The results beat both the company’s own revenue forecast of $3.35 billion and analysts’ estimates of $3.32 billion.

In after-hours trading, the company’s stock was up 66 cents, or 2.2 percent, to trade at $31 a share.

The rebound is perhaps a relief since the company’s stock had been trading somewhat lower since it announced earlier this month that Scott Thompson, the president of PayPal, was leaving the company to become the CEO of Yahoo.

The company’s earnings also exceeded expectations. Its non-GAAP earnings of 60 cents a share, which excludes some non-cash items, beat analysts’ expectations of 57 cents a share. Internally, the company had forecast non-GAAP earnings between 55 and 58 cents a share.

On a GAAP basis, the company reported $2 billion, or $1.51 a share, in the fourth quarter, bolstered by a gain on the sale of the company’s investment in Skype.

Retailers during the holiday quarter can often report mixed results, depending on consumer demand during the business shopping season. EBay’s results are perhaps a good signal for the overall market since it is one of the first e-commerce providers to report year-end results.

Amazon, the e-commerce leader, will report Q4 results on Jan. 31.

For the full-year, eBay said revenue increased 27 percent to $11.7 billion and net income totaled $3.2 billion, up 79 percent over the prior year.

PayPal, one of eBay’s fastest-growing businesses, also reported a strong quarter.

The payments division said revenues in Q4 totaled $1.2 billion, up 28 percent from the year-ago period. A lot of that was driven by new accounts and the adoption of mobile payments.

As previously announced, the company said its mobile payment volume reached $4 billion in 2011, more than five times the mobile payment volume in the prior year. It also said that it added one million new accounts on average each month of the year.

EBay said its forecast for the first quarter will not be as robust, which typically happens as spending levels go back to normal. It expects revenues of up to $3.15 billion, with non-GAAP earnings per share of up to 51 cents a share.

Just as the annual Consumer Electronics Show kicks off this week, according to a report from the NPD Group: Consumer electronics sales during this past holiday period dropped six percent from last year.

That should be some not-so-welcome news for the vendors at the Las Vegas gadget confab, which is seeking to show off new wares to excite said consumers.

Those offerings had better step it up, from a look at the NPD Weekly Tracking Service, which noted that the decline was coming off another decline from a year ago.

While 2011′s drop was not as bad as 2010′s, it’s not the right direction, although the tally did not include some of the more explosive device categories being prominently featured at CES, such as tablets.

Said NPD: “Total consumer technology sales (excluding cell phones, tablets, e-readers, and video games) fell 5.9 percent to around $9.5 billion for the 5 weeks ending December 24, a slight improvement over the 6.2 percent decline in 2010.”

Sales of personal computers and televisions fell 4 percent, with flat unit volumes.

“2010 was the first year in quite awhile where the real drags on the core CE marketplace were not TVs and PCs,” said Stephen Baker, VP of industry analysis at NPD, in a press release. “Revenue for those two segments outperformed while the rest of the market dropped by more than 7 percent. The accelerated rate of decline in older technology categories such as DVD, GPS and MP3 players put a ceiling on how well the industry could perform during the holiday.”

Consumers did snap up flat-panel TVs, with screen sizes of 50 inches and higher rising by 32 percent in unit sales.

And the rocky 3-D TV business also grew by more than 100 percent, with TVs with “3D capability accounting for more than one in every five dollars spent on TVs during the holiday.”

Also up: Home theater systems (10 percent) and stand-alone streaming devices (65 percent).

But those increases did not stem the overall negative tide.

For other sectors, here’s the damage to holiday revenue in percentage change from 2011 dollars spent:

Blu-ray players: Down 17 percent.

Camcorders: Down 42.5 percent.

Digital picture frames: Down 37.5 percent.

GPS: Down 32.6 percent.

HDD: Down 25.1 percent.

Mice and keyboards: Down 7.1 percent.

MP3 players: Down 20.5 percent.

Multifunction printers: Down 9.9 percent.

Point-and-shoot cameras: Down 20.8 percent.

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According to Experian Hitwise, the top search query the week before Christmas that included some variation of the term “gift card” was for “kindle gift card.” Apple’s iTunes gift card was not even close, ranking as the eighth most searched-for term. In between were several more generic combinations, including American Express or Visa, or terms like “cheap gift cards.”

This holiday season, spending on gift cards was expected to hit $27.8 billion, a four-year high, according to a survey conducted by the National Retail Federation.

The plastic versions of cash were the most requested items on people’s wish lists for the fifth year in a row. What was unusual was the increased number of shoppers who were willing to give them, shedding concerns about looking impersonal or lazy.

The average shopper was expected to spend $155.43 on gift cards, the highest amount since 2007.

Experian theorized that the Kindle gift card, in particular, was searched for so heavily because it made a practical companion gift to the record number of e-readers being purchased. It also said that the increase in gift card purchases drove higher traffic to retailers’ Web sites on Christmas Day, with visits up 31 percent year over year.

But what if you got a gift card you don’t want, or one for a restaurant or theater that doesn’t exist in your hometown?

There’s a secondary market for that.

Companies such as PlasticJungle.com, GiftCardRescue.com and CardPool.com will give you up to 90 percent of the voucher’s value — depending on the demand for the card. Likewise, you can also purchase gift cards for below face value on these sites.

Even better, if you didn’t get a Kindle gift card but wanted one, PlasticJungle and GiftCardRescue both have partnerships with Amazon that will give you an extra 5 percent on the value of the unwanted card if you swap it for an Amazon gift card instead of cash.

Whatever you do, experts suggest you don’t put the cards in a drawer and forget about them. The best deals are being offered now, so spend them.

Take Reiss Innovations, for example.

Six years ago, owner Ken Reiss was selling five to 10 mouse pads a year through Amazon. Flash forward to 2011, Reiss increased the number of products he sells by 50 percent compared to last year and expanded into Canada.

In many ways, Amazon is a giant built on the backs of millions of individuals.

Or at least that’s the message the Amazon wants you to hear this morning.

Along with a laundry list of holiday announcements, it said its third-party sellers reported record growth this Christmas season. This year, nearly 40 percent of products purchased by Amazon customers were sold by more than two million independent sellers of all sizes.

But it’s hard to read the story of Reiss Innovations and others in the press release and not think “damage control.”

Earlier this month, Amazon faced a flurry of criticism after launching a promotion that would give consumers $5 off if they compared prices using Amazon’s mobile phone application in the store.

The one-day promotion served as a way for Amazon to increase usage of its Price Check application, while also collecting intelligence on prices in the stores. Consumers received the discount if they bought the item using their phone.

