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eBay, Yahoo Japan to faciliate cross-border trading

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seikamonOnline auction giant eBay will have another chance to establish foothold in Japan with its new partnership with Yahoo Japan to link up their auction sites.

The two companies will launch a separate website called Sekaimon which means “Gateway to the World” and or “global shopping” in English. The goal of this venture is to expand online auction and make online purchase a lot easier between Japan and the U.S. In English, it means additional income for both companies.

The Japanese-language Sekaimon will break language barriers by translating all items in eBay to Japanese. Moreover, it will assist in all aspects of online shopping from shipping, payment to custom clearance.

With only 15 million auction items listed, Yahoo Japan will now have access to more than 248 million users registered under eBay. The auction giant, on the other hand, will benefit from the strong presence of Yahoo in the Japanese market.

Originally posted on December 4, 2007 @ 10:18 am

More than half of European households go online

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eu.gifBased on the latest survey by Eurostat in the 27 countries under EU, access of households to the Internet has increased from 49% in the first quarter of 2006 to 54% for the same quarter this year.

Moreover, broadband usage escalated from 30% during the first quarter of 2006 to 42% for the same quarter this year.

Fifty percent use of the online users in EU use online search engines while 15% use Internet telephony and only 13% use P2P software for sharing movies and music.

What is very clear in this study is the wide gap between member countries in terms of technology and pricing. Failure of the government to break monopolies and open up the market is to blame for this disappointing gap.

Winners
Netherlands leads the EU in terms of Internet access (4 of 5) and broadband connections. On the other hand, the French holds the highest record for VoIP calls. When it comes to downloading movies and music, the Dutch and Luxembourgers are the most active.

Losers
Unfortunately, not all countries get overdosed for downloading digital contents and uploading videos to YouTube. Only 1 of 5 Bulgarians has Internet access while the Greeks has the lowest broadband rate of only 7%. Don’t expect Irish and Czechs to know about file sharing or downloading because only 6% use this technology.

Originally posted on December 4, 2007 @ 10:57 am

Influential African-American consumers not active in social network sites

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A new study by leading public relations and communications consultancy firm Burson-Marsteller shows that influential African-American consumers often use the Web for business purposes and favor offline interaction over social network sites.

African American-fluentials, the moniker for this influential group, are much more likely to make business contacts online (52 percent) compared to the total influential consumers in the U.S. population (28 percent).

Still, they are less active in social networking sites compared to the general population of online influencers. Instead, they speak to about 56 people daily or 40 percent more people than African American non-fluentials and 20 percent more than U.S. e-fluentials.

“African American-fluentials tend to embrace the Web for business and ‘serious’ pursuits while favoring a range of offline communications tools for social networking,” said Mireille Grangenois, Managing Director, U.S. Multicultural. “They are twice as likely to use handwritten notes than U.S. e-fluentials but half as likely to write blog entries.”

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Originally posted on December 4, 2007 @ 11:56 am

Luxury consumers are also into social networking

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social networkingThe next time you visit social network sites don’t be surprised if middle-aged men and women checked out your personal profile. In fact, you should be accommodating for many of them are quite well off.

This is perhaps the most surprising finding of a survey conducted by Unity Marketing on how 1,074 luxury consumers are using the Internet. In the last 3 months, more than 40 percent of luxury consumers have visited social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube.

When buying home luxury products, more than half of luxury consumers relied on the Internet for their purchases. In terms of luxury fashion, fashion accessories, cosmetics, jewelry and watches, about 46% depended on the Internet.

By definition, luxury consumers have average income of $150,200 and age of 43.6 years. The top 5 sites they frequently visit are:

  1. Amazon
  2. eBay
  3. Nordstrom.com
  4. Macys.com and Overstock.com (tie)
  5. Neimanmarcus.com

“When asked what features were most important for a luxury shopping site to offer these luxury consumers, they were adamant about three features in depth product information and specifications, detailed product pictures and a flexible return policy. They were far less concerned with company or brand news, lifestyle content or a store locator,” says Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing.

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Originally posted on December 3, 2007 @ 1:30 pm

Cheaters evicted from iYomu’s $1 Million Dollar Challenge

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iyomu.gifYou might remember the $1 Million Dollar Challenge by the social networking site for grown ups, iYomu. While this game started a few months ago, new participants still have a chance to catch up because some of the leading players are disqualified for cheating.

To refresh your memory, this is a global contest wherein you have to complete series of puzzles, refer many friends, and finish other online tasks to earn the highest points. The top 10 players as of December 31 will advance to the next stage.

Similar to the rules of American Idol, iYomu users will now vote out one player every week until the ultimate iYomu Challenge winner emerges. Winner will receive $1 million in 12 monthly installments.

Nine of the 10 leading players are now disqualified for violating the rules of this challenge.

“We always expected some lobbying by members who referred their friends to iYomu as a way of earning points and we applaud the creativity of players doing that. However, for such a big prize we set up processes to monitor rule-breaking and it was clear to us that some of the leading users were cheating on a grand scale,” said iYomu founder David Wolf-Rooney.

Join now guys and maybe one of us will be lucky enough to snag that million dollar prize.

Originally posted on December 3, 2007 @ 7:40 am