|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
June 2005Vertical Leap: Summary by SessionI am finally recovering from a double-dose of jet lag and brain buzz. This was a seriously, seriously great event. I don't even know where to begin, especially since it is almost midnight. For starters, here is the coverage that is finding its way to the Web: Overview: Master of 500 Hats Keynote: Software Only, Elegant Hack Investing: Barney Pell, Elegant Hack, Chris' Insytes Local: Elegant Hack Shopping: Barney Pell, Elegant Hack Travel: Barney Pell, Elegant Hack Jobs/Classifieds: Barney Pell, Bogle's Blog, Elegant Hack News/Blogs: Barney Pell, Elegant Hack The Future: Elegant Hack Powerpoints: Top 10 Rules for Vertical Revolutionaries (.ppt) Podcasts: John Furrier (coming soon) tags: verticalleap, vertical+leap Lots of notes online. Not a lot of discussion yet. Maybe we'll all get around to that next week. I thought several points deserved to be discussed in much greater detail. More later.
Vertical Leap: Summary by Session
Last Post Before Vertical LEAPOkay, time to wrap things up until... probably Thursday. (out Monday, conference Tuesday, back Wednesday) Looking forward to Vertical LEAP. A bit surprised to see how many Vertical LEAPers read this blog. Wish I had extended the trip by another day just to kick back and meet up. But I must also guard against Silicon Valley fever, at least for now, which might not be easy for me. :-) K, out for now, big fun in July.
Last Post Before Vertical LEAP
New Look for FatLensFatLens, the ticket search engine, got a fresh new look last weekend.
I talked to Siva Kumar, Co-Founder and President of FatLens, about a number of things, including the new interface. Found a couple of related issues on seating sections: no grouping of sections on the attribute-based search, and no sorting by sections on the results pages. Siva told me they plan to take care of both issues next week. Sounds good. (There is no way to overstate the importance of interfaces for aggregators.) I'll post about other aspects of FatLens soon.
New Look for FatLens
Price Search EnginesWhile we are on the topic of price comparison... Of all the site suggestions that come my way, the most common are the price-check sites. I'm like the old woman who lived in a shoe, I have so many price-engine suggestions I don't know what to do. Not every site deserves its own post, but I do not want to sit on them, in case one of them proves to be extraordinary. So here you have it, a list of some popular price-only engines, their current rankings at Alexa, and a sample search for "sd500" (aCanon camera): #2,494 - Pricewatch - (sample search)
Price Search Engines
Search Guru Louis Monier goes from eBay to GoogleOm Malik floated the rumor, John Battelle has confirmed it. Search Engine Watch has background on Monier's career. update:
Search Guru Louis Monier goes from eBay to Google
Blog Sighting: Pierre ChappazKelBlog - meditations on the internet and comparison shopping from the Founder of Kelkoo. (in French)
Blog Sighting: Pierre Chappaz
Is Shopzilla the Google of Comparison Shopping Engines?Shopzilla Announces zLabs (press release) "Manual operations don't scale well; great technology does. We still have a long way to go before every product in the world is stored, catalogued and structured perfectly on Shopzilla, and for that we need break-through technologies like Robozilla and beyond to best leverage our lean operations." If you did not know the source and this did not include the company, you might think it came from Google: (1) The relentless pursuit of automation. I am researching Robozilla, more on that in a week or two. added: Shopzilla was also named one of the "Coolest Shopping Websites of 2005" by TIME.
Is Shopzilla the Google of Comparison Shopping Engines?
Study: Searchers Operating with Blunt Instruments51% of online adults use search engines for shopping (internetretailer.com) "Of 1,047 adults using search engines for shopping, 80% use it to compare prices, the study found." Yikes. I hope this does not mean what I think it means. (Search, Click, Back, Click, Back, Click, Back...) If people are routinely using general search engines to compare prices on popular products, they risk missing out in two ways: wasting time and missing out. For example, go to a price-comparison powerhouse like Shopzilla and you will find 113 offers for the Canon a95. Q: An ambitious shopper could compare all of these offers the hard way, one at a time, but who has that much time? Q: So by comparing only a fraction of the available offers, what are the odds a "manual shopper" will find the highest rated merchants and the lowest total price? (price + tax + shipping) Crikey, there is so much upside to comparison shopping that I can hardly sleep at night...
Study: Searchers Operating with Blunt Instruments
Product Video Clips at CNET ShopperJust stumbled over the watch video option at CNET Shopper. Nice!
for example: see also: CNET Videos
Product Video Clips at CNET Shopper
Introduction to AOL InStorenoted: InternetRetailer.com has an overview of AOL inStore.
