Articles by Clare Saliba

Educational toy e-tailer SmarterKids has narrowly edged out the powerhouse partnership ofToysrus.com and Amazon.com to secure the title of best online toy and game seller overall, according to Forrester Research rankings released Monday Forrester said SmarterKids won its first-place showing by the "tiniest ofmargins" due to the wealth of instructio...

Just one month after MP3.com brought to aclose its costly legal contest with industry giant Universal Music Group,the online music service has been hit by a copyright infringementlawsuit by Internet subscription site EMusic The action charges MP3.com and its streaming service MyMP3.com withillegally offering an indeterminate number of albums to whi...

Internet grocery service HomeGrocer.com has slashed roughly 100 jobs -- the second workforce reduction in recent months -- as it continues consolidating operations with Webvan Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: WBVN). Webvan purchased HomeGrocer for US$1.2 billion earlier this year The current round of layoffs account for nearly a quarter ofHomeGrocer.com's work...

Despite spending almost US$500 million over the past 12 months to improve their customer service operations, e-tailers could face a loss of some $11 billion in sales by the end of this year,according to a report released Friday by market analysis firm Datamonitor Poor customer service all too often will result in users abandoning theirfilled shoppi...

More than half of the roughly 46 million adults in the UK have Web access and nearly a third of them are frequent online users, according to new data released Wednesday by ForresterResearch. As part of its semi-annual Internet User Monitor, the research firm alsofound that the Web's gender gap in the UK is narrowing. While online usage in UKhas tr...

Despite the fact that high-speed Internet access has yetto take a firm hold with the vast majority of the wired public, measurement firm Nielsen//NetRatingsreported Tuesday that streaming media consumption soared 65 percent over the past year According to the report, arecord 35 million online users accessed streaming content in November,and more th...

CenterSpan Communications Corp.(Nasdaq: CSCC) was given the green light to purchase the assets of Internetentertainment firm Scour, Inc. Tuesday by a Los Angeles bankruptcy court The high-profile Scour -- which operated a controversial multimedia file-sharing and searchingnetwork -- was placed on the auction block after it declared bankruptcy inOct...

Possibly indicating a consumer cooldown in the e-tail arena, onlinespending during the week following the Thanksgiving holiday topped out at about US$1.3billion -- representing just a 50 percent increase over last year's figures for the same period -- according to a new study released Monday by Goldman Sachs and PC Data While most traditional retai...

According to a study released Monday by business services firm Ernst & Young, Canadian consumers plan to spend 14 percent of their holiday shopping funds online -- a 100 percent increase over last year's level but still lessthan half as much as their American counterparts The report also said that Canadian consumers spent roughly US$890 over thepas...

Online pharmacyDrugstore.com continues to narrowly outpaceniche competitor PlanetRx (now XMediapartners.com)and retains the No. 1 spot among Internet healthretailers, according to new rankingsreleased by Forrester Research Although researchers surveyed a number of e-tailers in the category, theyconcluded that the contest essentially boiled down to ...

Amazon.comhas inked a content agreement with venerable product-testing organization ConsumersUnion -- the publisher of Consumer Reports and Consumer Reports Online -- that will allow the Internet giant to publish "unbiased" product advice summaries, merchandise information and ratings on its site As part of the deal, Consumers Union said Amazon.com...

Just one day after women's online network Oxygen Media said it was paring down itsworkforce and consolidating operations, niche competitor Women.com announced that it is laying off 25 percent of its workforce in a bid to trim expenses and achieve profitability As part of what the company called "proactive cost-cutting initiatives," Women.com elimin...

The civil rights group that filed a discrimination lawsuit against onlinedelivery service Kozmo.com earlierthis year announced Tuesday that it will not pursue the suit as part of aagreement brokered by the parties to increase Internet access inunderserved communities in Washington, D.C The Equal Rights Center said the initiative and thecompany's ex...

Music and video retailer Tower Records has scored the latest victory for brick-and-click stores on the Net, edging out Internet heavyweight Amazon.com as the top online music seller in Forrester Research rankings released Tuesday Forrester said that the first-place showing by Tower -- which has aimed to use its physical brand to bolster its Interne...

Just two weeksafter announcing changes in its executive team,controversial Web advertising giant DoubleClick(Nasdaq: DCLK) is laying off some 5 percent of its 2,100-person workforce. DoubleClick director of corporate communications Jennifer Blum would notconfirm the number of employees being let go, but the figure issaid to range between 100 and 1...

U.S.-based online shoppers who buy products from other countries riskbecoming ensnared in the intricate legalities thatgovern overseas purchases and importation, warned the U.S. Customs Service in an alert issued Monday "Shopping on the Internet seems quick and easy, but buying gifts or othergoods online from a foreign source turns the shopper into...

In a bid to chip away at Priceline.com's market share in the online travel sector, discount travel service Hotwire.com said Friday that Trans WorldAir Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines have signed on with the company to sell theirinventory of unfilled airline seats Backed by six of the largest U.S. air carriers, the San Francisco,California-based comp...

Further signifying that e-commerce continues to make headway in the traditional retail arena, a study released Thursday by Forrester Research forecasts that consumers will spend at least US$36 billion on gifts purchased online by 2005 As part of its report, "Pulling in Online Gift Buyers," the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based firm also found that Int...

Further confirming that e-commerce is alive and well,the surge in online traffic triggered by the onset of the holiday season caused sporadic system outages over two days at Internet payment network PayPal The Palo Alto, California-based company has over four million users, andits payment service is particularly popular with those who buy and sellg...

Although many Internet firms are slashing advertising budgets in favor of direct marketing campaigns, a new study released Wednesdayby Andersen Consulting and Online Insight warns that e-tailersoften miss the mark when it comes to marketing initiatives "Companies are ignoring the basic marketing principles traditional business use -- first, choose ...