Articles by Erika

U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in California has given preliminary approval to Facebook's attempt to settle a class action lawsuit alleging the company violated members' privacy rights by using their images in Facebook's Sponsored Stories ad format This second attempt at settlement -- the judge rejected Facebook's first offering -- would give ...

In just a few short years, social networks have become deeply entrenched as a means for consumers and businesses to connect online. Consumers spend more time on social networks than on any other category of sites, according to the latest social media report from NM Incite/Nielsen. That amounts to roughly 20 percent of their total time online using...

The mobile experience has clearly changed consumers' expectations of the shopping experience, creating higher expectations for service, selection and convenience. Want a certain item? With in-stock notifications, a mobile shopper doesn't have to run around to various stores. Want to ask a question about a product? Many apps offer chat. "This coul...

It's that time of year again: Consumer Reports has published its annual list of best cellphone carriers. Verizon is at the top, having received the most favorable scores for voice and data service quality. It also scored well for staff knowledge and resolution of issues Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T each got middle to low marks, especially in the voic...

Goldman Sachs has given Research In Motion a thumbs up -- relatively speaking -- telling investors on Thursday that there was a "30 percent chance" the company's long-awaited BlackBerry 10 smartphones would be a success. The investment bank upgraded the stock from "neutral" to "buy." It also lifted the 12-month price target from US$9 to $16. RIM's stock jumped 6 percent in response...

Benbria has launched Blazeloop, a customer engagement platform that revolves around one pointed question aimed at the consumer: How did we do? The theory behind the Web-based app is that most customers do not take the trouble to complain about little things -- but it is those very little things that can drive them away.

Nokia has filed lawsuits against Research In Motion in the U.S., the UK and Canada seeking to enforce an arbitration ruling it won in Sweden The dispute began when Nokia accused RIM of breaching a cross-licensing agreement that allowed RIM to use Nokia's standard-essential cellular patents. RIM had taken the position that the agreement included No...

There's apparently little inclination to wait for the legal system to establish who wronged whom with respect to the allegations that Autonomy committed accounting sleight of hand prior to being acquired by HP. Both HP and the erstwhile head of Autonomy are making their claims and counterclaims public Mike Lynch, founder of Autonomy, came out swin...

Cyber Monday online sales broke records this year, clocking in at 30 percent higher than 2011, according to IBM Smarter Commerce Sales are expected to reach US$1.5 billion for the day, making Cyber Monday 2012 the biggest online shopping day in history, comScore projects....

Cyber Monday was the biggest day ever for Kindle sales worldwide, Amazon reported Although it did not release specific figures -- it typically doesn't -- Amazon did say Kindle sales were more than double last year's figure for the holiday weekend. Nine of the 10 best-selling items on its site are Kindles or accessories or digital content for the de...

Based on recent statistics, one would think Houston is the mobile-commerce capital of the United States Shortly before the Thanksgiving holiday, the Interactive Advertising Bureau released its list of mobile-savvy cities. Houston was ranked No. 1, followed by Seattle-Tacoma, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City....

Shopping and sales activity on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday rocked this year, with online purchases on Black Friday topping $1 billion for the first time More than 35 million Americans visited retailers' stores or websites on Thanksgiving Day, up from 29 million last year, the National Retail Federation reported. The following day -- Black Fri...

Avaya IP Office joined the BYOD revolution with the release of version 8.1 earlier this year. Now the company is gearing up for more changes, including a forthcoming release that will integrate video functionality into its feature set. It will continue to expand its functionality around mobility in 2013, said SVP Tom Mitchell, president of Avaya G...

This story was originally published on Aug. 21, 2012, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. Jeff Hasen, Hipcricket's CMO, recently had what he called his "10 millionth" bad customer experience with Comcast.

Stick a fork in the sacrosanctity of Thanksgiving -- it is done. A number of retailers, most famously Walmart, will be opening their doors on Thanksgiving Day, on the premise that they will be scooping up sales from consumers too eager to wait for Black Friday. Whether that is true or whether so-called Gray Thursday will cannibalize sales meant for Black Friday and Cyber Monday is yet to be determined...

"GUYS, teenagers have messy bedrooms, and The Times is ON IT." "GUYS, women enjoy wearing pantyhose again, and The Times is ON IT."

HP released its fourth quarter earnings report, bearing out CEO Meg Whitman's warning last month. It is not pretty For the full year fiscal 2012, net revenue was US$120.4 billion, down 5 percent from the prior-year period. For the fourth quarter, HP posted net revenue of $30 billion, down 7 percent year over year....

The Wii U's launch has not been without its bumps in the road, to put it kindly. There were reports of users waiting hours to download and install a very large -- said to be 5 GB -- mandatory firmware update. For some, the wait seemed endless, and they powered off the system before the download was complete. When they powered on again, some found their consoles bricked.

In the beginning, there was Apple's iPad. For a long time, "tablet" meant the iPad and nothing but the iPad. Then competitors began to make an appearance in the tablet market. For CRM vendors, that state of affairs made developing mobile products and strategies much easier Now, there are several tablets of varying sizes competing in the market -- ...

Some of Walmart's employees are taking aim at a major soft spot for any retailer: Black Friday, the most important shopping day of the year. A union-backed coalition called "Making Change at Wal-Mart" is organizing strikes this week, culminating on Friday, to protest the company's working conditions. Walmart has already been the focus of negative ...