eCommerce information, facts, news and articles.

Every day, millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now, people are turning to Twitter as an effective way to reach out to businesses, too. From local stores to big brands, and from brick-and-mortar to internet-based or service sector, people are finding great value in the connections they make with businesses on Twitter.

So what does Twitter do for businesses?
Twitter is a communication platform that helps businesses stay connected to their customers. As a business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company. As an individual user, you can use Twitter to tell a company (or anyone else) that you’ve had a great—or disappointing—experience with their business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offers.

So How does it work?
Twitter lets you write and read messages of up to 140 characters, or the very length of this sentence, including all punctuation and spaces. The messages are public and you decide what sort of messages you want to receive—Twitter being a recipient driven information network. In addition, you can send and receive Twitter messages, or tweets, equally well from your desktop or your mobile phone.

When you combine messages that are quick to write, easy to read, public, controlled by the recipient and exchangeable anywhere, you’ve got a powerful, real-time way to communicate. And real-time communication is turning out to be ground-breaking for users and businesses alike.

So how do businesses use Twitter?
Twitter connects you to your customers right now, in a way that was never before possible. For example, let’s say you work for a custom bike company. If you run a search for your brand, you may find people posting messages about how happy they are riding your bikes in the French Alps—giving you a chance to share tips about cyclist-friendly cafes along their route.

Others may post minor equipment complaints or desired features that they would never bother to contact you about—providing you with invaluable customer feedback that you can respond to right away or use for future planning. Still others may twitter about serious problems with your bikes—letting you offer customer service that can turn around a bad situation.

You don’t have to run a bike shop or a relatively small company to get good stuff out of Twitter. Businesses of all kinds, including major brands, increasingly find that listening and engaging on the service leads to happier customers, passionate advocates, key product improvements and, in many cases, more sales.

A key benefit
One of Twitter’s key benefits is that it gives you the chance to communicate casually with customers on their terms, creating friendly relationships along the way—tough for corporations to do in most other mediums.
But Twitter isn’t just about useful immediacy. The conversational nature of the medium lets you build relationships with customers, partners and other people important to your business. Beyond transactions, Twitter gives your constituents direct access to employees and a way to contribute to your company; as marketers say, it shrinks the emotional distance between your company and your customers. Plus, the platform lends itself to integration with your existing communication channels and strategies. In combination, those factors can make Twitter a critical piece of your company’s bigger digital footprint.

For instance, let’s say you run a big retail website. In addition to learning more about what your customers want, you can provide exclusive Twitter coupon codes, link to key posts on your blog, share tips for shopping online, and announce specials at store locations. And you can take things a step further by occasionally posting messages about fun, quirky events at your HQ, giving others a small but valuable connection with the people in your company.

source: http://business.twitter.com/twitter101

Just wondered if anyone else feels like they are joining a new world with social networking?  Facebook and twitter is all new to me and many of my friends and associates.  We feel a little removed from this and many state they can’t really relate to this.  Are we a generation that feels a little reserved and shy about publishing information about ourselves or am I just needing to catch up and embrace this different way of communicating, I suppose there are many my age already totally immersed.  Having recently done a facebook entry to dip my toe in the water and within a day had someone from my past join me as a friend, it really was great to get in touch again.  Perhaps I am a reluctant convert.

I received this email from Microsoft Windows Azure Team, thought it was interesting with some dates to remember regarding the launch of the Azure Service.

Greetings from the Windows Azure Platform Team!

We hope you are enjoying your participation in one or more of the Community Technology Previews (CTPs) of the Windows® Azure™ platform (i.e., Windows Azure, SQL Azure and .NET Services). The feedback from these CTPs has proven invaluable in enhancing our services and we appreciate your participation.

In October 2008 at our Professional Developer Conference we opened the Community Technology Preview (CTP) for the Windows Azure platform (Windows Azure, SQL Azure and .NET Services). The CTP has been invaluable in terms of shaping many aspects of the Windows Azure platform.

PDC 2009 is an exciting event for all of us who are working on the Windows Azure platform as it’s our opportunity to show you the work that we’ve done over the past year, including some brand new features. The conference also marks the beginning of our transition from a CTP to a business. For your planning purposes, this post maps out the key stages of that transition that you should be aware of.

