Webware

A snapshot of holiday sales.

(Credit: ComScore)

This year's online holiday-shopping season has topped $19.9 billion so far--a 3 percent jump over the same period in 2008, according to ComScore.

Online sales were bolstered last week when consumers spent more than $800 million on two separate days, ComScore said. On Thursday, for example, consumers coughed up $852 million.

Monday has the potential to produce the best day of this year's holiday-shopping season, which started November 1 in ComScore's stats.

ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said that Monday "represents our best opportunity to finally surpass that elusive $900 million spending threshold. The early part of this upcoming week should bring us the heaviest online spending days of the season before consumers refocus their attention on brick-and-mortar retail locations to finish up their holiday shopping."

Considering that 2008 wasn't the great year for holiday sales, online or otherwise, it is also worth looking back to 2007. From November 1 through December 14 in 2007, ComScore reported, consumers spent $22.67 billion online.

ComScore's 2009 figures included up through Friday, December 11. It will be interesting to see whether the extra three days could push this year's online sales figures anywhere near 2007's level.

The new report is the latest from the e-commerce-tracking company showing healthier sales than last year. A recent report cited strong Cyber Monday sales figures.

Updated at 7:15 a.m. PDT with 2007 online sales figures.

Those who say that Twitter is nothing more than a place where people share inconsequential experiences in their lives might want to listen up. Dell told Bloomberg on Tuesday that it has earned an estimated $6.5 million in sales of PCs, accessories, and software, thanks to promotions on Twitter.

Dell's vice president for the company's online unit, Manish Mehta, told Bloomberg that over the past three months alone, the number of people who have started following Dell's tweets has risen 23 percent. The company's DellOutlet account, which is home to most of the vendor's sales announcements, currently has almost 1.5 million followers. But unlike some companies, Dell has made Twitter an integral part of its operation. Bloomberg reported that "more than 100 employees send out the tweets" to customers.

"It's a very vibrant channel for us and it's growing aggressively," Mehta told Bloomberg, referring to Twitter. "It's not just our reach and growth that has progressed, it's that it's happening globally."

Mehta told Bloomberg that its Twitter accounts are followed by people in 12 countries. Brazil users alone spent $800,000 in the past eight months, he said.

Wow. There is money out there: a retail deals site called Groupon has raised a whopping $30 million Series B funding round led by Accel Partners, one of Facebook's early backers. Existing Groupon investor NEA, which led the company's $4.8 million Series A round in January 2008, also contributed.

Here is the gist of Groupon: there are currently editions for 26 U.S. cities. The site advertises a deal each day from a selected local establishment like a restaurant, nail salon, or gym. There's a heavy discount involved. But enough members have to opt into the deal in order for any of them to get it. Groupon takes a cut of earnings if the deal hits the "tipping point" and goes live; otherwise, the featured merchant does not have to pay.

They've been profitable since June, founder and CEO Andrew Mason told CNET. So why raise $30 million? "We want to roll out to another 50 cities or so next year," he said, adding that early in 2010 it hopes to expand to Canadian cities, "so it's just going to help us increase the rate of customer acquisition and focus on building new technology." He wouldn't say what that new technology is, but he did add that the company went from 10 to 120 employees in the past year and planned to continue to grow at that rate.

The company grew out of an existing start-up called ThePoint, which applied a similar "collective" model to community and activism projects, before switching entirely to the retail model.

Web shoppers are a suspicious lot. That's the conclusion of a recent poll conducted by Zogby International and funded by Symantec and the National Cyber Security Alliance. The survey found that 63 percent of online shoppers abandoned a purchase due to security concerns.

Among the reasons given for failing to complete the transaction were sites that asked for too much information, uncertainty about how their personal data would be used by the site, and lack of faith in the site's security. These are all valid concerns.

CNET News reporter Greg Sandoval describes recent Congressional hearings on bogus online loyalty programs that sucker Web shoppers into offers that are loaded with fine print. Sandoval's follow-up report indicates that few of the big-name sites profiting from these programs intend to end their relationships with the companies being scrutinized.

Even if you've been making Web purchases for years, it pays to review the top five tips for avoiding unpleasant online-shopping surprises.

