Don’t have time to obsess over the latest fashion trends? Launching today, a new service called Ajent is bringing curated style options to busy professionals.

Most e-commerce sites focus on breadth and offer a massive database of fashion items, typically imported by the community or a developer scraping the web. Polyvore, for instance, is updated with over two million new items each month. 

But San Francisco-based Ajent feeds its users just one “look” per day. Sign up for free, and receive a daily email with trendy style suggestions, home decor options, and more.

Today’s look is “Emerald”; users can peruse a shortlist of affordable deep green shirts, a kimono, pants and shoes, and even plan a trip to the Emerald Isle.

Ajent’s founder Meghan Higney (pictured above) hit on the idea for the site when she was bedridden for several months after breaking her back. The former private equity professional said she felt “overwhelmed” by the clutter on the Web and yearned to have a personal style hunter to source the best deals, delivered straight to her inbox.

So Higney quit her day job to develop the site and daily newsletter. She tested the beta on 200 users — men and women — and brought on a team of five staff members, including a front-end designer and several fashion editors. Each day, Ajent’s human editors pore through magazines, street style blogs, arts and culture, and more for inspiration. 

Ajent is a bootstrapped effort, and the next step is to hire engineers to build an algorithm (inspired by Netflix or Pandora) to offer personalized style recommendations. This will differentiate it from sites like Stylefeed that help users curate fashion by searching for deals from their favorite designers.

“The really interesting piece will be when Ajent brings you items on a day-to-day basis that you have told us specifically to look for,” said Higney over coffee. Ajent will also be aware of users’ size, budget, and style preferences.

To make money, the team is also considering rolling out a concierge-style service. If you’re looking for a leather skirt for spring, an Ajent style hunter will source the best deal and style from the Web and offer suggestions for items that will complement the look. It’s a similar business model to Zirtual, a virtual assistant service that is growing quickly and recently raised funds from Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh, among others.

In the future, Ajent will also benefit from building its own buying and selling platform, so users won’t be redirected to an external site if they choose to make a purchase.

In a recent interview, Forerunner Ventures‘ founder and managing partner said the key for the next wave of e-commerce sites is to “focus on augmenting the traditional shopping experience.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Finally, someone at a major television network gets it: Unreasonably restricting access to great content drives piracy.

Unfortunately, the major television network is in Australia.

News.com.au is reporting that ABC — that would be the Australian Broadcasting Network — will be featuring new Dr. Who episodes online at ABC iView a week before they are actually aired on television. Showtimes will be just hours after UK airtimes, specifically in an attempt to reduce piracy.

While piracy is wrong, an ABC spokesperson told News.com.au, “The fact that it is happening is indicative that as broadcasters we are not meeting demand for a segment of the population.”

Finally, some sense of reason from a large public broadcaster! Not only will episodes be available online, they will also be available on ABC’s iPhone apps.

This is something Americans might wish stateside network NBC had learned prior to the recent London 2012 Olympic games, in which the digital laggard broadcaster did precisely the opposite: hold all content delivery to a schedule that suited it, not the public — and certainly not the techie, affluent emerging market of cord-cutters. Which, of course, drove people to watch the Olympics online in ways which, while perhaps not exactly qualifying as piracy, certainly did not drive any revenue to NBC.

All TV is moving online.

More correctly, perhaps, all video content is moving online — which is one reason Google just shuttered its TV ad group. The sooner large American networks grasp that reality in their bones, the quicker they can disrupt themselves. It may not be comfortable, and it will not be easy. But the nastier alternative, of course, is that someone else will disrupt them.

Image credit: BBC

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Google is shuttering its TV ads product in favor of online video ad solutions.

Google started the TV ads division in 2007 when it seemed that any form of advertising might be amenable to AdWords-style pricing mechanics and placement. Even today, the company advertises the capability to “target up to 42 million U.S. households” via networks such as ESPN and CNN.

