Daily Bits

Internet

More Shoppers Will Go Mobile by 2015

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It looks like e-commerce is taking a new route these days – via mobile phones. That is more shoppers are doing their daily shopping fix using their mobile phones, says ABI Research’s latest “Mobile Commerce” study which focused on mobile online shopping and mobile payments for virtual goods.

According to the report, mobile shoppers are projected to spend as much as $119 billion on goods and services via their mobile phones. Although the increase is quite significant, overall however this only amounts to 8% of the total e-commerce market. ABI’s report include global forecasts for e-commerce, mobile online shopping as a subset of e-commerce, virtual goods as well as mobile payments for those virtual goods.

ABI’s senior analyst Mark Beccue said that mobile online shopping is getting more common among online shoppers.

“In the United States, mobile online shopping rose from $396 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion in 2009. While definitions of ‘mass market adoption’ vary, a more than threefold increase in one year indicates significant consumer interest.”

Interestingly while the U.S. mobile shopping industry is steadily growing, its current condition still fall way too short of the mobile shopping industry in Japan which reached more than $10 billion in 2009. Europe’s mobile shopping market is steadily growing as well and is expected to surpass the US market by the end of 2010.

Does this mean that U.S. online shoppers don’t use their mobile phones as much as their Japanese or European counterparts before?  It seems that it’s not really a problem on the consumers part though.

The report also noted that interests toward smartphone is only starting to build up. Plus support for mobile commerce is websites is also just starting to get a headway recently.

Amazon to Give Free Kindle to Amazon Prime Subscribers?

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Are you a frequent Amazon products buyer? Do you do all of your online shopping via Amazon? If you do, you must be an Amazon Prime subscriber already. Well, guess what? Amazon is reportedly planning to give out free Amazon Kindles to their loyal Amazon Prime Subscribers. Last time I checked, I’m an Amazon Prime subscriber, so Amazon please push through with your plans. I would love to get that free Kindle.

In case you’re not aware, Amazon Prime is a premium subscription product that entitles members to a free two days shipping on any of their purchases at Amazon. Members are charged an annual fee of $79/year to maintain this privilege. They are also considered as Amazon’s best customers who makes multiple purchases every month.

Amazon’s plan of giving out free Kindles was first reported by TechCrunch. According to Arrington, what’s keeping Amazon from pushing this play as of now is that the Amazon folks are still figuring out how to do it without losing too much money. Amazon of course is in dire need of getting the Kindle into the hands of as many people as they can, especially with various threats coming from its rivals, and upcoming rivals such as the iPad. And giving it out for free to those who will potentially purchase e-books from the Kindle store could be a pretty good strategy.

So, there. If you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber, hope that this plan pushes through.

YouTube Still King of Online Video, But Facebook is Growing Fast

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NielsenWire has just published their latest online video metrics report and as expected like it has been the past couple of years, YouTube is still the most visited online video site. But what’s interesting to note from Nielsen’s stats is how fast Facebook is growing as an online video channel.

First,  some facts and details. According to the NielsenWire’s report, the number of unique viewers of online video increased y 5.2% year-over-year, from 137.4 million unique viewers in January 2009 to 142.7 million the same month this year. And the fastest growing online video sites include the likes of Disney Online with 23.3% growth, MSN/WindowsLive/Bing with 15.6% and of course Facebook with 18.6% growth during the said period.

YouTube on the other hand managed to posed only a 6.7% growth but it still remains at the top of the list with a commanding 112.6 million unique viewers.

Now, as I said, it’s quite interesting to note how fast Facebook is growing as a video channel. It only goes to show that more Facebook users are sharing online video as well as watching them online via Facebook. What is ironic about this is that most of those videos were actually embedded from the YouTube site.

Perhaps, Google has not yet noticed this trend especially since YouTube continues to be the number 1 online video site. But at the rate that Facebook is growing, it might just be a matter of time before it catches up with YouTube. Unless of course Google does something to prevent this from happening. Hopefully Google won’t do something drastic in the future.

