Cyber Monday, November 26, 2007 had its unbelievable snafoos, but it ultimately was a success. In fact, comScore is reporting...
...that sales are up 21 percent over last year.
comScore also said today that Amazon.com and Wal-Mart were the top online retailers amongst all of the Cyber Monday visitors on November 26, 2007.
comScore is a leader in measuring the digital world. They released an update of this years holiday season e-commerce spending covering the first 26 days (November 1 - 26) of the November - December 2007 holiday season, including spending totals for Cyber Monday (November 26).
According to comScore, more than $10.7 billion has been spent online during the season-to-date, marking a 17-percent gain versus the corresponding days last year. Cyber Monday saw $733 million in online spending, representing a
Cyber Monday, the first Monday after black friday (the day after Thanksgiving in the USA) is one of the most important days in the holiday shopping season for online retailers. It usually represents the first big spike in holiday sales activity.
Cyber Monday November 26, 2007 set a record with $733 million in sales, This was the first time a single day of online retail spending has broken the $700 million mark.
Some other notable findings for Cyber Monday 2007 according to comScore include:
" The number of online buyers was up 38 percent compared to Cyber Monday 2006, while the average dollars spent per buyer was down 12 percent. The decline in dollars per buyer may be due to two factors " deeper and broader price discounts offered by online merchants this year and the fact that new Cyber Monday buyers tended to spend less online than returning buyers.
" 6 percent of the Internet users on Cyber Monday made an online purchase.
" 44 percent of Internet users on Cyber Monday shopped online (i.e. visited an online retail site or used a comparison shopping engine)
" 60 percent of dollars spent online on Cyber Monday came from work computers, with the balance coming from home and university computers.
hats amazing to me is that although Yahoo! Stores had a horrible day yesterday with their Yahoo! Store outage they still ended up making the top 10 list. Note that Yahoo! Stores are generally small businesses and are not related to the Yahoo! Shopping portal.
In an ongoing discussion on a great entrepreneurs mailing list I'm involved with, a member has begun talking about his desire to raise...
...some serious capital to grow his business faster. In response, another member challenged him to write an "action plan" to detail what he was going to do so his business would evolve from its current nascent state. That's not enough, however, and here's what I wrote in response...
Actually, as someone who consults with investors and companies raising capital, I will say that what you need, and what any entrepreneur needs isn't an action plan, but a business plan. You need to really flesh out the business opportunity, not the idea. Your business (), as a business, would need to have a quantified marketing plan, partners, affiliates, staff, a scalable backend, a method for identifying, qualifying and training additional artists (if needed), and a projected profit and loss statement with an emphasis on costs. Worry about 12 months, not years out, but you have to be able to show unequivocally that it is a lucrative, scalable business.
In my experience, the very last thing any investor does is loan you money to get your business fully fleshed out. The odds of an investment of that nature being a success (e.g., earning a decent return in 24-36 months) are very, very slim. Far more likely is what happened to one company we invested in when I was Entrepreneur in Residence for a small incubator: the guy just vanished once the check was signed and two weeks later I bumped into him at a caf. He was showing off his brand new Harley. Not good. VCs know this and there's a whole "yacht money" syndrome referring to this problem, actually.
Realize too that you don't need to have a great business plan because in many ways, it's the process of going through the steps to develop and realize your plan that are the most important. Instead of saying "we'll get to marketing once we have funding" you have to actually plan out a coherent and comprehensive marketing plan, for example. Far more valuable. (see this too: )
Also, there's a classic catch-22 in the staffing department worth mentioning too: too many startups tell investors "we have great execs lined up once we have funding". That's the wrong answer. The senior people need to already be on board and committed to the project, or they're just filler in the plan, not real executives you can leverage when trying to raise capital. If they can't afford to work full-time without pay for a few months, well, maybe they're not the right match for your business after all. Remember, it's passion that drives a young business, not capital.
So my advice to you as it is to all entrepreneurs is that you need to really get into the mindset of growing a business, not "doing something cool" if you really want to raise investor capital and grow your business to the next level.
Good luck!
Side note: The business in question is , and I'm a happy customer. Tom does brilliant work turning photographs into oil paintings. They're splendid gifts too. Nonetheless, as discussed in this article, is there a business here, or just a very cool hobby?
If youre thinking of creating an e-book and cant decide whether to give it away for free or charge for your hard work, you now have a third option.
Yahoo and Adobe have teamed up to provide contextually relevant ads for PDF documents.
