August 7, 2005

According to a number of news sources, Amazon.com is getting ready to launch a service to rival Apple's iTunes Music Store. All this speculation is based on a job listing posted by Amazon.com earlier in the week.

June 18, 2005

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is preparing to launch an electronic payment service in the next six months that would rival PayPal. If true, this would be a major blow to eBay, the parent of PayPal.

June 8, 2005

Yahoo! Inc. has announced that it will stop charging fees for auctions on its U.S. site to encourage more people to use auction service. Previously, Yahoo! Auctions charged 5 to 75 cents for listing an item and varying additional fees when an item was sold. However, the company will continue to charge fees on its other auction sites like those in Japan, Canada, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Yahoo! plans to make money on U.S. auctions by generating revenue through paid search listing advertisements. The move is seen by many as the start of a possible price war with eBay's and Amazon's auction services.

May 11, 2005

Yahoo has announced their new Yahoo Music Unlimited service, priced at just $6.99 a month or $60 for a full year. The service offers subscribers access to unlimited music downloads that can played on portable devices. In what may well be the start of a price war, Yahoo's service is priced at just half the cost of similar services from Napster and RealNetworks, and is certainly cheaper than Apple's iTunes Music Service.

April 26, 2005

RealNetworks completed the overhaul of its Rhapsody digital music service and has decided to take on Apple's iTunes head on. In what could be the start of a major price war, Rhapsody is allowing users to listen to up to 25 songs per month without paying anything at all. To protect downloaded music content, the Rhapsody service now uses digital rights management technology from Microsoft.

April 21, 2005

Visa, MasterCard, and American Express are going after e-commerce sites to make sure that customer data is secure. After June 30th, companies selling online will have to apply for certification under new security guidelines. Online stores processing more than 20,000 transactions per year will be forced to get their networks scanned each quarter and submit proof of annual compliance audits in order to be able to accept credit card payments from the three providers. This means that companies with as few as 55 transactions per day will be forced to spend many thousands of dollars per year to remain compliant. This is bad news for small online stores with low margins, and very good news for companies providing vulnerability scanning services.

April 21, 2005

Many are starting to think that eBay is starting to collapse. One thing is for sure, eBay shareholders aren't very happy as they watch eBay's market cap deflate and its traffic diminish. According to comScore Networks, traffic to the eBay site dropped by 14% in February and another 5% in March, completing nine consecutive months of declining traffic. Sellers are upset at eBay over poor treatment and fee hikes and are now starting to view the entire Web as their marketplace, setting up Yahoo Stores and buying keywords on search engines. The only wildcard is eBay's PayPal service, which has huge potential for finally bringing micropayments to the Internet. The question now is whether eBay will continue to stumble or catch its second wind. See the article at the AlwaysOn network for more about eBay and its problems.

April 20, 2005

Sony Online Entertainment, the company that runs the multiplayer online games EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies, has set up an auction for the buying and selling virtual goods. The service, called Station Exchange, allows players to purchase and sell virtual weapons, armor, coins, and high-level game characters using real money. The service is expected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year for Sony. In related news, Microsoft announced earlier this month that it would allow micropayments within its Xbox Live service for players who want to purchase game items while playing.

April 10, 2005

Beyond banner ads, beyond contextual text links, beyond permission-based e-mail, there exists the virgin frontier of RSS. The audience of RSS readers is growing very fast, and where there are eyeballs, the ad men will surely follow. This article from ClickZ explains how online marketers are getting ready to conquer this territory.

April 9, 2005

ExtremeTech has published an excellent review and comparison of a dozen commercial music download services. They compared not just the big ones like iTunes Music Store, MSN Music, eMusic, Napster, Connect, Musicmatch, Rhapsody, Virgin Music, and Wal-Mart Music Download Store, but also smaller ones like AllofMP3, MP3Tunes, and AudioLunchBox. Factors for comparison included music selection, file format flexibility, digital rights management, sharing and streaming capabilities, portable device support, and platform support.

April 7, 2005

The State of Florida is debating legislation that would regulate online dating sites by forcing them to disclose information about what kind of member screening measures are in force at each particular dating site. Other states looking into similar laws include California, Ohio, Virginia, Michigan and Texas.

March 20, 2005

Online web sites are taking an ever bigger bite out of classified ad spending and making newspapers very nervous. According to a recent report, spending for online classifieds reached almost $2 Billion in 2004.

March 14, 2005

The New York Times takes a look at the online newspaper industry to find out when these publishers will begin charging for access.

March 11, 2005

According to a report by the Online Publishers Association, online spending for paid content grew 14% last year to $1.8 billion. The biggest increase was for entertainment, specifically online music purchases. Other top categories include dating sites, online games, and sports content.

March 8, 2005

A new Ohio law, effective May 2nd, requires residents to obtain a license and post a $50,000 bond in order to sell on eBay as part of a business. While occasional sellers are probably immune, it is unclear as to how much eBay activity is required before sellers need to comply.

March 4, 2005

CNET is reporting that eBay is 'scrambling' to fix a phishing bug that allows spammers to use eBay servers to redirect links to fraudulent sites. However, this bug was posted on the Bugtraq security mailing list almost three weeks ago and was seen by people receiving spam long before that. The redirect bug seems simple enough for eBay to fix: simply check the input URL and prevent a redirect to any domain not owned by eBay. Three weeks to do a ten minute fix? Give us a break.

February 27, 2005

Web blogger Kevin Kelly has just published a very informative and useful guide for aspiring micro-publishers. Kevin guides you through Amazon's confusing requirements including ISBN, UPC, and bar codes.

February 24, 2005

A new report from the U.S. Commerce Department has some new online retail sales statistics: $18.42 Billion in fourth quarter 2004 sales, a 4.7% rise over the previous quarter, and a 22.1% rise over the same period last year.

February 7, 2005

A few weeks after announcing fee increases, eBay is now saying that they will reduce some fees.

February 7, 2005

A feature of several non-IE browsers could make it easy for scammers to spoof legitimate web sites. No simple fix is available yet.