulled off at least one successful attack, directing some AT&T Inc. Internet customers in Texas to a fake Google site. The phony page was accompanied by three programs that automatically clicked on ads, with the profits for those clicks flowing back to the hackers.

There are likely worse scams happening that haven’t been discovered or publicly disclosed by Internet service providers. “You can bet that the (Internet providers) are going to stay tightlipped about any attacks on their networks,” said HD Moore, a security researcher.

The AT&T attack probably would have stayed quiet had it not affected the Internet service of Austin, Texas-based BreakingPoint Systems Inc., which makes machines for testing networking equipment and has Moore as its labs director. He disclosed the incident in hopes it would help uncover more breaches.

The underlying flaw is in the Domain Name System (DNS), a network of millions of servers that translate words typed into Web browsers into numerical codes that computers can understand.

Getting from one place to another on the Internet typically requires a trip through several DNS servers, including some that accept incoming data and store parts of it. That opens them up for potential attack.

What this means is that a computer user in say, San Francisco, might type www.yahoo.com and head straight to the real Yahoo site, while at the same moment, a user in New York — whose traffic is routed through different DNS servers — might type that same Web address and end up on a phony duplicate site.

Scant details have been available about how the vulnerability works.

The researcher who discovered it, Dan Kaminsky of Seattle-based computer security consultant IOActive Inc., announced July 8 that he’d found a major weakness in DNS.

But he kept the rest secret because he wanted to give companies that run vulnerable servers a month to apply patches — software tweaks that cover the security hole. He coordinated with Microsoft Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and other major vendors to simultaneously issue patches.

He got two weeks before bad guys and good guys alike accurately guessed the basics of what Kaminsky discovered.

It is this: By adding bad information to the packets of data zooming in and out of certain DNS servers, hackers can swap out the address of a legitimate Web site and insert the address of their malicious Web site instead.

A compromised server believes it’s sending people to the authentic site. And if the bogus site is designed well enough, users don’t know the difference, unless the site starts behaving weirdly.

Some clues might come if a page, like a banking Web site, is usually protected with Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, which verifies a site’s owner and shows a padlock icon or a green address bar inside the Web browser. The padlocks in particular, however, are not always foolproof, because scammers can spoof them.

Just how widespread the attacks have been is hard to tell. The evidence of tampering can disappear before an Internet provider even learns there’s a problem.

The patching of DNS servers has accelerated. Kaminsky said 84 percent of the servers he tested at the beginning of the process were vulnerable. That has dropped to around 31 percent.

Still, Kaminsky said some administrators of computer networks might not patch their machines until they come under attack. Others didn’t patch immediately because they had to spend days or weeks testing the repairs.

That was the case with AT&T, which said the breach affected just one of its servers, a machine that was scheduled to be taken off line anyway. AT&T says it has fixed the problem.

More details about the vulnerability are expected to emerge Wednesday, when Kaminsky speaks at the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas. The conference and its sister event, DefCon, draw researchers, government investigators and corporate executives eager to learn about new vulnerabilities and how to protect against them.

“There might be one or two things that haven’t leaked yet,” Kaminsky said with a snicker. “No one should even think they know the subject of the talk.” DNS attacks aren’t new. But Kaminsky discovered a way to link together some widely known weaknesses in the system, so that an attack that would have taken hours or days can now take only seconds.

“Quite frankly, all the pieces of this have been staring us in the face for decades, and none of us saw it until Dan put it all together,” said Paul Vixie, president of the Internet Systems Consortium, a nonprofit that publishes the software inside most of the world’s DNS servers.

“This is the mother lode all right, from the point of view of Internet criminals looking for easier access to other people’s money and secrets.”

Hackers create fake sites through Internet flaw – CNN.com

Filed Under: E-Commerce, Web Development, Web Hosting Tagged With:

Good Info on PPC Campaigns

May 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Yesterday my business partners and I met with one of our Real Estate clients about PPC Campaigns.  It’s coming up on his busy season and he is considering a PPC campaign this year to increase his website’s visibility in the search engines for a couple of key terms.  We first looked at his natural or organic search position and got a good idea of where he is at now with his website and focused on some keywords that he’s not pulling up as well as he would like.  We helped him to identify some good keywords for PPC and gave him a brief overview of our PPC management services.  While we offer our clients total PPC Management for a small monthly fee we have some that prefer to manage it themselves. 

While discussing PPC Campaigns I was looking around the web for some good information for him to look at on the topic and ran across a couple of good posts on my good friend Mike Muise’s Blog that I forwarded to him to take a look at. I admittedly haven’t spent a lot of time as of late researching PPC campaigns on my own since my business partner Stephen usually manages this side of our business.

