The soul of online retailing in Australia - internetretailing.com.au. Get serious about selling online!

Australian internet use is on the move, so  when are traditional retailers in Australia going to get the gist of this?

 Rand Fishkin, owner of SEOmoz.org a hub for search marketers worldwide and keynote speaker at the recent SMX (Search Marketing Expo) Expo in Sydney recently, summarised certain certain aspects of the Australian internet arena:

• Even in Australia, savvy newspapers and offline media portals are building social media marketing and promotion positions to help get their content in front of linkerati. I was shocked by the level of sophistication, which, in some instances, exceeds that of their American counterparts. Note the 4,000+ Digg entries for newspaper The Age.
• Social Media is big in Australia - there's a Digg clone, Confer, popular blogs (like Lifehacker Australia), social media divisions inside many of the major publications, including The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, and heavy use of LinkedIn for business networking. Social networking as a whole is exploding down under.
• Search market share in Australia - Google ~80%, Yahoo! ~10%, Microsoft ~10%.
• The Australian media world is a bit worried about the potential Microsoft/Yahoo! deal. Both MSN & Yahoo! have media relationships with large portals - Channel 7 for Yahoo! and Channel 9 for MSN. The media landscape could be vastly different with a combined Yahoo!/MSN.
• High broadband speed in Australia is tough to find - ADSL is still the most popular connection speed.