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Leading photo site PhotoPoint has been off-line for several days, much to the chagrin of its 1.25 million customers. While the now-defunct site has referred visitors to its partner, EZPrints, the referral isn’t much help for many of them, because people aren’t able to access the photos they had stored at the site. Customers are particularly irked at the timing, given that photo printing and sharing is very popular during the holiday season. Some advance warning was issued in the form of an email to PhotoPoint customers that went out on Dec. 7. The message said that PhotoPoint would go off-line because of technical difficulties, seeming to indicate that it would come back up at sometime in the future. But according to reports, PhotoPoint’s phone service has been disconnected.
Search engine Google adds mail-order images
People who want a virtual glimpse of the Lands’ End swimsuit section now have a new option. They can log on to search engine Google, which on Thursday began experimenting with a new feature that lets people look at images from mail-order catalogs. The test of Google Catalogs involves Lands’ End, L.L. Bean, Pottery Barn and hundreds of other retailers. For the purposes of the test, Google is not charging the retailers, but if all goes well, Google expects to use this feature as an additional source of income. Google recently expanded its search tools to include images and newsgroups, so a catalog-browsing tool does not represent a big departure. How it works: Users search for goods and Google responds by calling up images from retailers’ print catalogs. Observers have compared Google Catalogs to an online mall, and they say it could encroach on the territory of established online retailers like Amazon.com and mall-like site Yahoo Shopping.
Clear Channel breaks into online music biz
Radio king Clear Channel Communications has teamed with small upstart FullAudio to sell online music subscriptions through 30 radio stations in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix and Salt Lake City. Ten dollars a month will let customers download between 90 and 130 songs from a library of more than 100,000 songs, which FullAudio has licensed from EMI and Universal. A third label is said to be close to joining. The numbers are comparable to offers from Real One's partnership with MusicNet, a joint venture launched Dec. 4 by Bertelsmann, EMI and AOL Time Warner; and from Pressplay, a project from Sony and Vivendi Universal that is set to roll out soon. Where they differ is that Clear Channel will not offer streaming, only downloading, and will only enable users to listen to the music on their own computers. MusicNet and Pressplay will allow for listening from any PC. Users will have to download a new software key each month to keep listening to their stored material and to acquire new music. Whether consumers will fork over money and convenience for music that is still easy to obtain for free remains to be seen.
Brit surfers shop online for sexy items
At least in the U.K. people are turning to the web to buy the most personal of personal items, according to a recent survey. Business technology company Cochango found that 78 percent of people it surveyed were inclined to purchase things such as sex toys over the web. Online sales of all goods in the U.K. are up 116 percent over last year so far. Internet lingerie vendor Figleaves.com reports that its sales are triple those of last year and notes that half of its orders are gifts. Cochango officials suggest that e-commerce vendors of intimate goods make it easy to return and exchange purchases, since many of them are intended as gifts that the recipient will have no interest in wearing, such as ill-fitting crimson brassieres and the like.
Push scooter sales plunge along with dot.coms
The scope of the dot.com boom and subsequent crash might take decades to gauge, but right now we know of one indirect casualty: push scooters. Those silver "Razors" that enabled suddenly cash-flush 20-somethings to zip around in all their fleeting glee have crashed and burned at retail stores since the dot.com burst. The fad that pumped $44 million into last year's third quarter fell to practically nothing this year. Novelty stores like Sharper Image have seen their entire store's sales sag because of the declining interest in little scooters. Analysts say the scooter fits the markings of a classic fad--one that started in urban centers among young dot.com players scarcely flung from their adolescent years (and toys) and spread to kids all across the country. Between eight to 12 million scooters were sold, sometimes fetching $1,000 for souped-up models. Retailers are currently slashing prices to $29.95 to ease the glut.
December 19, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
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