ETD: 998 Blogger Power; End of a retail era; AOL Releases
Web-Search Data of 650,000 Users
E-Tailer's Digest
etd_post at gapent.com
Tue Aug 8 13:51:43 GMT 2006
E-Tailer's Digest --- Everything for the Retailer
Issue #0998 August 8, 2006
George Matyjewicz, Moderator mailto:georgem at gapent.com
Published by: GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.etailersdigest.com
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CONTENTS
[1] Greetings
[2] Blogger Power
[3] End of a retail era
[4] AOL Releases Web-Search Data of 650,000 Users
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[1] Greetings.
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Hi All:
Bloggers seem to be in the news quite a bit lately. They discovered
the fake Reuters photos from Beirut, the Senate race in Connecticut
and the AOL fiasco where information on 650,000 users were made
available. My question is, are you taking advantage of this new
method of communication? It is powerful.
List member Alan J. Zell has some more information on the end of an
era for retailing and some thoughts on why. Interesting material.
And we posted some details on the AOL fiasco. More than 20 million
queries made by 650,000 users between March 1 and May 31, were posted
without authorization, to a new AOL research Web site. Nothing is
safe anymore.
Now, let's get to everything for the retailer.
Sincerely
George Matyjewicz, PhD
Chief Global Strategist, GAP Enterprises, LLC
mailto:georgem at gapent.com
http://www.etailersdigest.com
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[2] Blogger Power
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Bloggers seem to be in the news quite a bit this week. Little Green
Footballs (LGF) reported on how news agency Reuters printed some
faked photos of
Beirut.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=21956_Reuters_Doctoring_Photos_from_Beirut&only
The photographer who took the picture (probably also the person who
doctored it), Adnan Hajj, is rather well-known to bloggers and rather
well-known to the entire world. He also took this infamous
photograph from Qana of the guy in the green helmet, parading a dead
body around for pictures, featured on the front pages of newspapers
worldwide - another phony.
Bloggers also caught that phony reporting by Dan Rather, a formerly
well-respected newscaster, who subsequently resigned (actually retired).
The past couple of weeks bloggers have been slamming Joe Lieberman,
the Senator from Connecticut who is up for re-election. He is in a
Democratic primary battle and polls show he is losing. Today we will
know for sure.
And yesterday, bloggers reported the AOL fiasco where AOL released
Web-search data on 650,000 users (see 4 below).
Blogs can be a good thing and will keep the media in check. They
also serve a good purpose by keeping businesses honest. They are a
great way to get your message out to the world.
How about you? Do you use blogs? Do you read blogs?
George
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[3] End of a retail era
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Your post about Wannamakers, bring more tears to my eyes. The death
of the fine retailers of old is hard to take. Look at some of these
that preceded Wannamakers:
Meier & Frank, Portland, Or. An innovator in merchandising, one that
Aaron Frank and family were most famous for was their weekly Friday
Surprises -- merchandise primarily bought just for those days along
with some close outs. At one time M & F was had the highest gross
sales for a single unit department store . . . and that was in a
city or market are of, at that time, far less than 1, 000,000 population.
Gimbels, NYC. The "fight" between Macy's of that time and Gimbels
was known world wide. "Does Macy's tell Gimbels?" was a retail
industry slogan.
B. Altman, NYC -- Like its counter part in Los Angeles, Bullocks
Wilshire, a retailer of high fine quality merchandise.
Bullocks Wilshire -- Los Angeles, a leader of new merchandise lines
along with Marshall Fields of Chicago
Marshall Field -- Chicago. They got new merchandise before anyone
else. Line Bullocks Wilshire, anyone who travelled, it was a must to
visit while on the trip. They had a companion store in Seatttle, WA,
Frederick & Nelson.
I. Magnin Los Angeles and San Francisco -- where Ladies
shopped! High style and quality merchandise.
Joseph Magnin, Los Angeles -- popular price goods for working women.
Orbachs, Los Angeles -- an early store to feature knock-offs of the
newest high fashion lines.
Sakowitz, Houston, TX -- while running second to Neiman Marcus, they
new how to compete with quality merchandise.
Garfinkles, Washington DC. Besides Woodward & Lothrop and
Strawbridge & Clothier, Garfinkles "in the nation's capital"along
with Woodys "up the marble staircase" were synonymous retail slogans
know the nation over.
But, not only has the phenomenon you wrote about happened with
department store, it has also eaten into the very fine speciality
stores that carried those things the department stores did not carry
or did not have the selection the smaller merchants could offer.
I was privileged to compete with some, I knew many of the principals
and got to know and commiserate with many of the buyers of giftware,
china, glass, silverware, linens and like merchandise.
But, there is another area to cry about and that is the disappearance
of many of the suppliers of fine quality merchandise. Even some who
are still in business do not make the same quality of goods they made
them famous. I'm not sure which came first, the waning of fine
store or their suppliers.
Now, the question becomes, why did this happen? To my way of looking
at it, what we lost was threefold. One was that the age of the
innovative merchants is no more. Two, because of the first reason,
there were no training grounds such as the above stores provided so
that new innovative buyers could learn their trade. Third, the "MBA
Syndrome" in that business schools promoted the idea that one didn't
have to know the idiosyncracies of the industry, they only had to
know about the numbers. Lastly, the computer . . . that putting
SKUs on merchandise too the personality out of retailing. Stores
bought by SKUs, customers bought by the item. In many cases,
rate-of-sale was no longer important to those running the books. Open
to buy was law. Little did these non-merchants understand that
having open to buy may mean they do not have the right goods on hand
and that being overbought may mean that the store had the goods needed.
Regards,
Alan J. Zell, Ambassador Of Selling
Winner of the Murray Award for Marketing Excellence
Member, PNW Sales & Marketing Group
Member, Institute of Management Consultants
You are invited to learn about programs and services and
article on business topics that affect selling at www.sellingselling .com
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[4] AOL Releases Web-Search Data of 650,000 Users
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Yesterday there was a flurry of activity about how sensitive data of
AOL users were posted online. Bloggers and newslists were talking
about this fiasco all day long. AOL pulled the information, but not
before it was mirrored on at least 20 sites and is now available to the world.
AOL Inc., in a move that raised online-privacy concerns, said it
mistakenly released data about the Web-search habits of more than
650,000 AOL members.
The AOL users weren't personally identified in the data and instead
were tracked by anonymous user-ID numbers. However, numbers would
still allow everyone from law enforcement to identity thieves to
analyze an individual's searches -- which could involve names,
addresses and other subjects that could provide hints to the
individual's identities. Andrew Weinstein, a spokesman for the Time
Warner Inc. unit, acknowledged that "search queries themselves can
sometimes include such information" and called the release "a screw-up."
AOL researchers posted the data, which detailed more than 20 million
queries made by the users between March 1 and May 31, without
authorization, to a new AOL research Web site about 10 days ago. The
document was for use by other search-technology researchers, but was
noticed by bloggers in the search-marketing field late Sunday. Their
discovery set off a flurry of blog postings and apparently led to
hundreds of downloads of the data. AOL said it immediately pulled the
data off its site Sunday when it realized what had happened.
"We're angry and upset about it," AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein said
in an emailed statement. "It was an innocent enough attempt to reach
out to the academic community with new research tools, but it was
obviously not appropriately vetted, and if it had been, it would have
been stopped in an instant."
The company is conducting an internal investigation before
determining whether it will take disciplinary action against employees.
Details at...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115498329554829021.html
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