Small and large retailers, which worried that their stores would only become showrooms, called the move anti-competitive. Meanwhile, consumers pledged to buy locally and created Facebook pages in opposition and petitions asking Amazon to end the one-day promotion. In addition, eBay offered consumers $10 to walk back into the stores.

In this morning’s press release, Amazon also mentioned Scharf Industries, an office and electronics provider, that reported a sales increase of more than 500 percent this holiday season compared to last year.

Other third-party successes Amazon pointed to:

• Sellers sold enough cameras for every fan at the next 10 Super Bowls.
• Sellers sold enough toys to give one to every resident of Chicago.

It did not mention third-party sellers in last year’s press release, but it did mention how many times its Price Check application was used — a fact that was surreptitiously left out of this year.

To be sure, Amazon’s services give these retailers access to millions of consumers they may not ordinarily reach. But these retailers pay dearly for the opportunity.

Prices vary widely based on the services being provided and the product being sold, but as an example, a $10 book would glean a proceed of $6.42. Meanwhile, a $200 camera would garner $182.37. In these scenarios, Amazon is also offering fulfillment services, which means it will store, pack and ship orders from its warehouses as soon as an item is purchased online. That results in an additional fee, of course.

If Amazon’s promotion did motivate people to shop locally instead of buying online, it’s really not obvious.

ComScore reports that online shopping this holiday season was up 15 percent compared to a year ago and Wall Street analysts are expecting Amazon’s fourth-quarter revenues to be up at least 38 percent year over year.

It’s not clear if Netflix’s recent series of snafus are Amazon’s gain or not. But in a just-released report by ForeSee, one went up and one went down.

It’s an easy guess which was which.

In the well-known customer satisfaction survey of the Top 40 online retailers during the holiday season — which ForeSee has been conducting twice a year for the last seven years — Amazon rose to its highest spot ever, while Netflix’s score dropped significantly.

Amazon got an 88 out of 100, up two points, while Netflix dropped seven points to 79. The survey noted that “Netflix saw scores drop in every single element of the website that ForeSee measures, including site content, site functionality, merchandise, and prices.”

Ooops.

(Netflix fared better with customers in another poll last week, conducted by Citigroup. As Peter Kafka noted: “They’re less happy than they used to be. But they don’t seem to be going anywhere.”)

But in the ForeSee survey, Netflix moved from being a consumer darling to just another face in the crowd. It garnered the average score, which is also 79, a number that has risen from 74 since 2005.

But Netflix was not the only online retailer hit. Also down: Gap.com (down 6 percent to 73), and Overstock.com (down 5 percent to 72).

But on the up: TigerDirect.com (up 8 percent to 79) and J.C. Penney (up 6 percent to 83).

In general, ForeSee concluded that consumers are starting to get the hang of this e-commerce thing, and have become less price-sensitive, too.

And here’s a pretty chart explaining it all (click on the image to make it larger):

The stock market is closed today, as part of the Christmas holiday. But it is doubtful — barring any major announcements — that the vastly different performances seen by a range of tech companies will change much.

Which is to say, some companies — such as eBay and Google — did well, although only Apple shares rose significantly enough to cause festive feelings.

As of Friday, Google rose almost 7 percent for the year to date, eBay rose 10.8 percent and Apple was up almost 26 percent.

As for all the others in tech? Lumps of coal for investors of varying size.

Let’s start with the better negative performances: Amazon was down 1.95 percent, Yahoo was down 2.7 percent and Microsoft was down 6.7 percent.

Not exactly anything to wassail about. And Yahoo shares were only down a little, since the recent swirl around its possible sale gave its stock a recent bump, or the performance would have been worse, based on its financial results.

And the oft-troubled AOL? Down 35.3 percent.

The crop of new Internet companies was also not doing so great. The latest, Zynga was down only 1.2 percent, Groupon down 12.5 percent and LinkedIn down 32.3 percent. Pandora truly tanked, with a 42.5 decline in share price. Only Russia’s Yandex bested that, with a 48.6 percent drop.

Enterprise-focused companies also had a lackluster year. While recently public Jive Software was up 9.2 percent, Cisco was down 8.7 percent and Hewlett-Packard was down 38.5 percent. Juniper got truly socked, with a 43.6 percent decline.

The music you are looking for right about now is “(Hey, Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” by B.J.Thomas, which you can enjoy here in this timely video:

Only this time, we learn a little more about what exactly the big guy does all year — as told through Web apps and social media — when he’s not dropping Nintendo DSes and Xboxes down chimneys.

Seems Santa Claus may have gotten his Facebook Timeline before most of you did. And it looks like Rebecca Black may be getting coal for Christmas, if he has a say in the matter.

Last year’s video by the same YouTube user, ExcentricPT, chronicled the story of the Nativity through social media, got more than 10.6 million views and was decidedly funnier. But here’s this year’s video:

If you haven’t made your contributions to spurring the U.S. economy yet, here are 10 apps that can help you get your last-minute shopping done in record time:

Price Check by Amazon: Meant to be used in stores, Amazon’s Price Check app goes beyond just bar-code scanning. It enables users to compare prices on Amazon, using voice, text or by snapping a picture of an item in a store. The free app is available for iOS and Android devices. Its picture-matching feature doesn’t always bring up an exact match, and the fact that all points lead back to Amazon may make you wonder why you even left your couch. But with Amazon being a low-price leader with quick-shipping options, you probably won’t want to shop without it.

Google Shopper: Like Amazon’s Price Check, Google Shopper allows users to search for items using pictures, text, voice and bar-code scanning. But instead of directing shoppers to only one online source, it brings up millions of search results from across the Web. The latest version of the app includes the option to subscribe to Google Offers, Google’s answer to the daily deals offered by Web companies like Groupon and LivingSocial. So the latest update of Google Shopper should provide more local search results than previous versions of the app did, a common complaint from some users. The app is free in the iTunes App Store and, naturally, in the Google Android marketplace.

EBay’s Half.com: Limited to media purchases like books, movies, CDs, videogames and game consoles, eBay’s Half.com app offers items at fixed prices, based on a UPC; sellers are required to ship any item within a few days of sale. The app uses Speedy Checkout, rather than PayPal, for purchasing. Regular eBay users have griped about the inability to see more information about the seller, condition of the product or competitive prices, so if you’re looking for more than just a quick buy, or have a quirkier gift in mind, you might want to check out eBay’s standard app. This one is available for free on iPhone and Android phones.

RedLaser: Also owned by eBay, RedLaser is a popular, free, bar code and QR code scanning app that works on iOS, Android and Windows 7 phones. It’s been around for a couple of years now, but it has two new features that may be worth checking out: iOS app users that are also American Express cardholders can use AmEx rewards points to buy things in the shopAmex store, as we reported recently. And users can now search for price point and product information by scanning pictures from their phone’s camera roll.

