People are still getting used to the idea of services like Airbnb, which connect guests who wish to stay in new places with hosts who have accommodations to share. But as a peer-to-peer marketplace for people’s homes, Airbnb’s success still relies on ensuring that its users trust one another. Today, it took another step toward that goal, with the introduction of Verified Identification, which will connect users’ online and offline identities.

Airbnb has undertaken a number of initiatives over the past few years to build its users’ trust and ensure their safety. The marketplace has a ratings system which is designed to allow both guests and hosts to provide feedback on their stay. It also allows them to act as references for one another, especially helpful for first-time users. And Airbnb has implemented a $1 million guarantee for hosts, as well as a secure payment structure and 24/7 customer service.

The company is now seeking to take all that a step further, with a new feature that will link users’ online identities to their real offline identities. Previously, users could authenticate with the system by connecting their Facebook or LinkedIn identity with their Airbnb accounts. But the new Verified Identity system will tie a user’s account to his or her offline identity.

To do so, users simply go to www.airbnb.com/verify and login. The system will prompt users then to verify their offline identity in one of two ways: either by scanning a photo ID or passport with their webcam or mobile phone, or by answering the same sort of historical information you’d be prompted with when doing a credit check. For the system to work, both the online and offline accounts need to match.

The Verified Identity feature will first launch in the U.S., and users here can begin to opt-in and verify themselves today. Hosts will also be able to require users to be verified before they book a room. But if hosts set that requirement, they themselves also must go through the new verification system. That’s one way Airbnb is trying to drive adoption.

Another way that Airbnb will get people to sign up is by requiring that 25 percent of all users will need to get verified before they’re able to book a reservation. That 25 percent will be chosen randomly, and once a user is verified, he or she will never have to go through the process again.

In the short term, requiring a percentage of users to verify their offline identity will add a small bit of friction to the booking process, and could result in users dropping off before completing a booking. If a user is asked to verify his or her account, either because a host has required it or they’re part of the lucky 25 percent, then they’ll have 12 hours to do so without losing the reservation.

It’s important to note that, at least for now, that 25 percent is only required for U.S. users. Airbnb has said in the past that about 75 percent of all bookings have some international component — that is, either the place being booked is outside the U.S. or the guest is not a U.S. resident. Over time, Airbnb plans to increase the percentage of bookings which will require a identity verification. And it also plans to make it required outside the U.S. at some point.

Airbnb believes that the Verified Identity system will not only help provide more trust between guests and hosts, but that it can also help build more community. “The more info you can provide to each other, the better the Airnb experience,” Airbnb communications manager Jakob Kerr told me. “Someday we might get to point where you’re not staying with a stranger.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Clash of Clans, the title that’s made Finland’s Supercell the new darling of the mobile gaming industry, has doubled its marketshare among U.S. iPhone users over the last six months, according to Onavo, an app tracking company that can actually see active usage. The data is part of a monthly report Onavo does on winners and losers in marketshare — which is defined as the percentage of U.S. iPhone users who open an app at least once in a 30-day period.

The last time Supercell publicly shared its revenues was last fall when it said it was pulling in $500,000 per day about five months ago – when Clash of Clans’ marketshare was one-third of what it is now. But from sources in the industry, we hear that figure is much higher now, in the $1 to $1.3 million range per day. Generally, the top grossing games are doing about four times what they were pulling in a year ago. With the iOS base of devices growing, we could see a $2 million per day for a single developer by summer. The big question for a lot of observers in the industry is if and when Supercell will raise a massive funding round off the back of its success.

Meanwhile, the bootstrapped husband-and-wife team at Imangi looks like they are making a successful sequel transition with Temple Run 2 picking up market share where the original game left off. Sequels can be pretty risky for studios if they’re not executed properly because they cannibalize players from the original. And if the sequel isn’t good at retaining users, then the entire franchise can suffer.

EA Popcap’s Plants Vs. Zombies also made a big comeback this month after the company made the paid title free. Many developers behind the older, popular titles on iOS from several years ago are making their original games free. Rovio just made the original Angry Birds game free this month. Perhaps it’s a bid to rekindle interest in these games, or perhaps it’s a recognition of the huge shift in the industry toward free-to-play games.

