eBay have been on a shopping spree lately. On the list - Shopping.com for US$620m and two free classifieds sites (Gumtree and Loquo) bought for an undisclosed amount.
Shopping.com is basically a price comparison service, and is an amalgation of Epinions and Dealtime. Making life easy for consumers and generating leads for retail affiliates turns out to be a pretty profitable business, which is why Google also has the sector in its sights.
If you believe the accepted wisdom, the best way to find a wife, boyfriend or job is to get set up by a friend. That might explain the latest dotcom craze of uploading your entire contact database of friends and colleagues onto the web, and encouraging them to do the same. Something must be working, because millions of people are now happily chatting, mixing and swapping photos of themselves on an emerging multitude of social networking websites. Whatever you are looking for, the only thing you can’t easily find on one of these sites is a clear business model. So far it seems that social networks have been more successful in raising money than making any of their own.
It seems what was new is old again. With Yahoo! delivering a spectacular profit result this week, the old economy parentals are looking jealously at a sector which after the nineties crash, seemed reassuring destined for extinction.