Know who you're dealing with
You can get an indication of a site's trustworthiness by using a site-rating browser add-on such as the Web of Trust, LinkExtend, and McAfee SiteAdvisor. I described these and other security add-ons for Firefox in a post on Nov. 17, but these and similar site-rating services are available for Internet Explorer and other browsers as well.

The BBB Online's shopping tips suggest that if you're not sure about completing a Web purchase, look for a toll-free phone number you can call to place your order. Just remember not to volunteer more information than necessary, whether you make your purchase via a Web form or telephone.

Know exactly what you're getting—and when and how you're getting it
Document as many specs as possible about the products you're purchasing, including model numbers, dimensions, item numbers, and guarantees of authenticity. Know beforehand all delivery and handling charges, warranties, and return/refund policies. Get the tracking number of the delivery service the vendor will use.

In my experience, the ability of Amazon and other reputable Web sites to deliver products when they promise goes down as the heart of holiday shopping season approaches. To avoid Christmas morning disappointments, shop very early or stick to brick and mortar for your most important purchases.

Watch for prechecked or disguised 'offers'
Just as you can find your browser sporting a new toolbar if you rush through an update of your media player or PDF reader, being in a hurry when you make a Web purchase can cause you to "sign up" for unwanted offers. Technologizer blogger Harry McCracken found himself an inadvertent enrollee in the SavingsAce affinity program run by Vertrue, which is one of the companies under investigation by Congress.

Maintain a complete paper trail
Print out all transaction records, invoices, order-confirmation e-mails, warranties, return and refund policies, and anything else that documents the transaction. The BBB Online recommends printing Web pages showing the vendor's name, physical address, and telephone number. Also print pages with information about the product you're purchasing and the seller's privacy policy and legal terms.

Watch for unexpected charges after the fact
Some of the most unpleasant surprises may not manifest themselves until you receive your next credit-card statement. Be ready to challenge any unauthorized fees or other added charges. Watch out for mystery charges from third-party vendors such as Harry's experience with SavingsAce.

If you're unable to work out any problems with the vendor, the BBB Online recommends using the Better Business Bureau's complaint form, the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection complaint form, or the equivalent complaint form on the site of your state's attorney general.

Unfortunately, when I went this route with the faulty notebook computer HP sold me, I got nowhere fast. Still, you might have better luck with your complaints than I had with mine.

eBay on Sunday confirmed that a "technical issue" had caused search queries on the auction site to be messed up over the weekend, resulting in limited or no search results. The company says that it's being cautious, though, and is holding back on some advanced search features until the issue is fully solved.

"We are happy to report that critical search functionality was restored overnight on Saturday and we are seeing normal activity levels today," a post on the company's eBay Ink blog read Sunday. "As part of our effort to restore critical search functionality as quickly as possible for sellers and for buyers, we have kept some secondary search features temporarily offline. This includes refining search by certain item specifics, such as color or clothing size, and having Store Inventory Format results included in the main search results."

In a statement, eBay also said the technical issue was caused by "a surge in live listings as sellers ramp up for the holiday season. eBay currently has more than 200 million live listings, 33 percent more than at this time a year ago."

Some eBay members still weren't satisfied with the explanation. "I had a one day auction ending today, (and) no one was obviously able to bid on it because they couldn't search for it," one commenter said on the eBay Ink blog. "Will I get a credit for this?"

"eBay should credit all sellers with active listings during this time," another said. "These issues have cost sellers many bids and sales. Once again eBay is screwing sellers."

Much like Twitter's today, outages at eBay were rather prominent in the company's early days. They're not too frequent anymore. But this one came at a time when there are some sentiments of malaise among eBay sellers, some of whom use the auction site to make a living, and when it also faces increased competition in the e-commerce sector.

An analyst release from JP Morgan Chase said that it did not anticipate the outage would have an effect on eBay's fourth-quarter earnings. But, it contained a warning: "Although we recognize it is virtually impossible for a site of this complexity to not encounter occasional issues," the report from analyst Imran Khan read, "we continue to believe that eBay needs to make greater investments in the robustness and functionality of its site in order to remain competitive within the e-commerce space."

