In reply to this menace, Zappos have confirmed that actual passwords are still intact and have reset. So, users can login to the web portal and create new passwords right away. The company also made it clear that the database where confidential credit information is stored is still not accessed or affected.

Tony Hsieh, the Chief Executive of Zappos, posted on the company website saying,

“We’ve spent over 12 years building our reputation, brand, and trust with our customers. It’s painful to see us take so many steps back due to a single incident. Over the next day or so, we will be training everyone on the specifics of how to best help our customers through their password change process. We need all hands on deck to help get through this.”

A representative from Zappos stated that customer accounts at 6pm.com and Zappos were the only ones that got affected. He further mentioned that,

“Amazon accounts were not accessed in any way. Amazon customers have never been able to log into Zappos or 6pm with their Amazon accounts, “or vice versa.”

With all the anomymous and relentless hacking making the rounds, brands will now need to hunt for solutions to counter them if they look to maintain a loyal customer base.

mydala.com is one of the country’s biggest social commerce websites which offers city specific discounted deals for various products and services. For the new offering, mydala is trying to get a user friendly and effective mobile browsing experience for consumers.

Ashish Bhatnagar, co- founder of mydala.com said,

“mydala’s WAP portal, m.mydala.com, harnesses the advantages of internationally-accepted WAP2.0 protocol to offer a zippy, secure and over-simplified shopping experience through a browser that is text-heavy but with very few images to speed up access even on very slow mobile internet speed. The mydala WAP portal has an integrated payment option, where users can make payments using credit card, debit card, OxiCash, Voice payment or even cash on delivery. WAP enables easy and fast access to mydala.com, and is supported by most wireless networks including GSM and CDMA. You can access our WAP portal even from a non-smartphone!”

With smartphone sales rising and many people opting for 3G services, mobiles seem to be the perfect platform to generate traffic to a website. This is not mydala’s first venture into the mobile phone industry. In August, they had launched a application for BlackBerry devices as well.

According to Anisha Singh, CEO at mydala,

“Mobile is the future growth story for India, with over 858 million wireless connections, out of which 46% of the mobile subscribers being capable of accessing wireless internet, and India, consumers are becoming more receptive to accessing discount deals on their mobile phones. Using mydala’s new mobile WAP site, users can now buy their preferred deals not only with smartphone but also with any basic feature phone that has internet connectivity. The best part is that you don’t need to download any app to be able to take advantage of our deep discounts.”

With the upcoming Diwali season where shopping will be on the rise, this new move by mydala.com seems to be a smart one.

The new website has been opened up to 11 cities in India. These cities include, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai and Mumbai among others. Crazeal is currently in its Beta Version.

In order to improve their consumer experience, a new, more improved, management team will handle the working of the web portal.

Ankur Warikoo, CEO of Crazeal said,

“Groupon Inc’s DNA is intrinsic to Crazeal.com and we know what it takes to be the leader in this industry. Having pioneered the online deal industry and emerged as the top player in markets around the world we are confident that this is the right time for us to provide the discerning Indian consumer with the Crazeal.com experience, We are identifying merchants with high quality offerings, expanding to newer cities and above all enabling Social Commerce to help consumers avail of the best that their city has to offer. We are passionate about bringing quality deals to our consumers, and we feature only those deals that we would ourselves love to buy”

Apart from Warikoo, the new management team will also consist of other board members with impressive portfolios. In order to strengthen the brands presence in metros, a dedicated team of six Sales directors have been appointed for Delhi, Mumbai Bangalore and Kolkata.

Users can expect better deals on the new websites with partnerships with brands like Claridges, Domino’s, Cafe Coffee Day, Olivea, Crowne Plaza and Amoda Spa.

Though these brands will begin rolling out deals eventually, some offers are already available on the new website

With competitors like SnapDeal establishing their base in India, it will be interesting to see how people react to the newly re-branded Groupon.

Shopow claims they are the first online buying websites which allows users to interact with retailers and other shoppers.

On the websites, users can compare prices, various services and logistical methods which gives them the choice of buying products that suit their convenience and budgets.

The websites also lets users make friends with other shoppers on the website so they can upload and read reviews and opinions about various products up for sale. Options allowing users to connect shoppers directly to the retailers are present on Shopow.

According to CEO Kevin Flood,

“We all know how hectic Christmas shopping can be when crowds descend on major shopping streets – Shopow was created to bring a new dimension to seeking out low prices. Our aim is to empower shoppers to get the best deals and find out the truth about the items they’re about to purchase from people they can trust – their friends”

With eBay making plans of revamping their image, Shopow may just turn out to be some major competition for them.

The study was carried out by ViziSense,an Online traffic management provider based in India. According to the statistics, the active online population for the country went up from 53 million in July 2010 to 73 million in June 2011. With the rise in usage of social networking sites, this shift was an expected one.

