A battle among the titans of the Internet

Fancy the competition among Yahoo, Google and Microsoft?

Internet powerhouses Yahoo and eBay are joining forces in aliance to complete with Google and Microsoft in the quest to become the most powerful players in the online market.

Competition faced by Yahoo and ebay:

• Google continues to expand its lead in search while offering new services that pose new threats.
• Google has invaded eBay's turf by offering a free classified listing service as well as a payment service.
• Microsoft has vowed to invest heavily in the Internet during the next year, focusing on building a better online advertising platform.

Under the multiyear partnership announced Thursday, both Yahoo and ebay will draw upon each other's strengths in online advertising, payments and communications so they can connect with even more Web surfers than they already do.

Full article is here.

Pay-per-call in Internet Advertising

Familiar with pay-per-click?
It is a situation where advertisers pay when they receive a click.

How about pay-per-call?
Pay-per-call ads work in a similar way to pay-per-click ads, except that advertisers pay when they receive a phone call rather than a click.

Read this story on Pay-per-Call here.

Lecture 8 - Online Advertising

Marketing through the mobile in India

New marketing tools such as mobile coupons, location specific services, mobile portals and advertising on the mobile are just few of the tools being deployed by marketers to reach the 90 million strong mobile subscribers base in India.

These new marketing tools are also known as the 2nd generation of mobile marketing.

Applications:

• Wireless marketing technology provider Activemedia Technologies has partnered with mobile operator Hutchison Essar to deliver m-coupons, which can be cashed across 40 retail outlets such as Barista, Domino's Pizza, Lifestyle and Kaya Skin Clinic.

• Airtel has joined with Enpocket, a global leader in intelligent mobile marketing, to give advertisers a convenient, effective way to reach a major cross-section of the country's population.

• Mobile2win is in talks with mobile operators to start location-based services that will enable marketers to reach out to the prospective customer while he is in the vicinity of the outlet by giving various incentives and offers.

Lecture 11 - Mobile Commerce.

Full story is available here.

E-Commerce Credit Card Fraud

An interesting case study on e-commerce credit card fraud in US.

According to Celent Communications, an international consultancy group, the United States alone faces US$3.2 billion of online credit card fraud by 2007.

Results from various surveys and reports were discussed such as:

• nine out of ten Americans want their banks to monitor their online accounts for suspicious behavior
• 79 percent surveyed said they were less likely to respond to e-mail from their bank because of worry over phishing scams

Company: US Digital Media
Problem: US Digital Media lost upwards of $200,000 due to e-commerce credit card fraud
Solution: Automated Fraud Prevention

Full story is here.

Cambodia bans 3G mobile phones to curb porn

Without 3G mobile phones, how the prospect of having 3G Services in Cambodia will be?

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday banned video-capable mobile phones in Cambodia to curb the dissemination of pornography, because they can be used to spread obscene images.

"Maybe we can wait for another 10 years or so until we have done enough to strengthen the morality of our society,'' he said. Alcatel, a French telecommunications firm, announced in February that it would provide 3G mobile services to CamGSM, a Cambodian mobile phone network.

Alcatel officials in France were not immediately available for comment Friday. Hun Sen said Cambodia is facing a severe decline in social morality and that curbing pornography is one way to help rescue the country.

The third-generation mobile phone "is way too advanced for us. Hearing each other's voices and exchanging text messages should be enough. If we go further than this, it could be more difficult for us to control'' pornography, he added.

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More stories on 3G developments in other countries:

• 3G soon in China
• Russia- the next country for 3G
  

Double digits growth forecasted for Online Retail Sales

Online sales are projected to hit more than US$200 billion in 2006 as compared to US$176.4 billion in 2005, an increase of almost 20%.

• Travel is the largest type of product bought online (almost 1/3 of all online purchases).
• No. 2 is buying computer hardware and software online.
• Buying autos and auto parts online is No. 3

The main reason for this rising retail sales online is because consumers are becoming more comfortable with using the Internet which has been a hurdle for online retails sales in the past.

At the same time, retailers are trying to integrating their stores with more access to the web by having in-store kiosks that let customers order online if they don't find the right product in the store.

Don't miss out this interesting development by reading this article.

This article is related to Lecture 6 and 8.

Online Video Advertising Launched by Google

Google has taken the wraps off plans to sell video advertising online, an ambitious move that could unlock significant additional growth potential for the search giant.

Google said it was adding video ads to meet the needs of its advertisers, some of whom, such as movie studios, need a fully interactive experience to deliver their messages.

For more reading, click here.

This is a new online marketing tool that companies may consider in the near future. (Lecture 8 - Consumer Behaviour and Online Advertising)

The costliest web access on Earth is in Africa

According to the news published in TheStar InTech (23 May 2006, pg 27),

• African Internet users pay on average 90 times what US surfers pay - US$20 (RM76) for 1 gigabyte of data per month for US surfers but African users have to pay US$1800 (RM6840) for the same amount of data.

Why the costs of data and voice communications in Africa is the highest in the world?

• The infrastructure-strapped continent spends millions of dollars every year to route data and voice traffic from one African country to another through Europe or North American.

Only 1.5% of the 906 million of Africa's population are connected to Internet as compared to 70% of people in Hong Kong and 40% of Malaysian are online.


This is what we called "Digital Divide" - The gap between those who have and those who do not have the ability to access eclectronic technology in general and the Internet and E-Commerce in particular. This will also be causing unbalanced growth and crippling the efforts by the world's poorest continent to become competitive in a global economy driven by communications.

Welcome to UBAI3013 May 2006

A warmest welcome for all the UBAI3013 E-Commerce - May Semester 2006.

Some facts for this semester:
1100 students from BBA (530+), BCA (540+) and BEN (30).
45 tutorial classes - 21 (BBA), 22 (BCA) and 2 (BEN).

Some changes compared to last semester:
Tutorial classes will commence on the 1st week instead of 2nd week.
Tutorial hours is now become 1.5 hours instead of an hour previously.
Lecture hours reduced to 2 hours.


Hope this semester will be an enjoyable learning session for everyone.

From the teaching team.