More midcore games are also climbing in active usage. Phoenix Age, the quiet studio behind Castle Age HD, saw its title triple its marketshare over the past month. The developer, which often has titles in the top-grossing charts, hasn’t publicly announced any funding to date and is based out of the San Francisco Bay Area.

The ITU has approved a new video format that could bring 4k video to future broadband networks, while also making streaming HD video available even on bandwidth-constrained mobile networks. The H.265 standard, also informally known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), is designed to provide high-quality streaming video, even on low-bandwidth networks.

The new video format is the successor to the H.264 codec, which nearly every video publisher has standardized after the release of the iPad and several other connected devices. It seems crazy now, but once upon a time, Apple’s adoption of H.264 and insistence on HTML5-based video players was controversial — especially since most video before the iPad was encoded in VP6 to play through Adobe’s proprietary Flash player.

The hope is that, through improved compression techniques, H.265 will enable publishers to stream 1080p video with about half as many bits as required today. That should make true streaming HD video available not just in broadband households, but on mobile and tablet devices, using networks that are a lot more bandwidth-constrained. Doing so could make online video more widely available in markets with poor connectivity or mostly mobile connections.

In places where there is decent broadband connectivity, H.265 could enable even higher-quality video. With 4K TVs finally becoming available, there’s an opportunity for even greater video resolution. The only problem is that networks aren’t built to support the load that streaming that video would require. With H.265, 4K streaming could be possible with as little as 20-30 Mbps of bandwidth. Still a lot by today’s standards, but not completely unheard of.

Of course, just because the format has been approved doesn’t mean that we’ll start seeing video files shrink or lower bit-rate streams anytime soon. While there will likely be software-based encoders available by the end of the year, the codec won’t see mass adoption until it gets embedded into chips and hardware. It could be 12 to 18 months, maybe longer, before the first devices with H.265 hardware acceleration make it to market.

Once those initial devices do make it to market, however, we can probably expect a quick ramp up in the amount of content that begins to take advantage of H.265. Since the launch of the iPad, the percentage of video published in H.264 has climbed from less than 10 percent to more than 84 percent in less than three years, according to MeFeedia.

The adoption of H.265 could mean less network strain, more HD video, or some combination of the two. I personally expect that the availability of a more efficient codec will more likely mean higher quality rather than smaller video files, but every little bit helps.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

According to new data released from KinderTown, an educational app finder for parents of preschool and kindergarteners, Apple’s new iPad mini showed a drastic increase in usage among its app’s install base after the holidays, suggesting that many parents purchased the new tablet for their young kids this season.

The data was recently pulled from the app’s over 200,000 users, which is decent sample size to draw some insights about the new devices, in terms of their use by children. KinderTown’s app, for those unfamiliar, offers an alternative Apple’s App Store that only features kid-friendly apps vetted for their educational value, and which can be further refined by age, category and price. Because parents use it to find and buy apps for their kids, it’s generally installed on the device the child or children in the family use.

Although normally, the percentage of KinderTown users on a specific device rarely changes week-to-week, the holiday period following Christmas was not what you would call a normal week, the company tells me. After the year’s biggest gift-giving day, the iPad mini showed a drastic increase. Of course, this would be expected upon any new device launch.

In further examining the data, it was clear that the iPad mini wasn’t the only big gainer – the latest iPod Touch (4th or 5th gen) and the new iPad (4th gen) also saw big boosts during this time. But of the three, KinderTown’s parents were clearly choosing the iPad mini over the new iPad for their kids. The company notes that there’s also some indication that older iPads are passed down to the kids as mom or dad get their own new devices, as evidenced by the increase in iPad 1 usage after the holidays.

In the chart below, you can see that KinderTown’s users still preferred the latest iPad over the iPad mini, in total. The post-Christmas breakdown was 5.8% and 4.9% of users, respectively. But since the iPad mini’s usage increased by 270% after the Christmas, compared with the iPad 4th gen’s 190% increase, the company says it believes the minis are being purchased at a faster rate.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Some good news for Nokia today: the company announced that it exceeding guidance for Q4 sales, after a strong quarter of sales for its Windows Phone Lumia line and its Asha low-cost smartphones, with sales of Lumias nearly doubling over last quarter to 4.4 million devices. It also noted that its operating expenses are also lower and that the two combined are helping improve the company’s operating margins. These are now expected to be between break even and positive 2%. This is significant in that it is a big change from previous quarters, where Nokia has had to warn the market that it wouldn’t be meeting original forecasts.