Shopkick: Unlike apps that offer immediate comparative pricing on the Web — which have increasingly put pressure on brick-and-mortar retailers — Shopkick emphasizes local shopping, and turns it into a kind of game. The app offers “kicks,” or rewards, for stepping into stores like Target, Macy’s, Best Buy and others. Shopkick points can then be converted into store vouchers, iTunes gift cards and movie tickets. Additional points may be earned by scanning items in stores, even if you have no intention of buying them right away. The free app, which launched in 2010, is available on the iPhone and Android platforms.

Goodzer: Another app for local shopping, Goodzer culls results from more than half a million stores — and not just small shops, but national retailers like Wal-Mart, Sears, T.J. Maxx, Bloomingdale’s and Sephora. The latest version of Goodzer claims to work all over the U.S., even in tiny towns, and offers the ability to save product listings for later viewing and comparison. Available for iPhone only — version 4.0 or later — Goodzer offers fast results for in-store buying, as well as some online options.

Consumer Reports Mobile Shopper: Many apps allow users to scan more bar codes than a grocery store checkout clerk. But what if you’re also looking for product ratings from a trusted source? Enter the Consumer Reports Mobile Shopper app, available for both iPhone and Android OS. Earlier versions of the $4.99 app were buggy, but Consumer Reports says its recent update improves performance and the user interface.

WalkSafe: Ever hear the song “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”? She was actually walking home from Best Buy, not our house, according to people familiar with the situation. Too bad Grandma wasn’t using WalkSafe, an app created by researchers from Italy’s University of Bologna and the Smartphone Sensing Group at Dartmouth. The app uses the smartphone’s sensors to keep an eye out for oncoming traffic, so you can browse your phone and comparative shop to your heart’s content. WalkSafe is free in the Google Android market; note that it’s currently not available for iOS devices.

NORAD Tracks Santa: This doesn’t have anything to do with shopping. Consider it a bonus holiday app.

You see, back in the days when people trudged to school in three feet of snow — uphill, both ways — they didn’t have search engines like Google and Bing to answer every question. Now, with the click of a mouse, kids can run searches to find out whether Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and Kim Jong Il are real.

For the more dubious members of your household, you can point them to a number of Santa-related apps. One of our favorites is from NORAD, the U.S.-Canadian military organization in charge of aerospace and maritime defense, which offers a free iPhone/Android app to help users “track” Santa Claus’s activity.

Parents can also download a free app called Postcards from Santa in both the Apple App Store and the Android market, and send personalized postcards from the big guy for $1.99.

You’re welcome.

(Image credit: iStockphoto | mattjeacock)

Oh, dear — Silicon Valley VCs acting like teenage girls.

And there’s not even a hot start-up in sight to chase and scream over.

It must be the holidays and First Round Capital’s annual digital greeting card, which is based on one of the popular viral videos of the year.

In 2008, First Round did its own version of “Dancing Matt.” In 2009, the firm’s CEOs sang as if they were Susan Boyle in “I Dreamed a Dream.” And last year, it was partner Josh Kopelman wearing a body suit to mimic the Old Spice guy.

This year, it spoofs one of the more irksome music videos of 2011 — Rebecca Black’s “Friday.”

I like First Round’s version a lot better.

Along with the rhythm-impaired VCs, you can see a wide range of their start-ups here, such as Xobni, Path and — thank goodness, since they can sing — Birchbox.

Enjoy:

That’s Target’s motto this holiday season, as it promises on-time Christmas deliveries for online orders placed by Tuesday.

But some retailers are being a little more jolly.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, procrastinators are being rewarded, and will be able to shop online as late as Thursday and still get presents safely underneath the tree in time for Christmas.

For example, Wal-Mart will rush packages to your door for orders placed as late as Wednesday; Amazon is offering regular free two-day shipping as late as Wednesday; Zappos is offering free shipping for orders made by 1 pm PT on Thursday; and Toys “R” Us will go as late as noon on Thursday for express shipping.

There are exceptions, of course, and Amazon is a big one.

For orders placed on Thursday, one-day shipping will cost shoppers $3.99 an item; for items ordered on Friday, only Amazon Prime members will be able to pay $9.99 an item for on-time delivery; those in 11 U.S. cities can wait until Saturday, at which point it will cost $3.99 per item to ship by local express.

Amazon Prime is the e-commerce company’s membership service; it charges $79 a year for free two-day shipping and other perks, like free streaming videos.

One of the biggest limitations for the holiday is the logistics of getting a package from a distribution center to someone’s home. For example, FedEx won’t be running on Christmas, but will be running partial operations on Christmas Eve, a Saturday.

At this late point in the year, physical retailers shine.

For example, Apple’s shipping cutoff date is on Wednesday, but it will allow customers to order online and pick up in the store until 11 pm on Friday. On Christmas Eve, many of its stores will be open until 6 pm. Toys “R” Us and Best Buy are also offering free in-store pickup, adding late hours to accommodate the busiest of people. Best Buy will be open until 3 pm local time on Dec. 24, and Toys “R” Us will will stay open for 112 hours straight, starting at 6 am Tuesday, Dec. 20 and closing at 10 pm on Saturday night.

Online retailers can’t compete with store hours but, conversely, stores have had a hard time competing with the deals online, especially earlier in the season.

This holiday period, Amazon prompted consumers to consider the moral dilemma of shopping in stores versus online, when it kicked off a Dec. 10 promotion that offered $5 off to consumers as an inducement to walk out of stores empty-handed. EBay fired back with its own promotion, which gave online shoppers a $10 coupon to return to stores.

To be sure, online retailers will have something to celebrate on Sunday.

ComScore, which is tracking online spending habits this holiday season, said $30.9 billion had been spent online during a 46-day shopping window that ended Dec. 16, marking a 15 percent increase over last year.

Spending last Friday — dubbed Free Shipping Friday — hit $1.07 billion; it was the fourth day to surpass the billion-dollar mark this year. Still, Cyber Monday — the Monday following Thanksgiving — appears to rank as the heaviest online spending day of the year for the second consecutive season.

According to a new survey from Parks Associates, an international market research firm, age will be the biggest factor in tech purchases made between Nov. 1 and Jan. 1. Young adult consumers — defined as those between 18 and 34 years of age — are more likely than others to purchase laptops, smartphones, tablets and LCD flat-panel displays this season. Also, households with children are much more likely to purchase laptops and LCD flat-panels.

Image courtesy of David Boyle/Flickr

Not surprisingly, tablets are the product of choice for big spenders, with higher-income households more likely to buy iPads and Android tablets. Some other interesting notes from the survey: Apple’s ecosystem of music, media and apps continues to drive interest in hardware, with 17 percent of consumers surveyed saying they’re looking to buy Mac laptops, trailing only Dell at 22 percent of intended purchases.

