"This funding not only allows us to advance our company but also brings tremendous knowledge and resources through our investors, all of whom have a wealth of valuable experience," says Gary Briggs, CEO of Plastic Jungle. "We are entering a very exciting phase of our business and remain uniquely poised to create a new and more efficient market where consumers can realize the full benefit of gift cards they receive, and retailers can attract incremental revenue and profit by ensuring gift cards move into the hands of their best and most profitable consumers."

Now business owners are getting their chance. And talking back is sweet.

This month, Yelp will open up its site to public responses from businesses, a first for the 5-year-old San Francisco company.

It's a significant victory for business owners, who have long griped that they were being shut out of the Yelp community -- which boasts more than 5 million reviews to date -- and were unable to address what they perceived as unfair and unchecked posts.

For small businesses, which rely on good word of mouth, a negative review could be especially damaging.

Kijiji, the classifieds site that is owned by eBay, will be changing their name to eBay Classifieds. In an email received today, eBay has decided to change the name because it "just seemed like a good idea."

I think this is a great move since Kijiji is so hard to spell and pronounce. They are testing this change in the San Antonio market and then most likely will be rolling this out to the remaining markets. The email is below:

• GiftCardRescue.com
• Plastic Jungle
• MonsterGiftCard.com

Dell, which also announced the campaign in its Direct2Dell blog, says the offer is the first of what will be many Twitter exclusives as it continues to try to build its base of more than 11,000 Dell Outlet followers on the network. The company, which has experimented with different frequencies of communication to customers via Twitter, says it is settling into a regular pattern of one to two tweets a week regarding what’s happening at its online Dell Outlet store. A tweet is a very brief in-the-moment update that a Twitter user—an individual or an organization—posts for his followers on the network.

Dell credits at least $1 million in revenue to Twitter, which it began using in March 2007 as a medium to notify Twitter users of occasional sales. Bob Pearson, vice president of communities and conversation at Dell, says Twitter’s influence on sales is likely larger than the $1 million it can directly tie to the network.

"This is our way of saying thank you," says Pearson of the Twitter-exclusive offers campaign.

• nintendo wii
• wii fit
• ipod touch
• xbox 360
• nintendo ds
• ipod nano
• uggs
• nikon d90
• zune
• digital picture frame

DiscountMore.com views comparison shopping sites like Shopping.com, PriceGrabber.com, ShopZilla.com, PriceRunner.com and Shopper.com essentially as search engines similar to Google and Yahoo-the difference being comparison shopping sites search for products and prices as opposed to news and web sites, the company says.

The problem online shoppers face, founder and CEO Bobby Kalili says, is "there are so many comparison shopping sites, who really has the lowest price?" The solution, he says, is to "search the top comparison shopping sites all at the same time and get the results all on one page."

When Gap.com re-launched with a new site design a year ago, it left out a site search function-a key tool of most apparel sites-until it develops one that supports the experience Gap offers in shopping for outfits, Gap.com general manager Will Hunsinger tells Internet Retailer.

"We don't want to put up something on our site just to have it," says Hunsinger, who is also a vice president of Gap Inc., No. 24 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites. "A lot of times we see interesting shopping features that come out into the marketplace, and retailers put them on their site whether or not they fit within the experience they're trying to craft on their site."

For a preview of what type of site search might eventually appear on Gap.com, Hunsinger says, shoppers can visit Gap Inc.'s new footwear retail site, Piperlime.com, which offers a pull-down menu within the search window to search by product category.

"When we launch site search on Gap.com, it will be similar to the site search on Piperlime," Hunsinger says. "We want it to go along with the overall customer experience."

Going against the traditional wisdom spoken by the philosophers from Fugazi, "You are not what you own," Zebo defines you by what you own. Your profile is filled with information about what gadgets you buy and which brands you dig. There's also some integrated MySpace and YouTube functionality. The idea is that you can check out what other people are buying, get product recommendations, go shopping, and potentially hang out with (date) other Zeboers who are into the same brands, bands and styles as you.

The site matches up buyers and sellers in a patent-pending marketplace in which interruptive advertising is replaced with added value for online shoppers. At least half of the advertising revenue generated from each sale is shared with the consumer. Because retailers compete to get to the top of search rankings by increasing the amount of cash back that will be provided to consumers, Jellyfish hopes to maximize savings for the consumer.

"The Jellyfish model really levels the playing field for retailers," said Adrienne Hartman, Internet Business Manager at ShoeMall.com. "With the transparent Jellyfish model, ShoeMall competes and the customer is more satisfied with her experience, knowing that she got the best price possible in the end."

The method is similar to major Pay Per Click search engines, but those engines keep all of the monetary value the advertising competition generates.

In-store pickup users tend to be men (52%), probably because men are more likely to buy consumer electronics online, and consumer electronics retailers are the most common retailers to offer the service, Jupiter said.

The study also found that in-store pickup drives more spending. Online buyers who use in-store pickup spend about 10% more than overall online buyers and 20% more than online buyers who do not use the service. That difference could be due to the fact that in-store pickup items tend to be larger items, with larger tickets, Jupiter said.

In-store pickup users also display cross-channel store affinity. In-store pickup users are more likely to be same-store multi-channel buyers and have higher expectations of cross-channel consistency when it comes to services like returns, according to the report.

Remember Kozmo? It was an immediate delivery ecommerce service that launched in 1998 (ahhh...1998...sigh). They'd deliver a packet of skittles, or a new Palm Pilot, to you within an hour. After burning through $280 million in venture capital, they called it quits in early 2001. Kozmo had plenty of demand, but its cost structure just didn't make sense: free delivery, which equaled low or negative margin sales.

Well, Robert Pazornik, CEO of new San Francisco-based LicketyShip, isn’t afraid to try the whole thing again, albeit with a significant twist. LicketyShip is now in private beta in select Bay area markets: San Jose, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Santa Clara, and Milpitas.