In one of his posts, Basics of a PPC Campaign, Mike has posted some good information:

For some the thought of spending a little money to get quality, targeted traffic is a scary proposition. For many Pay-Per-Click is still something of an unknown. How do I get started, how much do I have to spend, can I manage it myself, what if I can’t do it, and on and on.

The truth of the matter is you can get started without breaking the bank. Even if you are an everyday individual without a huge budget. In a previous post I shared a promotion Yahoo! is running where you can setup a new account with them, deposit only $30 and they will add another $100. So right off, you have $130 to play with.

Obviously your first step is setting up an account with them. So what else should you know about using Yahoo! PPC?

1. You will be bidding on keywords that people search for on Yahoo!. Obviously you want to choose keywords that are both relevant to your site and that people actually search. To choose your keywords, try using a tool like the free keyword tracker. The popularity of a keyword will determine the amount you are likely to spend per click if you choose to bid on it. So I recommend you avoid the really generic, one word keywords.

2. The keywords you choose are not set in stone for any length of time, you can change them at anytime. If your site content changes focus, or if keywords just aren’t bringing you results, swap them for new ones.

3. You won’t spend more than you want to. You can set your max daily budgets, you can set an end date to your campaign. This allows you to make sure you don’t spend outside of your means. I am currently running a campaign using the $130 promo with a daily spend limit of $4. My estimated costs for the month will be right around $130.

4. Within your control panel you will have access to a number of reports that are easy to read and understand. The key things you may want to look at are the stats for your keywords. You can choose to display what your keywords currently are, your average positioning within the ad space, how many impressions your ad has received for each one (how many times your ad was displayed to a user), and how many clicks you had for each keyword. Using this information you can determine what keywords can and should be removed and replaced and you can determine if maybe your ad needs to be made more attractive. You may find that you are getting lots of impressions, but no clicks.

5. In building your ad you should look to make you ad short but to the point. It is also recommended that both the title and the description contain all or a portion of your core keyword. My website which is found at both Dropthemike.com and Helpwithtraffic.com is bidding on numerous “traffic” related keywords and my ad looks like this:

Also, in his blog Mike posted an entry titled Online Marketing Budgeting – What Next? and he takes a look at how to decide how much money to devote to online marketing, it’s a great post, here’s an excerpt:

Previously I wrote that as a guide you should look to re-allocate at least 20-25% of your existing marketing budget towards online marketing. Specifically I mention PPC advertising, also known as Search Engine Marketing. It is a good first step. But there are more options for you that you can spend your marketing dollars on as well and see a measurable return.

The 3 main components of a good online campaign (all compliment each other) are:

1. Search (paid listings, organic listings)

2. Email (mailing lists, newsletters, etc.)

3. Social (blogs, forums, community driven sites)

With search, you want to make sure to invest money, time, and resources into making sure your organic search ranking is high. This means that for the keywords that apply to your site, when a user searches for them on say Google or Yahoo that you are within the first few results returned (preferably the first 3 results). In addition you want to be bidding on those same keywords via PPC advertising through both Yahoo and Google. Users are more likely to click on either your organic search result or your paid search result if they have seen your brand/listing/url more than once. Hitting them twice on a single page dramatically increases your chances of attracting the customer to your site. Of your online marketing budget I would look to allocate as much as 60% of your budget towards search strategies.

With email you want to start devising a plan for acquiring and building a list of your clients/site visitors in which they have opted in to being contacted by you. Ideas for building a list include starting a newsletter, providing items for download such as a whitepaper or ebook, or even providing discount or coupon notifications. And there are likely many other ways of doing it depending on your industry. Once you have a list, keep it up to date and make sure to keep it clean. This is an invaluable sales tool for you to promote your services and to talk to your customers. On email, I would allocate no less than 25% of your budget. Again this is you communicating directly with the clients who endorse you and want to hear from you!

The last piece of your strategy is Social marketing. The internet world has gone “social” crazy. We have Facebook, My Space, YouTube, just to name a few of the big social site names. You can choose to advertise with such services. For instance using Facebook’s newly launched targeted ad service which works much like Google Adwords or Yahoo SEM. But that is not the most important piece of investing in the Social arena. Instead you want to be a part of it. Create a blog for instance. Or add a user review section to your ecommerce site where users can review products. Create and participate in forums based on your service. DO whatever it takes to further open up the lines of communications with your users. That is what the Social Scene is all about. User interaction. I would look to allocate 15% of your budget here now, but expect this to grow over time. The reason I would only invest 15% now is that, while booming, the social scene is still developing. Once the dust settles a little more and knowing where exactly to focus the majority of your funds becomes clearer and more defined, then you can look to increase the budget.

Filed Under: E-Commerce, Search Engines Tagged With:
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