Infopia Sold to Versata – Ina Steiner broke this one last night (btw, if you don’t subscribe to her emails, do so now). OK, everyone has been waiting for this one for about a year. Maybe 2. Infopia, Infopia, Infopia. I don’t know where to even start. The company has been through a number of makeovers since I first got to know the team at their 2007 Summit. I’ve been lucky enough to meet some great people at the company, but it’s now a totally different beast with a completely different team. When I saw the CEO speak at a recent PeSA Summit, it was all about analytics and nothing about being an ecommerce platform (ECP) or eBay selling platform. In Silicon Valley speak, the company had to pivot (at least once) as going after the eBay sellers wasn’t cutting it. I’d actually love to write up a full history of these guys, so I’ll reach out to them soon.
-Shopping.com, please get rid of the hideous ‘Sponsored Listings’ from eBay littering your site. Or take down all the paid merchant listings and just put up eBay ads.
-Google using BizRate ratings (among others). Yes, everyone knows that BizRate is one of the sources for Google’s ratings, but it’s nice to see a press release on the subject (from Sept. 29). Also nice to see more activity recently on the BizRate Insights blog.
-95K Job cuts in September. Analysts got this one wrong. Doesn’t bode well for the holiday shopping season. From the NYTimes: “September’s U.S. payroll report adds to the evidence that the recovery is losing what little forward momentum it had,” said Paul Ashworth, senior United States economist at Capital Economics.
Posted by Brian Smith 