As a point of comparison, Nokia had originally estimated that its operating margin for the quarter would be negative 6 percent, plus or minus four percentage points.

The company also notes that the Nokia Siemens Networks also did better than expected in Q4 and continues to be profitable. The company did not give revenue figures for the division but noted that the reasons for the improvement was the “strong” performance of higher margin product categories — 4G network equipment is one example of those — along with better-than-expected cost management. Operating margin is anticipated at between 13% and 15%.

“We are pleased that Q4 2012 was a solid quarter where we exceeded expectations and delivered underlying profitability in Devices & Services and record underlying profitability in Nokia Siemens Networks,” said CEO Stephen Elop in a statement. “We focused on our priorities and as a result we sold a total of 14 million Asha smartphones and Lumia smartphones while managing our costs efficiently, and Nokia Siemens Networks delivered yet another very good quarter.”

But operating margin will not hold to the next quarter. It expects Q1 operating margin to be negative 2%, plus or minus four percentage points. This is because of “competitive industry dynamics” that have negative impact on smart devices and mobile phones — that is, competition from Samsung and other Android handset makers, as well as Apple and the iPhone. It also notes that Q1 will be seasonally weak. And although Lumia smartphones continue to “ramp up” this may not offset larger consumer demand or the wider economic environment.

Nokia also said that Location & Commerce non-IFRS operating margin in the first quarter 2013 would be negative “due to lower recognized revenue from internal sales, which carry higher gross margin, and to a lesser extent by a negative mix shift within external sales.”

Going back to Q4, Nokia says that it currently estimates that Q4 net sales in its devices and services division were €3.9 billion ($5.1 billion), with total device volumes of 86.3 million units. Mobile phones accounted for €2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) of that, at 79.6 million units, 9.3 million of which were part of its lower-cost Asha line aimed at emerging markets and newer users.

Smartphones are also picking up: these they had net sales of €1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) with 6.6 million units sold, 4.4 million of which were Lumia devices. As a point of contrast this is nearly double what Nokia sold in Q3, where it reported 2.9 million Lumia devices sold.

Because Nokia is now selling smartphones both in its traditionally feature phone “mobile phone” segment as well as in the “smart devices” segment, it’s also breaking out total smartphones. These are now 15.9 million in total.

Other devices and services generated net sales of 200 million euros.

The full results for Q4 will be out on January 24.

Release below.

Nokia exceeds previous Q4 2012 outlook for Devices & Services and Nokia Siemens Networks

Nokia provides preliminary financial information for Q4 2012 and preliminary outlook for Q1 2013

Nokia Corporation
Stock exchange release
January 10, 2013 at 15:00 (CET+1)

Espoo, Finland – Nokia today provided preliminary information on certain aspects of its fourth quarter 2012 financial performance and also provided preliminary information on its outlook for the first quarter 2013.

Nokia now estimates that Devices & Services has exceeded expectations and achieved underlying profitability in the fourth quarter 2012.
- Mobile Phones business unit and Lumia portfolio delivered better than expected results; and
- Operating expenses were lower than expected.
- Devices & Services non-IFRS operating margin for the fourth quarter 2012 now expected to be between break even and positive 2 percent.

Seasonality and competitive environment are expected to have a negative impact on the first quarter 2013 underlying profitability for Devices & Services, compared to the fourth quarter 2012.

Nokia also estimates that Nokia Siemens Networks has exceeded expectations for the fourth quarter 2012, delivering record underlying profits and a third consecutive quarter of underlying profitability.
- Strong performance in higher margin product categories and geographic regions; and
- Better than expected cost management.
- Nokia Siemens Networks non-IFRS operating margin for the fourth quarter 2012 now expected to be between 13 and 15 percent.

Seasonality is expected to have a negative impact on the first quarter 2013 underlying profitability for Nokia Siemens Networks, compared to the fourth quarter 2012.

Commenting on the preliminary Q4 financial information, Stephen Elop, Nokia CEO, said:
“We are pleased that Q4 2012 was a solid quarter where we exceeded expectations and delivered underlying profitability in Devices & Services and record underlying profitability in Nokia Siemens Networks. We focused on our priorities and as a result we sold a total of 14 million Asha smartphones and Lumia smartphones while managing our costs efficiently, and Nokia Siemens Networks delivered yet another very good quarter.”

