Friday
31st March 2000
GOVT. SUGGESTS WORKPLACE
NET GUIDELINES
Australia's
Privacy Commissioner (PC)
released a set of guidelines today governing internet use in the workplace
in an attempt to stem the growing number of disputes surrounding the practice,
as well as the increasing number of companies using the Net to covertly spy
on their staff. The guidelines suggest that employers should ensure their
email and web use policy is clearly communicated to staff - ideally, by popping
up on screen when employees log on - and that company policies clearly define
what is permitted and forbidden; what information is logged about online
sessions and who has access to it; and how the organisation intends to monitor
and regulate staff to ensure compliance with the rules. The new guidelines
were launched by Federal Attorney-General Daryl Williams, who said "the aim
of the guidelines is to ensure organisations define clear web browsing and
email policies that are widely known and understood by staff", before going
on to cite a recent survey by legal firm Freehill, Hollingdale and Page
who found that of the 76% of employers who currently monitor employee
email and web usage, only 35% have informed their staff they're doing
so.
Thursday
30th March 2000
US JUDGE SAYS LINKS ARE
LEGAL
In what may prove to be another
watershed case in the developing area of online law, US District Judge Harry
Hupp ruled today this it is legal to link to any page on another web site
providing viewers clearly understood whose site they were on. Hupp handed
down the ruling in an action between Ticketmaster Online CitySearch and
Tickets.Com, which had linked to parts of Ticketmaster's site to expand its
range of content and offerings. Ticketmaster argued that Tickets.Com's hyperlinks
went deeply into its site, bypassing the front page where it earned advertising
revenues. It had asked the court to declare "deep linking" illegal. However,
Hupp dismissed four counts of Ticketmaster's claim, writing that "deep linking
by itself ... does not necessarily involve unfair competition". Ticketmaster
now plans to file an amended complaint attempting to reinstate the dismissed
claims. In a similar case in England in 1998 where one newspaper linked to
another newspaper's site but - through clever use of frames - deceived viewers
into believing that the headlines and content they were seeing came from
the linker's site, the courts found in favour of the linked site.
Wednesday
29th March 2000
COLES-MYER GOES
ONLINE...AGAIN
After several years of dabbling
on the fringes of ecommerce, Australia's largest retailing group Coles-Myer
announced today that it will open a dedicated online wing to its business.
The company has launched its own
portal and struck deals with Yahoo!, Travelshop and PlayNow to provide
news content, travel sales and online games at the site. In addition, the
portal will allow consumers to buy goods from Coles supermarkets, Myer-Grace
Bros outlets and Liquorland stores, with plans afoot to sell music in the
near future. Ignoring electrical retailer Harvey Norman's
recent complaint that online consumers appear
to have little interest in generic products they can simply walk down the
street and buy off the shelves, Coles-Myer announced that they intend to
regard the new online division as a distinct entity whose results will be
logged separately in annual reports. The company's ailing Myer Direct catalog
business will also be folded into the new e.colesmyer division which - a
spokesman freely admitted - anticipates a loss in the current fiscal year.
Australian investors were underwhelmed by the announcement, marking down
Coles-Myer shares by 2c within a few hours of the news release.
Tuesday
28th March 2000
FRAUD PROBLEMS BESET
eBAY
According to
C/Net, online auction firm
eBay has had to close down member
accounts and call in the Los Angeles police after receiving more than 150
complaints about fraudulent auctions - the latest in a number of "stings"
that have tarnished the image of Net auctions over the last two years. According
to C/Net, the scam artists built up their reputations for several weeks before
defrauding buyers in a series of electronic goods auctions earlier this month.
Victims either received nothing at all, or goods worth much less than they
thought they were buying. Late last year, a man was sentenced to 14 months
in prison for defrauding eBay users of more than $36,000 and the company
was forced to institute a number of anti-fraud measures after fielding complaints
about fraudulent sports collectibles being sold on the site and a rash of
"spoof" auctions. The anti-fraud measures attempted to identify both buyers
and sellers - but apparently, without success. The problems that have beset
eBay also appear to be widespread across the online auction industry. Last
year US consumers filed more than 11,000 complaints about Internet auctions
with the Federal Trade Commission - up from 107 only 2 years earlier.
