Holiday shoppers brought good cheer to e-commerce retailers, spending $27 billion online from November 1 through December 24, a 5 percent jump over last year, ComScore reported Wednesday.
The period from Black Friday through Christmas Eve was also bright and merry as sales grew by around 3.5 percent, even after adjusting for an additional shopping day this year. Consumer electronics proved to be the hottest selling category, rising 20 percent. Larger retailers outpaced smaller vendors thanks in part to their use of free shipping and marketing via social-networking sites, said ComScore.
(Credit:
ComScore)
The growth in this year's online holiday sales showed improvement over 2008, when sales dropped by 3 percent. Results were likely helped by a snowstorm that blanketed the East Coast the weekend of December 19-20, forcing many shoppers to pick up those last-minute gifts online.
"Online sales growth this year was driven by a continued increase in the number of people buying online, but consumers' economic challenges resulted in a slight decline versus last year in the amount spent per buyer," said ComScore chairman Gian Fulgoni in a statement. "The season featured a strong start as a result of early retailer promotions and a very strong finish helped by the snowstorms that occurred the weekend of December 19-20, retailers' willingness to offer free shipping later in the season, and consumers' confidence in expedited shipping arriving in time."
Linden Lab, the parent company of virtual world Second Life, has quietly snapped up two companies that had built e-commerce marketplaces on its platform. The two start-ups, Xstreet SL and OnRez, will be combined into the "Xstreet SL platform," a sort of Craigslist-eBay hybrid for the trade of Second Life virtual goods.
Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed.
It's a revenue stream for Linden Lab, which will take a cut of each sale. And, the company says, virtual goods are a $1.5 billion industry. Though a vicious marketing hype-backlash cycle has painted Second Life as an also-ran, $360 million in Second Life goods were bought and sold in 2008, believe it or not, and there are currently 680,000 items up for sale on Xstreet SL.
Based on the Web rather than in-world, the newly acquired marketplace is part of an ongoing strategy at Linden Lab to recapture mass interest by giving members and prospective members an opportunity to "shop" outside of the Second Life environment.
"Having a Web marketplace to browse and search is a great way to find new designers, keep up with the latest creations, or just find that perfect gift/texture/dress/home/weapon/couch," a post on the Linden Lab blog explained. "Our goal is to make the Web marketplace a wonderful complement to in-world shopping and a great benefit for all residents."
Perhaps part of the thinking is that by giving Second Life more of an official Web-based presence, the marketing will take care of itself. That's possible. But reversals in fortune are rare on the Web, where even a successful product can't stay stagnant for too long before an enterprising rival eclipses it.
Worth noting: virtual goods have been banned from auction giant eBay for nearly two years now, but Second Life goods were exempted because of Linden Lab's argument that the virtual world does not count as a game (and the ban specifically targeted gaming items).
Second Life also has reason to take some of its financial activity out of the virtual world: resident-created banks were effectively banned after a series of scams and scandals last year.
The Wii - catch it if you can.
(Credit: Walmart.com)Discount retailer Wal-Mart on Monday announced that it has started to sell "tens of thousands" of Nintendo's Wii gaming console online. The 2-year-old gadget, consistently sold out and difficult to obtain, emerged as one of Black Friday's big hits amid a bleak economy.
On Friday night, the Wii was sold out on Wal-Mart's Web site as well as the Web sites of electronics retailers Best Buy and Circuit City, Reuters reported. On Monday morning, they were in stock.
Wal-Mart plans to sell the Wii consoles online for a price of $249.24 (Best Buy's listing price is about 50 cents more expensive, so it's not a deep discount) along with a $329 "value bundle" that contains extra controllers and some other add-ons.
The retailer is also offering discounts on Wii accessories and games.
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