And in the smartphone category, there’s more bad news for BlackBerry: 83 percent of current iPhone users intend to buy an iPhone again this holiday season; 81 percent of Android OS users said the same, but only 41 percent percent of BlackBerry users intend to buy RIM’s iconic handheld device again this season.

The data, which comes from a survey of 2,000 U.S. heads of household and factors in purchases to date this year, as well as buying intentions, offers a somewhat optimistic outlook for consumer electronics this holiday season, with purchase intentions rebounding to near-2009 levels after a steep decline in 2010. Almost 50 percent of U.S. broadband-connected households intend to purchase a CE product from early November to Jan. 1, compared to 38 percent last year.

The fact that consumers began shopping earlier than usual this year may be giving retailers a longer window to move products, researchers note. Consumers also indicated that mobile shopping and mobile wallet options are increasingly appealing.

But it’s not all good news in gadgetland, as the economy continues to weigh on consumer confidence. Other data suggests that 2011 may still be a weaker than expected year for consumer electronics spending. Research firm IHS iSuppli recently reduced its consumer electronics growth outlook for the year, cutting expected revenue to $357.3 billion, a 1.5 percent rise from revenues in 2010, compared to its previous forecast of 6.4 percent growth for the year.

Parks Associates’ director of research John Barrett calls the slight boost in spending intentions this season the “keeping-it-home” phenomenon, noting that the people surveyed were more likely to make purchases for themselves this year, or for someone in their own household, rather than for gift-giving outside of the home. “The number of people buying something has gone up, but so have all the economic worries,” Barrett notes.

Readers, have you bought, or do you intend to buy, consumer electronics this holiday season?

In a statement Friday, AT&T said commissioners won’t be able to vote a proposal announced Tuesday from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski that the $39 billion merger be sent before an administrative law judge. The carrier announced it had withdrawn its FCC application in the early hours of the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

I hate to use a personal story to make a professional point — but when I was in the hospital recently, after suffering from a mini-stroke, I got an important piece of health advice that, oddly enough, applies perfectly to Yahoo, the Silicon Valley Internet icon I cover very closely.

I know, I know, but listen up …

When I was close to going home, one of my doctors told me I had to make sure I paid attention to any signs that might indicate a recurrence. The issue around any possible future ischemic attack taking place, he said, is speed in getting critical care once any unusual symptoms become apparent, such as numbness, tingling, confusion and cognitive difficulty.

That’s because every second of delay translates to increased damage to cerebral cells that could badly impact speech, movement and worse.

“Remember,” the doctor intoned with great and very appropriate gravity. “Time is brain.”

Yes, indeed it is — for me, and also very much so for Yahoo these days.

Leaving aside my own mortality, one of the most important issues going forward for Yahoo’s long-hoped-for revival will be how quickly the company moves in the next month, in what has so far been a lugubrious and rumor-heavy process to figure out its strategic plan in the wake of the firing of CEO Carol Bartz in early September.

That means — going into a major holiday season — Yahoo has about 30 working days to make what has to be a complex and multiparty deal. It is likely to include private equity firms, big companies, Asian partners, investment bankers, major shareholders and scrutiny from the media, in an effort that is approximately akin to herding cats.

This from a board that has often moved with snail-like reflexes in the midst of much more minors crises, and has shown a talent for disaster.

So, while speed is sometimes the enemy of reason, in this case, it is now more necessary than ever before.

There are three key reasons why Yahoo’s leaders have to perform quickly now, each of which could spell even more turmoil for the long-troubled company, if botched.

The first is the possibility — actually, the probability — of a proxy fight that might begin informally just after the new year.

That’s when you could start hearing from someone like activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point — who has been vocal about ousting Yahoo board members, including co-founder Jerry Yang. Yahoo directors are fully aware that he is eyeing this ugly option, which will include readying an alternate slate of directors.

According to a Yahoo spokeswoman, the earliest nominations for directors can be submitted is February 24 for those “shareholder proposals not intended for inclusion in proxy materials and for nomination of director candidates.”

But while there is a formal process, you will hear it coming long before that, unless Yahoo gives Loeb board seats to quiet him down — which is unlikely but possible.

Such a noisy fight is not one Yahoo can afford to have, and it has already shown some cloddish sensibilities in its response to a recent letter by Loeb — who has many more shares than Yang, and should still be accorded a certain amount of respect, no matter what he says.

Given how badly the last Yahoo shareholder tussle with Carl Icahn went, another proxy battle could be deadly, and might drag on through the first half of 2012. In his Yahoo tussle, Icahn ultimately got three seats on the Yahoo board, but eventually went away with everyone the poorer.

Second, Yahoo will report its fourth-quarter earnings in late January, which will likely continue to show weakness in key sectors of its business. While interim CEO Tim Morse is doing a laudable job given the shaky circumstances, drops in advertising revenue growth, engagement and search are not anything Yahoo can keep making excuses for.

While it is likely the company’s beleaguered operating execs will pull out the stops to make the numbers look better — a new game I like to play is “how many homepage ads can they jam in there at the quarter’s end?” — it’s no panacea for the kinds of dramatic and even drastic changes that new ownership will have to make, sooner than later.

And, speaking of beleaguered, perhaps the most important reason that Yahoo has to get the lead out and clarify its situation is due to one consistent thing about the company: Talent attrition and employee fatigue.

Speaking to one exec after another in recent weeks, it is dead clear that Yahoo is increasingly hard-pressed to hold on to the best of its current employees, or to attract any terrific new ones.

The impact on product innovation, morale and more is obvious.

One exec who has long been one of the more cheerleader types for Yahoo — often calling me out in the past for being too negative on the company’s prospects — has recently turned weary, cynical and even depressed about the future — so much so that I now find myself bucking up the worker.

“You can’t hire anyone, since you can’t tell them honestly who their bosses might be in three months,” said the staffer. “And you can’t look anyone who works for you now in the eye and tell them it will turn out right in the end, either, given the track record so far.”

Indeed. And, more than any other factor that could hurt Yahoo in the competitive tech sector, brain drain is what will always get you in the end.

How did I miss this fantastic holiday commercial for Macy’s, featuring teen heartthrob and singing sensation Justin Bieber?

Called “Screamers,” it’s a very sly take on the proclivity of people to emit high-pitched utterances around the Biebs.

But this time, it works.

Adorkable all around:

Of all the fantastic characters on the brilliant HBO comedy series, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the one I can never get enough of is JB Smoove, the innovative comic who plays Larry David’s best sidekick, Leon Black.

Here is an insidery, slightly tasteless, but decidedly funny spoof video of Smoove taking over Hollywood’s William Morris Endeavor talent agency on Yom Kippur, the Jewish holiday.

