eCommerce and

Happy Halloween!

• Andy Beal reports on the Google AdWords changes that we should be seeing soon.  Interesting changes to say the least, and I love the fact that he referenced Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update.
• Facebook is top choice for socially engaged retailers according to recent studies.
• A Harvard Professor is suing Google for typo-squatting, the practice of registering web sites addresses that are spelled similarly to the legitimate site but with small variances like an extra letter or a letter out of place.  Benjamin Edelman, the professor, alleges that Google is costing advertisers between $30-$50 million dollars per year.
• The economy is affecting all of us and hopefully we are all working for companies that are preparing for it.  If for some reason you’re not quite sure if the company you work for is heading in the right direction, you may want to look over this checklist.
• This story wasn’t from this week, but I just caught wind of it so I thought I would share.  Take a look at the decision set forth below and decide which of the two options you would choose to invest in:
  
  Innovation A enjoyed blockbuster first-year revenues of $200 million thanks to "a clear value proposition, clever positioning, and a strong distribution network."
  
  Innovation B, meanwhile, had on a muddled business model and generated only $220,000 during its first year.
  
  Most people would probably choose option A without considering the numerous other factors that should be taken into consideration.  This is the point that Scott Anthony is trying to get across in this article, because as it turns out option A was Vanilla Coke which was discontinued three years later, and option B was Google.  Google’s “muddled business model” was enormously successful once they settled on an ad-based business model.