I often get questions of how many sites are supported by ShoppingAdvisor. I thought I’d post this here for you to get an idea of the type of support we shipped with.

• Become
• BobVila
• Builder’s Square
• Buyer’s Edge
• CNET Shopper
• Commission Junction
• FindGift
• Gifts.com
• Google Base/Google Product Search
• HGTV
• Jellyfish
• LinkShare
• MSN Shopping
• Nextag
• Performics
• Pricegrabber
• Pricefish
• PriceLeap
• PriceRunner
• PriceScan
• Pronto
• Shop.com
• ShopLocal
• ShopMinnesota (yes there is really a site called this)
• Shopping.com
• Shopzilla
• Smarter.com
• SortPrice
• Yahoo! Shopping
• Yahoo Site Submit Pro

Plus one more to be announced next week.

UK

• Google Base UK
• Ciao UK
• Kelkoo UK
• Nextag UK
• Pangora UK
• Pricegrabber UK
• Shopping.com UK
• Shopzilla UK

In the next month, we’ll be adding 14 new sites, many of them international. That’s almost a site every 2 days. Whew…

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I love the old AT&T “You Will” commercials in the mid 90’s that painted an inspiring vision of a technological future (I don’t think anybody wants to talk into a watch now that we have bluetooth headsets but how can you say no to a gadget??).

If you were to make a similar series today you would have to include virtual worlds and eCommerce, represented (I may as well write the script while I am at it) by a consumer navigating easily through an online shopping experience with easy category navigation (looking for apparel? head this way), interacting with trusted friends and family about recommendations and specials, taking advantage of tailored ad-hoc promotions and one-click checkouts.

Virtual world leader Second Life may not become that home run but thanks to the Amazon AWS team it’s making interesting strides in that direction. That team has just launched a virtual marketplace in Second Life and is looking for exhibitors. A two-week experiment, it’s first come, first serve and you’re limited to a 15 x 6 ft space. But it’s free (haven’t you all been clamoring for a no-fee Amazon?).

Why should you care? Even if you’re hopefully too busy growing your online business using ChannelAdvisor Complete, more and more affluent consumers are spending their leisure time and real dollars in these virtual worlds with virtual friends. Retailers and manufacturers are quickly discovering this space — important to keep an eye on this budding channel.

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Yesterday we took the wraps off ShoppingAdvisor, a product that allows retail marketers full control over their comparison shopping business.

ShoppingAdvisor is designed, from the ground up, to put your marketing team back in control of marketing your products. Day after day we talk to companies who are literally held hostage by their technical team as far as their comparison shopping business is concerned. We set out to develop a product that would change that. The result is ShoppingAdvisor, a fully self-managed comparison shopping engine management solution that gives the control back to marketing, for good.

So we’ve been working on this release for a while, and I thought it might be fun to tell a quick anecdote from the release.

Late one night in the midst of software development, one of our developers, Jon, was feeling a little down. One of the stories I relayed at the time, was that the only releases you really remember are ones where you are building something very ambitious, at least 10 things could go wrong, and there is a tight timeline. The point is no one remembers version 3.1.12 from early 2003. You remember the release where everyone was sleeping on the floor and the last bug was fixed at 6am the second before the code rolled out to production.
His question was classic, of course: “Are you trying to make this hard so we’ll remember it? A note in my cube might accomplish the same thing.”

Silence in the room.

Of course the release ships and everything’s OK, but I thought that was pretty funny at the time. I won’t relay the joke I told at launch time internally about the difference between a death march and a death sprint. I really prefer the term rapid development - isn’t it more positive?

If you want to meet Jon, he’ll be out at Internet Retailer with us and can tell you all about it if you like :-) We’ll be at booth 1015.

One more note, if you buy before June 30, we are offering a full money-back guarantee. For any reason. Get more information here.

From around the web:
- Shout out to Brian @ ComparisonEngines.com for picking up the release.
- Internet Retailer Coverage
- VentureDeal mention

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A few months ago, items listed to eBay.co.uk (largely) stopped being displayed in the search results for buyers shopping on eBay.com. Many of our sellers involved in the tail-end of the long-tail (media sellers, niche products) have seen sales hit hard with this change to visibility. It’s heartening to know that eBay is investigating how to address, without over-correcting their earlier change.

Minds at eBay.co.uk have announced a test, running from June 19th and visible to roughly 1% of shoppers on eBay.com. Listings from eBay.co.uk will be displayed according to four different sets of criteria. They’re, of course, looking at what the best way forward would be to allow listings to display for .com shoppers, without impeding domestic trade. Here’s the full announcement:
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/uk/200705.shtml#2007-05-29135444

It’s not as positive, though not surprising, that while they give, they also taketh away. The latter end of the announcement mentions adding .com listings into .co.uk search results. It’s mitigated by the requirements that the seller specify postage to the UK and has 98% positive feedback, though. On behalf of the sellers I represent, I want to grumble, but as a buyer I’m happy to see eBay in ANY geography try to address the shrinking product availability as they mature.

Just another response to flattening growth in the US and loss of market share, but one that isn’t all that bad.

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eBay U.S. announced an insertion fee promotion for auction-style listings for tomorrow, Thursday, May 24, 2007. More details can be found at eBay.

Again, eBay provided more then 24 hours heads-up — thank you!

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