Introduction to AOL InStore
Rage Against the Newpaper MachineAnd I thought I was passionate about my industry... The Changing Rules of Journalism: Going to save this link in case I acquire an immunity to coffee. huge hat tip: pc4media
Rage Against the Newpaper Machine
Finally got around to trying LinkedIn. My profile is still too stealthy -- I'll work on that -- but it is up and open for connecting.
LinkedIn
CNET Mobile: Read Reviews, Compare PricesMixed feeling on the mobile CNET shopper (the service, the description, the press release). On one hand, I appreciate anyone who wants to help in this area. I research and retain a fair amount of product information before going brick 'n' mortar shopping, yet often get a feeling of disconnectness. After playing with products, things happen, and un-researched and lesser-researched products enter the mix. Even on a proxyless browser, I like the idea of shrinking a 100K+ page down to ~1K. But finding the right amount of content per mobile page is not easy. A lot of mobile sites not only trim the fat, they also starve the muscle mass, and maybe even disrupt the functioning of vital organs. two examples: Reviews - there is a way to page through all of the prices, but we can only access a limited selection of the user opinions? Speaking of reviews, this would seem to be a perfect place for one of my favorite summary features, Pro and Con. More Info - the site has messages like "Visit CNET.com for more detailed product information" and "For complete user opinion coverage, visit CNET.com"... but no link. Large information pages are not always bad, because they can be downloaded while doing other things. Having to navigate an unknown quantity of large pages is never a good thing. + + + Like I say, the more mobile options the better, will be interesting to see if/how this progresses. I've seen a few mobile shopping apps scattered about, will have to pull them all together sometime for a more in-depth look. http://m.cnet.com/ (also works with a standard web browser, check it out)
CNET Mobile: Read Reviews, Compare Prices
Update: I'm attending Vertical LEAP (June 28th)It's official, I'm going to the Vertical LEAP [ site | wiki ] vertical search conference on the 28th of this month. In Monday afternoon, out Wednesday morning. Anyone who wants to "say hey" can let me know here. Tags: sdforum vertical+leap
Update: I'm attending Vertical LEAP (June 28th)
Shopping Jobs Snapshot: Q3 2005An archive of job openings at the shopping engines as of 6/15/2005. (previous jobs snapshots: Q1, Q2) Summary: see below for the list of all job titles: note: jobs that were created/filled in the time between the last list are not included in the job lists or job totals.
p.s. - cool post from Ken Norton, How to Hire a Product Manager, got me thinking about what types of jobs could make sense for a jack-of-many-trades like myself, besides the most obvious answer, entrepreneur (no, I could not come up with an answer, heh). Become.com Jobs (6) Google/Froogle Jobs (1) MSN Shopping Jobs (9) NexTag Jobs (38)
Shopping Jobs Snapshot: Q3 2005
Top 10 UK Comparison Shopping SitesHitwise data for May, by way of Netimperative. (via SEW)
Top 10 UK Comparison Shopping Sites
New! The MSN Shopping Blog, MSN Shopping InsiderMSN Shopping has become the first major comparison shopping engine with a public weblog, the MSN Shopping Insider. Initial Authors: This could be an ideal test of Scoble's thesis: "...companies that have lots of bloggers will end up making better products, will end up having better marketing and PR, will end up making more profit at the end of the day, and will be more likely to have more than one "hit product" and will be more likely to last 100s of years." Honestly, I have not met anyone who said the old MSN Shopping was their "go to" shopping engine. How could this happen with the vast resources of Bill Gates & company? Dunno, but history looks less likely to repeat itself, if these developments are any indication: (1) Participation in hReview Congrats to Scott and Chris for kicking off the conversation. Will be interesting to see how this develops: what audience(s) they try to reach, what topics they choose to tackle, the posting frequency, the level of reader participation... and will other comparison shopping engines follow their lead? link: MSN Shopping Insider
New! The MSN Shopping Blog, MSN Shopping Insider
PriceGrabber.com Announces Strategic Alliance with MSN Shopping"PriceGrabber.com, a leader in online comparison shopping, has formed a strategic alliance with MSN (Nasdaq:MSFT) to further increase the selection of products available on MSN Shopping." PriceGrabber Announces Strategic Alliance with MSN The press release is sparse, I am seeking clarification... added I talked to Chris Jolley, Group Programming Manager, MSN Shopping. The main thing is this does not replace the primary MSN Shopping site that is being built, it is a non-exclusive supplement to that site. But a very big, important addition nonetheless. This gives MSN enough listings to satisfy shoppers for the holiday season. It also gives them a critical mass of reviews, which not only helps with shopping, it also makes people more likely to add their own reviews. Chris could not pin down a time for the new data to be integrated, but he did say the beta site would be up again fairly soon (note: it came down last Friday and currently displays a welcome page). MediaPost has a few more details. Interesting integration issues, like how to go about adding reviews to products that are PriceGrabber listings. + + + So, we have primary shopping engines, we have metashopping engines, and now we have primary shopping engines that are supplemented by other primary shopping engines. In this way, the comparison shopping landscape is starting to look more like the web search landscape.
