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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Square pioneered the concept of a Smartphone dongle that lets anybody accept card payments. But the more product initiatives the San Francisco-based company releases, the more it goes head to head with payment giant PayPal. Or, as Philip Ryan puts it: “It’s getting harder and harder to tell PayPal and Square apart”.
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Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, has published his thoughts about a new blogging platform idea called Tiny, including a prototype video. The core feature: Readers could actually watch writers while they create the content. Rose doesn’t want to build this tool right now, so it’s safe to assume that he mainly wants to see the reactions. If he witnesses encouragement, who knows if he or somebody else wouldn’t create that kind of system one day.
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Numbers and statistics explaining the growth of mobile commerce are ubiquitous these days. Here is another one, for the UK: Compared to 2012, 64% more of smartphone owners will use their device to shop online during Christmas 2013, according to a recent prediction. This year’s Christmas is already being nicknamed “the year of the mobile Christmas”
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Japan is usually a guarantor for seeing cool or crazy technology in action. The Bridge reports about a trend among Tokyo’s department stores to digitize their window displays. It’s an attempt to lure people inside, who can touch different products on the screens to get more information or check size and colors.
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Shopify, a Canadian e-commerce startup that develops ecommerce software for beginners and experts alike, got a nice little “Christmas gift”: $100 million in funding to challenge big players like Amazon and eBay.
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Blogging is the ultimate career boost and the new resume, says Ryan Hoover. We could not agree more!