Holiday Web Shopping Hits $20.65B

NEW YORK (AP) — Holiday online spending reached $20.65 billion in the U.S. as of Monday night, a 25 percent rise over 2005, according to data released Wednesday from comScore Networks.

Shoppers spent more than $643 million last weekend, 34 percent higher than the corresponding weekend last year, the Reston, Va.-based research group reported.

“The strategy of luring holiday shopping procrastinators with extended shipping guarantees paid off handsomely for online retailers,” Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore Networks, said in a statement.

ComScore raised its forecast for total spending this holiday season by $300 million to $24.6 billion.

ComScore reported Web traffic data for the month of November Tuesday evening.
In terms of unique visitors, Yahoo Inc. sites still topped the list at 129.9 million.

Time Warner Inc. sites, which include AOL, followed, then Microsoft Corp.’s MSN and other sites, Google Inc., and eBay Inc.

News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media, which includes the popular social hangout MySpace, came in sixth, even though MySpace received more total page views last month than Yahoo.

ComScore also reported that 9 of the top 10 growing categories of Web sites were retail-related, thanks to holiday shopping pressure. Online department stores saw visitors climb 24 percent over October. In that category, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s site saw a 64 percent gain in visitors month-over-month and Target Corp.’s traffic rose 37 percent. The research group said Wal-Mart’s gain was helped by traffic to its electronics section, which more than doubled.

Best Buy Co. and Circuit City Stores Inc. both saw traffic rise steeply, as did specialty gifts retailer RedEnvelope Inc.

Cingular in deal with MySpace.com

ATLANTA – Cingular Wireless LLC, the nation’s largest cell phone provider, has made a deal with MySpace.com that will allow MySpace users to access their profiles through Cingular phones.

Under the agreement, cell phone users will be able to go to their MySpace.com page to edit it, post photos and get messages, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Monday. For example, a MySpace.com user could take a picture with his or her cell phone and then immediately post the image to a Web page.

The new MySpace Mobile application will cost $2.99 a month plus charges for data usage, Atlanta-based Cingular said.

The deal also expands Cingular’s work with MySpace.com, which includes letting bands use a service called MySpace Mobile Music to create ringtones.

MySpace.com, a popular social networking Web site, already has a deal with Helio, a cell phone venture of South Korea’s SK Telecom and EarthLink.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061218/ap_on_hi_te/cingular_myspace

MySpace to offer technology to block sex offenders

NEW YORK (Reuters) – MySpace said on Tuesday it will offer in the next 30 days a technology to identify and block convicted sex offenders from the popular online social network.

The top online social network, which has a large following of teens attracted to its music and entertainment offerings, has also been used by adults seeking sex with underage Internet users.

The personal safety of its users while online and the protection of entertainment copyrights are viewed as two of the biggest threats to MySpace’s ability to make money in the future, analysts say.

MySpace said it has struck a deal with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp., an expert in background verification, to build the new feature.

The new technology, called Sentinel Safe, will let MySpace search state and federal databases to seek out and delete MySpace profiles of registered sex offenders. It will be available in the next 30 days.

“We are committed to keeping sex offenders off MySpace,” the site’s chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, said in a statement.

Profiles of convicted sex offenders in the U.S. are added to a database available to authorities.

According to MySpace, there are 550,000 registered sex offenders in the United States. The company said the new service will be the first national database that brings together about 46 state sex offender registers.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061205/tc_nm/newscorp_myspace_dc