PriceGrabber.com Announces Strategic Alliance with MSN Shopping
Shopping Engine Software for Purchase or License?There is no shortage of software and services available for general search engines. But are there any for more structured search, i.e. shopping search? A reader asked this question re: an industry that is not served by the existing shopping engines... anyone?
Shopping Engine Software for Purchase or License?
Price-Only Comparison Engines?How much of this is specific to PriceWatch, and how is an overall decline in demand for price-only comparison engines?
Price-Only Comparison Engines?
WashingtonPost.com Hosts Discussion With PriceGrabber CEODiscussion with PriceGrabber CEO Kamran Pourzanjani (washingtonpost.com)
WashingtonPost.com Hosts Discussion With PriceGrabber CEO
Hasta La Vista, Acquired Comparison Shopping Engines?"Bye-bye, Shopping.com. So long, LowerMyBills.com. Hasta la vista, Shopzilla.com." Includes comparisons to some of the earliest shoping engines in the .com days: Junglee, Jango, Quando, C2B Technologies. Hmmmm... The leading shopping engines of today are said to drive in the neighborhood of a billion $ in retail sales. How is this like 1998?
Hasta La Vista, Acquired Comparison Shopping Engines?
Guide to Comparison Shopping Engines for MerchantsA little something for merchants who are new to comparison engines: Comparison Shopping Engines: An E-Tailers Guide (www.ecommerce-guide.com) Includes an Overview, Step-by-Step Guide, Misperceptions and Mistakes.
Guide to Comparison Shopping Engines for Merchants
Farhad Mohit on Shopzilla vs. Shopping.comA follow-up to David Jackson's post at the Interent Stock Blog: Chairman and Chief Product Officer of Shopzilla on Shopzilla vs Shopping.com (SHOP) He makes five main points on Shopzilla vs. Shopping.com, starting with 1) Shopzilla has far superior technology. The rest of his response elaborates on this theme. A barn-burner of a good read, but it could use some balance. for example, "How else can you explain that with 22MM UVs they're planning on generating significantly less revenues than we will be with 14MM UVs?" It could be superior technology, but that is not the only possible answer. 1) What vs. Where. In other words, when I am early in the buying process (What), I almost always use a Shopping.com site (Epinions) over Shopzilla, for a near-seamless transition of buying guides, attribute search and user reviews. When I am getting closer to making the purchase (Where), I might be more apt to check in on Shopzilla. Of course, clicks later in the buying process are far more valuable. 2) International Expansion. 3) Distribution Partners. How do we ever know we are comparing apples vs. apples? For example, visitors from AOL InStore, surely they show up on the revenue side, but are they also included in the unique visitor count? None of this is to take away from the strong results by Shopzilla, but comparing financial results is not always as straightforward as comparing product prices.
Farhad Mohit on Shopzilla vs. Shopping.com
Become.com Introduces Dynamic SuggestionsTo me, the layout is more natural than a drop-down box. Try it on the home page of http://www.become.com
Become.com Introduces Dynamic Suggestions
Valuation: Shopping.com vs. ShopzillaInternet deals analyzed by David Jackson of the Internet Stock Blog: Scripps-Shopzilla deal shows eBay-SHOP deal too cheap?
Valuation: Shopping.com vs. Shopzilla
Shopzilla SpeaksBrian Smith of ComparisonEngines.com has a Q&A with Farhad Mohit, Founder and Chief Product Officer of Shopzilla.
Shopzilla Speaks
Alert: Shopzilla Acquired by E.W. ScrippsE.W. Scripps Company agrees to pay $525 million in cash for 100% of Shopzilla. press release hat tip: The Tech Beat
Alert: Shopzilla Acquired by E.W. Scripps
Yahoo Mindset: Refrigerator KeywordYahoo has introduced a new search tool, Yahoo Mindset, which uses sliders to re-mix the main search results, based on the user's location on the shopping-research continuum. Ken "Hey" Norton has some interesting thoughts on this kind of user interface, and a lengthy discussion is also taking place at Greg Linden's blog. I might add inferface comments to one or both of those posts, but my focus here is the following question: is this an example of a "horizontal" search engine having the answer to vertical search? For an apples-to-apples comparison, I ran the primary flavors of Yahoo Minset (default, all-shopping, all-research) against the pesky "refrigerator" keyword. (see: Become vs. Google - Refrigerator Keyword). continued: First Impression: this is not the be-all, end-all answer to engines like Become.com. The shopping results are not particularly authoritative for a category-level keyword. The difference could be that Become.com applies a shopping-oriented algorithm against an entire index of shopping-oriented listings. Yahoo Mindset applies their shopping-flavored criteria against a tiny fraction of their main search results. In many cases, the subset used for Yahoo Mindset is less than 1% of total results. - What if the main index is imbalanced? i.e. What is there are too many sites from either Shopping or Research, and they crowd out the most outstanding results from the other end of the spectrum? - What if the main index is too... bland? i.e. What if too many sites that are not strongly Shopping or Research crowd out the most outsanding results from both ends of the spectrum?
