After Yahoo! showed me their new site for the holiday season, I was pretty much underwhelmed. How could Yahoo! Shopping not introduce something incredibly bold for the holidays? And unfortunately I couldn’t even properly articulate my disappointment. I know Chris and Matt (and Haley) wanted to strangle me that afternoon…
What I want to do in this post is shed more light on what I like and don’t like about Yahoo! Shopping. Comments Off
NexTag Shopping Itself to IAC? Yes, this rumor is in constant play, but considering David Lewis’ prescient comments on PriceGrabber/Experian back in June of last year, you should check out his thoughts on NexTag and IAC hooking up (a deal he also pondered last June). A couple people have mentioned to me that AOL is interested in NexTag. While it makes sense for AOL to shore up it’s shopping site, NexTag...
Kaboodle Becoming More Social Kaboodle is presenting at DEMO this week and the company just launched lots of updates…while the core functionality - the ability to quickly and easily add content from anywhere on the net to a single kaboodle page - is still key, Kaboodle has added a layer of social networking/social shopping (please remember, it’s still in Beta). If you’ve previously gone to Kaboodle and immediately left because you had to register to...
Searching the Yahoo Shoposphere One of my pet peeves about the Yahoo Shoposphere was that Yahoo! Shopping hid the search feature at the bottom of the page. Well, that’s changed. There’s now a prominent ’search pick lists’ field on the right side of the page and links to popular searches like digital camera, shoes, and women. It’s a start, but more needs to be done. Once you’ve made a...
Smarter.com Shopping Search Expands to China & Japan As I’ve been hinting at for a while, Smarter.com became the first US shopping comparison engine to move into both Japan (www.smarter.co.jp) and China (www.smarter.com.cn). Read the official press release. Smarter.com made the announcement in conjunction with the beginning of Ad Tech Shanghai. While Smarter is only a splash in the bucket in the US, it has the opportunity to build a loyal following...
Holiday Shopping at Yahoo, MSN, Shopzilla and Smarter Yahoo! seems to be the first out of the gate in pushing a holiday gifts section. The company is currently emphasizing tons of top 10 lists (toys, laptops, cellphones, clothing, etc.) and their gift finder service (which seems to now be out of Beta). Shopzilla has also made an early move, pushing Christmas Ornaments and Hanukkah merchandise. [Hmmm. I think...
Froogle Updates Layout, Looks Like Comparison Engine As one industry insider stated in an email, Froogle’s new layout is “very comparison engine-esque!” Froogle quietly updated its site yesterday. There are a number of changes, but here are the basics: 1) The sponsored links (Google AdWords) are no longer flooding the right side of the page (note to Froogle: you need to update your About Us section to reflect this change), but rather have been more...
Murdoch's Fox Interactive Media Needs a Shopping Search Engine After announcing the formation of Fox Interactive Media (FIM), Rupert Murdoch spent $580m to acquire Intermix, the owner of MySpace, the insanely popular (28m unique users) community site. He bid around $94m for a leading Australian real estate site, although the company recently rejected the bid. He acquired Scout Media. There were rumors that FIM was also interested in acquiring Skype...
Shopping Comparison Engine News : Snap, Smarter.com, and Shopping.com A number of stories today about shopping comparison engines. Mylene Mangalindan writes a piece in the WSJ Personal Journal section. The article mentions Smarter.com’s coupons, Vendio’s toolbar, and BuySafe’s antifraud guarantees as services offered by “a new crop of start-ups [that are] pushing the price-comparison concept even further.” SNAP.com announced the launch of it’s shopping section powered by Smarter.com. Nice to see...
Loren Baker
+Ann Smarty
Alan Bleiweiss
David Harry
