2009

Yesterday we reviewed the past decade in online retailing. Today we look at some forward-looking statistics about e-commerce. In particular we analyze the upcoming holiday season and how online retailers can expect to fare. Amazon.com was founded in 1995, but it famously didn’t make its first annual profit until 2003. Those days of struggle for … Read more

Over the past decade, Amazon.com and eBay have continued to dominate the online retail market in the United States. However, there have been signs that more social and distributed forms of online shopping are gaining traction. eBay, in particular, is beginning to lose ground. In this post, we review the past decade of e-commerce and … Read more

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup – our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week – we report on President Obama’s (non)-use of Twitter, take a look at the past decade in the media industry, review the latest statistics about blogging, question if Oxford Dictionary should’ve chosen “unfriend” as its word of the … Read more

HP Labs has joined the race to build an infrastructure for the emerging Internet of Things. The giant computing and IT services company has announced a project that aims to be a “Central Nervous System for the Earth” (CeNSE). It’s a research and development program to build a planetwide sensing network, using billions of “tiny, … Read more

It’s November 2009 and we’re nearing the end of a decade. It’s been a tumultuous time of change for many industries, much of it driven by the Internet. The newspaper industry has been particularly affected by the Web. Over the past 10 years, news media has undergone a seachange akin to the invention of the … Read more

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the Web, has embarked on a trip through Africa on behalf of the non-profit Web Foundation – which today announced two new projects. The Web Foundation exists to bridge the ‘digital divide’ in Internet usage. Only about 25% of the world population uses the Web today, however more than … Read more

Yesterday we wrote about how Demand Media produces 4,000 new pieces of content every day – and whether it can sustain quality at that scale. There was vigorous discussion about the quality issue in the comments, including from some of Demand Media’s thousands of freelance writers. In this follow-up post, we look at the type … Read more

In August we reviewed Demand Media, one of the largest producers of content on the Web today. Wired Magazine recently compared Demand Media’s content business to Henry Ford’s production line for cars. Demand Media currently produces 4,000 new pieces of content a day. What’s more, it’s increasingly syndicating this content to media sites outside of … Read more

We’re very pleased to announce the launch of ReadWriteWeb’s fourth country channel: ReadWriteWeb Spain. It joins our existing three country channels: France, China and Brazil (which launched last month). Our Spain channel is edited by Ignacio García Ramos. Ignacio and his team will combine translation of ReadWriteWeb posts with original posts about Spain’s Web market. … Read more

It’s November 2009 and we’re nearing the end of a decade. It’s been a tumultuous time of change for many industries, much of it driven by the Internet. With that in mind, over the coming weeks ReadWriteWeb will look back on the defining Web trends of the past 10 years. From the dot com boom, … Read more

Digital marketing company Razorfish has just launched its third annual FEED survey of 1,000 “connected consumers.” The survey is focused on online consumer behavior. This year Facebook and Twitter feature prominently. 40% of respondents “friended” brands on Facebook, while 25% reported following brands on Twitter. What’s more, Razorfish found that consumers access brands on Twitter … Read more

Five years ago I interviewed tech publisher Tim O’Reilly about a new term that his company had just coined: Web 2.0. The first Web 2.0 conference had been held the previous month, October 2004, and O’Reilly had graciously agreed to give an interview to yours truly – “an unknown blogger from New Zealand,” as I … Read more

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup – our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week – we analyze a new breed of content site that is rapidly gaining momentum, look into recent statistics showing that Gen Y is using Twitter more, compare five recommendation services for iPhone apps, review the new-look MSN, and … Read more

Two companies that produce massive quantities of new content every day, Answers.com and Demand Media, are rapidly moving up the list of top U.S. web properties, as measured by comScore. Answers.com has risen from #26 to #13 in just two months, and Demand Media has risen from #24 to #15 in the same time period. … Read more

IBM has launched a new product called Returnable Container Management, which uses the Internet of Things to track and measure the usage of shipping containers. These containers are a large, dull but essential part of the supply chain for manufacturers – they are used to hold automobile parts, meat, pharmaceuticals and anything else that needs … Read more