Preliminary financial information for the fourth quarter 2012:

Nokia currently estimates that Devices & Services net sales in the fourth quarter 2012 were approximately EUR 3.9 billion, with total device volumes of 86.3 million units.
- Mobile Phones net sales of approximately EUR 2.5 billion, with total volumes of 79.6 million units of which 9.3 million units were Asha full touch smartphones.
- Smart Devices net sales of approximately EUR 1.2 billion, with total volumes of 6.6 million units of which 4.4 million units were Nokia Lumia smartphones.
- Total smartphone volumes of 15.9 million units composed of 9.3 million Asha full touch smartphones, 4.4 million Lumia smartphones and 2.2 million Symbian smartphones.
- Devices & Services Other net sales of approximately EUR 0.2 billion, including a positive impact from non-recurring IPR income of approximately EUR 50 million.

Nokia currently estimates that Devices & Services non-IFRS operating margin for the fourth quarter 2012 was between break even and positive 2 percent, which compares to the previous outlook of approximately negative 6 percent, plus or minus four percentage points. Devices & Services non-IFRS operating margin includes a positive impact from non-recurring IPR income of approximately EUR 50 million.

During the fourth quarter 2012, multiple factors positively affected Nokia’s Devices & Services businesses to a greater extent than previously expected. Preliminary information indicates that the main factors include:
- Within the Devices & Services business, better than expected financial performance in the Mobile Phones business unit and Lumia smartphones. In addition, Devices & Services recognized non-recurring IPR income of approximately EUR 50 million; and
- Lower than expected Devices & Services’ operating expenses, partially due to greater than expected cost reductions under the restructuring program.

Nokia currently estimates that Location & Commerce net sales in the fourth quarter 2012 were approximately EUR 0.3 billion and the non-IFRS operating margin was between 13 and 15 percent.

Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks currently estimates that Nokia Siemens Networks net sales in the fourth quarter 2012 were approximately EUR 4.0 billion and the non-IFRS operating margin was between 13 and 15 percent, which compares to the previous outlook of approximately positive 8 percent, plus or minus four percentage points. Nokia Siemens Networks non-IFRS operating margin includes a positive impact from non-recurring IPR income of approximately EUR 30 million.

During the fourth quarter 2012, multiple factors positively affected Nokia Siemens Networks’ businesses to a greater extent than previously expected. Preliminary information indicates that the main factors include:
- More favorable product and regional mix in Nokia Siemens Networks. In addition, Nokia Siemens Networks recognized non-recurring IPR income of approximately EUR 30 million; and
- Better than expected improvement under Nokia Siemens Networks’ restructuring program to reduce operating expenses and production overheads.

Preliminary outlook for the first quarter 2013:

Nokia expects its non-IFRS Devices & Services operating margin in the first quarter 2013 to be approximately negative 2 percent, plus or minus four percentage points. This outlook is based on Nokia’s expectations regarding a number of factors, including:
- competitive industry dynamics continuing to negatively affect the Smart Devices and Mobile Phones business units;
- the first quarter being a seasonally weak quarter;
- consumer demand, particularly for our Lumia and Asha smartphones;
- continued ramp up for our new Lumia smartphones;
- expected cost reductions under Devices & Services’ restructuring program; and
- the macroeconomic environment.

Nokia expects Location & Commerce non-IFRS operating margin in the first quarter 2013 to be negative due to lower recognized revenue from internal sales, which carry higher gross margin, and to a lesser extent by a negative mix shift within external sales.

Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks expect Nokia Siemens Networks non-IFRS operating margin in the first quarter 2013 to be approximately positive 3 percent, plus or minus four percentage points.  This outlook is based on Nokia Siemens Networks’ expectations regarding a number of factors, including:
- competitive industry dynamics;
- the first quarter being a seasonally weak quarter;
- product and regional mix;
- expected continued improvement under Nokia Siemens Networks’ restructuring program; and
- the macroeconomic environment.

Nokia will provide more details when it reports fourth quarter and full year 2012 results on January 24, 2013.

Nokia will be hosting a conference call today at 13:30 UK time (8:30 EST).

The dial-in number for media (listen only – the question and answer session will be limited to financial analysts and investors only) is +1 706 634 5012. Conference ID: 86914019.