In it, Smoove decides to “run sh*t!“

And so he does:

The major e-commerce spending days typically fall around the holidays at the end of the year, with the day after Thanksgiving or the first day back to work after Thanksgiving typically being some of the biggest retail highlights of the year. But traditionally, retailers have also marked down items heavily on Labor Day to draw in crowds over the three-day weekend before school starts.

However, in an unofficial survey of how online retailers handled the holiday yesterday, it seems traditional retailers such as Best Buy, Toys R Us, Fry’s Electronics and Old Navy offered the most specials, while many of the new e-commerce companies — like daily deal or flash sales sites — failed to mention the holiday at all.

There were two major exceptions: One Kings Lane, which sells home decor, offered a Labor Day Blowout Sale, discounting pillows and bedding, lanterns and polka-dotted tea sets. But oddly, there was no direct tie to the holiday since the sale ends Thursday. Zulily, a flash sales site focused on children’s apparel, also offered a specific Labor Day sale, which in addition to having hundreds of items for sale for kids and moms also was promoting a Labor Day shipping special, offering free shipping on all additional orders placed between Friday and Monday at midnight.

But after those two examples, mentions of Labor Day were fairly weak, and many missed the opportunity to call out the holiday in the subject line of the emails they normally send every day. It appears that sites that normally offer discounts have a hard time knowing how a sale tied to a marketing opportunity, like a holiday, can stand out on its own.

For instance, HauteLook, which is a flash-sales site owned by Nordstrom, offered a sale on some jewelry, including necklaces, rings and earrings. (Ironically, from what I could see, Nordstrom made no mention of Labor Day at all on its site.) The Clymb, which is a flash sales site focused on outdoor apparel, offered special Labor Day discounts on an assortment of hoodies, dog jackets and portable picnic tables. But in either case, nothing made the items particularly appropriate or timely — and the discounts seemed regular.

The Gilt Groupe perhaps tried a little harder by creating a section called Labor Day gifts, which discounted a handful of random items, such as wine glasses, picture frames, vases and photo albums.

Meanwhile, Groupon and LivingSocial, two of the biggest mass emailers, let the day pass without calling attention to it.

Regardless of how relevant the offer is, the biggest mistake of all may be not mentioning the holiday. After all, it is something that consumers were searching for.

Yahoo said that searches for “Labor Day weekend 2011″ were up 1,889 percent his month, and that “Labor Day sales” was one of the major search terms, along with “Does FedEx deliver on Labor Day?”

(Answer: No, it does not.)

This is a marvelous video, titled “Google Exodus,” about what the original Passover would be like if it took place in the digital age.

Let my people geek?

It was done by the Jewish content Web site, Aish.com, which uses Google, Facebook, Amazon and more Web technologies to clever effect how the Exodus might have happened today.

Just watch before the Jewish holiday takes place later this month:

The company’s nine-month results ended Dec. 31 included revenues of $954.6 million, jumping 80 percent, compared with the same period a year earlier. In that same period, income from continuing operations totaled $76.2 million, or 88 cents a diluted share, compared with a loss of $98.4 million, or $1.27 a share, for the year-ago period.

Third-quarter net revenues totaled $334.3 million on earnings of 45 cents per diluted share. That easily beat analyst expectations, which had forecasted revenues of $314 million and earnings per share of 34 cents.

The New York-based game maker, known for hit titles such as Grand Theft Auto and NBA 2K11, also increased its financial guidance for the fiscal year 2011. The company now expects revenues of $130 to $150 million in Q4, and revenues of up to $1.1 billion for the year ending March 31.

The company’s forecasts now call for Q4 non-GAAP earnings per share to be in the range of a loss of 40 to 45 cents, and for the year from 80 to 85 cents to easily beat analysts’ previous expectations of 62 cents for the year.

In a release, Strauss Zelnick, chairman and CEO of Take-Two, said strong holiday results enabled the better-than-expected results. Going forward, it’s evaluating new revenue streams. “These include opportunities in Asia and Latin America, evolving downloadable content models and online multiplayer experiences,” he said.

More to follow after the company’s earnings call.

Zoosk makes its money from premium subscriptions, which users must purchase for all but the most basic interactions on its site. It declines to disclose total user numbers, but says it is making money from them in more than 60 countries. The company has 80 employees working out of its headquarters in San Francisco. It is “cash-flow neutral,” according to co-CEO Alex Mehr.

Mehr admitted that Zoosk traditionally gets a 10 percent lift in revenue each January, but said that expected user growth should ensure revenue will not trail off later in the year.

Free dating site OkCupid was acquired last week by market leader Match.com, which often buys smaller competitors. Match, which itself is owned by IAC, had $108.3 million in revenue for the most recent quarter.

Zoosk, which was founded in 2007, bills itself as a younger and more social alternative to the standard dating sites. Sixty percent of Zoosk’s users are under 30 years old. The service originally grew in the viral (i.e., spammy!) early days of the Facebook platform, but now has a Web site, mobile apps and even a desktop client.

Mehr said to expect the company to introduce additional features in 2011 to make it more of a “social network built for dating” than a plain old dating site.

Zoosk’s last funding was a Series D round of $30 million led by Bessemer Venture Partners in November 2009.

In a bold and definitive move, AOL is paying $315 million, mostly in cash, to buy the Huffington Post, one of the Web’s most prominent news and opinion sites.

As part of the deal, Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington (pictured here)–who was derided by some when she co-founded the left-leaning site in 2005 with investor and well-known communications exec Kenneth Lerer–will become president and editor in chief of the Huffington Post Media Group within AOL.

The deal was signed late this afternoon, and the board of directors of each company and shareholders of the privately held Huffington Post have approved the transaction.

In an exclusive video interview BoomTown conducted earlier today in Dallas, just before Super Bowl XLV, both Armstrong and Huffington were jovial that the whirlwind deal, begun in November, actually worked out so quickly.

Perhaps giddy, they hit upon a common motto:

“One plus one equals 11.”

Get it? One and one next to each other is the number 11!

Let’s move on, shall we?

AOL said it is expected to close in the late-first or early-second quarter of 2011.

Once culminated, it will put Huffington in charge of all AOL content and other properties, including well-known names such as Engadget, Moviefone, MapQuest and TechCrunch.

She said she plans to move to New York from Los Angeles, although she will also maintain her longtime Brentwood home there.

And content for all these sites will be integrated deeply into the Huffington Post, giving it a huge new infusion of editorial material.

More to the point, the flashy acquisition–which essentially came together in less than two weeks in January–will become the linchpin of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s aggressive, if risky, strategy to focus the long-troubled company as a content and advertising powerhouse.