Yahoo Mindset: Refrigerator Keyword
Yahoo Auctions to Drop Listing Fees in U.S.AuctionsBytes has good background on the announcement here. let's see... What changed between then and now? eBay developments, of course. What else? * They are certainly making more money from paid search... They lost a ton of listings in 2001 (see AuctionBytes).
Yahoo Auctions to Drop Listing Fees in U.S.
Sub-Ratings and Sub-ReviewsAwhile back, I posted about hReview, a proposed review microformat, and it got me re-thinking about user reviews, one of the true joys of online shopping. One problem is that reviews are scattered all over the Web. But even within websites, we are only scratching the surface of what is possible with user reviews. Along those lines, due to the impending weekend, I will only scratch the surface of what is possible in this post. :-) Here are two existing features related to product reviews that deserve more consideration: (note: ask ten people the name of these features, and you might get ten answers...) Sub-RatingsSub-ratings are any rating that is not an overall rating. Often, when it comes to product reviews, sub-ratings are generic in nature, such as value or quality. But they need not be. For example, a laptop can be rated on attributes such as display or keyboard or battery life. (see: notebook computers at Circuit City) Sub-rating information is often aggregated at the product level, but rarely makes its way to the category level. In other words, you can see this information after you are already viewing a product, but you cannot use this information to get from the category level to the product level. If a product category only has one type of rating (overall), it can be used as a sort option. But what if a product has several types of sub-ratings? In that case, perhaps sub-ratings could act as product attributes, the way digital cameras have attributes like megapixels and optical zoom, and be manipulated in the same ways. Sub-ReviewsSub-reviews are short summaries that have more structure than the main body of a review. By far, the most common of these is the summary. A bit less common, but oh so useful, are pro and con. When used on a page of review summaries, Pro and Con can offer a quick, well-rounded product overview. Also, they can help determine which reviews to read in full, by giving us a glimpse of a reviewer's balance, or lack thereof. I would love to see more adoption of Pro and Con. And I am more than a little surprised they are not included in a microformat such as hReview, quite frankly. oops, time is up, the weekend beckons, more later...
Sub-Ratings and Sub-Reviews
The Progression from Ebay Seller to Shopping.com MerchantThe announced acquisition of eBay and Shopping.com got me thinking about a friend who is an online retailer. Several years ago, he sold computer cables on eBay to make extra money while in college. Rapid turnover lead to a growing inventory that soon filled every nook and cranny of living space, like a scene from the movie, The Blob. Eventually, his catalog grew to over a thousand products, and he went from the simplest website possible (one-page .txt file!) to a more advanced shopping system. Along the way, he tried a range of online advertising, from direct graphical advertising on popular content sites to PPC ads from Google/Yahoo. After all this, he is just now getting ready to test the comparison shopping engines. People can debate the current level of merchant synergy in this deal, but perhaps it makes a lot of sense when viewed over the long term? I'm guessing my friend coulda/shoulda started advertising at the shopping engines years ago. Could a combined eBay/Shopping.com have expedited that transition? Hmmm...
The Progression from Ebay Seller to Shopping.com Merchant
Q&A with BrilliantShopper CEO at SearchViewsA nice Q&A session with Phillip Lan of BrilliantShopper, including follow-up on issues raised by SearchViews and Search Engine Watch.
Q&A with BrilliantShopper CEO at SearchViews
Quick Links: eBay and Shopping.comGoogle News has a few zillion rewrites of the eBay/Shopping.com press release. Here is a quick roundup of articles and posts that offer additional information: background, analysis, comments, etc. - Shopping.com, Sold! (fool.com)
Quick Links: eBay and Shopping.com
eBay to Acquire Shopping.comeBay to Acquire Shopping.com (press release) "eBay has agreed to acquire all outstanding shares of Shopping.com stock for $21 per share in cash. Based on the number of Shopping.com shares outstanding on May 31, 2005, the total consideration would amount to approximately $620 million. Shopping.com's cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities as of May 31, 2005 totaled approximately $140 million." more soon... hat tip: Niall Kennedy
eBay to Acquire Shopping.com
Under The Radar: FatLens is a VC Top PickFrom the event on early-stage innovation in consumer technology: see also:
Under The Radar: FatLens is a VC Top Pick
German Comparison Shopping EnginesFYI via Heise Online, a German survey about online shopping (PDF). Includes a list of shopping engines in order of customer awareness:
German Comparison Shopping Engines
|
(2)
+-0
+2
-1