But Google has never been very successful selling ads outside of its core competency. Newspaper and radio ads sales were killed in 2009, and some speculated that TV ads would be next. The product never reached scale, and networks were somewhat suspicious of the new kid on the block. All of Google’s success stores listed on the Google TV Ads site are small, little-known companies: DynoMighty, SelectQuote, Currituck Visitors Bureau. …

The team working on TV Ads currently will be moved to other areas in YouTube, AdWords for Video, and ad serving tools for web publishers, Google says. The current product will be wound down over the next few months.

Part of this is a somewhat embarrassing failure, to be sure. But a much bigger part of this is that the future of video content is the Internet.

Whether on a small screen, laptop, tablet, or large living room screen, video is increasingly moving towards web models of access and delivery. Currently, Google video sites alone — mostly YouTube — have 157 million unique monthly viewers watching 20 million videos. And on average, each of those viewers is spending over 500 minutes a month on YouTube.

In that sense, it’s no stupid move to jump from that which isn’t growing to that which is.

photo credit: Jonas’ Design via photo pin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

WhatRunsWhere, the innovative service that allows you to track your competitors’ online advertising, has just acquired U.K.-based startup Mobile Ad Spy, which essentially does the same thing for mobile.

Terms were not publicly announced, but VentureBeat has learned from chief operating officer Max Teitelbaum that the deal was worth north of seven figures — a significant exit for a start-up launched just last year which is still in beta.

Interestingly, Mobile Ad Spy was built by a software engineer who lost a large amount of money buying mobile ads and realized he needed better intelligence.

“What we’ve learned from the product is that mobile is a huge black box,” Teitelbaum told me in an email. “There’s not a lot of transparency and a lot of stuff that gets shut down in online display ads for being scammy or not appropriate slips by in mobile.”

Advertisers use WhatRunsWhere to learn where competitors are advertising online: what ads they’re running, and who they’re buying inventory from. With the addition of Mobile Ad Spy technology, clients will now be able to get similar analytics on mobile advertising … seeing which apps, mobile sites, and mobile ad networks companies are employing on smartphones and tablets.

That insider information will result in lower risk and higher advertising ROI, according to WhatRunsWhere.

Competitors include MixRank and AdClarity, neither of which appear to have a mobile solution. The acquisition makes WhatRunsWhere a one-stop-shop for digital advertising intelligence and, as mobile advertising is just really starting to take off, provides a significant competitive advantage.

WhatRunsWhere currently provides data on over 140,000 unique advertisers, Teitelbaum says.

Mobile Ad Spy’s capabilities will be merged into the platform, and all beta user agreements will be honored.

photo credit: shapeshift via photo pin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

ComScore released its July 2012 online video rankings for the U.S., and the news is that there is no contest. Google (read YouTube) is number one, and you’ve got to look a long way down the graph for numbers two, three, and four.

Beyond that, Facebook is now number two, and Hulu is quite obviously Queen of Ads.

Google sites had a total viewership of 157 million viewers in July, up from 154.5 million in June, and they watched almost 37 million videos. And each user watched an astounding average of 525 minutes — also up from 1,238 minutes last month.

That compares to 53 million unique viewers on Facebook, 49 million on Yahoo, and 45 million on VEVO. And the minutes per viewer for those networks are much lower as well: 22 minutes/month on Facebook, 70 minutes on Yahoo, and 46 minutes on VEVO.

Facebook: We’re number two!

The other piece of news: Facebook is now second, up from third last week. Facebook’s growth is not shocking — the shocking part is that with almost a billion users, only 53 million are watching videos.

I would expect this number to rise over time, but it will have to triple to start challenging Google and YouTube.

One thing that may not change quickly: the average number of minutes viewed on Facebook. At 22 minutes per viewer, it’s a fraction of YouTube’s 525 minutes, and a function of the type of videos being shared. The average person can only watch so many cats, babies, and Little League clips and stay sane.

Hulu: queen of ads

And finally, here’s an interesting tidbit: Hulu has a much higher percentage of ads than any other video network. This isn’t surprising, perhaps — Hulu is, after all, owned by the big traditional media networks NBC, Disney, and News Corp.

But with a fraction of the videos and viewer-minutes of YouTube, it somehow manages to jam in almost three times the number of ads: 521 minutes of ads on Hulu to 166 ad minutes on Google.