Monday
27th March 2000
FRENCH REJECT ONLINE
REFORMS
Europe may remain a backwater
of the new economy for many years to come after French delegates to the European
"dot.com" summit currently being held in Lisbon voiced strong opposition
to radical reform plans to deregulate telecommunications in the European
Union. French Prime Minister Jospin launched a strong rearguard action against
liberalisation proposals advanced by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and was
backed by EU President Nicole Fontaine who said that "savage mergers" of
businesses driven by the dictums of the new economy were threatening social
cohesion. She said the effect of such mergers by multi-national companies
was "inhuman"; that they had a traumatic effect on the lives of workers and
their families; and they were "turning a lot of people against European
integration". The "slowly, slowly" approach to change urged by the French
is being seen as as setback for Mr Blair and other EU leaders who wanted
the summit to demonstrate that Europe was determined to embrace new technology
and compete with America in electronic commerce and the "knowledge economy".
Studies in recent years have shown that timed local calls and the slow uptake
of computers across much of Europe has increasingly left the continent behind
more electronically advanced countries such as the USA, Canada, Scandinavia,
Australia and Japan.
Friday
24th March 2000
CON ARTISTS GET
CANED
In an unprecedented global
effort, the US Federal
Trade Commission (FTC) announced today that it has been conducting
a co-ordinated campaign with more than 28 countries for the last month to
crack down on "get rich quick" Internet fraudsters - and will shortly begin
terminating sites that refuse to modify their behaviour. According to an
FTC press release issued today, the organisation has been partnering with
49 other US state and local consumer protection agencies and officials from
28 other countries since late February this year in a global sweep targeting
phony get-rich-quick schemes. The campaign identified more than 1,600 web
sites which have all been issued with warnings to either modify their claims
or cease operations - and over the next month those that have failed to comply
will be shut down. Apart from protecting gullible consumers, the campaign
may also have benefits for ordinary Net users: most of the targeted sites
are all mass spammers, so closure of their sites may also have some effect
on the growing volumes of spam currently bombarding most email boxes.
Thursday
23rd March 2000
NET USE EXPANDING IN
USA
In a study likely to have strong
parallels in Australia, the
Strategis Group has found
that Net usage is continuing to spread across the USA with 52% of the adult
population now surfing the Net. According to their survey of 1,002 households
more than 61% of users now go online every day, compared with 46.7% in mid-1997
and 57.3% at the end of 1998. Strategis also report that the average age
of US surfers is now around 40 (up from 38.6 years in mid-1997) and that
men now only slightly outnumber women in the US surfing population (55 million
vs 51 million). Furthermore, the number of Net "veterans" (those with 3 or
more years surfing experience) had risen to 44.9% at the end of 1999, while
the number of "newbies" (those with less than a year's experience) had dropped
to 18.8%. Interestingly, Strategis found that the percentage of those who
use the Net at work has dropped slightly in the last 9 months. They attribute
this to the explosion in home usage. Strategis also found that the average
amount of time spent online - 7.2 hours per week - has not really shifted
over the last year. Even so, they report that the number of Americans buying
online has almost doubled over the last 12 months from 27 million to 52 million,
or roughly 1 in every 2 users.
Wednesday
22nd March 2000
ETOYS CHOPS
AFFILIATES
The blush may be finally starting
to come off the bloom for affiliate marketing, the exploitative concept pioneered
(and recently
patented) by Amazon which allows affiliate web sites to obtain
a commission for referring customers to an affiliate marketer's business
- generally for a slim fraction of the cost the affiliate marketer would
have to pay if it acquired customers by traditional advertising. Last week
troubled online retailer eToys
exercised a clause in its affiliate agreement (now common in nearly all such
contracts) to unilaterally cut the commissions of its affiliates, betraying
thousands of web sites who'd promoted eToys over several years and had naively
believed that the company would never exercise the draconian rights embedded
in its affiliate agreement. eToys scaled back its commissions from a $5 referral
fee and a percentage of customer transactions to a onetime referral fee of
$10. While company officials denied that the change was a cost-cutting move,
the firm's stock has dropped from $US86 to less than $US12 since October
last year. US web analysts now believe that many other cash-strapped affiliate
marketers may follow eToys' lead over the coming year as they try to secure
lower customer acquisition costs, now that their sites have become
well-established.