In Case You Missed It, You Can Also Create a Buzz on Google Reader

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So, have you started “buzzing around?” Has Google enabled Google Buzz on your Gmail? Or have you tried it on your mobile phone?  How was it? Revolutionary? Innovative?  Well, in case you might have missed it due to the influx of buzz that Google has created with the launch of Google Buzz, the service is actually also available in Google Reader. That is you can also post the items from your Google Reader as a buzz on your Gmail.

To activate this feature, all you need to do is to link up your Google Reader account to Gmail Buzz. And while you’re there, you might also want to link up other current services that are tied up with your Google Profile.  Once set up, everything that you share on Google Reader will be automatically be posted to your Gmail Buzz. That’s why Google Buzz is called a social sharing service.  Once your Reader item is posted as a buzz, people who are following you will be able to post comments to the items you shared.

The good thing about this, in case you didn’t notice it, is that the people you follow and who follow you on Google Reader are also the same set of people in your Gmail Buzz.

This is why I like Google Buzz so far. It’s like partaking of a new product without exerting to much effort on learning something new. Something which Google Wave did, and which is gradually leading it to its downfall.

Got one more room for a person to follow? Follow me on Twitter, I mean on Google Buzz – http://www.google.com/profiles/noli725.

YouTube Turns On Safety Mode Video Viewing

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In its effort to provide users with a more controlled and safe environment, YouTube has rolled out Safety Mode. This is an opt-in setting that will let you screen out outright and potential objectionable contents from showing up on your YouTube account channel, which you definitely don’t want your friends and family to see when they check out your YouTube video.

I’m pretty sure at some point in your YouTube experience, you’ve seen examples of these contents. It may be newsworthy video depicting violence at its gruesome details. Since this content does not contain any sexually objectionable content, YouTube will not censor them. So, it is up to you to determine whether these contents will be displayed on your YouTube account. If you don’t want to – then comes YouTube in Safety Mode.

To activate Safety Mode on your YouTube account, just click on the link at the bottom of any video page.

Safety Mode may not be a full-proof system yet, but it is certainly a step in the right direction. It may not guarantee safe video watching at all times, but at least Google is doing something to remedy this issue and provide us all with a “safe environment”  when watching YouTube videos.

And that alone is a great achievement.

Yahoo and Microsoft React to Google Buzz

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If you’ve been monitoring tech headlines the past couple of hours, you’d know that the hottest buzz right now is none other than Google Buzz. Credit it to Google for creating yet again another noise upon launching a significant product or service and for soliciting a much needed reaction from its rivals – Yahoo and Microsoft.

In case you’ve missed the discussion thread online, Google Buzz is purported as Google’s approach to social sharing.  The main service sits right inside Gmail Inbox but you can also use the service on your iPhone or Android devices. You can read more about Google Buzz  in Gmail and Google Buzz for Mobile at 901am.

So, how did Yahoo and Microsoft reacted to Google Buzz? Microsoft was a bit short and yet direct to the point, as quoted by TechCrunch.

“Busy people don’t want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation. We’ve done that. Hotmail customers have benefitted from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008.”

While Yahoo’s reaction was more elaborate by saying that they have the same service for a year now via Yahoo! Updates. Silicon Alley Insider shares Yahoo’s email explaining that they had that same product for over a year now.

It’s been almost a year and a half since we first launched Yahoo! Updates – a social feature that lets people share their status, content and online activities and stay connected to what their friends and family are doing on Yahoo! and across the Web – and we wanted to share the latest on what’s happening with Updates…

So, what do you think? Did Google just copied existing services of its two rivals? Or did Google in fact copied the services of some other location-aware, social recommendation sites such as Yelp, Gowalla, FourSquare and others?

Update: Incidentally, Google Buzz for Mobile is now on. You may check it out by pointing your iPhone or Android phone’s browser to buzz.google.com.