Welcome to the new edition of “This week’s news”, a selection of links to interesting articles and news from the worlds of blogs, commerce and e-commerce.

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Groupon and similar deal sites have experienced a rapid rise, which is now followed by an equally rapid fall. The Washington Post sheds a light on the issues that daily deal sites are being faced with and that eventually lead to the decline of their deals business.

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Some people find it annoying if a writer or a company on Twitter posts the same link to a blog post over and over again. But our friends at that the Buffer Blog have come up with three reasons why that kind of behaviour is pretty effective to gain maximum traffic from social media shares.

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At least in the U.S., consumers increasingly expect free shipping when buying stuff online, fueled by Amazon’s popular Prime service that with a one-time fee entitles to free shipping for 12 month. Interestingly, now even the big credit card companies like MasterCard and Visa want to help people reduce shipping costs by launching specific campaigns and web portals.

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Do you know Boxed.com? It is a fairly new U.S online retailer that focuses on one thing: Selling bulk-sized products at pint-sized prices over mobile devices. Quartz portrays the company that was launched three month ago after only three month of development, and it’s already expanding rapidly in the U.S.

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A very interesting news comes from Chinese WhatsApp competitor WeChat: Its platform was used by the Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi for the sale of its latest flagship device, and that worked out pretty well: Xiaomi sold 150.000 units in under 10 minutes through the chat app. Looks like there is a new effective sales channel evolving!

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Speaking about the Asian e-commerce market: According to a new forecast, the volume of products sold online in the five leading Asian markets will double within five years.

Welcome to the new edition of “This week’s news”, a selection of links to interesting articles and news from the worlds of blogs, commerce and e-commerce.

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The magical thing about blogging is: Assuming that you are a person who likes writing and who knows basic rules of orthography, grammar and of how to structure a text, you almost guaranteed can become successful wit it. The only thing that could keep you back are wrong goals, a lack of self discipline and a wrong mindset. The blogger Ryan Biddulph has compiled a good list of 11 tips that help every blogger to remove obstacles on her or his way to the top. This sounds a bit stereotypical but we think he is right: Follow set fundamentals and you will see blogging success.

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Fashion blogging is big in Sweden. One of the most known bloggers is Rebecca Stella, a young woman who has worked as a model, been in charge of a Stockholm nightclub, done acting gigs, worked as a TV presenter and created her own fashion collection. And yes, let’s not forget that she blogs as well ; ). resume.se, an industry publication covering the Swedish communication and media sector, has interviewed Rebecca and asked her many questions about her rapid career and her success in personal branding. (original version in Swedish, translated version)

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Flipboard is a social news reader for tablets that has gained quite a big following. Users can subscribe to news sites, blogs and social media feeds and consume the content right inside the elegant app. With a new feature, Flipboard is entering the e-commerce sector by allowing users and brands to create curated catalogs containing products from all over the web. Other users who browse the catalogs can click on items they like and purchase them on respective online store. With the move, Flipboard is obviously getting a bit more similar to Pinterest

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Meanwhile, Pinterest is opening up to outside developers for the first time: Partnering e-commerce sites will receive real-time data about popular items on Pinterest enabling them to generate product lists based on this data. For instance, with the new tool, major U.S. shops like Zappos.com or Walmart.com that are partners of Pinterest can get customers’ attention by promoting most popular products among the Pinterest community on their sites.

Welcome to the new edition of “This week’s news”, a selection of links to interesting articles and news from the worlds of blogs, commerce and e-commerce.

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In it’s attempt to become more of an e-commerce website with a focus on discounted items instead of the group buying platform that it was started as, Groupon has launched a new website, making it easier to find the more than 50.000 deals that it now offers in the U.S. alone.

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According to a recent study, 77 % of online shoppers have abandoned an online purchase in the past year, with 53% citing unacceptably high delivery costs as the main reason for bailing out. 26% actually placed an item in their basket just to check the delivery costs, meaning that in many cases, online shops simply fail at informing potential customers about the actual shipping costs upfront.

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Linio, the “Amazon of Latin America”, has received a hefty $50 million in funding. The company is backed by Rocket Internet, the German incubator that is known for quickly copying existing business models and bringing it to parts of the world that are rather ignored by the major Internet giants.

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It is not uncommon that popular bloggers become celebrities and media darlings, using their blog reach to build influence in other areas of media and lifestyle circles. Or they get hired by commercial online magazines. That’s exactly what just happened to Swedish video blogger Clara Henry. The 19 year old girl has almost 150.000 subscribers on YouTube and was awarded as Sweden’s video blogger of 2013. Now the newcomer has joined popular Swedish website veckorevyn where she will publish her own blog.

We’ll probably hear more about her in the future.

Welcome to the new edition of “This week’s news”, a selection of links to interesting articles and news from the worlds of blogs, commerce and e-commerce.

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After an impressive growth period, the design e-commerce retailer Fab.com was struggling a bit in the recent month, laying off staff and trying to find a new focus after the flash sales concept turned out to have a less lucrative future than what initially was expected. But now, the New York-based company seems to push forward again, having announced that it has acquired assets from myFab, a French home decor and designer furniture portal. In total, Fab.com has raised an impressive $336 million in outside funding so far.

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Dwolla is an interesting US startup that allows individuals and businesses to move money at very low fees. Now the company has launched a feature called “Dwolla Credit”, which enables merchants using Dwolla to offer customers an option to purchase now but pay later – without the need of a credit card. Retailers on the other hand receive the paid amount in real-time, instead of days or weeks later.

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Customers abandoning a purchase in the final stages is both a huge loss and a huge chance for retailers. On the one hand, it is missed revenue. On the other hand, with the right approach, those users can be brought back to the shop in order to complete the purchase. It all depends on the strategy. PowerRetail analyzes the effectiveness of a personalized approach that makes use of individual reminder emails.

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Twitter has launched a new feature that shows pictures from different photo platforms inside the stream without that the user has to click to see them. While some users complain about the increased noise and loss of focus caused by the change, Forbes sees big potential for online shops. Photos can convey a lot of information quickly – something that Twitter with its 140 character limited has been not that suitable for. By selectively publishing photos to specific items available online, retailers can leverage the new Twitter function to drive sales.

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Medium, the publishing platform started by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, is now open for everybody who wants to publish content. Previously, only those who had gotten hold of an invite did have writing privileges.