While it experienced a 1% growth on the whole in Q1 2013, what is exciting for Walmart is that its ecommerce revenues grew 30%. And this growth is not coming off a small base. Walmart is expected to end this year with revenues of $9 billion. While this might be much lower than revenue expectations for Amazon -- $61 billion, it certainly puts Walmart into the bracket of ecommerce giants. How much longer before we refer to ecommerce players as "Amazon, eBay, and Walmart," as opposed to merely, "Amazon and eBay?"

When we look around us, we can find too many pockets of economic depression. But ecommerce growth seems to be unaffected by that. In a recent report by comScore, we can see that ecommerce grew 13% in Q1.

These numbers must be taken in perspective. They represent desktop-based, US non-travel ecommerce, and don't factor in auctions and large transactions that are routed online.

Given that mobile commerce is demonstrating rapid growth, it is nice to see a 13% quarter-on-quarter growth coming from desktop commerce alone. Also, several international markets are growing at a much faster rate. So the overall global ecommerce scene looks pretty good right now.

However, there are those who say that with the sales tax holiday for ecommerce coming to an end, online prices might not be as much lower in comparison with physical retail. So, the coming quarters will be especially exciting to monitor.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter would have noticed the conversation I have recently engaged in with @iLearn2 and @RetentionGrid. It is about the merits of requiring readers to login before posting their comments.

On the one hand, forcing readers to login will dramatically reduce the amount of spam that comes through. On the other, it also discourages those with something valuable to say. If you have a blog on your ecommerce website this is a decision that you too will need to make. I would not be surprised if you found yourself revisiting your decision often.

What do you think?

The US is presently debating a bill that will allow states to levy sales tax on online shopping. The idea of collecting sales tax from shoppers is not new and states have been collecting it from physical store shoppers for a long time. But online shoppers have so far managed to "escape" this tax. At least that is the view that many in power seem to share. This includes senators from both ends of the spectrum, as well as the White House.

Of course there is a lot of opposition to the bill -- the most vocal one coming from eBay. But there are also voices of dissent from non-ecommerce domains as people are afraid that this bill will somehow have a spillover effect into other areas of taxation too.

This bill is called the "Marketplace Fairness Act," and though ecommerce players are not yet positioning it as the death knell for ecommerce, they are pretty worried about its ramifications.