Tuesday
21st March 2000
TOP NET FIRMS RUNNING OUT
OF CASH?
According to a report by
Pegasus Research International
(PRI) commissioned by
Barron's and published yesterday,
up to 51 "name brand" web sites are likely to run out of cash within a year.
Many of these will be unable to raise additional cash by further stock and
bond sales, PRI predict, and will either have to sell out to more cashed-up
competitors or close down altogether unless there is a sudden reversal in
their fortunes. Companies fingered by the study include CDNow, Dr
Koop, Peapod, Secure Computing Corp and Medscape,
amongst many others. The Pegasus study also suggested that Amazon
has less than 21 months of cash left and will also be in dire straits soon
unless it can halt the perpetual flow of red ink on its books. Today the
Nasdaq plunged 3.9% as investors absorbed the impact of the Barrons article
"Burning Fast", which Pegasus said was an "over-reaction" to a fairly
simplistic, straight-line projection of figures taken at the end of last
year. It said the principal purpose of its study was simply to point out
that one of the key risks of Internet investing was running out cash, and
that companies aggressively burning capital in pursuit of market share and
branding may not be pursuing the wisest course.
Monday
20th March 2000
NET RETAILING DISAPPOINTS
HARVEY NORMAN
Less than a few months after
opening his company's web site
- which he said at the time he expected would perform poorly -
billionaire Australian retailer Gerry Harvey now bemoans the fact
that his expectations had been met. Speaking on Business Sunday over
the weekend, Harvey said that online sales for his discounted merchandise
were "disappointing" and went on to speculate that the majority of online
retail companies wouldn't be in business within 5 years. Mr. Harvey, who
in April last
year was so intimidated by the Net that he threatened to ban any
supplier who sold to consumers online, said that sales from his company's
new web site were already less than one of his smallest stores. He said
that he now expected his company's site would account for no more than 3%
to 5% of total sales within 5 years, before going on to add that if he was
finding it tough as a "click and mortar" retailer, then most dot-com etailers
would surely find things even tougher. Mr Harvey said that if people knew
how little online retailers were selling it would take the gloss of the whole
etailing phenomenon. "I know some etailers who are spending $100,000 a month
on advertising but their sales aren't much more than $100,000 a month either!"
he exclaimed.
Friday
17th March 2000
BERTELSMANN DUMPS AOL
AUSTRALIA
German media giant
Bertelsmann announced today that it intends to sell out its 50% stake
in AOL Australia and AOL
Europe in a complex stock deal worth between $6.5 and $8.25 billion.
Both companies will be wholly acquired by AOL. Bertelsmann said that AOL's
merger with its arch rival Time-Warner in January this year had put it into
conflict in several areas, and was the chief reason for the decision. AOL
Europe has done well for both companies. It now has more than 3.4 million
subscribers through its AOL and CompuServe services as well as 400,000 Netscape
Online users, second only to Deutsche Telekom's T-Online Internet service
(with an estimated 4.2 million subscribers). AOL Australia, however, has
suffered from very lacklustre performance since it opened in Australia in
1998 and has failed to prosper against established local players and a relatively
sophisticated Internet audience unwilling to pay high connect charges.
Bertelsmann said that it would use revenues from the sales to advance its
own ecommerce ventures and to invest in other online projects.
Thursday
16th March 2000
TELSTRA.COM PUSH STARTS
MONDAY
After a disastrous two months
in which it saw its largest competitor OzEmail slip through its fingers and
aroused national anger with its announced plans to shed 10,000 jobs, Telstra
will begin a major promotional push for its
Telstra.Com portal on Monday,
March 19th. The company will run an extensive national TV campaign for the
portal, coupled with shopping centre promotions. The new site - a revamp
of BigPond.Com - will allow users to shop, send emails, read news and pay
bills online. Uniquely, Telstra.Com will also function as a one-stop message
centre for the company's mobile phone customers. MobileNet subscribers will
be able to receive messages on their mobile phone each time new emails arrive
in their account, and will also be able to send text messages to each other
from the Telstra.com site. Telstra also hope to be able to offer branded
versions of the portal to other organisations, and will also use the site
to push its high-end services - including its new application service provision
(ASP), which will allow companies to "hire" software over the Net rather
than buy it outright. In the last week, Telstra announced that it had inked
separate deals with Microsoft, Lotus and PriceWaterhouseCoopers to make a
number of software products available in this fashion.