According to , publishers upload their PDFs to Yahoo (we assume via Yahoo! Publisher) and then text ads appear in a panel to the right of the main PDF content. The ads are dynamic, giving them flexibility to change based on the content.
Heres a screenshot from CNET:
While it wasnt announced, I suspect Adobe will use this new service to make its current "" online service available for free. It currently charges $9.99 per month for the service, but it might be too tempting to offer the service for free, but on the condition that ads are added to the content. Im not sure who the market would be for that, but heck, were adding ads to everything these days. So if my emails can include Yahoo ads, why cant my next customer proposal.
Will Facebook have to face the Federal Trade Commission over their three-week-old Project Beacon and Social Ads platforms?
If the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy have their way, you bet.
The two privacy watchdogs have said that they intend to file against Facebooks new advertising platforms, which they view as an invasion of users privacy. EPIC says theyll file by January; CDD has already begun an official complaint against behavioral targeting in general and says theyll join in action against Facebook.
, and offers a succinct summary of the difference between the two Facebook advertising programs:
"EPIC plans to protest both Facebooks SocialAds"which tells members which of their friends have signed on as fans of the advertisers" and Beacon ads, which notifies members friends about their off-site purchases."
Okay, Im not really thrilled with the programs, either. But I think this is going a bit far, really. Check out what EPIC has to say for themselves:
Part of what Facebook is doing is taking from people the value of their endorsements, which traditionally is something that people can be compensated for, and selling it back to their advertisers, says EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg."
Traditionally is something that people can be compensated for, eh? Amazon.com owes me money for all those reviews Ive written for them, then. Oh, wait, what? I voluntarily did that just like Facebook users signing up for Social Ads voluntarily? Oh, right.
Just because people can be compensated for their endorsements doesnt mean that they should be, nor does it mean that we cant provide endorsements for free. (Besides, I humbly accept the fact that my endorsement wont bring in the same sum that an endorsement from, say, Michael Jordan would.)
Project Beacon, on the other hand, is way less cool. We already know theyve had popular opposition from such sites as MoveOn.org:
"The activist group MoveOn.org also is campaigning against Facebooks Beacon program, which publicizes information about peoples purchases to their friends. While users can opt-out of sharing such information "either at the point-of-purchase or on Facebook itself"MoveOn says the program should be opt-in only, to ensure that members have explicitly consented. Last week, MoveOn started a Facebook group Petition: Facebook, stop invading my privacy! which had drawn more than 28,000 members by Tuesday."
When I saw it yesterday, was just over 27,000 strong. Today? 41,000+. While the groups growth is pretty remarkable and will probably continue for at least a few weeks, its also important to remember that Facebook has almost 60M members. 41,000 is a drop in the bucket.
MediaPost also reports that this isnt the first FTC complaint against the new platforms:
"Within days of the launch, the Center for Digital Democracy and US Public Interest Research Group sent a letter to FTC chair Deborah Platt Majoras protesting Facebooks new ad programs as well as an expanded behavioral targeting effort on MySpace."
Many states have laws against using someones likeness in advertising without their consent, but Facebook argues that its users do give consent. MoveOn.org, EPIC, CDD and company argue that opting in to a brands page or neglecting to opt out of the service altogether to not consent make. Who is right?
Having posted some initial thoughts on RuleBursts acquisition of Haley, I was lucky enough to get some time with Peter Still, VP Strategy.
Peter and I spent an interesting hour discussing the merger and the combined companies plans so I thought I would share some of my thoughts.
The first interesting thing to note is that, although RuleBurst has bought Haley, the new company will be adopting the Haley name. Initially in the US but then worldwide. Given the size of the US market, this probably makes sense, as does breaking the implicit tie of the name to just rules. Decisioning is increasingly perceived as needing more than just rules so a name that leaves that open clearly makes sense.
As you would expect, the plan is to merge the two products over time while supporting upgrade paths for both. While both products are natural language based they do bring some different strengths to the party. RuleBurst is strong in using office documents for editing and supports multiple languages while Haley is based on a conceptual model and has a strong repository. As always the question is how quickly can they bring the products together without abandoning either user community - particularly important when both companies have a significant user base. Details of the roadmap were, as you would expect at this early stage, sketchy.
