shopping

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Social-Shopping Website OpenSky Relaunches as Full-Fledged Online Marketplace

Lauren Goode in Commerce on May 1 at 4:00 am PT

OpenSky, the two-year-old e-commerce site that took a stab at social shopping by allowing members to follow celebrity and expert curators, has relaunched as a full-fledged marketplace for small businesses. Merchants can open up their own “stores” on the site for free, and can sell to OpenSky’s 2.5 million members, with OpenSky taking a commission on items sold — like Etsy, but with a social twist, more established sellers and a much smaller community of shoppers. Items listed range from cosmetics to clothing to kitchen supplies. OpenSky is based in New York and has raised nearly $50 million in venture capital funding to date.

News Byte

Google Acquires E-Commerce Partner Channel Intelligence for $125M

Tricia Duryee in Commerce on February 6 at 12:04 pm PT

Google has agreed to acquire Orlando, Fla.-based Channel Intelligence from ICG Group for $125 million in cash. Channel Intelligence helps merchants maximize sales from ads purchased on Google Shopping, which made the controversial move last year to charge for listings instead of providing them for free. This is the second recent acquisition by Google Shopping; in November, it bought delivery service BufferBox.

News Byte

Sift Raises More Funding to Help Turn Your Inbox Into a Personalized Shopping App

Tricia Duryee in Commerce on January 31 at 9:17 am PT

Sift has raised $540,000 in funding to turn the deluge of offers sent to consumers via email into a shopping app for the iPad. The Burlingame, Calif.-based company, which was incubated by the Tandem accelerator, said the seed funding comes from Shawn Wang, co-founder of Baidu and Unity Ventures; Deep Nishar, SVP of Product at LinkedIn; Bhupen Shah, co-founder of Sling Media; Sand Hill Angels and others. The money will be used to hire more employees.