As we have shown last week, Pinterest is growing rapidly and having an increasing impact on e-commerce sales. Even the world biggest e-commerce retailer, Amazon, can’t ignore that. And it doesn’t. This week, the Seattle-based company has launched what seems to be its very own Pinterest competitor: On “Amazon Collections”, users can see what other customers like, want or recommend – presented in the typical Pinterest layout with lots of rectangle-boxed showing photos of products which users can add to their own collections. Of course, all items presented can be purchased directly on Amazon. That can be both an advantage or a disadvantage for the service, since users will already be logged in to Amazon while browsing through collections, but will be limited to what’s available on Amazon.
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In the past years, a host of startups and companies has followed Square in offering mobile card readers for smartphones, making it easier and cheaper for local retailers to accept card payments. Now an astonishing report from BIA/Kelsey finds that 40 % of small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S. already accept payments with mobile credit card readers. Another 16% of the businesses plan to add capability within the next year. If true, that means that smartphone card readers have reached mass market appeal and cannot be considered a niche business anymore.
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Austrian newspaper derStandard.at has published some facts about the local blogosphere, based on a survey among 236 persons. The results are being presented in an infographic. If you understand German you might want to read them.