In Re E-Commerce
Bob Lewis
As the Internet expands at a pace incomprehensible even to most of us in the industry, I find myself using this worldwide reference tool more and more for help in the preparation of this column.
One of the main references I use in keeping up with the world of e-commerce is
The Electronic Commerce Guide at
ecommerce.internet.com. Of all the e-commerce Internet sites I’ve used, this appears to be the most comprehensive. The site and its links are evenly split between Internet news, Internet commerce and e-commerce.
Within the guide, which includes it own e-comm search engine, there reside thirteen separate links, covering such topics as e-commerce solutions, e-commerce news, opinions and trends, and product reviews. There’s also a software review section, which appears to be quite comprehensive.
One of the best features of this site is the range of publications it uses in reviewing the latest e-commerce topics. They range from articles in USA Today and Business Week to PC World and E-Commerce Guide. In the past, I’ve subscribed to almost all of the e-comm magazines, but have found that it’s a lot easier to go to the guide site and have all of the top stories presented to me in capsule review format, with the detail only a click away. It also keeps my desk a lot less cluttered.
If the site’s search engine fails to find the information you’re looking for, there are several other options available. These include a free subscription to their weekly newsletter, and the e-commerce Link Vault, which provides innumerable links to related news articles, magazines, journals, newsgroups and many other e-comm related Internet sites. If this isn’t enough, there’s also the newly launched ECTalk site where one can post questions, thoughts, tips and tricks.
David Arganbright, VP of commerce and licensing with internet.com gave me a brief background on the formation of their e-commerce organization. Until about a year ago internet.com was a division of MecklerMedia Corporation, a publicly traded company founded and run by Alan Meckler. MecklerMedia was then sold to Penton Media, but Meckler purchased internet.com and ran it as an LLC until a few months ago when internet.com Corporation was formed with an IPO.
Internet.com Corporation, based in Westport, Conn., is a leading provider of global real-time news and information resources for Internet technology professionals, Web developers and experienced users. Internet.com operates a network of 70 Web sites, 46 e-mail newsletters, 55 online discussion forums and 52 moderated e-mail discussion lists. Over 1.8 million unique visitors generate more than 60 million page views monthly. Total views, which include Web site page views, e-mail newsletter views and e-mail discussion list views, are now over 100 million per month. Internet.com’s global presence includes editions in Canada, China, the United Kingdom, Arabia, Australia, Asia, France, Japan and Israel.
I wasn’t aware that there were 1.8 million others that were as interested in e-commerce as I was.
Dave is currently responsible for the “Commerce Partners” program, which he describes as an “adver-commerce” program customized to fit the needs of each of the Commerce Partners’ business models. With obvious interest in attracting the Internet professionals and Web developers who visit the site for news, resources and information, the partners work with internet.com in developing a unique and exclusive position on its site. That position is defined by text links and small advertising banners that lead the internet.com visitor to the partners’ site for the purpose of conducting some commerce activity, e.g. software sales, travel bookings or book sales. In some cases links are built into the site at the point of a product review (books for example) to encourage the interested buyer to buy it now.
If you need to keep up on what’s happening in the e-comm world, give this site a look. In addition, there are two other sites that do a fine job of presenting the latest in e-commerce. They are www.commerce.net and www.allec.com. Happy browsing.