Today, I start something that I have been thinking about for the last few months. As of this Friday  (depending on a million things), I am going to be posting a list of 10 stories that got my attention. Yes, I said my attention.

There are a few emails I love getting, OM Malik’s 7 stories to read this weekend always contains some great articles that leads to thinking about entrepreneurship etc. (OM Says is also a good one). Monday Note has become something that I cannot live without. Apple and digital publishing are their main topics, but it is a must read. If you are looking for something entertaining and interesting to read then NextDraft, is a easy sell. Subscribe and let Dave Pell light up your day.

The problem for me is that I have not found anything that would adequately represent my e-commerce information needs. There are a few good ones (Shop.org’s Smartbrief is the email, that is archived and used later) but nothing has made me spend time reading all of the stories contained on a single email.

These stories are those that needs further attention for those of us in ecommerce, in my opinion. These are the stories that I have bookmarked, favorited and saved to pinboard  (a bookmark service), in the last 7 days.

1. The talks between Yahoo! and Alibaba seems to be reaching a conclusion. Then resumegate happened and the time frame was extended by a week. Alibaba was the crown-jewel in Yahoo’s holdings and the mere fact that Yahoo! are selling 20% back to Jack Ma, leads me to believe that the once big Silicon valley company is on the way to the history books. Read More at Tech in Asia.

2. Page load times is arguably one of the biggest challenges all of us in e-commerce management face. Every millisecond is worth a lot of money. Luke W provides all the really important stats on one page.

3. Fab.com is the poster-child for making the right decisions when relaunching a product. Sorry but pivot is one of the words that drives me up the wall. They have provided excellent slideshows on their company and them raising capital at an astronomical valuation leads me to believe that others are beginning to realise how important a holding they might become. One thing, to keep in the back of your mind, is that they are in a sense competing with IKEA, read more on Techcrunch.

4. Ritz Holtz, one of the most unlikeliest sources for eCommerce news, has a very interesting infographic on shopping cart abandonment. The topic is something of a recurring theme and I wonder, why no startup has attempted to build something to hook into ecommerce shopping cart software and provided analytics and assistance? If you know of a startup that is doing something like what I describe, please contact me.

5. Classified services are something that I am interested in. I believe that it is part of the eCommerce ecosystem (I sense a post on that soon) and in India it seems it is a huge battle between all the players. Quikr raised money from a bunch of venture capital companies. Interestingly, eBay is also part of the round.

6. Amazon, Amazon and Amazon. Yes, I said it three times and the company who is dominating globally have had their investor meeting which read like a movie scene. Jeff Bezos is a clever guy and going deeper into the fashion vertical was something no one expected. He does that alot. The Amazon catalog has also increased with more low cost items. This development  just highlights the importance of Amazon Prime for Amazon’s long term future.

7. MercadoLibre, has recently cemented their standing as one of the two biggest eCommerce companies in Latin America. I must admit, with the exception of fab.com, social is still something that eCommerce companies are trying to figure out. MercadoLibre seems to have gained a lot from using facebook connect.

8. BestBuy seems to be trying to solve the “showrooming” problem that Amazon has caused them. Call me ignorant, but I think that they will walk the same road that Border’s and others have gone on. Deeper discounts, is really the solution?

9.  Africa and in particular South Africa is steadily getting more traction withe regards to eCommerce. Mr Price, a clothing retailer seems to have realised that they need to provide an online service. The growth seen in  online shopping has lead to fraud prevention getting more words written about it. Both of these stories are exciting, for me as someone who works in the South African ecommerce space.

10. Is the next market that will be disrupted called commerce? Marc Andreesen mentioned it and KPCB’s Chi-Hua Chien re-emphasised that point. If you have used Gumroad to purchase something (I did recently) then you know the initial question was a rhetorical one..

Onwards..