Wednesday
15th March 2000
ECOMMERCE STILL FAILS
CUSTOMERS: STUDY
According to a study by the
Boston
Consulting Group (BCG), 80% of online buyers have experienced at
least one failed purchase in the last 12 months and 28% of all attempted
online purchases still fail. The most common problems, BCG found, were sites
taking too long to load (48%) and being so badly designed that products couldn't
be found (45%), with other factors such as technological problems, security
concerns and logistical or fulfillment issues making up the balance. In addition,
BCG discovered that failed purchases deterred shoppers: 28% who were frustrated
in a purchase said they wouldn't shop online anymore; 23% said they wouldn't
buy from that particular site anymore; and 6% said they'd stop shopping at
the company's real-world stores entirely (if they existed). BCG also found
that the average US online consumer now conducts 10 transactions on the Net
in a year and spends $USD460 - but will spend 20% more if their online purchase
experiences are satisfactory. They report that online consumers now expect
a home page to load in 13.2 seconds or less; and expect to spend no more
than 5.8 minutes to find a product, 4.5 minutes to complete the order and
6.4 days to take delivery of the goods.
Tuesday
14th March 2000
CENSOR SHUTS DOWN 22
SITES
The
Australian Broadcasting
Authority, charged with enforcing the controversial "Internet censorship
law" which came into effect in Australia on January 1st this year, claimed
today that it had only closed down 22 web sites since the amended law came
into place. An ABA spokesman said that most of the 22 sites it had
terminated contained offensive sexual material, and that the it had received
less than 90 written complaints about sites in total, most of which were
located offshore. Even so, the ABA refused to name the sites it has
issued notices against- claiming "privacy considerations" - so the truth
of its assertions can neither be proved nor disproved. Nonetheless,
the Internet Industry Association was quick to praise the online censorship
body today, saying that the low number of takedown notices had been "expected".
Under an agreement hammered out with the Federal Government prior to the
introduction of the legislation, ISPs and content hosts are not deemed to
be either accountable or liable for content hosted on their servers, providing
they terminate a web site if an ABA notice is issued against it. Last year,
the ABA claimed it needed substantial increases in funding and personnel
to effectively implement the new Act, which was introduced at great
cost and against a storm of protest.
Monday
13th March 2000
ONLINE SHOPPERS SPEND MORE,
BUT LESS LOYAL
Consumers who've become accustomed
to online shopping for a particular product category will place 66% of their
online buys with web retailers, according to a new study by
ActivMedia Research (AMR).
In a survey of 2248 US consumers who'd made at least one purchase online
during the last year, AMR found that they spent an average of $312 per month
online across 10 retail categories compared with $144 per month offline for
the same items. AMR also found that 83% of Net shoppers have made personal
interest purchases online (groceries and health and beauty products), while
59% of online consumers had also bought computer and electronics equipment
over the Net. As a result, they predict that online retail sales will double
this year, with computers and electronics products accounting for 32% of
buys, followed by travel and entertainment (22%). However, AMR's study also
found that while experienced Net shoppers are apt to spend more online than
offline in particular categories, they have significantly less loyalty to
online retailers . They warn that sites selling generic products (such as
books, CDs and consumer electronics) will find it hard to build loyal audiences
unless they emotionally "delight" their customers.
Friday
10th March 2000
NEW DOMAINS BACK IN
CONTENTION?