Here’s the full ComScore list by unique viewers:

Source: ComScore

Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties

And the list by video ads viewed:

Source: ComScore

Top 10 Video Ad Properties by Video Ads Viewed

photo credit: {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester} via photo pin cc

But don’t get too excited … it’s now in public beta, and you’ll still need an invite to join.

Branch was founded by New York-based university students Josh Miller, Hursh Agrawal, and Cemre Güngör, who worked with Williams and Stone for four months in San Francisco before moving back to the Big Apple to continue work on their conversation-facilitating app, now called Branch.

The goal is admirable and big: boost the signal and trim the noise of web-based communication to re-create the passion and deep connections of intense offline conversations, online. The company’s mission is to “empower people to talk about the world around them.”

Source: Branch

Branching a discussion

The result? Pretty much an online forum.

At least, on the surface. Beneath that instant impression are some innovations. Key to the innovations is a feature called Branching, and that’s also a critical differentiator from online forums.

One of the challenges of online forums, as highlighted in Branch’s launch video (below) is keeping content in context.

Anyone familiar with forum posts has seen this … a post that begins with apple pie veers to Macs vs PCs, deviates to politics and Obama versus Romney, and finally dead-ends in an all-caps discussion on the sexual orientation of orangutans.

Branch solves that by enabling users to add out-of-context content to a new branch. Each post in a conversation can be branched off to start a new conversation, which takes the place of threading, an innovation traditional forums use to contain sub-topics.

Other features?

Source: Branch

Can I talk? Can I talk? Please?

Creators of discussions can end branches, so the conversation does not last forever, and people who are not in branches to start with can ask for an invite — the equivalent of going up to someone in a coffee shop with “I couldn’t help but overhear …” Or jumping up and down in gym class when it’s time to pick teams and the cool kids are going first, shouting “Pick me, pick me.”

And, I suppose, the other feature is that right now, access is limited, theoretically increasing conversation value and intimacy.

My question: Is that enough? Can Branch offer a compelling argument for users that they should use its service for connecting and communicating with people?

Akanet at Hacker News is not too sure:

I’m not sure how any of the highlighted features really promote intimacy or quality in conversation.

Nor is “Username3″:

How is this different from a forum post? It doesn’t do anything for debates.

The thought that keeps bouncing around in my head is this: Great, amazing, intense, and memorable conversations are real-time, not delayed. Rapid repartee, quick jokes, little sidebars, rabbit holes that you and your companions pull back out of and restart the main thread … those are all key parts of conversations.

Not to mention nonverbal cues, laughs, gestures, volume, and the speed and cadence of answers … all also part of the give-and-take of great conversations.

It’s early days and everyone releases minimum viable products. I expect more from this team, and I expect great things from the company started by people who brought us Twitter and Square.

But at this point, color me disappointed.

Here is Branch’s introductory video, which is gorgeous:

photo credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ via photo pin cc

“In fact, we found that the brick-and-mortar impact of online ads could be bigger than their online impact,” RapidBlue chief operating office Sampo Parkkinen told VentureBeat today.

This result is astonishing and could upend the way the online advertising industry traditionally tracks costs and measures return on investment. An online campaign that doesn’t seem to be paying for itself could, if this study is correct, be providing offline benefits.

That could be music to offline retailers’ ears, who are naturally not tremendously excited about being Amazon.com’s showroom.

RapidBlue, a venture-funded company, maps shopper behavior in stores and shopping centers: how many visitors, where do they go, how long do they spend in the store, what do they look at. The resulting data helps retailers understand what shoppers are doing and why they’re spending money — or not.

“We’re not really tracking the individual person,” says Parkkinen. “We’re installing our solution, which tracks mobile phones in retail outlets. Then we look at the sales metrics and how they’re fluctuating.”

After gathering baseline data, RapidBlue asked retailers to conduct a Google AdWords campaign. Then, while controlling for time-of-day and day-of-week variability, it re-checked shopper metrics, using a patented approach the company calls Gross Shopping Hours. Finally, after pausing the campaigns, it continued gathering baseline data, in order to control for other variables that could be causing shopper behavior changes.

