Today, StartUp Britain was launched, an initiative offering support and resources for businesses just starting out or looking to grow.  The initiative has the backing of many companies known intimately by those of us on this side of the pond …

This past Wednesday it was made public that 300+ confidential documents from Twitter had been stolen. While most industry related sites chose not to post these documents, a few did, most notably being TechCrunch.

Sometimes one has to state the obvious: You’re in business to make money. You make money by convincing lots of people to give you some of their money. Success depends on making this process as painless as possible*.

But many online businesses may be making it too difficult for customers to hand over the cash, which is a bad business practice by any account.

Here’s what people (especially men) are used to:

I’m not going to tell you that "content is king." You already know that. There are reasons why your best bet for running a successful online business revolve around your content though.

1. Links

Making a purchase online, especially a substantial one, can be a nerve-wracking process for a consumer. The primary problem, aside from price, is trust. Shoppers negotiate their relationship with the vendor in much the same way they negotiate relationships with any stranger: by seeking information.

What an online vendor lacks (and what becomes a disadvantage) is one-on-one interaction with the customer. As such, the customer must put forth additional effort to find out about a product for sale. Making this task easier can make all the difference in closing a sale.

‘Tis the season for lists – lists reflecting on the year we are getting ready to leave behind, and lists looking toward the future. Sites all around the web are putting up best of/worst of lists, so I thought it might be fun to look at some lists from some of these sites in the eBusiness and tech industries.

I’ve always felt that comments have the ability to enhance articles, as they expand the conversation and often provide more thoughtful insight into the topic being written about. Of course this is not always true. There is plenty of spam, and always a fair amount of unconstructive criticism, name calling, and general ugliness. But it’s a small price to pay for making content more community-driven, which still overall, I feel is more useful to the end-user in the long run.

I ran into Joe the Plumber this morning. He said he and Joe Six Pack plan to celebrate their newfound fame tonight by gettin’ lit and layin’ pipe.

Those guys!

Another Joe the Plumber, this one in Amarillo, Texas, is about to score big time with his joetheplumber.com domain.

The number of online jobs went up according to the Monster U.S. Online Jobs Index. The increase marked the end of a three-month decline, indicating that employers are preparing for the fall hiring season. In August, online job availability went up in 14 of the Index’s 20 industry categories and in 13 of the 23 occupational categories measured. Still, the index is 14% lower than it was a year ago.

Much has been written in recent months about the allure of Twitter and why people stick with it through thick and thin.

Web directories don’t exactly have the reputation of being helpful resources for finding information. Most have become endless pits of links, and wading through them to find anything useful is next to impossible.

Then there are the human-edited ones that tend to be more useful, but are aimed more at the submitter promoting their business than they really are towards the user who is there to find information. Often times these directories offer paid links, further proving that they are really there for promotional purposes.

Research shows that print ads that contain URLs  are up to three times as likely to drive readers to a website than those that don’t include them.

Not that this information comes as much of a surprise, but it is probably a tactic that many businesses still are not using.

The Research Shows…

Internet advertising revenues reached a total of $21.2 billion last year! That’s billion.

That is according to IAB, who published PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Internet Advertising Report earlier this month. That is also 26% higher than the previous year.

It’s that time of year again, the time of year it’s perfectly acceptable to do a bit of drinking in honor of the saint that drove the snakes out of Ireland, in honor of luck or lack thereof, in honor of the Emerald Isle most of us have only seen in pictures but have vowed to travel to one day whether we have relatives there or not.

I subscribe to hundreds of RSS feeds in order to keep up with the world we cover here at WebProNews… eBusiness and search. Here are some of the more interesting blog posts and news articles from around the web.

Google properties made up three of the top 10 most significant e-commerce developments of the last decade, according the Software & Information Industry Association.

The InformationWeek cover story is Enterprise 2.0, based on a survey of engagement:

 Despite the risks and problems, a solid minority of the 250 business technology pros surveyed by InformationWeek are behind this IT strategy push that has come to be known as Enterprise 2.0 (even if the overplayed 2.0 terminology makes some people wince). Nearly a third, 32%, describe their Web 2.0 strategies as fully engaged, our survey finds.

When speaking of website optimization practices, it is often associated with SEO and the goal of achieving high search rankings. While this certainly is important to a site’s overall visibility, gaining and retaining user trust should also be a primary focus of any company looking to bolster its virtual presence.

Fear not System Administrators: There are exciting new system administration features in the pipeline for managing e-Business Suite environments.

I’ve recently written a couple of posts on the new certification track for Oracle Applications that has just been released.

I talked about Oracle Podcasting in a previous post. They now have a more Applications oriented podcast available called Oracle Appcasts.

Google’s rating from JMP Securities has been cut down from “Strong Buy” to “Market Outperform’.