The board of the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN), meeting in Cairo, has
broached the idea of expanding domain extensions again. The group has raised
the possibility of increasing the number of generic top-level domains to
combat the growing artificial scarcity of .COMs caused by domain squatters,
and suggested that up to 10 additional extensions (such as .INFO and .SHOP)
should be added to break their grasp. ICANN has been looking into the issue
for more than a year, and two committees are due to submit proposals on the
subject shortly which will address some of the trademark, copyright and
intellectual property issues surrounding the proposal. However, any decision
on the extension of generic domains is unlikely to be taken before the next
ICANN meeting, scheduled to be held in Japan in mid-July this year. A similar
proposal to extend the range of generic domains was quashed by the US Department
of Commerce shortly before control of .COMs passed out of its hands to ICANN
in 1998. Since that time, squatters have taken advantage of the open slather
approach that exists in this area to buy up literally millions of .COM domains
in the hope of selling them at inflated prices. In Australia, the much stricter
approach adopted by Internet Names
Australia - which insists that a business prove that it has a right
to a name before it issues a .COM.AU - has made domain squatting
unviable.
Thursday
9th March 2000
CHELLO TO LAUNCH RURAL
BROADBAND SERVICE
European company
Chello announced today that
it will be partnering with Australian pay-TV provider
Austar to deliver broadband
Net access to rural and regional areas. The announcement follows successful
commercial trials in Albury, Mackay and Bendigo over the last few months.
Chello claim that the service is available to 75,000 homes right now, but
that coverage will extend to 2.1 million households by the end of the year.
The new service will retail for $A65 per month with unlimited access and
no download limits. Existing Austar pay-TV subscribers will be able to have
the service installed for $95, while non subscribers will face a $199 connection
fee. The service is expected to have a speed of around 256kbps and the company
hope to develop 30 regional home pages to cover the areas they service. Chello
currently have 121,000 customers worldwide and hope to secure 5% penetration
of the Australian market within 12 months. Meanwhile, Telstra CEO Ziggy
Switkowski announced today that he hopes his company's own broadband service
will be available to 90% of Australian households in urban areas by the end
of 2002. At present, there are approximately 18,000 broadband connections
in Australia, but this is forecast to grow to 670,000 by 2005.
Wednesday
8th March 2000
TELSTRA TO SHED 10,000
STAFF
In an effort to maintain profits,
Telstra CEO Ziggy Switkowski
announced today that the company will reduce staff from 52,000 employees
down to 42,000 by mid-2002. The cuts, combined with the planned divestment
of its networking subsidiary, will leave Telstra's total staffing numbers
at around 36,000 within 18 months. However, while the announcement may be
good news for shareholders, it may not be as good for Australian consumers.
According to new statistics released today by the
Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman
(TIO), problems with new telephone service provision are now the
second most common complaint received at the TIO office, and some consumers
moving home or offices are now finding themselves without a new phone line
for several months. The TIO says this trend is partly the result of increasing
demand for second phone lines by households with Internet access, and partly
because demand for telco services has completely outstripped supply.
Coincidentally, perhaps, complaints about new connections have been increasing
dramatically ever since 1997 when Telstra first began shedding staff. All
the same, Telstra recently announced a half-year profit of $2.093 billion.
This was up 15.6% on the previous corresponding period.
Tuesday
7th March 2000
NET CENSORSHIP LAW "A WASTE
OF MONEY"
Australia's Internet censorship
law is a waste of money and may also have the potential to damage the country's
economy according to new research by a Newcastle University academic. In
a paper written for the Centre For
Independent Studies called "Shooting The Messenger", Newcastle
University lecturer Heath Gibson said that his PhD research indicated that
the industry compliance costs for the legislation could be as high as $150
million (roughly $25 for every Australian Internet user). However, even greater
amounts of money could be lost if the legislation led to the stifling of
creative local content and demand for online access - both of which had the
potential to cause economic damage over the longer term. Mr Heath also said
that the law was inherently unfair, since it treated textual content on the
Net as if it were film. The same content - published on paper - would attract
far less stringent guidelines and could probably be sold in a newsagency.
"In short, the legislation was unnecessary," Mr Gordon said. He recommends
that the law should be given further examination for other unexpected weaknesses
and detrimental side effects.