“What we’ve found, and what seems to be quite encouraging, is that online campaigns for retailers seem to have a brick-and-mortar impact,”says Parkkinen.

More shoppers visited, and shopper spent more time in-store.

Exciting stuff, if you’ve invested in a physical location.

Rostislav Glinsky / Shutterstock.com, Wrangler/ShutterStock

Monetate may not be a household name, but the company has its fingers in 20 percent of U.S. e-commerce traffic. With customers such as Best Buy, Comcast, Brooks Brothers, and Anthropologie, Monetate has its pulse on what works and what doesn’t work when selling online.

Today the web testing, merchandising, and targeting company is releasing the results of its latest market survey, Ecommerce Quarterly for the first quarter of 2012. VentureBeat spoke to Blair Lyon, vice president of marketing, and Rob Yoegel, content marketing director.

“Because Monetate influences more than 20% of  U.S. e-commerce traffic, we have the opportunity to sample that data in an anonymous and random way,” said Lyon. “So we can see key trends in the marketplace.”

Tablet traffic up

The first trend won’t be a big shock to VentureBeat readers: a major surge in tablet traffic. The survey also unearthed some interesting data around conversion of surfers into customers.

Source: Monetate

E-commerce site traffic: the amazing difference one quarter can make

“We’ve seen this huge surge around tablets,” Lyon said. “But not only is the traffic rate going up, the conversion rate is going up too … and sometimes exceeds desktop conversion rates.

Mobile traffic from smartphones is up too, but the conversion rate is still relatively low. The important point for Lyon is that “tablet is not mobile and mobile is not tablet.” In fact, the two are very different: different use cases, different times, and different conversion rates.

That’s something for retailers to think about, said Yoegel:

“Retailers in general will treat people on tablet and smartphones as the same user, and our data is showing that they shouldn’t.”

In fact, tablet visitors are much more like desktop visitors than smartphone users. While smartphone users might be checking a product on the go, or price shopping on the Internet while looking at an in-store display, tablet visitors are more likely to be in a buying mode — by a factor of almost three.

Tablet users also view almost as many pages on a site as desktop users, about 11-12, while smartphone visitors view only about seven pages per session.

Social commerce traffic way up

The Monetate study also investigated the impact of social commerce, comparing traffic from social networking sites to traffic from search engines such as Google.

Traffic from social networks increased between the last quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012 and was up 77 percent over a year’s period. And while Facebook drives 60 percent of social commerce visits, Pinterest came from nowhere to over a quarter of all visits.

Twitter and StumbleUpon took up most of the remaining traffic, with LinkedIn driving under one percent.

Search traffic also grew, but not as fast: up almost 25 percent.

But search converts much better

The difference comes in conversion rates: social traffic converts significantly worse than search traffic.

First, about half of it bounces as visitors leave without viewing any other pages on the shopping site. Only about three percent add a product to a shopping cart, and less than half of a percent actually buy something.

However, search traffic, particularly from Google, only bounces a quarter of the time; it converts surfers into customers at a 2.44 percent rate.

Lyon attributes this to differing objectives:

“I think the social user is looking at it more from an interest point of view versus a buying point of view,” he told VentureBeat. “Whereas search is targeted.”

One other question I asked Monetate: In the wake of the recent news that Orbitz was steering customers with Mac computers to pricier hotels than PC surfers … are we going to see this behavior in every retailer? In other words, will online shopping start to look like flights, where it sometimes seems that no two people ever pay the same price?

“Everyone is talking about it,” admitted Lyon. “Everyone is trying to figure it out. But it’s all about testing different ways to find out what is the right threshold.”

More highlights from the Monetate report:

Image credit: Keyboard/ShutterStock

KupiVIP is the largest luxury shopping club in Russia, offering designer labels and brand-name merchandise for significant discounts. The site now has more than eight million registered users, who participate in regular flash sales. (“Kupi” means “sale” in Russian.)

In a statement, general director Oskar Hartmann said that the company was the first in Russia “to launch an online shopping club and were thrilled with our early success.”

