Great info on TechCrunch about Yahoo!'s announcement yesterday of Shoposphere, the portal's reprise of the mall concept that was all the rage in '95.

The neat thing is that this time, it just might work, thanks to clouds and tags and neighborhoods and other non-traditional "folksonomies" of Web organization. Using tags, information that was formerly constrained by the limitations of a traditional coding or filing system index can float free among numerous queries, alighting when triggered by a tag.

The Shoposphere is among several contenders among major portal players in aggregating content for enabling both traditional e-commerce and the burgeoning m-commerce opportunities. E-Bay and Google are also in the fray, the former re-vamping its Reviews and Guides section, and the latter rolling out its Google Base beta, (as well as an RSS aggregator on the presonal home pages, among other innovations.)

It's interesting to me that eBay made a big push last Friday for the reviews and guides pages, offering posters landing pages with links to their reviews, auctions, etc. similar to Amazon's functionality. The problem is that eBay faces disgruntled developers and backlash from sellers tired of high fees given the number of alternative marketplaces which have emerged.

The aforementioned tagging trend is evident here, as well. There are tag-like terms included in the newly revamped recommendations, as well. (As well as my reviews of Enjoy Every Sandwich and Cognac and Bologna posted quickly after I saw the numerous opportunities to be the first reviewer. Remember, optimize the content--links from eBay are weighty.

Yahoo! and eBay both face a serious competitior in the $400 pound gorilla in the room. AuctionBytes reported that eBay partners Channel Advisors are working to integrate the eBay listings with a one click upload to Google Base. (Is this Froogle beta's destiny?)

Channel Advisor's Scott Wingo cited tags as one of the main differences between Froogle and Google Base.

The question is, who will shoppers trust this holiday season? Google's insistence on relevance, seemingly non-stop innovations offered free to merchants, and it's friendliness to searchers including prohibition on pop-ups and other annoying and interruptive tactics may give it the edge with serious spenders.

Another area that will be critical is success in integrating m-commerce into the shopping habits of those who are inclined to do their shopping in the mall without going into the stores, no matter where they are.

Today's New York Times reports big news for Web Advertisers in covering the announcement that Web Analytics will be part of the growing suite of services for Web advertisers from Google. According to the story:

"Google Analytics will also allow publishers and marketers to analyze the performance of non-Google ad campaigns, like e-mail marketing, banner ads or search ads on Yahoo, MSN or any other search engine. That service is free even if companies do not advertise with AdWords, as long as their users do not view more than five million Web pages in a given month."

The story also noted that only 17% of the estimated quarter of a million companies with revenues over $1 million use Web analytics services and software, with the cost the primary reason for skipping the service.

Google's acquistion of Urchin brought the functionaity to the growing suite of do it yourself Web tools in Google's stable.

Adwords, already perhaps the most cost effective way to advertise Online, just got even better.

Today's New York Times announced the death of social ecologist and management guru Peter Drucker at age 95.

Drucker's vision of business as a conduit to both profit and employment advocated the idea of the worker as a resource, not a cost and lead to a new era in management.

The story included some classic Drucker quotes, including:

"The only things that evolve by themselves in an organization are disorder, friction and malperformance."

While in some circles, he was more often right than popular, Drucker's observations and theories have guided progressive managers for decades and will live on for many more.

Traditionally, MS operating systems have not been known for being particularly bug-free (remember the old list of how your car would behave if it ran on Windows or other vintage OS's?)

In this late October press release, Microsoft announced that ithas added a huge amount of content to its site. A big new area is related to R&D in partnership with University research departments.

Singularity is a huge component of this effort. Researchers participating in the Singularity project are building a research Operating System (OS) from the ground up with the goal of using the newest technology to create a stable and dependabled system.

Is this the beginning of a new research paradigm for the software giant?

Find more information about the new Microsoft research initiatives, including specialized RSS feeds by area of interest at Microsoft's Research Home page. The seriously interested can even download a 44 page PDF file update on the Singularity project.

This type of tabla rasa approach to collaborative creation of a stability-focused OS found in the Singularity project will be worth watching, along with the other innovations being studied in conjunction with University researchers participating in Microsoft's new research initiatives. I found the iCampus project particularly interesting.

If you are a PhD candidate, or University researcher and want to learn more about funding opportunities, you'll find information on applying for employment, grants and fellowships on the site.

One warning to the curious. Be prepared to spend some time on this site if you're interested in the future of computing and how it will integrate with our lives. There's plenty to see at this site, and the volume of quality content is growing daily!

On the air right now, a Red State blogger / lobbyist to whom I don't want to link has made some wild assertions about the state of blogging today. Perhaps the gentleman would be interested in knowing some of the other uses of blogs that exist besides slinging mud at the opposite party than the one affiliated with the bloggers.

This is a smokescreen, as is the privacy debate on this edition, because the real issue is the ownership (and eventual profit) of content.

The content rights management issues that are presented by blogger and the Web in general are are not simple. If we follow the money, we might find out why this person is emphasizing privacy and free speech over control of content as the real issues. We may be alarmed to find out where the money trail leads us.

4000 bloggers apparently agree with this person's perspective.

According to Technorati, there are about 14.2 million blogs out there. I personally know of billionaires, lawyers and other educated professionals who blog and have blogged for years. The majority of us are not blogging about political issues. It's unfair to extrapolate the partisanship of DC to the rest of the world.

Don't do the rest of us any favors. We need to keep our eye on the real issues. Want the real story? Don't rely on spin. Find the text of the legislation at www.ftc.gov and decide for yourself. This overview of the FTC's powers related to the Web also makes good reading.

In today's Washington Post article, Weighing Webcasters Right to Content, Jonathan Krim defined the challenges faced in identifying ownership of Online content:

"The minutiae and complexity of rights and treaties in those (content ownership) matters are enough to cure a small nation of insomnia.

But the battle demonstrates yet again the high stakes and tensions of an era in which information is king, yet products and services are being produced at lightning speed to make information ever more copyable, malleable and portable."

Proponents of accommodations for public domain status and free information flow argue that there is value in the ability of the Web to introduce a variety of new audiences to public domain works, similar to the value new and emerging artists have realized from audio file sharing.

The official response appears to support the past record on this issue, judging from this quote from the article:

"We do have an economy that operates on market principles," says Michael Keplinger, a senior counsel at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. "And intellectual property rights have served very well to help that market function."

No one is saying copyright owners should not be compensated for their efforts, just that common sense needs to enter the equation.

These are the types of issues we should keep in mind in the evaluation of Supreme Court Justice nominations. Given the obsurity and complexity of the issue, it's the type of thing that could get missed in the smoke created by the focus on the more commonly debated and incendiary issues.

On November 3, 1995, Dr. Ralph F. Wilson served up the first issue of Wilson's Web Marketing Today newsletter, which has remained a solid source of Web Wisdom for the last decade. (Hard to believe it's been that long!) You'll find a wealth of free content along with paid content at http://www.wilsonweb.com/ (plus, you can subscribe to the free or paid versions of the newsletter that grew up with the Web.)

I regularly recommend the content on this site to students in my marketing and e-commerce classes.

Happy Birthday, Web Marketing Today!