I sort of preferred the last article because it was directly connected to your business selling designer shower curtains. It embraced "We sell artsy $30 shower curtains, and you know what sells artsy $30 shower curtains? Beautiful photography sells artsy $30 shower curtains, that is what." That is both intellectually interesting to me and, hey, they are nice shower curtains.
The new article is sort of wandering into that weird Internet marketing/social media haze where you have a blog to Twitter to send people into your autoresponder so that when they sign up to your RSS feed they can... BAGH! Shower curtains! Stick to the shower curtains!
Pull quotes dropped right into the text flow, relating to nothing, and unclear in their import. Check.
Graphic design pushing text to the margins? Check.
7 different colors of text on the page? Check.
Sentences that lead in one direction but never deliver ("small e-commerce boutiques have no perceived incentives to share what they make")? Check.
Redundency? Check.
Hard to interpret figures (18.3% for indirect networks? 18.3% of what? Profits? Conversion rate? Traffic?)? Check.