Hartmann thinks that this is just the beginning: “We have only just started to exploit the enormous opportunity the Russian consumer market offers to international brands. With this new investment, we are delighted to get the support we need to build a world class e-commerce company.”

The company also runs ShopTime.ru, which offers an e-commerce platform for brands to market their goods in Russia. This is increasingly attractive for international brands, as Russia has become the largest internet market in Europe, and companies such as QuickSilver and Mexx have signed on.

The company plans to use the funds to expand, invest in distribution, and launch new websites.

Other players in this round included Acton Capital Partners, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, and existing investors Accel Partners and Balderton Capital.

Anton Oparin / Shutterstock.com

An anonymous source, claiming to be working within Electronic Arts, says the company is in talks to make Origin, EA’s digital games distribution platform, an integral part of the Wii U online service. The usually reliable site WiiUGo quotes the source as saying that EA is “aggressively persuading Nintendo to go Origins exclusive with Wii U’s online”.

Despite impressive hardware sales, the online features of the Nintendo Wii have failed to match up to those of rival consoles this generation. In April this year, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said that “Wii’s future could have been different if Nintendo had made better partnerships with outside companies in the field of network services at the early stages of the penetration of Wii.” Referring to network services, he added, “we would like to clearly differentiate what is our true strength from what we can basically do by ourselves but can be done better by more skillful outside specialists”.

Such a position clearly leaves the door open for a third party to step in and support Nintendo’s online services on its upcoming console. According to the source, Nintendo sees an alliance with EA and Origin “as an opportunity to rebuild relationships with Western gamers because they feel that only a massive western company such as EA understands what is needed to make an online service attractive to western gamers.”

An exclusive partnership would give EA an opportunity to gain a foothold in the console market for its Origin platform, which has most notably been used to power the hit game Battlefield 3 on the PC. It would also be a shot across the bows of Steam, the rival online service provided by Valve, which is also reported to be keen on gaining a share of the Wii U market.

We’re checking with both companies to see if they have comment.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you need an inexpensive and insanely (pun intended) convenient option for therapy, look no further than PrettyPaddedRoom.

PPR is an online space for you to safely and securely vent your stresses, frustration, anxiety and depression, either into an online journal, face-to-face with a therapist over video chat, or both.

“There’s still a stigma attached to therapy, and I think people see it as intimidating or expensive,” founder and therapist Bea Arthur told VentureBeat. “But the fact remains that most people would love the chance to be listened to genuinely and objectively. So I wanted to transform traditional therapy into a more approachable and affordable experience.”

When you choose the online journaling method, a therapist will read your words and respond to you. These asynchronous “sessions” start at just $50 monthly for three sessions each month.

For face-to-face, real-time therapy, PPR offers private online sessions conducted over video chat; the rate is a low $100 per month for four 30-minute sessions each month and one journal consult. You can schedule these virtual meetings for any time that’s convenient for you, and they’ll take place wherever you’re most comfortable and have a reasonable WiFi connection.

There’s also a free option (journaling only with no therapist feedback) and a deluxe $150-per-month option that includes longer, 45-minute sessions and three monthly journal consultations.

Any way you slice it, that’s a lot of freakin’ therapy for the price.

The site is slightly skewed toward the female demographic and currently has an all-female staff. Arthur told us, “When I was working in domestic violence, we had an all-female staff and predominantly female clients. Women are natural caregivers, and we can be amazing at taking care of each other … I wanted to promote that with this project.”

During your sessions or in your journal, you can talk and get advice about relationships, family conflicts, your career, body issues, depression, trauma, self-esteem and a slew of other common concerns.

Currently, PPR is running its service with just five therapists on the team. However, it seems like the kind of model that could easily scale, allowing practicing therapists to supplement their real-world practices with virtual sessions in a wide range of locations and languages.

“I believe that every person at any given stage in their life needs help sorting through the millions of thoughts clogging their mind and zapping their energy,” Arthur concluded.

“Think of how much more effective each of us could be if we were able to process our thoughts and reactions better. If we could understand why we do the things we do and break our bad habits forever. Forget change — we could take over the world!”

