According to most national newspapers, everyone and anyone was shopping online during Christmas Day, hitting the sales in search of a bargain; especially as the likes of Marks and Spencers started their online sale at 12:01am that day, and John Lewis began theirs at 6pm on xmas eve.

Whilst brick ‘n mortar shops are panicking and feel they need to carry out this sort of crazy behaviour, in reality, internet shopping was fairly quiet over these two days.

Plusnet did a quick web-survey and found that the number one site on Christmas Day was Google, as usual. But a close second was Facebook, steadily increasing in numbers as the day wore on (and the boredom set in). Incidentally, did anyone leave a message on the Queens Facebook page following the Christmas speech?

Boxing Day saw the biggest boost: Amazon, iTunes and Play.com all saw massive amounts of traffic over the 24hr period. Even eBay proved very popular – perhaps as people needed to get rid of unwanted gifts without offending anyone?

Big brands are being stalked by MySpace to attract support for its ad-funded music service, MySpace Music, which will apparently be the social network’s biggest launch to date.

MySpace has joined forces with four major record labels, offering millions of UK consumers the opportunity to stream their entire back catalogues for free.

The site is also topped to be the biggest ad-funded music service in the UK, when it goes it goes live next year… The likes of McDonald’s, Toyota and Sony Pictures are all being hassled by the social network giant, as it offers them a variety of ad spots including a skinned player, pre-roll and in-video ads, playlist sponsorship and old-school display.

Agencies seem to be making little worried noises about the fact that the rates are likelyto  rise – but I’m more bothered about the fact you can’t download anything. On top of this, especially with Amazon’s new MP3 download service, online music seems to be getting increasingly competitive. Which hopefully means either cheap, or free…

Ok, there seems to have been some confusion over my opinion that the digital industry will flourish as the economy takes a down-turn.

My original comments related to online marketing.

Alongside my otimistic agency views, I’m also of the opinion that other internet-functioning businesses could be hit pretty hard. Examples:

E-Bay issued a stark warning that profits could be down this christmas – this last quarter saw revenue rise by 12% ($2.12bn) which was lower than analyst predictions. A quick recalculation later and the number-monkeys expect total 2008 revenue to be between $8.53 - $8.68bn (still more money than most people will ever see). 

To be more competitive, Amazon has slashed it’s free delivery qualification costs from £15 to £5. This means that over 90% of their products will be delivered for free. I personally think this is just common sense – leading industry experts have long-advised companies to play around more with free delivery.

Google’s market-share has dipped a teeny-tiny bit. My cynical side says that this explains why they’ve suddenly backtracked on their long-standing policy not to allow gambling advertisements. Now, potentially generating £millions more with this hypocritical move, as we have already seen a quarterly increase on profit this year. I’m sure we’ll see Google beginning to strangle the competition again.

Social networks are struggling to generate viable income. Which is no big secret. Sadly though, this is directly affecting people working in the industry, as they become statistics in the economic downturn. The most recent victim is Hi5, the third largest global network, where it was announced this week that around 10-15% of the workforce would be laid off. Other companies being affected include start-ups and software; again, the most recent casualty being Jive.

When the whole world is suffering economic crisis, it’s obviously going to affect the world-wide-web. But to reiterate my original point; some parts of the digital industry will do well from the misfortune of others. Yes, it will get increasingly competitive, but with decent strategy and user-confidence, those who succeed will be very apparent. Whilst we’re seeing companies collapse every day, I hardly think this is the end of the internet.