One of the key differences between their approach and most other rules vendors is that they do not start with a business object model. They like the way that their approach allows mapping to an execution model later. Not only does this allow development of expert systems for interactive diagnosis (with no database involved at all), it also allows mapping to multiple systems later. They also have some customers using the natural language approach to capture rules at a source rule level with implementation to come later. As a result some of their deployments involve tight integration with production systems, some do not. They have even done some work plugging the RuleBurst front end onto someone elses backend such as their ability to generate rules for Microsofts emerging rules engines. This is an area that intrigues me, though I remain to be convinced. I am hoping to get a demonstration of how this will all work together sometime soon and will blog again then.
It seems that the merged company will have an increasing focus on business solutions that include rules rather than the product as a pure platform play. Examples Peter gave included social security, tax and benefits in the public sector (where RuleBurst has a strong presence, especially in Europe/Asia/Australia), fraud detection, claims assessment, underwriting and other financial services and banking solutions (more I think from the Haley side). While this is a trend amongst most rules vendors - adding vertical content - this was one of the strongest positions on this I have seen taken by a rules vendor. It will be interesting to see how this plays in the general technology market, though I think their choice of focus areas is spot on (I might have added marketing/customer service decisioning). One difference is that they see increasing value from adding vertical content to both rules and related technologies. For instance, RuleBursts framework for compliance has workflow, neural networks (for fraud detection) and rules. This seems like the model for the kind of solution-oriented approach they want to take going forward. Despite the inclusion in these frameworks of analytics and BPM, they dont see this as excluding work with other analytic/BPM vendors so much as part and parcel of delivering a complete solution. Indeed they tout pre-built integration with BEA Aqualogic, IBM Websphere Process Server, Tibco, Netweaver and Biztalk.
One of my big questions was around the use of Haley in Oracle Siebel CRM. Siebel 8 includes Haley for configuring some of the behavior of the CRM component and customers can (and do) build on the OEM license to expand rules use beyond CRM. Despite Oracles known opposition to OEMing technology in their applications, Peter assured me that Oracle is continuing to sell the solution aggressively and to sell consulting packages around adopting this component. Given the need for Haley consulting support I am sure Oracle is pleased with the merger as the combined company can offer consulting worldwide much more effectively. That said, I am still not convinced that Oracle will continue to rely on an OEMed component. RuleBurst is confident that Oracle have no plans to drop it, despite its somewhat anomalous situation as the only OEM component in the Oracle stack. RuleBursts focus with Oracle is on business content around CRM rather than on integration with Oracles development tools such as their BPEL tool with its APIs for Decision Services.
Meanwhile they also have a good relationship with SAP from the Ruleburst side, especially in Public services. Despite the fact that they are one of many partners they feel that they have a special relationship and presented some compelling evidence that this, in fact, the case. They dont feel that the SAP purchase of Yasu (on which I commented ) as part of the Netweaver platform is a threat to this relationship thanks again to a focus on business content (this time in public sector). They remain confident that they can continue to work with both Oracle and SAP - I wish them luck!
In my original post I asked three questions:
* Will the combination be able to deliver the features now common in Business Rules Management Systems and Natural Language Processing?
This remains to be seen but Peter seemed confident they can and that their unique approach offers benefits
* Will the two companies different geographic focuses become an asset, making them a worldwide player, or a liability, by creating tensions between different parts of what should now be a single development team?
The adoption of the Haley name and the acknowledgment that merging the products sooner rather than later is desirable along with Peters discussion of the relative benefits of the two technologies makes me think they have a shot at this.
* Will the combined company focus on decisions not rules
While they do have many customers who use the engine like this and support having the engine deployed as a service, it is not the only way to use it. Although, therefore, you can build decision services that are widely accessible as a stateless component that can receive data, return decisions and explanations, flag additional required data etc., the company seems like it will remain split between this view and a more traditional expert-system-like view of rules.
So we will all have to wait and see what happens but consolidation is a sign of market maturity I think so I wish them, and the folks at Yasu/SAP, the best of luck.
...Google AdWords Deal. Google has reached an agreement with Hearst-Argyle Television where Hearst-Argyle Television will be the...
...first television reseller of Google AdWords, Googles Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.
Hearst-Argyle Television owns a lot of television stations across the USA and has access to a lot of local advertisers. The following is a map of the USA, indicating where Hearst-Argyle Television stations are located:
Google AdWords will now have even more access to small and medium-sized businesses who may not be currently advertising on the web.
Hearst-Argyle Television is the first TV industry reseller of Google AdWords. Under this new agreement, Hearst-Argyle Television, a company that operates 29 television stations and owns more than thirty Websites, will become an official reseller of Google AdWords. They will use their Web sales force to provide marketers in its 26 local markets access to Google AdWords.