The dial-in number for financial analysts and investors is US: +1 888 636 1561. Conference ID: 86914019. UK: +44 1452 560 299. Conference ID: 87088764.

A replay of the call will be available soon after the call completion. The replay number is US: +1 800 585 8367.  Conference ID: 86914019. UK: +44 1452 55 0000. Conference ID: 87088764.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook today announced new “flexible sentences” options for apps that publish to Facebook using custom Open Graph verbs.

Developers can now better control the sentence structure for stories that users share from their apps. Not only can they edit the tenses of their custom verbs, they can add additional text to provide more information about the activity. Although it adds another layer of complexity to Open Graph, this change allows developers create more compelling stories for their apps, which could lead users to share more and lead more of their friends to discover the app. See the Songkick example below, which now has added context to make it clearer what it means to “track” and artist:

To help developers prioritize which story formats to adjust, Facebook’s sentence configuration tool will now note which stories are shared and viewed most frequently. The percentage of impressions a story format receives will be listed to the right. By clicking “Edit” next to the percentage, developers can add free-form text or property expressions. Developers can also remove objects from the sentence. Facebook pointed out an example for a hiking app, which would not want to share the story “Horatio hiked a hike on Social Hiking.” Instead, it could remove the object and change the app attribution to say “Horatio hiked using Social Hiking.”

Flexible sentences are available to developers starting today, though they only apply to custom actions. Apps that use Facebook’s built-in verbs like read, watch or listen cannot be customized this way. Developers who modify their existing actions to change their tense or sentence format will need to resubmit their actions for approval.

A basic how-to for flexible sentences is available here.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Wallaby, a startup that had been originally working to develop a universal credit card that optimizes consumers’ credit card points, rewards, airline miles and more, recently launched a more simplified version of that concept via an iPhone application. Instead of routing purchases to the appropriate card after swiping a Wallaby-branded credit card, the new iPhone app instead just tells you which card you should use. Today, the company is launching that same application on Android.

Functionally, the Android and iOS applications work the same. That is, the new app also uses geo-location to know where you’re shopping, then makes its credit card suggestions on the fly. The app presents users with a full list of their credit cards, ranked by which one will be the best to use at that given location. For example, it might recommend the card that offers a higher percentage cashback, perhaps, or the one where you can maximize your points or miles. The user interface also tells you what deal each card provides, so users can make their own choices if they prefer, whereas the universal credit card would have made those determinations for them.

The company says that it’s continuing to tweak and improve its card recommendations by fine-tuning the algorithms that help pick the best card for users. In addition, it has to constantly adjust those recommendations based on the various promotions and offers which are run by the credit card companies and their merchant partners.

Wallaby CEO Matthew Goldman told us earlier that Wallaby’s plans to develop a universal card weren’t being scrapped, but that regulatory hurdles were slowing down the process of making that card available to the 10,000+ consumers who had signed the company’s waitlist.

In the meantime, Android users can now download the Wallaby app to have access to these card recommendations. Wallaby competes with others in this space, including Glyph, which is currently iPhone-only.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Forrester Research just published its annual “State of Consumers and Technology” report. As usual, it’s chockfull of interesting statistics about how U.S. consumers use the Internet, but the most interesting statistic is probably that the overall online penetration rate in the U.S. has stabilized at 79% (the same number Forrester found in 2011). That’s the percentage of U.S. adults who go online at least monthly. What has changed, however, is how many adults go online at least daily: in 2011, that was 78% of U.S. adults and in 2012, Forrester reports that 84% now go online at least once per day.

One of the reasons for this is, of course, the growing smartphone and tablet penetration. Forrester found that about half of U.S. online adults now own a smartphone and two-thirds even own multiple connected devices. Tablet adoption doubled since 2011 and is now at 19%.

One trend the Forrester report, which includes survey data from nearly 60,000 consumers in the U.S. and Canada, also notes is that 43% of consumers now connect to the web with their TVs. Forrester, just like similar surveys, found that most of these users rely on their game consoles to do so (42%), while connected TVs (19%) and Internet-connected set-top boxes like the Roku or Apple TV are only being used by 14%.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that Forrester’s research also found that there are still distinct usage patterns among different generations. The 18 to 23 year-old crowd, for example, is far more active on social networks than anybody else. About 70% of these Gen Zers, Forrester says, “visit social networking sites daily” and 85% visit Facebook at least once a month. Gen Y (24-32) is more likely to own a tablet (about 25%) and smartphone (72%) and Gen Xers (33-46) are most likely to spend their money by shopping online (an average of $561 in the past three months compared to an average of $449 for all U.S. shoppers).

