Of those users, the males (51%) are more likely to give their credit card info to brands on a social network than females (40%).

Those with a household income of $35K+ (50%), the study suggests, are more likely to give their credit card info than those making less than $35K (38%). Social media users age 18-54 (49%), it finds, are significantly more likely to do so than those age 55+ (35%).

“Throughout 2011, we saw social marketing and social commerce connect consumers in new ways with sellers, services, vendors and brands,” says Beth McCabe, VP, Social Marketing & Technology at Digitas. “As we enter into the next phase of social commerce, the survey findings show social networks must address security concerns. The results also show that brands and retailers should focus more of their social commerce efforts on male social media users and connect with them via mobile devices – the primary connection point to consumers in the post-PC digital era – as they move their strategies even deeper into their consumers’ graphs.”

Here’s a more in depth look, infographic style:

Are you comfortable giving your credit card to merchants via social media? Let us know in the comments.

That makes nine quarters in a row for positive year-over-year growth in U.S. e-commerce spending. In fact, that’s five in a row for double digit growth.

E-commerce spending in the U.S. reached a record $161.5 billion for all of 2011, according to the firm. That’s up 13% from 2010.

comScore’s highlights the following:

• The top-performing online product categories were: Digital Content & Subscriptions, Jewelry & Watches, Consumer Electronics, Toys & Hobbies, and Computer Software. Each category grew at least 18 percent vs. year ago.
• Ten individual days in Q4 surpassed $1 billion in online spending, led by Cyber Monday (Nov. 28) at $1.251 billion. Monday, Dec. 5 ranked second at $1.178 billion, followed by Green Monday (Dec. 12) at $1.133 billion.
• 52 percent of e-commerce transactions included free shipping, representing an all-time high. The previous high was Q4 2010 at 49 percent.
• Smartphones and tablets played a growing role in online shopping, with consumes increasingly using smartphones to check prices and product features while physically in a retail store.

“The fourth quarter of 2011 capped off what was yet another strong year for online retail, one in which every quarter achieved double-digit increases versus the prior year,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “In the face of continuing uncertainty regarding the U.S. economy, consumers increasingly went online for their shopping needs. Price and convenience continue to be the critical value drivers for e-commerce, and unless those conditions change we can expect to see more channel-shifting to online in 2012 and perhaps even an acceleration in the current growth trend.”

The coalition, made up of Google competitors, including main competitor Microsoft, is expanding more beyond travel sites now. The coalition announced today that it has added not only new members in travel, but also members in e-commerce and advertising.

New members include: PPC ad company adMarketplace, online travel industry trade group the Interactive Travel Services Association (ITSA), online shopping site Twenga and marketing firm ShopCity.com.

You may recall, ShopCity filed an antitrust complaint against Google with the FTC a couple months ago:

For most of its existence, ShopCity’s growth has been thwarted by unjustified Google penalties and anticompetitive Google prefacing. These matters were realized in writing with the Commission staff months ago, but the staff has not followed up in any respect.

“When a company begins competing directly with Google, in a market where they are not yet the dominant player, Google will make it very difficult to succeed,” says ShopCity CEO Colin Pape today. “In the process, Google harms consumers by steering them away from relevant results, solely for Google’s own financial benefit.”

“We believe that Google uses its monopoly power to distort the marketplace by steering consumers away from the natural search results available for travel online,” says ITSA President Joseph Rubin. “Further, the online travel companies are required to provide various consumer disclosures with their listings. Our members think consumers deserve the protection of those disclosures that we provide, and that Google Flight Search in many cases does not.”

Twenga filed a complaint with the European Commission earlier this week, asking it to stop Google’s “anti-competitive business and search practices”. Twenga says these “undermine jobs and innovation in the European Union.”

Interestingly enough Google was in Brussels this week with members of the Commission talking about how businesses are growing, thanks to the Internet.

“By systematically ranking its own offerings over links to competitors, Google uses its dominant power to hurt other businesses rather than competing fairly in the marketplace,” says Bastien Duclaux, co-founder and CEO of Twenga. “Google’s abuse of its monopoly power in search threatens the ability of innovators everywhere to reach consumers on the Internet. Google has created the conditions for an uneven playing field in which it is predetermined to always emerge as the winner.”

adMarketplace CEO James Hill says, “As media industry veterans, we have built a compelling search advertising network. Every day, our client teams hear from potential customers and publishers that Google makes it difficult for them to work with other advertising networks. A level playing field is critical to a competitive online advertising marketplace – and that does not exist today because of Google’s practices.”