*     At PDC 2009, on November 17th, 2009, a number of new features in Windows Azure will be made available for the first time. The CTP will remain open through December 31st, allowing you to experiment with the full feature platform and to give us any final feedback.

*     Beginning January, 2010, new customers will have to sign up for an offer to access services on the Windows Azure platform. You’ll receive your first bill with a $0 balance, so you can see your exact usage while still enjoying free service.

*     On February 1, 2010, we will begin charging customers for using the Windows Azure platform.

Making the transition in these three steps accomplishes a few goals. First, it gives you a chance to explore our full feature set for free. Second, it allows our team time to get your feedback on the new features and address any issues that arise. Finally, it lets you preview exactly how billing will work before you need to start paying.

We’d like to thank everyone who has participated in our Community Technology Preview. Windows Azure, SQL Azure and .NET Services are better products because of you. We look forward to seeing you next month at PDC 2009!

Windows Azure Platform CTP Team

Microsoft Corporation

More information can be found on the official Windows Azure web site http://bit.ly/9vSpB

What is Windows Azure?

Windows® Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft® datacenters.

Windows Azure is an open platform that supports Microsoft and non-Microsoft languages and environments. To build applications and services on Windows Azure, developers can use their existing Microsoft® Visual Studio® expertise. In addition, Windows Azure supports popular standards and protocols including SOAP, REST, XML, and PHP.

The top 10 fashion and accessory websites by share of the overall total for the UK for week ending October 17 are.
1. Next
2. Asos
3. New Look
4. River Island
5. Topshop
6. Shirtinator
7. M&M Direct
8. Tesco
9. Dorothy Perkins
10. Matalan.

Whats your favourite?

source: Drapers.

This is a fantastic opportunity for a creative and skilled Web Developer who has experience working within a creative organisation to further their career working in the eCommerce software development sector.

The position will involve working within a team of other software developers and creative designers, as well as working on their own initiate.

Essential Technical Skills/Experience:

• Excellent knowledge of HTML (to XHTML 1.1 standard)
• Excellent knowledge of CSS (to CSS 2.1 standard)
• Minimum 2 years experience of developing windows applications using VB.Net
• Minimum 2 years experience of ASP.Net with at least 1 year in ASP.Net 2.0 – preferably using VB.Net (C# developers will be considered as long as they are happy to learn to develop in VB)
• In relation to ASP.Net development, candidates must be familiar with the majority of the new ASP.Net 2.0 constructs, such as MVC Framework, Masterpages etc.
• Experience in developing using Micrsoft Visual Studio 2008 and Other Micrsoft Products, such as Expression.
• Experience using source control applications, the company uses Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. Knowledge of this would be benefical.
• Minimum 2 years experience developing relational databases using MS SQL 2005 & MS SQL 2008(must have used T-SQL, Stored Procedures, Triggers, bulk inserts etc)
• Minimum 2 years experience of other similar DBMS.
• Basic administration of websites/applications using IIS 6+
• Experience of full development cycle starting from gathering of requirements, development and testing, through to final deployment and configuration & customer support.

Desirable Technical Skills/Experience:

• Experience with image creation/manipulation using products like Photoshop, Fireworks, Expression or similar (for use in web pages).
• Experience of developing with Flash.
• Server administration over Terminal Services/Remote Desktop.
• Use of FTP clients.
• Experience of ASP.Net Web services.
• Experience of integrating websites with 3rd party systems, such as credit card payment providers, EPoS and Stock Control systems etc
• Experience with any ‘mail shot’ or other similar email marketing applications.
• Experience with the operation of social networking web sites from a commerical perspective and the integration of them to client web applications.

Skills:

• Excellent attention to detail.
• Team player, presentable and confident to converse at all levels within the company and with our clients at external meetings.
• Planning and project/self management skills. 
• Personal time management.
• Innovative & Creative.
• Excellent written and verbal communication at all levels.
• Conscientiousness

Send your CV to info@wdsinternet.com quoting  JOB0509-DEVB