Interactive highlights for 2007

What a year! 2007 was nothing less than explosive for new media. Every month seemed to hold some exciting news whether it was a major merger or a new online service passing the tipping point. Below I have highlighted some of the biggest news items of the year.

E-Commerce

• Monday, December 11, was the biggest day for e-commerce with $881 million in sales, a 33% gain over the same day in 2006.
• Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving) recorded $730 million in online sales.
• China’s biggest e-commerce firm, Alibaba, went public in November 2007 with ten percent of shares being purchased by Yahoo.

Search

• Google, Google, Google… they continue to dominate the search marketplace in terms of traffic, revenues, and rising stock prices.
• Yahoo introduced “Panama,” a new model for their Paid Search business that emulates the Google model.
• China’s search giant, Baidu, captured major Internet traffic as the Chinese government routed search traffic to the Baidu site.

Email

• 90 percent of marketing email in 2007 was considered Spam. This reinforces the need for marketers to use email service providers in order to deliver legitimate email communications to their prospects and customers.
• Email use increased dramatically to deliver holiday promotions to online shoppers.
• According to Jupiter Research, marketers trying to deploy email marketing efforts in-house is more costly than using an email service provider.

Online Advertising

• Google purchased Double-Click for $3.1 billion to extend the search dominance into the online advertising space.
• Yahoo purchased Rich Media companies AdInterax and Right Media.
• Google introduced video ads for its AdSense network.
• Microsoft purchased aQuantive for $6 billion to gain more control in the online advertising space.

Emerging Media

• Google announced its social network platform, OpenSocial, which will enable site developers to incorporate social media tools into their websites.
• Microsoft paid $240 million for a meager 1.6 percent investment in Facebook.
• YouTube dominated the hearts and minds of millions of Internet users across all content topics; from entertainment, to politics to just plain foolishness.
• SecondLife exploded onto the scene as the newest and hippest social media technology.

Of course, there were many other stories and highlights for the year (don’t forget the iPhone and Apple in general). 2007 was hot for new media. New sites and technologies appeared at a rapid pace and 2008 will be even more active. If you missed out on all the excitement in 2007, then keep track this year. You might just come across a new site, service or company that changes your business, your pocketbook, and maybe even your life!