But the noticeable change came in the total number of E-Commerce users in the same time period. From 16.8 million users last year, the figure rose up to 29.5 million this year. The statistics for travel e-commerce showed a rise from 8.1 million to roughly 18 million, while B2C shopping on the Internet went up to around 17.5 million users.

Amit Bhartiya, the General Manager at ViziSense said,

“The huge buzz seen in the e-commerce category funding and valuations last year has been matched by real and continued growth within this category. New formats and innovation like cash on delivery and free shipping have broken the barriers for Indians to come out and embrace e-commerce in large numbers and a combination of great deals and convenience will lead the charge for this category going forward. We are also amazed to see the huge traction that recently launched sites like Flipkart, Fashionandyou, Snapdeal and Bookmyshow have gained.”

With the rise in the number of people who buy online, we can expect the advertising budgets of many online shopping services to go up.

The initiative for filtering out the websites had started in November last year and the authorities said that they had checked a total of 504,728 websites to find out about their activities.

Apart from the websites that were shut, a total of 6,895 websites were given ultimatums to curb violations of Trademark violations.

With the clean up act, the Industry and Commerce claims that 38,446 products with spurious trademarks were taken off from the Internet. The organization will continue to to monitor and control the sale of fake brands in the future as well.

This move by China will provide a sigh of relief for major brands who have been a victim to piracy and had to suffer heavy losses because of the same.

The most recent being; Hewlett Packard (HP) undertaking every measure to make their table, the HP TouchPad worth a buy.

Since last Friday, when HP went ahead with its price cut, consumers have been flocking to stores to get their hands on it. To provide a further incentive to buyers, HP declared that six free apps will be given to buyers on a limited offer period.

“If you have an HP TouchPad…We’ve selected six apps that normally sell for as much as $14.99 and we’re making them available at no cost to HP webOS customers for a limited time”,

read the HP Palm website. The free apps consist of certain software and games.

DigiMouth had recently reported that tablet manufacturers are dropping prices to compete with the iPad. This new move by HP is sure to put in the lead over other manufacturers and however unlikely it may sound, the HP Touchpad may turn out to be the next leader in the fast growing and lucrative tablet market.

This move is touted to be the company’s biggest with a view to build their e-commerce chain. Magento delivers a point-of-sale software suite that facilitates an easy platform for e-commerce marketing, mobile shopping and payment services. eBay plans to expand its community base with total support to Magento’s open source initiatives. But will that be possible without an upgrade to Magento’s Community product level?

On the contrary the Enterprise edition seems to be a likely option for businesses that look at expansion and growth and reaching out to a relatively larger customer base. Magento’s versions too have been highly questionable with many facing support issues. It may serve well as a free product but may not be ideal when it comes to open source platforms if there is no upgrading done. To make things worse, upgrading it to the Enterprise edition can be done only if you are willing to rebuild your site all over again (not something that most companies would agree to).

From all of the Magento editions, Enterprise is touted as the most efficient with a potential to be a concrete platform for e-commerce. Integration of various products will increase its importance amongst existing customers of Magento.

However, eBay’s profit rationale through this deal still has to surface.

The service bares resemblance to their rival GroupOn’s daily e-mail service to subscribers in order for savings on local goods and other purchases by buying a voucher. Currently, AmazonLocal is available in Boise city in Idaho. One can only imagine the spree going on in that state as we speak.

The unique aspect of this deal is that unlike its competitors, Amazon will outsource the job to other companies instead of  developing a private sales team to strike it’s deals. Smart, isn’t it?

Living Social, which Amazon has invested in, is presently bargaining and cracking deals for the latter.

Besides Amazon, Google and GroupOn, The New York Times and social networking giant Facebook.The city to be selected for the service is still in the running. Nonetheless, with its extremely vast database, the ability for Amazon to reach out to its potential customers is unquestionable.

Next up, something on national standards!

However, the company won’t halt to reprise their successes yet.  Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon quoted saying, “This holiday season we’ll have the best prices, the biggest selection, the highest in-stock, and the fastest delivery in our history.”

The net figures are expected to hover around the $12-13 billion bracket in the following quarter. This would mean a 26 – 40% hike in comparison to the previous year’s final quarter. The Operational income estimates are in the $360 – $560 million range.

The ecommerce powerhouse has a lot of loyalists who place their faith in its promising fourth quarter prospects namely Bezos and analyst to Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Justin Post. The latter expressed his confidence saying, “While expectations are high into the print, we think strong holiday sales data points will drive the stock higher.”

Amazon is staking its impending success to latest markets and an all round flexibility of devises. Its aligning foreign alliances have also put up a good show with respect to sales.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon’s scheme of directly subscribing to customers will compete with the corresponding services of Google, Netflix and Apple.