Wednesday Internet Digest

Commerce:
* Online sales US 05Q3: +26.7% yoy and +5.7% qoq to $22.32 bn = 2.3% of total retail sales (+8.5% yoy and +1.8% qoq to $957.86 bn) (Commerce Dpt; excludes travel, tickets, financial)
* 52% expect more online shopping because of: 24 hrs (81%), time saving (76%), crowd avoiding (75%), research options (54%), comparison shopping (52%), free shipping (50%), high gas prices (49%), but overall holiday budget -7% (survey of 6239 by AOL)

Communication:
* email: usage 52% of internet users (Pew survey of 1577)

Ads:
* Yahoo, AOL, MSN sold out display ads
* Online ads US 05Q3: +33.9% yoy and +4.7% qoq to $3.1 bn (PwC, IAB)
* Holidays US: expected +24% to $19 bn, year total +24% to $82.7 bn (excluding travel, auctions) (comScore)

Search:
* Personalisation: Eurekster intros swicki (learning)
* Desktop: FAST intros ‘Personal Search Platform’; X1 Technologies and SoonR intro desktop search through mobile
* Shopping: Google plans Froogle Local
* Usage: 41% of internet users in Sep/Oct (Pew survey of 1577)
* Unique visitors Oct: Google 75m, Yahoo! 68m, MSN 49.7m, Ask 43.7m, AOL 36.1m (comScore)

User-generated content, sharing:
* Blogs: Yahoo! adds Gawker Media to Yahoo! News; Six Apart’s Typepad suffers outages; AlwaysOn plans GoingOn network early 2006 (blog-network-in-a-box for corporates)
* Podcast: IBM intros ‘IBM and the future of our cities’
* Vlogs: Het Net (KPN) plans intro on Shoobidoo.tv December 2005
* Photo sharing: AOL relaunches AOL Pictures, free; Google rumoured to bid for Riya
* Sharing: Bram Cohen (BitTorrent) settles with MPAA; i2Hub shuts down; deal Peer Impact (= Wurld Media) with NBC Universal

Corporate:
* IPO: plan Liquidity Services (auctions), raise $86m; plan Buy.com, 4.2m shares at $11-13