You can see a recent interview we did with FairSearch here, as well well as an interview TechFreedom, arguing against the merits of the coalition’s agenda.

Still Zappos sent an email around to customers, which said:

First, the bad news:

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. If you have any additional questions about this process, please email us at passwordchange@zappos.com.

TechCrunch shares an email from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh to the company’s employees which says:

The most important focus for us right now is the safety and security of our customers’ information. Within the next hour, we will begin the process of notifying the 24+ million customer accounts in our database about the incident and help step them through the process of choosing a new password for their accounts. (We’ve already reset and expired their existing passwords.)

Zappos was acquired by Amazon in 2009.

The suit, led by a seller from Phoenix, alleges breach of contract on eBay’s part, as well as violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law and “tortious interference with the sellers’ prospective economic advantage”.

eBay explains how automatic bidding works:

1. When you place a bid, you enter the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for the item. The seller and other bidders don’t know your maximum bid.

3. If another bidder places the same maximum bid or higher, we’ll notify you so you can place another bid. Your maximum bid is kept confidential until it is exceeded by another bidder.

To illustrate this, eBay also shares the following example:

1. The current bid for an item is $10.00. Tom is the high bidder, and has placed a maximum bid of $12.00 on the item. His maximum bid is kept confidential from other members.

4. We send Tom an email that he has been outbid. If he doesn’t raise his maximum bid, Laura wins the item.

Under a section on eBay’s help center labeled “The Fine Print,” eBay says, “In reserve price auctions, if your maximum bid is at least the reserve price, we’ll automatically increase your bid to meet the reserve, and bidding will continue from there.”

Those who have further questions are directed to contact customer support.

Here’s the complaint in its entirety (via AuctionBytes):

The suit was filed on December 30 in the U.S. District Court for California’s Northern District.

But social media and e-commerce are getting closer together all year long.

The following infographic from TabJuice looks at the psychology of social commerce:

Facebook.

Unless you have been under a rock this past year, you know that Facebook is quickly becoming the defacto platform for bringing awareness to your brand and is helping to drive purchases. We all know that Facebook has an enormous audience and immense popularity, but it’s the platform’s ability to target at a more granular level that marketers need to quickly get up to speed on. Think about a brand like Nike. One of your many goals this holiday season is to entice people to buy shoes as gifts. But, shoes come in all shapes and sizes – from running sneakers, to high heels, to the big furry boots no one wants to admit they still own. But you don’t care about those types of shoes, your goal is to market running shoes, then one way to find more potential buyers is to target not only the fans of New Balance and Asics, but also consumers that are athletic enthusiasts.

Another element of Facebook that marketers can take better advantage of is social recommendations – nothing is more powerful than seeing your friends interact with a brand or a product. And nothing makes you want to try something more than seeing a friend talk about it on Facebook. We’ve all lurked around at one point or another, clicking through someone’s conversation, and noticed someone mention a product they love. Or perhaps they share their newfound love of the product as a status update and it came up in your newsfeed. The obvious next step is to go check it out for yourself. At SocialCode, we see social recommendations as a strong driver in purchasing decisions all the time. In fact, I recently saw a friend mention they purchased a cookbook for their mom through my news feed and knew that was a perfect gift for someone on my list. I ordered the book and happily had it wrapped and ready to go before Thanksgiving (one gift off my list!).

Brands need to consider these sharing capabilities on Facebook, through organic and paid advertising, as the capabilities can really move the needle, especially during the holidays when everyone is trying to find that perfect gift. By advertising on the Facebook platform, brands can ensure that the right people seeing the right message at the right time. They can then take that information and retarget it to those people with a high propensity to use the product.

With these thoughts in mind, here are three tips for brands to consider this holiday season.

#1 – Have specific goals  and then organize your advertising campaigns to meet those objectives. For example, is your goal to – drive sales, consideration, or a recipient to ask for the gift? Think about jewelry retailers, they want to run campaigns over the holidays that are geared towards gift recipients, especially women. They would likely want to target females with a high amount of disposable income. And of course, they will want to target those people buying the jewelry for these women – husbands, sons and significant others are always looking for gifts that will please the special females in their lives, and usually need some hints or tips on gift ideas.  These would be launched as separate campaigns targeting specific segments with different creative.  Facebook gives brands the ability to design campaigns for each audience and learn from the data derived from the campaign.

#2 – Pick the right ad units and align them with your goals. Ad units on Facebook are designed to drive different actions – picking the right one will help brands be more successful over the holiday season. For example, if you want to drive downloads of a product, then consider a CPC ads with out social context; to drive use of an application an app use sponsored story would be the right choice, whereas for community building, brands should select an inline fan ad.