The simple concept of having virtual-good payments in games sent directly to your cell phone bill has gotten a lot of buzz--and stirred up a lot of rivalry. One of the start-ups looking to pull this off, Boku, announced Monday that it has signed on a dozen new gaming partners, both a few based on the Facebook platform and some others that are either Web-based or desktop downloads.

The partner companies are Waves, Cie Studios, Cyberstep, GameDuell, IGG, King.com, NHN USA, Ntreev, Outspark, PerfectWorld, Snap Interactive, and Zoosk. Most of them aren't household names: they're game manufacturers, not the games themselves, and some of them are most prominent outside the U.S.

There are a handful of companies trying to grab market share in this space, but the two who have been most vocal about making inroads have been Boku and rival Zong, which last month announced that it would allow members to sync credit cards with their phone numbers, allowing for larger payments and putting the company closer to direct competition with the likes of PayPal.

Boku says it's sticking to the mobile-number-only strategy, choosing instead to ink more deals and emphasize its global reach: with the current round of partnerships, the company says it will have 200 million registered users added to its ranks (no word on how active they all are, or how much redundancy there is across games).

Additionally, Boku has made some infrastructure upgrades that it says will improve the user experience, including the ability to detect whether a phone number that has been entered is landline or mobile--and if mobile, what carrier it's coming from.

eBay Motors founder Simon Rothman announced on Monday that he has officially launched a new e-commerce site, Glyde.

According to the press release, Glyde's goal "is to democratize e-commerce." The site was born out of Rothman's desire to make it easier for Web users to buy and sell products online.

But Glyde throws in a twist. The site's marketplace is designed for Web users to sell used goods. They can sell books, CDs, DVDs, and video games.

"The average American household has $3,000 worth of unwanted media collecting dust," Rothman said in a statement. "We built a service that makes buying and selling a used DVD as simple as trading a share of Disney stock. It's the NASDAQ for physical goods."

It's an interesting take on what Glyde is all about. But after using the site for awhile, I would agree that it does make it extremely easy to buy and sell goods.

Glyde lets you search for DVDs, CDs, Games, or books.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Glyde's design is extremely simple. If you decide you want to buy some products, you can flip through the listing of available inventory, pick what you want, and learn more about it by clicking on it without much trouble. Unlike sites like Amazon or eBay, which deliver you to a product's individual page listing, Glyde displays the listing over the search results. When you're done looking at it, simply click the "X" at the top right of the panel and you'll be returned to your spot in the results.

Placed prominently on all product pages is a "Buy Now" button. Users have the option of buying a used copy of the product from a seller or a new copy.

Glyde shows off a product listing.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Glyde's buying process isn't all that unique. It's standard fare. And even though it offers discounted pricing, I just don't think it competes well against Amazon's Marketplace or eBay. Those sites have far more products, competitive pricing, and simpler checkout processes. Unless Glyde can improve upon that, it might have a problem.

But it's Glyde's selling side that will probably appeal most to users. The site makes it incredibly simple to sell products. Users need only to list the product, set a sales price, and wait for someone to buy. Once they do, Glyde sends them a prestamped, preaddressed mailer. Sellers need to insert the item they're selling into the mailer and place it in their mailbox. Once the buyer receives the product, the funds are deposited into the seller's account, less the cost of the mailer and Glyde's fee, which is 10 percent of the sales price.

Even better, those selling products on Glyde can opt for the proceeds to go to the charity of their choice. It's a nice option.

Glyde provides a simple, efficient e-commerce solution. But by taking on giants eBay and Amazon in the used-goods market, it will be difficult for the company to stay relevant and capture significant market share.

The heated mobile-payment wars are expanding...beyond mobile. Zong, one of the start-ups hoping to capture the market for online micropayments billed to a mobile phone, announced Thursday the debut of "Zong Plus," which lets members link credit or debit cards to their Zong accounts.

It's another move that pits Zong against Boku, a competitor that launched right around the same time with broader global reach--last month, it announced its expansion to subscription-based services in addition to on-demand micropayments.

