Gift cards worth $10, $25, and $50 should become available at Best Buy stores this week, while Walmart will sell cards worth $5, $10, $25, and $50.  And although only U.S. stores will carry the cards and Facebook Credits won’t gain any new uses, this definitely counts as a win for Facebook.

Alexei Oreskovic reported, "Facebook began selling Facebook Credit gift cards at Target stores earlier this year, but landing on WalMart and Best Buy shelves should vastly expand the availability of its fledgling currency – at the end of 2009, WalMart had more than 3,600 stores in the United States."

Plus, this isn’t a simple matter of brand presence and mindshare.  Oreskovic noted, "[W]ith Facebook taking a 30 percent cut of the revenue that application-makers book on transactions involving Facebook credits, the more people that are using Credits, the better for Facebook."

Unfortunately, the specifics of whatever deals Facebook made with Best Buy and Walmart remain unknown, so it’s difficult to say what (if any) price Facebook was willing to pay to get more people using its virtual currency.

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The number of visitors to Netflix’s website jumped 46% in June year-over-year, due in part to the tremendous popularity of the Watch Instantly streaming service and its deployment on dozens of consumer electronics devices.

The numbers were cited in a blog post over at the online video industry blog NewTeeVee, which also quoted Citi analyst Mark Mahaney saying that this is the “fastest year-to-year growth [he] has seen in over five years.”

As most folks know, Netflix’s core business used to be DVDs, but that could very well change in the near future. Watch Instantly is driving its growth thanks to its availability on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, HDTVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes like Roku.

The service is more attractive now that it’s available in high definition in the living room. And although new releases don’t usually hit as quickly (with some exceptions like Relativity Media) as they do at Blockbuster and other brick and mortar video stores, the comparatively low price and watch-as-much-as-you-want convenience have appealed to consumers.

Netflix is challenged more by Redbox kiosks and Hulu Plus than it is by retail chains, but its rumored plans for international expansion could give it another edge. Family movie night is already very different from what it used to be.

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Milo.com

Shopping could be a whole lot easier if the Internet knew whether the stuff you were looking for was available at stores nearby.

Milo.com, a startup in Palo Alto, Calif., has been working for two years on setting up a database that knows not only what products are in stores near you–but also whether they’re in stock. Need a new pencil sharpener in downtown San Francisco? Milo says there’s one available for $1.99 at the Office Max on 3rd Street.

But the company (whose mascot is its founder’s dog Milo, shown here) got some big competition on Thursday, when Google officially launched a mobile version of its Product Search feature, including information about local inventory. If a product is in stock nearby, the listing shows up with a blue dot next to it.

Yet Google’s announcement highlights just how difficult it is to create a reliable database of things in the real world. The search giant launched its service with inventory data from just five retail outlets — Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm (the last three of which are all owned by Williams-Sonoma). They’ll undoubtedly expand that list, and are taking volunteers from businesses that want to join in the program.

In an interview, Milo’s CEO Jack Abraham didn’t seem too worried about Google’s arrival in his business. “We are, to be honest, surprised that they are launching it with so few retailers,” he said. “That really does underscore just how difficult it is to get this data.”

Milo has signed up 49 retail chains, covering 48,000 stores and 2 million products. Beyond brands like Best Buy and Sears, which have open systems that let any outside programmers tap into their inventory database, they’ve managed to sign up some big names, including Target, Nordstrom, Macy’s and J.C. Penny.

There’s a lot of technological complexity around inventory data, Abraham said, that Milo has solved those problems by developing custom software to plug into each retailer’s own unique inventory system. “We take the raw data in whatever form it comes,” said Abraham. Milo doesn’t have exclusivity from the retailers it taps — but it also wrote the software that helped bring their inventory online.

Over the next year, Abraham says Milo is going to focus on adding 5,000 to 10,000 small businesses into its database. They may actually be easier to integrate than the big retailers, he said, because they’re less likely to have customized systems.

The next big challenge has yet to be cracked by either Milo or Google: getting credit – and revenue — for sending customers into physical stores. Stay tuned, says Milo’s Abraham.

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On Friday McDonald’s officially added free Wi-Fi to the menu at most U.S. locations. Now you can have your Big Mac, fries and free Wi-Fi at 11,500 McDonald’s across the country.

News of the free Wi-Fi deal was initially announced in mid-December, but now the service is live.

You may recall that the fast food chain was previously serving up Wi-Fi for $2.95 for two hours of internet access, but AT&T swooped in to the rescue. By eliminating the cost, McDonald’s is taking yet another step to position their brand as an alternative to higher priced coffee retail chains.

There are 14,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the US – the small number that didn’t have Wi-Fi previously don’t appear to be part of the rollout.

[via Engadget]

[img credit: Tony the Misfit, Flickr]

Tags: Food, free wifi, McDonalds

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