#3 – Take advantage of social suggestions. Brands must think about ways to encourage social sharing during the holiday. If I see my friends are using a application it is extremely powerful.  If I know one of my friends likes it, I’m more apt to check it out and like it too, especially if it looks like it could lead me to a good holiday gift.

In defense of small businesses and what they stand to lose, Cohen explained :

The share of online sales being done by retailers with less than $20 million in sales is falling. Under the current mix of business costs, including the remote sales tax rules, the small business competitors are not taking over the field. Instead, it is the largest retailers that are growing. And not surprisingly, those giant retailers are lined up united in proposing a change in remote sales tax law that will harm the smaller retailers who do not have national physical presence. If small business retailers using the Internet were gaining unfair advantages from current remote sales tax laws, one would expect that their share of Internet sales would be growing. But it is not.

Although Cohen did not identify Amazon.com by name, it’s probably the internet’s worst kept secret that he likely had them in mind as he made these pointed statements. Additionally, Cohen suggested a Small Business Exemption that would reduce the tax burden on small businesses:

A real Small Business Exemption would protect small retailers who are already falling behind. Permanently protecting small business retailers from national remote sales tax collection burdens will promote new retail competition. … Protecting small business from burdens that will undermine their growth and even directly promoting small business operations is not a new or novel concept. There has traditionally been bipartisan support for small business promotion.

Cohen’s full congressional statement can be read below.

Amazon, alternately, has come out in favor of the online sales tax bill. From their official statement:

Amazon strongly supports enactment of the Enzi-Durbin-Alexander bill and will work with Congress, retailers, and the states to get this bi-partisan legislation passed,” said Paul Misener, Amazon vice president, global public policy. “It’s a win-win resolution – and as analysts have noted, Amazon offers customers the best prices with or without sales tax.

If enacted, the Enzi-Durbin-Alexander bill will allow states to require out of state retailers to collect sales tax at the time of purchase and remit those taxes on behalf of customers, and it will facilitate collection on behalf of third party sellers. Thus, this bill will allow states to obtain additional revenue without new taxes or federal spending and will make it easy for consumers and small retailers to comply with state sales tax laws.

It’s hard to rationalize Amazon’s position given the points that Cohen made today. More interesting is Amazon’s volte-face on taxes for online commerce. Amazon certainly would suffer the brunt of more taxes easier than small businesses. Whose side are you on? Amazon or eBay? Or is this one situation where every party involved stands to take a loss?

UPDATE: Shortly after this story was published, Ashley Morris, CRC Public Relations with Amazon.com, contacted WebProNews and delivered the following statement. It is the testimony given earlier today by Paul Misener, Vice President for Global Public Policy, Amazon.com:

Testimony of Paul Misener, Vice President for Global Public Policy, Amazon.com
Hearing on the Constitutional Limitations on States’ Authority to Collect Sales Tax in E-Commerce
Before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States House of Representatives
November 30, 2011
[Also available at www.amazon.com/pr]

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.”

It makes sense when you think of it that way. Why have different payment platforms? Go with the one that you’re betting on for the future. Just make the transition easy.

Google says it is taking all of the functionality of Google Checkout and merging it with Google Wallet, so it shouldn’t be too drastic a change for users, at least in theory.

“We’re committed to upgrading our payment solutions for merchants while ensuring they’re able to process payments without interruption during the holidays — so shoppers using Google Wallet will be able to make purchases seamlessly on merchant sites that accept Google Checkout,” says Google Wallet Product Manager Ben Lee. “Early next year, we will work closely with our merchant partners to switch to the Google Wallet logo and share details on new and upcoming features.”

Discussing the consumer side of things, Lee says, “When you shop with merchants that accept Google Wallet or Google Checkout, just use your Google Wallet username and password to complete your purchase — there’s no need to pull out your credit card or enter your shipping address with every transaction.”

Starting today, you should be able to add a Citi MasterCard to the Google Wallet mobile app, which will also be available for use when you show with Google Wallet online.

Current Google Checkout users can automatically transition their accounts to Gogole Wallet the next time they sign in or make a purchase online. Purchase history info is available here.

View more daily infographic round-ups here.

WebTrends looks at Halloween buzz (via Mashable):

Social media security:

Social Media Safety Infographic provided by CreditSesame.com an online credit and debt management company.

Are tablet buyers taking over e-commerce?

by Column Five Media