At launch, Zong Plus is compatible with Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express accounts,

"Today you've got a variety of products for different kinds of payments and services," vice president of product management Hill Ferguson told CNET News. "You've got PayPal. You've got several of us in this mobile payment arena. What Zong Plus does is just elevates us into a different mobile payment type."

On the surface, adding traditional credit card payments seems to defeat the purpose of Zong, which inherently tries to offer a simpler and more universal alternative for small payments (cell phone carriers put a cap on how much can be spent). But Ferguson said that Zong Plus, which is free for participating merchants to upgrade to, "is an optional feature for consumers who have payments cards and feel that the incentive that we offer is powerful enough for them to open up their wallet and type in the information."

What's that incentive? Part of Zong Plus is a loyalty program that will rack up points much like airline miles. In a participating game or other micropayments-linked application, this means that when enough points have been accrued, the member may be alerted that their next purchase is "on the house."

Whether it will work is still unclear. Zong has deals with social gaming and virtual-world companies like OMGPOP, IMVU, and Gaia Online, but there are still enough rivals offering similar packages as well as the off chance that a big e-commerce player like PayPal could launch a service of its own and snuff out the competition.

The announcement comes in advance of the Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco, where pretty much any start-up involved in the latest generation of e-commerce (read: magic swords and Mafia dons) will be showing off its wares. Plenty of other companies will be making announcements, too, presumably some in the payments space.

The revamped Facebook gift shop.

(Credit: Facebook)

It's not just music as rumored: Facebook announced on Wednesday a major overhaul to its "gift shop" feature, meaning that the social network just became an even bigger player in the burgeoning virtual-goods industry.

"We now are unveiling a newly stocked and redesigned Gift Shop, with new categories of gifts and additional gifts for charity, music, and sports from developers," a post on the company blog by Facebook's Will Chen read. With so many gifts available, we also introduced a new design to make it easier for you to browse and purchase gifts with different gift categories." It'll be rolling out over the next few weeks, he added.

Needless to say, this is a huge deal for the virtual-goods industry, which some estimate is now a billion-dollar business.

It also beefs up one of Facebook's few non-advertising revenue streams (though many of the virtual goods in the "gift shop" are licensed or sponsored)--even though in a talk on Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg downplayed rumors that the company would be making big moves into bringing commerce and payment transactions to its developer platform.

Music files, as rumored, will be sold through a partnership with Lala. Right now, they are only available to Facebook users in the U.S.--less than a quarter of its total membership. For one Facebook "credit" (10 cents U.S., and currently available for purchase in 15 currencies from around the world), members can buy one another songs that can be played online. For 10 credits (a dollar), they can gift downloadable MP3 files. "Other people who are able to see the music gift (in that member's profile) will only be able to play the song in full once, after which they will be able to play a 30-second clip," Chen's post added.

This is a big move on Facebook's part for another reason: iLike, which powers the extremely popular "Music" app on the social network, and which allowed members to gift songs to one another through the third-party application, was acquired by Facebook rival MySpace this summer.

Instead, it's partnered with Lala--which is also one of the partners in the music initiative that Google is slated to launch next week.

But music isn't all that's new in Facebook's revamped Gift Shop. There are also sports gifts officially licensed by teams--branded virtual goods from a number of college sports teams as well as the National Basketball Association and U.S. Major League Soccer. Also rolled in have been the non-profit gifts that Facebook first debuted this summer. In addition to existing partners like Kiva and Project Red, virtual charity gifts will also be sold by popular third-party Facebook app Causes.

And images posted to the Facebook blog show additional categories--e-cards, which are pretty self-explanatory, and "real gifts," which bundle a physical gift sent in the mail along with the virtual gift. These have all been tested in a limited scope by Facebook over the past few months.

Leaked screenshots of a document that Facebook distributed to advertisers earlier this month revealed that an upcoming design modification to Facebook's home page will make birthday alerts--which also encourage members to buy gifts for one another--more prominent.

Facebook hasn't disclosed any financials related to how much advertisers pay for sponsored gifts, or how any revenue-sharing logistics pan out.

Other social-networking services are trying to get in on the action, too. Social-site creator Ning, for one, launched a gifts platform earlier this week.

More to come...last updated at 4:01 p.m. PT.