Ecommerce & Web Marketing Research: September 16-30 2004

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September 30 2004

Search engine business model threatened?

At recent Emerging Technologies conference and reported by InternetWeek, a Microsoft technologist expressed doubts of the continued viability of the search engine business model for two main reasons, the first being that the "better we get at search, the cheaper the ads are" and "it is cheaper and cheaper to build a search engine. It could at some point get commoditized". 

I'm not quite sure what he meant by the first statement, but the second does have some validity - but not for many years to come in my opinion. I feel that companies like Google just have too much still left in their secret sauce for this technology to become commoditized that quickly. Also, the current well-established players, as long as they don't get too greedy or smug in their top spots (remember Alta Vista), will continue to retain users through the addition of extra related tools and find other ways to deliver ads to users. 

Microsoft are really behind the 8-ball with search, I'm eagerly anticipating their *real* entry into this field.

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Europe online music sales to exceed CD's by 2009

It's forecast that by 2009, Europeans will spend about $1 billion annually in online music downloads and subscriptions, finally eclipsing the CD market. Hrm, I wonder if the Beaster domain name is taken yet :). Read more.

Monitor resolution statistics

It's been a while since I checked what monitor resolutions visitors to our site run and I was asked a question about common monitor resolutions the other day - so here's some stats based on approximately 80,000 visitors to our site in the past week.

The remaining few percent were a series of weird and wonderful configurations. Ah, 640x480, now those were the days.. back when I was a boy I also remember 80x60 and evil amber screens - really made your eyes bleed :).

September 27 2004

PayPal now fining naughty members

If you're into buying/selling pharmaceuticals, gambling services or some of the more .. ahem.. adult hobbies, then PayPal is probably not the ecommerce service you want to use :).

In fact, as of last Friday, PayPal has begun fining users and webmasters who trade in dozens of categories of goods and services up to $500 + legal costs. I never realized how many products and services were taboo on PayPal's list; it's well worthwhile checking out. Be sure to click on the link next to the product/category for a full explanation as I noticed in some cases, you could trade in the item, but only under special conditions.

Damn, there goes my dreams of building a used airbag empire ;).

Spam, Spim, Spit and VoIP

VoIP technology, while still reasonably slow on the uptake, is expected to grow from just over 130,000 subscribers in the USA in 2003 to over 17 million by 2008. As if we didn't have enough online annoyances such as spam and spim (spam sent via IM), the spectre of Spit has arisen. 

Essentially, as VoIP uses standard internet protocols to transmit data, one message can be sent to many people. Maryland based company,  Qovia, ran a test demonstrating that a single computer can be configured to send tens of thousands of voice messages per hour via VoIP. Taking this possibility further, it's also imaginable that  VoIP "zombies" could launch DoS (Denial of Service) attacks on servers.

Learn more about Spit.

September 25 2004

Annenberg Internet survey results released

It's been a decade since the World Wide Web became available to the public and an number of major trends have been identified as to how the Internet interacts with the life of people in the USA.  

The following are some key findings from the year-to-year study of the impact of the Internet by the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future

• Online access has risen to its highest level with around 75% of people in the USA regularly connecting to the Internet.
• Users currently average 12.5 hours Internet time per week – the highest levels to date.
• While one of the most important sources of information, the perception of credibility of the information found online has dropped since the early years, except in regards to Government sites and sites that users visit regularly • Television viewing continues to decline among Internet users - this correlates with the survey that I reported on yesterday (see below)

Download the report - PDF 251kb

Buying/selling text links Buying Selling

September 24 2004

Internet withdrawals

A study released by Yahoo media today in relation to Internet Deprivation revealed what many of us online addicts already knew :)

Participants in the study found living without the Internet quite difficult and in some instances, unbearable as the web had become such an integral part of their lives. Nearly half the participants in one study stated they couldn't live without the Internet for more than 2 weeks. 2 weeks! I admire their strength :).

Read more about the Internet Deprivation Study.

Microsoft's Sender ID initiative dealt another blow

A few days ago I reported that AOL and some major Open Source organizations have refused to participate further in Microsoft's Sender ID initiative - it seems now that the group of engineers working on turning it into a standard have also thrown in the towel.  The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has announced that the working group whose role was to achieve consensus on the Sender ID proposal has "concluded" and has now made it an "experimental" project.

Internet vs. TV - the gap narrows.

The Online Publishers Association has released the results of their Generational Media Study, and it's not looking good for the TV industry, but very good for the Internet. Amongst it's key findings:

• 83.4% of males 18-24 have Internet access
• 74.2% of females 18-24 have Internet access
• Adult broadband users spend 40% more time
  online than dial-up Users
• 18-34 year olds with broadband spend 52% more time online than their dialup counterparts
• Over 45% of people stated that the Internet was their preferred form of media
• For those aged 18-24, just over half selected the Internet as their top media choice
• Of all the mediums, the Internet was the only one that displayed net growth in perceived time spent over last year
• The Internet was chosen as the medium most used for sourcing information

Download the report - PDF 224kb

September 22 2004

Online sales expected to reach $144 billion for 2004

US online sales reached 114 billion dollars in 2003 and that figure is expected to grow by 27% by the end of 2004 according to a Shop.org study carried out by Forrester Research. Some sectors are reporting extremely high growth rates:

• Health and Beauty - 40%
• Apparel - 42%
• Flowers, cards and gifts - 41%

Online sales are expected to hit 6.6% of total retail sales in 2004, a 1.2% increase from 5.4 percent in 2003. 

Symantec: E-commerce hacking targets up 400%

The Symantec Internet Security Threat Report was released this month and contains a variety of information regarding Internet security related issues over the past half year

In the report, Symantec states that attacks against e-commerce targets were up 400% from the second half of 2003 and constituted 16% of all attacks.

Download the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report

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