This new agreement is actually an expansion of Hearst-Argyles current relationship with Google. In June of 2007, Hearst-Argyle Television became the first independent TV station group owner to establish a content- and revenue-sharing arrangement with YouTube(TM). In fact, Hearst-Argyle Television has launched 26 YouTube Channels populated with news, weather, sports and entertainment videos as well as with original, local television programming and content from its recently launched social-networking site High School Playbook (www.HighSchoolPlaybook.com).
Hearst-Argyle Television also owns a bunch of local websites, including the following:
I honestly think - after many long cycles of entertainment, I'm going to have to give Ty Tyra Banks and America's Next Top Model the fucking boot. It's not so much that she kicked off my favorite contestant or even that all 4 of the remaining contestants are the most retarded, phony assholes I've ever seen. It's mostly that Ty Baby showed us all just how ignorant, oblivious, empty and arrogant she really is when she bestowed her "parting wisdom" with said contestant.
Immediately after the episode ended I turned to Lars and said - "Ya, know, I think I am really done with this show." I never thought the day would come.
Are you a victim of crime of persuasions, schemes, scams and frauds --- Telemarketing fraud?
What is Telemarketing Fraud? Telemarketing fraud is defined simply by the principle medium of contact used to perpetrate the fraud. Legitimate businesses use the same "tools" to sell their products, so consumers need to know the warning signs associated with telemarketing fraud. They should not be, but are often confused with legitimate telemarketing operations. At present, The Federal Trade Commission estimates that there are more than of 14,000 fraudulent telemarketing businesses operate in North America alone.
Operations may consist of a single individual in a makeshift and portable office facility set up with a bank of phones. There are two kinds of calls namely:
Outboundcalls. When calls have not been preceded with promotional materials but are made from lists of leads or at random.
Inbound calls. If consumers are encouraged or induced to call a number on their own.
A number of these operations take extraordinary measures to increase the difficulty of successful investigation and prosecution. These measures include
Using cell phones. It is sometimes in conjunction with prepaid "calling cards", which can be discarded after several weeks of intensive use.
Using stolen identity cards. These stolen cards are being used to open mail drops for receipt of payments that victims mail to them
Using multiple mail drops. Shuttle victim-related mail through multiple destinations
Impersonation of FBI and Customs agents or RCMP officers. To make victims believe that law enforcement is already aware of their losses
Contracting with other telemarketing "boiler rooms". Are small sales offices that can spring up and close down overnight. The only desk furniture is a telephone
Laundering. Laundering of fraud proceeds through foreign bank accounts.
Targets tend to be poor, often elderly people and those with a lot of debt and little chance of obtaining credit. Their names may appear on "sucker" lists. These are people with bad credit and heavy debts --- lured by the promise of a new card. Companies buy and sell these names.
Detailed below are how to avoid becoming a victim of telemarketing fraud:
Ask for written information. Salespeople may not explain the complete details of the product and the cost. Legitimate companies will send you the details upfront and never insist that you act immediately.
Don’t give your credit card or bank account information. There is no reason why the company would need that information for any other purpose.
Watch out for imposters. Crooks may pretend to be calling on behalf of well-known company or government agency and request payment for product or services rendered, when they have absolutely no connection with them at all and will simply pocket your money.
Add your phone number to the National Do Not Call Registry. This will reduce the chance that you will be contacted again as your name is sold to other scam artists.
Unwanted telemarketing calls are often triggered by responding to unwanted paper junk mail. Reduce unwanted junk mail that lead to a number of unwanted telemarketing calls. If you will pay your credit card, do not pay for that item on your credit card bill until you've received, examined and are satisfied with your product or price.
Remember that unsolicited telemarketing sales are not final until you have received written confirmation of the sale and you have three days after you receive your written confirmation to cancel an unsolicited telemarketing sale. The good news is, you may be able to undo the damage. Beware!
Wow, I am so not naturally cut out for holiday stuff. I took a 10 year break from any sort of observance of any kind (unless you count pigging out with some Muslim friends at 3 in the morning for like half of one Ramadan). This Christmas thing is not a strength of mine. I totally blame my parents.
