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Skype on Wednesday introduced new software with new features, such as click-to-call to facilitate e-commerce, as well as group chats.
Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom said features in Skype 3.0 - launched in public beta - would decrease the company dependence on communications revenue with “new services which are more targeted to e-commerce,” Reuters quotes him as saying (via MarketingVox). Skype will allow shoppers to place a call by clicking on a phone numbers listed on web pages - feature that Skype parent eBay has sought since it acquired the firm last year.
“Our long-term goal is to have much more balance between e-commerce and telecommunications revenues,” Zennstrom told Reuters.
Another feature allows users to set up text-based chats with up to 100 web users, whether they use Skype or not; it mirrors Skype’s group audio feature, called Skypecast. The public chat feature can be embedded into blogs to encourage conversation.
All sectors of the media business will suffer from the weakened economy in 2008 and 2009, with a slump in local advertising particularly hurting newspapers and local TV, according to a new projection from Goldman Sachs.
Broadcast nets will experience…
The New York Times is shuttering its International Herald Tribune site; NYTimes.com will soon host the international news normally reserved for its sister website.
The move is not about cost savings, but rather about growth, NYTimes.com general manager Vivian Schiller…
Unilever’s Vaseline set forth on an unusual research project in a small town in Alaska. Setting up a storefront, the company began giving away free bottles of lotion and asking recipients to name the person who had recommended they come…
Meet the Press, the show hosted by Tim Russert for 17 years before his death last June, is beginning to slip in ratings.
Last month, CBS’s Face the Nation pulled ahead of Meet the Press for the first time in two…
Bloggers collectively create nearly one million blog posts each day, and half of bloggers believe blogs will be a primary source of news and entertainment in the next five years, according to Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report, MarketingCharts writes.…
Wal-Mart and Costco reported same-store gains in September, with sales rising 2.4% and 9% respectively. Sales at Target stores open at least a year fell 3%, writes Retailer Daily.
Below, fiscal results from the discount retail giants:
Sales of food and…
