eBay has launched eBay Express allowing traders to offer fixed price goods like traditional eCommerce web sites.

The sex.com domain has been sold for $12m (£6.7m).

Google has been named as the most influential brand in 2005, narrowly beating Apple to the accolade, in Interbrand's annual survey.

Prime Minister Tony Blair and new Tory leader David Cameron have each abandoned the traditional hustings and taken to podcasts to get their messages across.

Yahoo! is to make its email, calendar and instant messaging services available on mobile phones.

British Airways is to use SMS for marketing and customer services.

The BBC is launching a web-based soap called ‘Wannabes’. Aimed at teenagers, it tells the story of a group of aspiring musicians, actors and film makers.

The Daily Mail & General Trust acquired property web site Primelocation.com for £48m.

BT plans to move into broadband television, having signed content deals with the BBC, Paramount and Warner Music Group.

Doctors have issued warnings of a condition called "iPod finger" caused by constantly using small buttons with the same finger in a repetitive motion. Similar problems have already been seen among heavy users of SMS.

ITV has acquired Friends Reunited for £175m.

The term 'podcast' was declared Word of the Year 2005 by the New Oxford American Dictionary.

A prolific spammer has been jailed for six years having been found guilty of running a £1.6m e-mail scam from his bedroom in his father's house.

25% of people prefer to listen to music on their PC or MP3 player rather than a hi-fi, according to Napster.

AOL is to launch a free online television service later this year. Called In2TV, it will use programming from sister company Warner Brothers.

Vodafone has teamed up with record company Universal Music to allow its Vodafone Live 3G customers to download music videos and songs to their phones.

ASDA has launched an online travel agency in partnership with travel agency Chelsea Village Travel.

Welcome to Esquared from experience engine

Welcome to the year’s first issue of Esquared. 2005 was certainly an interesting year: the continued dominance of the MP3 format over traditional CDs, the rise and rise of online retail, the ubiquity of the iPod and a battle between the US and Europe over who controls the Internet (the US still does for now, but watch this space).

Google had another strong year with the launch of Gmail, Froogle and
its recently revealed online applications. Microsoft has witnessed the
erosion of the dominance of Internet Explorer, thanks mainly to the
increase in popularity of Firefox and Opera's decision to go freeware.
Microsoft's response is a planned launch of Windows Live, which will
allow users to use online versions of Word or Excel rather than having
to own the software. It remains to be seen how the licence will operate.

2006 seems to be heading towards the year that TV on mobile phones finally becomes a reality. On the web, broadband will continue to become ever cheaper and ever broader with bandwidth allowances ever increasing, web site usability will still be key, ever more brands will turn to the web –rather than TV- as the advertising medium of choice, and for those with smaller budgets, a search engine friendly site combined with the accountability of pay-per-click will become even more attractive.

At experience engine we will keep our clients informed of the latest developments and how they can embrace the wealth of opportunities that interactive communications can offer. Thanks for your continued readership, 2006 is going to be exciting…

Bumper Christmas sales point to increasing online retail growth in 2006

Christmas online sales were up almost 50% compared to last year, according to the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG). Online buyers spent almost £5 billion in the 10 week run up to Christmas, compared with only £3.3 billion in 2004.

A survey by YouGov found that a third of consumers did their Christmas shopping online this year and that one in four spent more than in previous years.

Tesco – which already did very well off-line thank you very much – reported that its online arm Tesco.com enjoyed increased sales as more and more people chose to shop online rather than in-store. The company delivered more than a million orders in the four weeks before Christmas with UK sales growing by 10 per cent over Christmas and New Year.

John Lewis, which also owns supermarket chain Waitrose, reported similar success, enjoying record sales online over the Christmas period, which capped off sales of over £100 million in the twelve months preceding this.

Other retailers also reported huge growth in Christmas sales. These featured a mixture of both pure play online retailers and traditional retailers such as Dixons, Amazon, Argos, Play and Sainsbury’s.

Sales success and outstanding growth appear not to have been limited to just the big players either. A survey of small and medium online retailers revealed an increase of online sales of about 80% in November and December compared with 2004.

Overall, UK consumers spent around £19 billion online in 2005, an increase of 32% compared to 2004. It’s believed that around 24 million UK consumers bought at least one item online last year, spending an average of £816 each.

The IMRG described 2005 as a "year of remarkable dynamic growth for UK online shopping". The company predicts that online retail will grow a further 36% this year with an estimated £26 billion worth of sales and an average spend of £1,000 per person online in 2006.

Google embraces evil to reach the Chinese Internet audience

One company that probably wasn't celebrating yesterday's Chinese New Year was Google. The world’s most influential brand has been tarnished in recent days over the news that its Chinese search engine will be self censored.

Google has been available in China for years, but has had content censored or blocked by the Chinese government. However, the company is now setting up its www.google.cn domain and has agreed to self censorship to appease the Chinese authorities.

Much has been made in the press about Google’s corporate mission statement which includes the pledge "don’t be evil" being at odds with the fact that search phrases such as "Tiananmen Square" will return restricted search results.

Google has argued that it is "less evil" to offer restricted results than to provide no results at all. It also argues that users will be warned when content is being censored.

However, it must be remembered that both Yahoo! and MSN Search also censor their search results, so Google isn’t the only company making compromises in order to grab a slice of the lucrative Chinese Internet market.

Blatant plug:

Ransom Consumer Healthcare has launched Metanium Moments 2006, after the success of last year’s competition; take a look at the site at www.metanium-moments.com. And we have just launched a freelance section and dedicated registration site for Davis Xchangeteam at www.davisxchangeteam.com.

Only on the web:

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www.postmodernpets.com

About:

Esquared is a regular digest of news, opinion and developments within interactive communications which we find interesting and hope you will too. If you want more information about anything that we mention, or have any comments, please call us on 01992 500990 or e-mail esquared@experience-engine.co.uk.