Yesterday was a lovely day. It was my son's third birthday. Joe the bigger took the day off and we were having such a lovely morning loafing off until the landlord brought a plumber by. We ended up sitting around observing plumbing so I suggested we take the birthday boy out to lunch. Very few places are suitable for a comfortable toddler lunch so we chose one of the Pat's Pizzas in the area. Everything went better than expected. Apparently my son really digs going out for pizza. He also enjoyed watching the Celtics-Cavaliers game being replayed on the television there. See? I can be regular people. I was feeling pretty good about this.
We returned home to presents in the mail for the little guy. I put him down for nap and the hubby and I did nothing important whatsoever. We basically checked out YouTube videos: Australia's Prime Minister elect Kevin Rudd eating earwax, a Snoop Dogg video for a song called "Sensual Seduction"- uhm, you know the stuff I should totally be admitting to in a public forum. The point is: yesterday had a sort of relaxed, hanging with the fam' feel that let me believe I was ready to start with this "Christmas" thing.
When the smaller Joe woke up I said good-bye to both Joes and headed out to buy stuff that would make the inside of our apartment somewhat holiday like. My trip started at the bank where I simply asked for blank deposit slips. All the teller had to do was give me some. Nope! She had to ask why I needed them. I told her I was finally getting my name legally changed and we still had tons of checks, etc. She told me I should have had that done ages ago, I told her I wasn't sure I was even going to do it., she told me that I should have decided these things before I ordered my last checks- suddenly I realized this was all no one's business and that she just needed to give me the damn deposit slips. I tried to be assertive and asked again for "just blank deposit slips, please". You would not believe the look she gave me!!! This is the thing I fear about holidays! It is something hard to put into words: that tone in a voice, that look in the eye....
I moved on to my next errand: tree. I won't go into much detail because I was truly traumatized with choosing a tree. I will never feel confident I did the right thing. Never. Let us just say I have a tree of some sort in my home. We will leave it at that.
I then had to return a birthday present at a giant, scary, mega-store I never go to. The troubles started in the line for returns/customer service. An elderly employee was CLEARLY on his break and snacking on a bag of bugles. The impatient elderly women in line behind me started verbally assaulting him. I say 'verbally assaulting' and I mean 'verbally assaulting'. It was terrible!! I wanted to whisk him away to some private break room in paradise where his many years lived would not be rewarded with snide remarks. These women were brutal! It did not get any easier when I was shopping around in the store proper. Christmas is weeks away and yet people are already in cart assault mode (or so it would seem to a person who never shops and is very sensitive in matters of cart etiquette). The cashier line was hands down the worst. Only 3 registers were open though the store was obviously very busy. I waited patiently until I was the next person to pay. The woman in front of me had (I am not making this up) about 6 identical velor track suits (more likely retirement appropriate stay at home togs). The moment the cashier started ringing them up she remembered she had forgotten something and bolted, leaving everything and saying she would be right back. I understand why the cashier waited: the woman was oldish and somehow put together in a way that made walking difficult and seemed really, really mean. She finally returned with a cartload of adult diapers and informed everyone within ear shot that if she doesn't "get these for Margie herself the woman will mess herself every day until someone does." I guess I will end my store story there.
Traffic getting out of there was scary. I am asking all you people dazzled with Christmas cheer: do you see this? Are you aware of the misery and the drive to kill on the faces of your holiday 'loving' ilk WEEKS away from the big day? Am I just paranoid?
Christmas isn't all fear for me. I do appreciate many parts. Actually, I appreciate most of the parts that don't involve driving and shopping. Today the little guy and I will decorate the tree with strings of beads and snowflakes (we will be making them from construction paper today). We will listen to some Christmas music on the radio and I will not make the mistake my parents made. I will not let on about any of the parts of the holiday that I do not like. I will let him have his fun and try to have fun with him...
...and, most importantly, I will try to forget that Snoop video I saw. Check it out, I dare you.
Cyber Monday, November 26, 2007 had its unbelievable snafoos, but it ultimately was a success. In fact, comScore is reporting...
In an ongoing discussion on a great entrepreneurs mailing list I'm involved with, a member has begun talking about his desire to raise...
If youre thinking of creating an e-book and cant decide whether to give it away for free or charge for your hard work, you now have a third option.
Will Facebook have to face the Federal Trade Commission over their three-week-old Project Beacon and Social Ads platforms?
Having posted some initial thoughts on RuleBursts acquisition of Haley, I was lucky enough to get some time with Peter Still, VP Strategy.
...Google AdWords Deal. Google has reached an agreement with Hearst-Argyle Television where Hearst-Argyle Television will be the...