Monday
6th March 2000
GATES, ALLEN DUMP MICROSOFT
SHARES
In what may be a show of confidence
for the future of its recently released Windows2000 and the ultimate outcome
of its long-running case with the US Department of Justice, it emerged today
that Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen have been
cashing out several billion dollars of their shareholdings in the company
over the last month, or will be doing so shortly. According to filings at
the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published today, Gates sold
1.1 million shares in his company for around $175 million last month, and
has filed to sell a further 300,000 for approximately $47 million in the
near future. Meanwhile, his former partner Paul Allen is currently trying
to sell $3 billion in Microsoft stock, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
also sold off $3.3 billion worth of stock in the period between January 26th
and February 18th this year. According to the SEC filings, Gates now owns
less than 15.3% of the company (though he still remains the largest individual
stockholder), while Allen's share has dwindled to less than 5%. A Microsoft
spokesperson said the sell-offs were part of a "prudent portfolio
diversification".
Friday
3rd March 2000
DOUBLECLICK ABANDONS DATA
MATCHING PLANS
Stung by a US Federal Trade
Commission investigation, several class-action lawsuits from privacy campaigners
and a near-halving of its share price in less than 6 weeks, online ad group
DoubleClick today shelved
its plans to spy on web surfers - temporarily. In an announcement posted
on the firm's site today, DoubleClick CEO Kevin O'Connor said "It
is clear... I made a mistake by planning to merge names with anonymous user
activity across Web sites in the absence of government and industry privacy
standards." However, he went on to add that today's announcement doesn't
mean the company has given up the idea - only that it has shelved it until
new privacy guidelines are developed by the US Government. In
late January
this year, USA Today revealed that DoubleClick planned to
use controversial data collation techniques to try to covertly build
comprehensive profiles of web surfers, then resell this data to third parties.
In the storm of controversy that ensued, many of the US firm's high-profile
clients quickly tried to distance themselves from the company and DoubleClick's
shares rapidly declined from $US135 down as low as $US79. They rose slightly
to $US83 today in light of the announcement.
Thursday
2nd March 2000
AUSTRALIAN ONLINE SHOPPING
TREBLES
Over 25% of Australian households
are now online and 50% of households now have a computer, according to the
latest Internet demographics report from the
Australian Bureau of Statistics
(ABS). The ABS' latest survey (Use of the Internet By
Householders) showed that Net penetration rose from 19% in November
1998 to 25% in November 1999. The ABS also found that close to 6 million
Australian adults (44% of all adults) accessed the Net in 1999, against 4.2
million (31%) of adults the previous year. Most surprisingly of all, however,
the ABS found that the number of Australians buying online had trebled over
the previous 12 months - from a slim 2% in 1998 to 6% in 1999. Whilst the
majority of Australians have yet to make a purchase online, the ABS found
that of those that do, 34% spent more than $500 on their purchases. The most
popular items for Australians shopping online are books and magazines (27%),
computer products (19%), clothing (14%), music (13%) and tickets to concerts
and sporting events (12%). The ABS also found that 54% of goods and services
bought online are purchased from Australian merchants.
Wednesday
1st March 2000
AUSTRALIAN NET KEEPS ON
GROWING
The Australian Net recorded
its 8th consecutive month of growth during February 2000 according to our
monthly Australian Internet Growth Index. Our index has been attempting
to estimate the number of live Australian sites on the Net - as opposed to
the number of registered domains - ever since January 1996. During February,
the number of new sites easily outpaced the number of die-offs and all capital
cities once again recorded strong growth. We estimate that there are now
in excess of 50,000 Australian web sites on the Internet - roughly one for
every 2.5 registered .AU domains. The March 1st figures (with February 1st
figures in brackets) are as follows:
Australian
Internet Growth Index February 2000
(Figures Show Estimated Live Sites) |
-
Brisbane - 4,058
(3,821)
-
Sydney - 15,476
(13,302)
-
Melbourne - 10,071
(9,185)
-
Adelaide - 4,522
(3,897)
|
-
Perth - 4,434
(4,005)
-
Hobart - 2,171
(1,792)
-
Canberra - 4,536
(3,645)
-
Darwin* - 4,930
(4,135)
|
NB: The Darwin figure includes
rural Australian sites |
|
During February 2000 Australian
Cybermalls hosted 77,852 visitors, a slight rise on January's 76,377
(given that February is the shortest month of the year). This was equivalent
to 248,366 page displays from our servers, and we consumed 7.58Gb of bandwidth.
Our February 2000 traffic summary
can be viewed
here.
|