For AOL, the deal gives it a popular branded site that is very good at generating lots of page views and impressions very efficiently–which is the company’s whole thrust these days.

That means lots more ad inventory to sell and an injection of content talent, giving AOL the scale it desperately needs.

The move also obviously gives AOL a much-needed editorial identity and cohesion, which it doesn’t really have.

In fact, many think AOL needs a rallying point to bring clarity to its hodgepodge of recent acquisitions that all center on the notion that a strong company has yet to emerge in the premium content space.

Here is a mock-up of the front page of AOL tonight (click on it to make it larger):

While it all makes for a riveting narrative by the charming Armstrong, AOL still has not delivered the business turnaround promised after its spinoff from Time Warner in 2009.

Wall Street, which has given Armstrong a lot of rope, has become more impatient of late to see results–especially more robust increases in its display advertising business, as its access business dies off–after AOL spun off from Time Warner in 2009.

In its quarterly report last week, AOL reported earnings of 61 cents a share on revenue of $596 million.

But, as MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka wrote:

The bigger picture is that Armstrong’s turnaround is still in progress. Ad revenue was down 29 percent in the last quarter, although that number is worse than it looks. A big chunk of the decline comes from moves AOL has intentionally made that will cut revenue in the short run in return for more profitable sales down the road.

A more representative data set for Armstrong are his display ad sales, which are down 14 percent overall and eight percent in the U.S..

The bad news is that the rest of the Web ad industry is well into rebound mode; the good news is that AOL has trained Wall Street to expect numbers like these. If you’re waiting to see positive sales numbers, Armstrong said during AOL’s earnings call this morning, wait until the second half of this year.

In any case, the move is a good one for the Huffington Post since it will vault it to the next level of growth.

Other companies, such as Yahoo and NBC Universal, had looked at the company as a purchase target, and many expected it to eventually sell out to a larger company.

Sources close to the Huffington Post said that that outcome seemed the most likely, and the recent expansion of the site and its audience made it a good time to do a deal now.

Talks with Yahoo last year went nowhere, sources said, but Armstrong was not as slow to act.

Indeed, the actual deal happened quickly, said Armstrong and Huffington in a video interview with BoomTown earlier today (which you can see here).

The pair started talking in early November of last year at the Quadrangle Conference in New York and continued their discussions through the holidays.

Armstrong made the official offer to Huffington by phone in January, while she was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and he was snowed in in New York.

Five time multiple to the Huffington Post’s upward of $60 million in expected revenue for the coming year, and nearly 10 times the $31 million for 2010, the offer was accepted quickly.

AOL used cash for $300 million of the purchase and $15 million in stock for the rest.

“The idea of turning a fire hose of traffic onto our content made enormous sense,” said one person close to the situation. “Everything is changing so fast, it seemed like the time was right.”

An IPO was also considered for the Huffington Post, sources said. But since the site only recently moved into profitability–although barely–such an event would have been farther out.

That’s despite the fact that the Huffington Post has seen fast-growing traffic and influence, spurred in part by Huffington’s larger-than-life persona in both the mainstream media and blogosphere.

The wide-ranging site–which has added a number of content areas in recent years beyond its flagship political offering–currently has almost 26 million unique monthly visitors, according to recent stats, moving in close range to established news organizations such as the New York Times.

That kind of success seemed unlikely when the Huffington Post launched on May 9, 2005, positioning itself as as a liberal counterweight to the popular right-leaning Drudge Report.

But the Huffington Post’s heady mix of celebrity bloggers, personality and voice, as well as aggressive curation of links from other sites, quickly caught on.

To fund its efforts, the New York-based online media company has raised $37 million from angel investors such as Lerer–the largest individual shareholder, followed closely by Huffington–and venture firms such as Greycroft Partners, Softbank Capital and Oak Investment Partners.

The growth has not been without controversy around issues such as lack of payments to bloggers who contribute and accusations that the site uses too much content from other Web sources when linking.

And Huffington herself has also been a lightning rod, which has been both positive and negative for the site.

But, there is no question she is one of the Web’s most prominent players, along with writing books, appearing on television frequently and being a fixture at high-profile events in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

That includes a never-ending panoply of parties that feature a potent mix of movie stars, corporate poo-bahs, glad-handing politicians and lots of journalists from all over the media.

In fact, full disclosure, I was at one of those parties this past weekend for actor Colin Firth and others involved in the making of the Oscar-nominated film “The King’s Speech.” (Apropos of nothing, actor Helena Bonham Carter is as smart as you would expect, but much more delicate.)

As part of the AOL deal, CEO Eric Hippeau–who has been integral to professionalizing the business and will be joining Lerer Ventures–and Chief Revenue Officer Greg Coleman will leave the Huffington Post.

Ironically, Coleman was replaced by Armstrong as head of ad sales at AOL after he took over as CEO. Coleman got a big payout and will now apparently get another.

But the rest of the 200 Huffington Post employees are moving over to AOL with Huffington, who Armstrong hopes will be the company’s ace in the content hole going forward.

There are likely to be changes to come too at AOL, within weeks, especially in its content-side management and site staffs.

AOL provided some quotes in support of the deal from prominent Internet figures who know Huffington well.

“Arianna is one of the preeminent authors and editors of our time, and Tim has a remarkable track record of business success,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. “Bringing them together creates tremendous potential for AOL.”

And Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said:

“Editorial vision and leadership are essential in order to transmute our shared cacophony of voices into a valuable dialogue. Arianna’s expertise, empathy, and entrepreneurial enthusiasm forms a kind of alchemy turning mere words and phrases into powerful expressions of humanity.”

Inter-Internet harmony: How sweet!

Here is the official press release, with all the details, but there is also an 8 am ET AOL conference call tomorrow:

AOL AGREES TO ACQUIRE THE HUFFINGTON POST

Acquisition Will Solidify AOL’s Strategy of Creating a Premier Content Network With Local, National and International Reach

Arianna Huffington To Lead Newly Formed The Huffington Post Media Group Which Will Integrate All Huffington Post and AOL Content, Including News, Tech, Women, Local, Multicultural, Entertainment, Video, Community, and More

The New Combined Media Group Will Reach 117 Million Americans and 270 Million Globally

Group Uniquely Positioned To Redefine the Future of Brand Advertising and Marketing For an Engaged and Influential Audience

New York, NY–February 7, 2011–AOL Inc. [NYSE:AOL] announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire The Huffington Post, the influential and rapidly growing news, analysis, and lifestyle website founded in 2005, which now counts nearly 25 million unique monthly visitors*.

