The 2006 holiday season was Amazon.com’s “best ever,” peaking with more than four million orders placed on Dec. 11, the Web retailer said.
During its 12th holiday season, Amazon said that it had shipped more than 99 percent of orders in time to meet holiday deadlines around the world. At its peak, the retailer sent out more than 3.4 million units in a single day. Read the rest of this entry »
Accipiter, which sells ad serving technologies to web publishers in more than 20 countries, has been bought up by Seattle-based Atlas, the technologies business unit of aQuantive, Inc. Accipiter outstanding shares were acquired in exchange for cash consideration of $30.3 million. According to Atlas president Karl Siebrecht, the acquisition will compliment Atlas’s core strength and position among buyers of Internet advertising.
The Accipiter business was founded in 1996 and has operated independently since 2002. From 1996 to 2002, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based company operated under various corporate parents, including Engage and CMGI. Joining Atlas will be the long-standing Accipiter management team with co-founder and CEO Brian Handly leading the team in Raleigh as senior vice president, Atlas. European operations will join Atlas EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).
Microsoft has unfurled a Wi-Fi HotSpot Locator using MSN Virtual Earth maps and imagery. Find 114,008 free and paid WiFi hotspots in 100 countries. The Windows Live Hotspot Locator await here.
Northwest consumers whose holiday shopping lists include a digital camera or a digital television may be trying to understand and sort through a dizzying array of options. Take Control Books is on hand, your mouse clicking hand that is, to help locate the right gift at the right price by offering a 30 percent discount on any ebook order that includes “Take Control of Buying a Digital Camera,” or “Take Control of Digital TV.” Both guides are authored by Seattle-based experts.
Clark Humphreys, author of “Take Control of Digital TV,” is editor of the Belltown Messenger as well as a former staff writer for the Stranger and the Comics Journal. He wrote, among other things, the 1995 book “Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story,” and the 2006 book “Vanishing Seattle.” His blog is at http://www.miscmedia.com/.
Larry Chen, author of “Take Control of Buying a Digital Camera,” is a freelance photographer who lives in the Seattle area and who teaches photography as an adjunct faculty member at Seattle Pacific University. His portfolio is online at http://www.lchenphoto.com/.
The news that Microsoft’s Zune could be slipping down the holiday sales chimney, and quite possibly landing flat on its ash, is not only attributable to the lackluster (and in some cases, brutal) 
reviews. This time Apple is beating Microsoft at its own game. The problem is the Law of the Network. Without a large user base, Zune’s wireless sharing features are all but irrelevant. And with this market superiority, the iPod dominates in the accessories ‘ culture. There are literally thousands of after-market enhancements to embellish the iPod, right down to automobile integration with most car makers.
Now, for those who want to keep their iPods close wherever they may dock their fannies, there is the on a toilet-paper holder that mounts on the wall. Compatible with most recent iPod models (and presumably all brands of toilet paper), the iCarta comes with four integrated speakers to bounce sound off the bathroom walls. With its electrical adapter, the iCarta charges the iPod while it is parked in the dock. The system sells for around $100 and is available at many online electronics stores. There is a “where to buy” list and more details at atechflash.com/products-icarta.html.
Search marketers in Portland are blazing a new trail in the search world! A special interest
group known as the Search Engine Marketing Professionals of Portland (SEMpdx) has been born. The Search SIG has a mission to inform and educate area businesses on the benefits of SEM to bottom line revenue.
Member companies will meet regularly to discuss search engine marketing issues, trends and host educational events and programs. Will Seattle be next?
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask.com and Microsoft’s Live are the primary driver of traffic to e-tailers. According to Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer, search engines account for 25% of the upstream traffic. That means 25% of the traffic that go to the more than 19,000 online retailers visit search engines first!
Even big-brand retailers rely on search engines for traffic. About 12% of Wal-Mart.com traffic visited Google first, according to Hitwise. But here’s an interesting change and trend Tancer has spotted. Social networks, such as News Corp’s MySpace, are starting to drive traffic to retailers as well. In fact, 5% of traffic to retailers comes from social networks, with MySpace accounting for 2.5% of that traffic.
The founder of Search Engine Watch and the main man behind the Search Engine Strategies conferences, Danny Sullivan, is making a clean break with his former employer and launching a newly branded search engine marketing conference series. The new events will be branded Search Engine Marketing Expo or SMX for short.
The first show will take place in Seattle on June 4 and 5 of 2007 at the Bell Harbor Conference Center!
Danny’s new company Third Door will also be responsible for a new Search Engine Land site covering the science of searching and search engine marketing. In one more exciting search industry-related development, the new company has announced Search Marketing Now or SMN, a series of search marketing webcasts. which will complement the current search engine podcast known as the Daily Searchcast with feature oriented content.
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