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Forget the final two years of wizard school. Harry Potter can quit now, while he’s ahead. The fifth book in J.K. Rowling’s wildly popular series about a magically gifted youngster, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” officially has become Amazon.com’s biggest seller ever. The online retailer said this week that its U.S. site has logged more than 500,000 advance sales of the book, which will be released June 21. “Phoenix” tops “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” the fourth book in the series, for the top-seller slot. Worldwide, 875,000 Amazon orders have been placed. Amazon.com claims that June’s delivery date will be the biggest internet-based distribution day since e-commerce began.
Music industry site pleads: Please do it legally
First the music industry produced flyers informing college students and businesses of the evils of copyright infringement. Then it admitted to researching ways to sabotage users of peer-to-peer swapping sites. Now it finally has taken its campaign to the web itself. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has launched the web site www.Pro-Music.org, designed to encourage and instruct music listeners in the art of legal downloads. Pro-Music directs fans to the industry-backed sites Pressplay and Musicnet, whose traffic is significantly lower than peer-swapping sites Kazaa, Morpheus and others. The site even includes appeals from the recording artists themselves, asking that fans pass up the chance at free music in favor of more honorable downloads. The IFPI and record labels blame such free sites for a decline in CD sales that has spanned the past two years.
Study: Identity theft will cost $2T worldwide
Identity has become a slippery issue on the internet. New forecasts predict that in the next few years, online fraud and identity theft will cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars unless something is done to stop the spiraling trend. Aberdeen Group reports that by the end of the year, identity theft costs will reach $221 billion worldwide, including $73.8 billion in the United States. Aberdeen estimates that if the 300 percent compound annual growth rate continues, worldwide losses could climb to $2 trillion by the end of 2005. Identity theft losses in 2002 measured a measly-by-comparison $73.8 billion, including $24.6 billion in the U.S. More than 263,000 complaints were logged about e-fraud in 2002. The Department of Justice began the Operation E-Con initiative last year to crack down on internet thieving. So far E-Con has assisted 89,000 victims stripped of more than $176 million.
Google drops minimum bid price per word
It just became a little cheaper to advertise on Google. As part of the Adwords program, the company lowered its minimum bid price per keyword to 5 cents per click last week, a level that all but the most popular of its words had been at already. The company says that the move will allow more advertisers to participate in the auction process, but it hasn’t made a big deal about the switch. It also would not reveal how many words actually were affected by the pricing change. This comes at a time when Overture and FindWhat, two rival search companies, actually raised their minimum bid prices. Overture doubled its from five to 10 cents. Google Adwords results usually return up to 10 listings while Overture spits back only four.
In search of revenues, iVillage goes sex route
Women’s portal iVillage wants to sex its users up. The site is running a six-week course entitled “Awaken Your Sexual Self,” and to celebrate, it’s opened a new online sex boutique. Drugstore.com has partnered with iVillage for the new online store, the latest in a series of economically minded iVillage moves aimed at expanding its revenue streams. Last year the ad-based site promised to eradicate annoying pop-up ads in response to user complaints. This year iVillage wants to find alternative money-making sources, and subscription services and e-commerce wings seem like the smartest solutions. The site already offers a storefront that sells beauty aids and the like for the “mature” audience.
May 22, 2003© 2003 Media Life
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