The transaction will create a premier global, national, local, and hyper-local content group for the digital age–leveraged across online, mobile, tablet, and video platforms. The combination of AOL’s infrastructure and scale with The Huffington Post’s pioneering approach to news and innovative community building among a broad and sophisticated audience will mark a seminal moment in the evolution of digital journalism and online engagement.

The new group will have a combined base of 117 million unique visitors a month in the United States and 270 million around the world**. Following the close of this transaction, AOL will accelerate its strategy to deliver a scaled and differentiated array of premium news, analysis, and entertainment produced by thousands of writers, editors, reporters, and videographers around the globe.

As part of the transaction, Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, will be named president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will include all Huffington Post and AOL content, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, StyleList, and more.

“The acquisition of The Huffington Post will create a next-generation American media company with global reach that combines content, community, and social experiences for consumers,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO of AOL. “Together, our companies will embrace the digital future and become a digital destination that delivers unmatched experiences for both consumers and advertisers.”

Armstrong continued, “Arianna is a singularly passionate and dedicated champion of innovative journalistic engagement, and a master of the art of using new media to illuminate, entertain and enhance the national conversation. Arianna is a remarkable person and she will continue to create remarkable outcomes for the combined company.”

“This is truly a merger of visions and a perfect fit for us,” said Huffington. “The Huffington Post will continue on the same path we have been on for the last six years–though now at light speed–by combining with AOL. Our readers will still be able to come to the Huffington Post at the same URL, and find all the same content they’ve grown to love, plus a lot more–more local, more tech, more entertainment, more finance, and lots more video. We are fusing a legendary and powerful new media brand with a vibrant, innovative news organization, known for its distinctive voice, a highly engaged audience, an expertise in community-building, and a track record for demystifying the news and putting flesh and blood on the data while drawing our audience into the conversation.”

Huffington continued, “By uniting AOL and The Huffington Post, we are creating one of the largest destinations for smart content and community on the Internet. And we intend to keep making it better and better.”

Kenneth Lerer, The Huffington Post’s Co-Founder and Chairman, said, “The Huffington Post team has created a potent brand with the proven track record of knowing how to grow traffic, inform and entertain its readers and build a one-of-a-kind online community. Add that to the powerful scale and resources of AOL and you have the perfect combination for today and the future. Together these two companies will be a premier online content provider. From local citizen reporting through AOL’s Patch, to The Huffington Post’s national reporting on politics, business and culture, consumers will have access to everything they want whenever they want it.”

AOL has agreed to purchase The Huffington Post for $315 million, approximately $300 million of which will be paid in cash funded from cash on hand. The Huffington Post is privately owned by its two cofounders, as well as a group of investors. The proposed transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of government approvals. The boards of directors of each company and shareholders of The Huffington Post have approved the transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the late first- or early second-quarter 2011.

The Huffington Post over-indexes on educated, affluent users, reaching the key decision makers in C-suites around the globe. The Huffington Post speaks to this influential audience via a host of prominent voices on its group blog. Among those who have blogged on The Huffington Post are: President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Larry Page, Diane Sawyer, Buzz Aldrin, Nora Ephron, Bill Maher, Madeleine Albright, Robert Redford, Katie Couric, Neil Young, Rahm Emanuel, Mia Farrow, Senator Russ Feingold, Senator Al Franken, Ari Emanuel, Harry Shearer, Senator John Kerry, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Madonna, Lawrence Summers, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ryan Reynolds, Craig Newmark, Alec Baldwin, Aaron Sorkin, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Russell Simmons, Sean Penn, Bill Gates, Norman Lear, Charlie Rose, Elizabeth Warren, Tavis Smiley, Sheryl Sandberg, George Clooney, and former President Bill Clinton. And the audience speaks back, generating four million comments a month***.

The Huffington Post’s affluent, influential audience, that is growing at a rate of 22 percent (December 2009 vs. December 2010)****, when combined with AOL’s massive scale, video offerings and local expertise, will represent an incredibly desirable demographic for a broad range of advertising partners across the board.

And here is Armstrong’s internal memo to the AOL staff:

AOLers,

We are taking another major step in the comeback of AOL. Today we are announcing that we have agreed to acquire The Huffington Post, one of the most exciting, influential, and fastest growing properties on the Internet. We believe in brands, quality journalism, and the positive role of communities in the world–The Huffington Post shares our values and the combination of the two companies will create the premier global and local media company on the Internet.

Co-founded six years ago by Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, The Huffington Post has grown to become an industry leader–one of the Web’s most popular and innovative sources of online news, commentary, and information. Arianna and team have created a brand and a destination that focuses on the consumer experience. By combining The Huffington Post with AOL’s network of sites, thriving video offerings, local expertise and enormous reach, we will create a company that is laser-focused on serving our audiences across every platform imaginable–social, local, video, mobile and tablet.

The Huffington Post is core to our strategy and our 80:80:80 focus–80% of domestic spending is done by women, 80% of commerce happens locally and 80% of considered purchases are driven by influencers. The influencer part of the strategy is important and will be potent.

The Huffington Post is a strong influencer brand and it attracts a valuable audience, including a great focus on women’s content. In addition, Arianna Huffington is a world-renowned expert on women’s topics and issues, and has enabled The Huffington Post to grow rapidly by continually developing new audiences.

In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a scaled connection between global and local communities on one platform. This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely and entertaining way.

The Huffington Post will join the family of AOL Brands that are destinations for an influencer audience, brands like TechCrunch, Engadget, AutoBlog, and Moviefone. Uniquely, The Huffington Post is the platform for influential people–the people that drive trends, commerce, politics, entertainment, news, and information. Adding this strategic platform to our already strong network of sites, including the AOL homepage, has the potential to make AOL the most influential company in the content space.

Arianna Huffington is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the Internet space and someone that is even more successful in building communities and relationships in every corner of the globe. The Huffington Post and Arianna have created a company that has partnered with the most successful and well-known leaders in all aspects of society that touch important topics to give consumers direct access to the most influential decision makers and community leaders.

This acquisition will create a high-quality and diverse digital ecosystem encompassing local, national and international news, politics, entertainment, technology, fashion, sports, health, personal finance, green, lifestyle, the arts and more. This deal will combine the amazing talent at AOL with the innovative and talented staff of The Huffington Post. Here are just a few high-level points around what this deal brings to market:

* Together, AOL and The Huffington Post will have 117MM unduplicated domestic monthly UVs, and ~270MM monthly UVs worldwide (according to comScore Dec 2010).

* The Huffington Post is one of the fastest growing web properties on the Internet. It grew 22% last year–that’s faster than Twitter, which grew 18% – and 15x as quickly as the Internet grew last year (comScore Dec ’09-’10).

* Both AOL and The Huffington Post count powerful, affluent users among their top loyal visitors, significantly over-indexing in $100K+ income users.