Yahoo’s net revenue was down 12 percent from $1.7 billion to $1.53 billion in the fourth quarter last year when compared to 2009. Income was up 85 percent to $220 million, up from $119 million in the fourth quarter of 2009. But that’s largely because Yahoo has ruthlessly cut costs under CEO Carol Bartz’s reign — its total expenses were down 13 percent to $747 million from $863 million in the same quarter a year earlier. That also included research and development for products.

The troubles continue to mount for Bartz, who has seen everything from a semi-exodus of Yahoo executives to a public relations snafu regarding online services of epic proportions during her tenure as chief executive of the search provider. Bartz took control of the company toward the beginning of 2009 in order to turn it around as Google rapidly became the dominant search provider, but she has failed to move the needle on the company’s share values since then. After a brief run-up in early 2009, Yahoo’s shares have largely built a nest at around the $15.50 mark. Despite the company’s best efforts to remake itself and stay relevant, Bartz’s Yahoo has largely been the same as it is today — in line with expectations.

The largest dip came from advertising on search results, where revenue fell from $863 million in the fourth quarter of 2009 to $639 million in 2010. Yahoo’s display advertising revenues, however, rose 14 percent from $559 million to $635 million. Yahoo’s search engine is powered by Microsoft’s Bing engine, and Yahoo has a revenue sharing arrangement with the company. It paid Microsoft $66 million in the fourth quarter last year and is expected to pay $36 million in the first quarter this year for the arrangement.

While its revenues in the U.S. continued to sag, Yahoo saw a decent amount of growth in Asia. It’s revenue (minus traffic acquisition costs) was up 15 percent to $211 million from $184 million in the fourth quarter year-over-year. That’s compared to a 7.9 percent decline in revenue from U.S. operations, down from $965 million to $889 million year-over-year in the fourth quarter.

Excluding traffic acquisition costs, Yahoo’s revenue was only down 4 percent to $1.2 billion — which just about hit the consensus estimates from Wall Street analysts of $1.19 billion. Wall Street analysts were expecting $1.5 billion in net revenue before traffic acquisition costs and $239 million in income. Yahoo is projecting revenue between $1.02 and $1.08 billion in the first quarter this year, well below Wall Street estimates of $1.13 billion.

Meanwhile, Google and Facebook are dominating the search space where Yahoo was once a major player. And to add a little bit of insult to injury, Yahoo earlier announced it is reducing its workforce by 1 percent today — between 100 and 150 members of its staff.

Even though the company’s results largely met the expectations of Wall Street analysts, its shares were still down around 3.5 percent to $15.45 in extended trading.

[Photo: Yodel Anecdotal]

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

(Editor’s note: Kevin Sproles is the CEO of Volusion. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.)

Heads up, entrepreneurs! There’s increasing political interest for an Internet sales tax.

Although we’ve seen calls for this in the past, the topic has seen a resounding resurgence amidst budget deficits in almost all 50 states. This deficit crisis has presented many lawmakers with a golden opportunity to recoup some revenue by collecting tax on online purchases.

As a brief recap, online businesses are only required to charge sales tax in a state where they have nexus, such as a physical location. For example, if you’re running an e-commerce site from a home office in New Jersey, you only have to charge sales tax to customers that reside in New Jersey. Although your customers are required to pay use taxes on sales made in other states, this is a complicated process that’s nearly impossible to enforce.

While this lack of enforcement is enticing to online shoppers, state governments claim that they’re losing over $23 billion in revenue because of the current tax code. In Texas alone, the state comptroller notes that almost $600 million in local and state sales taxes were lost from online purchases in 2009.

On the federal level, the push for new tax legislation came with the introduction of The Main Street Fairness Act. This proposal calls for an online sales tax under the reasoning that online stores should face the same tax regulations as their retail counterparts. To complicate things even further, several states are independently working to broaden the definition of nexus so that they may be entitled to online sales tax. The most vocal cases come from states like Nevada, Florida and Washington, all of which rely on sales taxes in the absence of a state income tax.