Once you get to the Boomers (47-67) and the so-called “Golden Generation” (68+), technology adoption obviously lags quite a bit. Older online adults, for example, are more likely to use desktop computers at home and are less likely to own tablets and smartphones. Still, even among this group, tablet adoption doubled to 14% since 2011.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

It’s widely believed in policy circles that technology creates jobs around the U.S., especially outside the startup-happy zone of Silicon Valley. But, searching for statistical nuggets in a needlestack of words is daunting–and a little boring. So, technology lobby, Engine Advocacy, and the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, are here to inform and dazzle you with multi-colored graphs (plus some egregious copy and pasting on our part) [PDF].

The big take-aways are:

1. Concentrated tech centers are scattered all around the U.S., but (not surprisingly) on the coasts.

2. There are a lot of surprising tech zones, such as Wichita Kansas and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Cities with the percentage share of tech jobs range from 28.8 in San Jose to Santa Ana-Irvine area, in Orange County (8.2).

3. Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) job opportunities have continued to expand up to 10% growth since 2000, while total occupations have hovered around 0%. Life Sciences is king of growth at 42.1%, with Computer and Math Sciences at around 20% and “Engineering and Related” slightly negative.

4. Probably the most interesting finding is that one tech job supposedly creates, on average, 4.3 jobs in the surrounding area in other fields. The so-called “local multiplier” is measured by the change in employment in a randomly selected non-tech field at two points and weighted by the national change in overall growth in that particular sector (geeks can read the technical paper here). Berkeley Economist, Enrico Moretti, outlines the effect in more detail, in his new book The New Geography of Jobs.

Download complete. Now that you’ve done your homework, here’s a picture of an adorable corgi:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

ComScore yesterday predicted that e-commerce sales would jump by 14% this holiday season compared to last year, to $42 billion, and some numbers just out from IBM’s Benchmark service – an ongoing measurement that covers some 500 of the largest online retailers in the U.S. — indicate that consumers are getting a head start today. Online sales, it says, are already up by 14.3% on last year, with the average order at $132.57. IBM also highlighted a particularly strong showing in mobile commerce.

As of noon today, IBM says, the number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site was at 26.5%, compared to 15.8% in 2011. The average number of pages viewed on a mobile device were 7.13.

Apple, it says, has a lot to do with that: the iPhone led as the most popular device driving retail shopping, with 9.6% of traffic coming from it. In a very close second place was the iPad, at 9.3%. IBM aggregates all Android devices together, and collectively they drove 7.3% of all traffic.

Mobile devices are also becoming better tools for actually buying things, too. IBM says that 14.1 percent of consumers have been using their mobile devices to make purchases, up four percentage points on last year.

Less strong, however, is so-called “social shopping,” that is retail being driven via social network referrals on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. This, so far, has only generated online sales of 0.2%, says IBM.

This might be down to two reasons: either social networks are not getting used by people to look for deals, or it’s simply still too much of a nascent space for e-commerce referrals. Still, these results seem to run in contrast to studies from companies like Eventbrite that make a direct connection between ticket sales to events and those events getting shared on social networks. It recently noted that ‘dollars per share’ were at their highest point ever for events that it tickets and are now at $3.23.

Overall, consumers both online and on mobile are ordering an average of 3.67 items, IBM says.

Given that most stores are all closed on Thanksgiving, today is essentially more of an e-commerce day than Black Friday, the weekend, or Monday will be. Some big brands like Apple are already getting into the action internationally.

IBM Benchmark collects and analyzes data directly from the web sites of over 500 large U.S. retailers. That list, IBM tells me, includes close to 50 percent of the Internet Retailer Top 100, so it becomes a good barometer for what is happening across the larger online e-commerce landscape. It tracks more than a million transactions a day, analyzing terabytes of raw data in real-time, and it’s issuing updates through today and Black Friday, and again on Monday.

Photo: Flickr

Article courtesy of TechCrunch