* AOL passed Hulu in unique viewers on video in the fourth quarter of 2010; video views on AOL are up 400 percent year-over-year.

* Between AOL’s innovative Project Devil ad unit, engaging users for 27 seconds longer than traditional display ads, and The Huffington Post’s highly-vocal community, with 4MM+ comments per month, we will marry attention-grabbing content and brand experiences for both advertisers and consumers.

In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a premier global/local syndication network at scale. This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely, informative and entertaining way.

To maximize the strategic advantage of this great deal, we will be creating a new group at AOL called The Huffington Post Media Group. Within this group will be AOL Media, AOL Local & Mapping, AOL Search and our new friends at The Huffington Post. We will continue operating the towns structure, AOL.com and HuffingtonPost.com.

I’m thrilled to announce that Arianna Huffington will join AOL’s executive team as President and Editor in Chief of The Huffington Post Media Group. We have asked Jon Brod to lead the overall operational integration on the AOL side of the combined entities. Jon will lead the local group integration and work closely with David Eun and the teams in AOL Media. We will work quickly with The Huffington Post to create a combined organizational design to coincide with the deal closing. While we wait for the required regulatory reviews to be completed and the transaction to close before implementing the design, we will move very quickly to plan the details of the integration of the two companies. To this end, we will announce the new organizational structure as soon as possible.

In the meantime, we will continue creating great content and products for our consumers within the town structure and stay laser-focused on the aggressive goals we have set for our winter luge. We are on the right track and will continue our weekly operating cadence and town structure to drive successful results against our company goals.

Here’s a special message for all of you we taped to welcome The Huffington Post and Arianna to our AOL Family:

http://today.office.aol.com/company-news/2011/02/aol-agrees-buy-huffington-post

And of course we wanted to welcome Arianna to our “You’ve Got” video of the day–check her out on AOL.com.

We will be holding a company all hands meeting to address your questions related to today’s exciting news. We will video conference from our New York office on the 6th Floor at 9:30 AM ET and will be joined by Arianna Huffington and key executives from her organization. We will also be holding a call for our west coast offices at 2:00 PM ET and for our Patch offices at 2:45 PM ET. See below for meeting info (conference rooms will be sent out shortly).

AOL is playing to win…and The Huffington Post and AOL will occupy a unique place in the future of the Internet. Let’s go get it done.

–TA

(More full disclosure: As has been previously reported by MediaMemo, All Things Digital had the briefest and most preliminary of discussions with Armstrong about moving to AOL last year, while exploring several other options. All’s well that ended well: We stayed at Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp.)

Spending in the fourth quarter was up 11 percent over a year ago, representing the fifth consecutive quarter of positive annual growth and the second quarter of double-digit growth rates in the past year.

In 2010, holiday spending online was bolstered by the first-ever billion-dollar day on record, and others surpassing $900 million. The strong growth rates are a huge swing from two years ago, when fourth-quarter sales fell by three percent.

The bulk of online sales occur among the top 25 online retailers, which accounted for 68.4 percent of dollars spent.

As the largest e-commerce provider, Amazon turned in a fourth-quarter performance that mirrored comScore’s findings. Amazon reported its first $10 billion quarter ever, and saw year-over-year growth rates of 40 percent (its best growth rate since 2000).

In a release, comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni predicted that the increased spending levels will continue this year: “We anticipate that the progress we’ve seen in the past year as we climbed out of the recession will continue with sustained double-digit growth rates in 2011.”

Other highlights:

• The top categories were computer software, consumer electronics, digital books and magazines, computers and peripherals, and toys and hobbies.
• 84 percent of U.S. Internet users conducted an online transaction in the period, up from 78 percent last year.

The local-focused service will launch first in Seattle and only in a limited beta through its Web site or mobile application.

The company fits snuggly between social and mobile trends in e-commerce, and, much like Groupon and Gilt Groupe, it recommends a limited number of offers based on the recipient’s tastes–drawn from Facebook or gleaned from a short questionnaire.

Offers could include anything from kayaking trips for the outdoorsy type, to dinner for two for the wine lover, to a cooking class for someone who’d rather eat at home.

But unlike with Groupon or Gilt Groupe, the deals are not discounted–they are regular price, or close to it.

Before you think that’s suicide in today’s bargain market, ask this: Is it appropriate to buy a Valentine’s Day or anniversary present at a discount?

Thoughtful’s co-founders Chris Lynch and Tim Low say it’s a social quandary they toy with a lot.

“It’s buying for me vs. buying for someone else. We are focused on premium gifts and experiences that you are buying for someone else,” Lynch said.

In other words, Thoughtful is trying to corner the market of recommending gifts that will match with specific tastes at the time of purchase. The service is aimed at affluent people “who are busy, have jobs, have a lot going on and have the impulse to do something good.” Low said, “It’s like a personal assistant that manages the important people in your life.”

Because of that, it attracts a set of buyers who have a strong intent to buy and have a deadline for an upcoming event, making it attractive to merchants, who are looking to avoid the “discount hunting hordes that perhaps generate lower volume at higher margins than Groupon.”

The service starts by gathering information from your Facebook page, which may automatically know who your wife is, what her tastes are and when the important times are in your lives. It also can track other important people in your life and their birth dates. If the information is not on Facebook, some manual input will be necessary, including answering a short, whimsical survey that takes just a few clicks to complete, and asks questions such as whether the person in your life is a fan of beer or wine.

Thoughtful said it negotiates for itself a 25 to 35 percent split for the offer, which is off a full-priced item vs. something that is already half off.

Thoughtful has seven employees and has raised $130,000 in seed financing. It has used crowd-sourcing techniques to come up with ideas for offers, and will be collecting feedback on this beta to figure out its next step, which could include market expansion.

Here’s a video on how it works:

However, its forecast that it will sell 8.5 million smartphones this quarter may not be enough to satisfy some analysts. According to Reuters, some firms had recently hiked expectations for HTC, predicting the company would sell 9 million smartphones or more. The company sold 9.1 million phones in the December quarter, though of course that includes the seasonally strong holiday period. HTC noted that any drop in the first quarter will be less than typical.

“Demand remains visible and solid,” the company said. “Management expects a relatively muted seasonal slowdown than previous years.”

For the fourth quarter, HTC reported that sales rose to $3.58 billion (104 billion Taiwanese dollars), up from $1.4 billion (41 billion Taiwanese dollars) a year ago, with per-share earnings growing to nearly 63 U.S. cents a share, up from just over 24 cents in the year-ago quarter.

HTC announced a number of new Android devices earlier this month, including the HTC Evo Shift (a lower-priced 4G phone for Sprint), the HTC Thunderbolt for Verizon and a new phone for AT&T that packs more Web-based services direct from HTC.