Linden Labs Releases Real Numbers for Virtual World – Roughly 1.5 million “unique people” have logged into Second Life at least once (differentiated from the 2.3 million “residents” claimed in the game) and roughly 252,000 people have logged in more than 30 days after their account creation date. Monthly growth in that figure appears to be greater than 20 percent.
Online Retail Spending Surges To $102B – E-commerce spending in November and December reached $24.6 billion–a 26% increase from last year, according to a new report by comScore. For the entire year, online retail spending soared to $102 billion–up 24% from last year’s $83 billion. iVillage Bows New Health Portal – In a significant expansion, womens’ online network iVillage Thursday unveiled a souped-up new health portal. The site, iVillage Total Health, adds 13 new “condition centers” covering topics ranging from cancer to skin and hair. It also offers new tools for identifying causes of illness symptoms and for a Healthy Living diet program.
CMOs Look for Blended Agencies for Contemporary Marketing – According to a recent study of senior marketing executives by Evalueserve for Sapient, just over half of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) believe that traditional, large advertising agencies are ill-suited to meet online marketing needs. Instead, the majority of senior marketing executives show a strong preference for blended firms – firms with roots in technology that can also offer creative and traditional print expertise. Some Google Advertisers Exit – Google keyword prices are soaring, returns are diminishing and click fraud is still an uncontained problem. So many small-to-midsize advertisers say they plan to do less business with Google than in years past. Some plan to reduce spending significantly. For example, retailer eBags.com, which depends on search engines and shopping-comparison sites to drive traffic to its site, spent between $5 million and $8 million with Google last year, with more than 75% of that figure going to the search giant. Said CEO Peter Cobb, “The Google percentage has got to go down.”
Tracking Anomalies Pervade Web – The Internet is supposed to be the most quantifiable medium, but publishers don’t keep track of users in a uniform manner, creating discrepancies everywhere. Even video can be hard to track. Different video sites have different definitions for what constitutes a viewing. For instance, each click counts as a view at vSocial, a seller of premium video services to businesses, while at Revver–the video site that shares ad revenue with producers–a view is only counted if a user watches an entire clip and an ad that has to be downloaded at the end.
Major Online Recruiters Look To Buy As Niche Sites; Social Nets Emerge As Competition – In the past six months, visits to the big three online recruiters, Monster, Yahoo’s HotJobs, and CareerBuilder dropped by 23.7 percent, 18.4 percent, and 7.1 percent, respectively, Hitwise reports. The reason, BusinessWeek reports, is the rise of social networks and job sites dedicated to matching employers and job seekers in very specific pockets of the job market – sites where musicians looking for work on cruise ships, for example. To cope, The Big Three have been embarking on series of partnerships with newspaper chains.
Photo Sharing Site BubbleShare Bought By Kaboose For up To $3 Million – Toronto-based online photo sharing site BubbleShare has been bought out by Kaboose, the family focused online media company, also based in Toronto. The price is about $2.25 million upfront and another $0.75 million based on future performance. BubbleShare allows user to upload photos and add voice and video captions to photos. Story:
Performancing Deal is Off – After much discussion and heartache PayPerPost decided to walk away from the Performancing deal. They listened to their Posties and other Metrics users, dug into the Metrics platform and regretfully found that it wasn’t what they were looking for right now.