Debates and opinions don’t impact bottom lines, though. Here are five major implications you would face if you do business online. (Some are more obvious than others and I should note that this list is by no means comprehensive.)

Need for additional software: Since there are over 7,500 independent tax jurisdictions with varying regulations, you’ll need to invest in software that can automate tax calculations, collections and filings for you. Managing differences across these jurisdictions would be impossible without drowning in maps and numbers.

To further complicate matters, each state has varying tax exemptions. For example, some states require no sales tax on digital products like software. Other states have reduced rates for food items or children’s clothing.

Thus, be ready to shell out some extra cash or wait for an integrated system to automatically process sales tax for you.

A big push in paperwork: An Internet sales tax will require you to place an extra emphasis on record keeping and form filing. To begin your new path to tax compliance, you must register in every state in which your business sells. Thus, if you’re selling nationwide, you’ll have to submit business registration forms in all 50 states, and various cities, counties, boroughs, etc. , each of which have different requirements.

Next, you’ll need to submit tax forms at the end of each tax season to each jurisdiction in which you’ve sold something. And in the event of an audit from any of these states, you’ll be required to keep detailed documentation of each transaction to protect yourself.

So whether you decide to hire an extra hand, invest in a giant filing cabinet, or create a new database, be prepared for an unprecedented increase in record keeping.

Inability to position on price: In this current heyday of ecommerce, many marketing strategies are based on price. This is particularly true if you’re active in comparison shopping engines like Google Product Search. Online shopping trends, particularly during the economic downturn, demonstrate that customers are more price conscious than ever.

With the passage of this proposed sales tax, you’ll now have to convince customers to shell out money for an additional 7-9 percent sales tax, on top of convincing them to pay those dreaded shipping fees.

In a world with an online sales tax, your business will have to shift its marketing promise away from price to focus on product benefits and customer service. These two selling points will become more and more important to help justify higher prices to customers.

Smaller margins: Unfortunately, price will always remain an issue, and smaller online businesses must remain competitive with their larger counterparts. So even though your customers will be the ones paying the tax, you’ll likely have to lower prices to compensate for this new surcharge and prevent prices from becoming astonishingly high. This will be particularly true for luxury items.

With an Internet sales tax, customers will become even more price-conscious than before, leading to an increased dependence on discounts. And once you start slashing prices and running more promotions, your profit margins will begin to diminish. This revenue hit will then require cost-cutting measures in other aspects of your operations.

A shift toward local marketing: An Internet sales tax will also require your business to take a more local approach in its marketing strategy. This includes an increased push toward local SEM, such as targeted PPC and local listings like Yellow Pages. While interstate e-commerce will continue to play an important role in any revenue stream, it will be much easier and convenient to sell within your own state.

This impact should actually be beneficial. It’s typically easier to manage local marketing campaigns, particularly in regards to budget allocation. There will also be a shift of marketing dollars to more traditional advertising, such as local newspapers.

The cost of streaming Netflix, accessing social networks and playing games online on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game console will go up beginning Nov. 1, just as Sony begins rolling out its premium $50-a-year Playstation Plus service.

The monthly Xbox Live “gold” service will now cost $9.99, while the three-month service will cost $24.99, and the annual price will be $59.99 a year. The previous prices were $7.99 a month, $19.99 a month, or $49.99 a year.

Microsoft did announce a handful of new services at this year’s E3 for gold users, including ESPN 3 integration, but users will still have to shell out an additional $9.99 to access the popular Hulu Plus television show service, on top of the increase in the gold subscription fee.

Microsoft also recently canceled the popular 1 vs. 100 online trivia game offered to Xbox Live gold users at no additional charge. The prime benefit of the Xbox Live gold subscription is multiplayer gaming, a service that Sony has provided for free on its PlayStation Network.

Users have until Nov. 1 to lock themselves into another year’s subscription at the current price — or go out and buy a truck full of prepaid subscription cards.

Bloomberg reported that Microsoft accrued around $1.2 billion in revenue last year in revenue as a result of popular sales of cosmetic changes to player avatars and the immense popularity of “Call of Duty 2: Modern Warfare.”

[Photo: gamerscoreblog]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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