Naspers, Rakuten, GSI Ecommerce and flash sale ecommerce get some headlines…

The past week can be summarized into one thought “Just how global is ecommerce?” Truth is that the man on the street has little idea nor is it important for him. His primary mission is to buy that product that he wants. Sometimes, I feel that we in ecommerce forget that. When last have you asked your team “How are we helping our users get the desired end result?” I will most probably follow that thought with a post soon.

The past week had featured stories on Naspers and acquisitions. For me the most interesting story line was that on Rakuten. Hiroshi Mikitani, is the man trying to take his ecommerce business (Rakuten) into new markets. There is also some interesting news from startups (decide.com, Instacart) and a regional look. In three sentences, I mentioned businesses in a large number of markets and it highlights just how global ecommerce is.

Without any further babbling, here is the 10 e-commerce stories that got my attention:

1. Naspers looks beyond Tencent, Mail.ru – A media company started based on newspapers that has some very interesting ecommerce businesses all across the developing world. Can you imagine, Newscorp or the New York Times Company doing something like it? A day after this story Naspers bought a online retailer eMag in Romania (disclosure: I am employed by a Naspers subsidiary MIH)

2. Amazon’s recommendation secret – One of the features that Amazon has a considerable advantage over rivals is their product recommendations. I have bought many things after seeing a recommendation and I think I am not the only one to have that experience.  However, I wonder if the recommendation engine is not due for an upgrade?

3. Seemingly Unhurt By Rough Times in China’s Ecommerce Sector, Alibaba Looks Set to Raise a Whopping Round -There is a very large ecommerce company that flies below the radar for a majority of the time. The Chinese ecommerce behemoth, Alibaba I think is a company to watch. Even when other local competitors have faulted they have kept going at a rate of knots.

4. 5 Ways the Flash Sale Industry is Changing – Disclaimer, the flash sale vertical is one that interests me greatly. Time and network effects together leads to something akin to playing 20 questions with your credit card. Is the model sustainable in it current format?

5. E-Commerce Firm Accuses Facebook of Click Fraud – This past week has been a pretty bad one for facebook. Their share price is down, they are bleeding talent, get called out for negotiating in bad faith and then get accused on click fraud.

6. Decide.com Now Recommending When to Buy and What to Buy – Big Data / Data based decision making is something that I believe will become a must have for any ecommerce business. At the moment, decide.com is the rocket ship in the space and will most likely become an acquisition target. (Mr Bezos, get in your car, drive down into Seattle and buy these folks.. this is a startup that I have been following since being a beta tester and they are the real deal. That is if they want to sell to a big corporate…)

7. Video Shopping Startup CuriousCatch Launches Today – South East Asia is a market that is contains some ecommerce startups making a whole lot of noise. Video commerce is something of an unknown at the moment for me. I see definite value added with it, product pages get more multimedia coverage is never a bad thing. Not being able to touch and feel the product while being online is a draw back but video changes that. Would love to see where CuriousCatch is in a years time..

8. Region’s malls force online retailers to innovate – In the developing world, retailers in general are seeing ecommerce as a threat. However, in the Middle East it seems that physical retail is forcing ecommerce to innovate and provide better services to users.

9. Instead Of Retiring After Selling His Company For $2 Billion, This Guy Went Ahead And Created A New ~$2 Billion Business – Firstly, I don’t think many people are familiar with Michael Rubin. Rubin was the CEO of GSI Commerce Prior to eBay acquiring the company. Rubin then creates a spin-off called Kynetic and this company is making a lot of waves. We all stick to what we know, some just have the ability to make a huge success of it.

10.  Japanese ecommerce giant Rakuten booked $2.56 billion in revenue in the first half of 2012 – Rakuten is a very ambitious company. The revenue is getting more and it seems that they are on a mission to “destroy Amazon“. I must admit, I was shocked to see the CEO writing a comment on Fortune article, which is hardly something that you would expect to happen, right?

The bonus link this week is for a company that is gaining a lot of momentum in the flash sales vertical. One Kings Lane, has been hiring some serious talent, read the article One Kings Lane Stocks Up on Talent as Revenue Is Projected to Hit $200 Million to see how CEO Doug Mack approaches hiring key staff.

Onwards.