Articles by Jon Weisman

Talk about losing the big game A year ago, approximately 20 dot-com companies -- including half a dozen e-commerce startups -- paid US$2.2 million for 30 seconds of advertising time during television's most watched sporting event, the Super Bowl....

There is an interesting paradox developing in the online bookstore industry. Fourth quarter revenues (including holiday sales) are up, and books continue to be the top-selling product category on the Net, but virtually across the board, book e-tailers are falling short of analyst earnings estimates. The result: a flurry of e-bookseller stock downg...

Online sales for health and beauty products e-tailer Drugstore.com (Nasdaq: DSCM) in the fourth quarter of 2000 totaled more than US$35 million, approximately a 90 percent increase over sales in the same quarter of 1999, the company announced Monday Revenues for the recently completed quarter were greater than those of the entire 1999 fiscal year, ...

Despite a slowdown in growth during 2001, particularly for the first six months, e-commerce sales will increase 57 percent this year compared to 2000, according toan upcoming report by research firm eMarketer In previewing the report Saturday, eMarketer co-founder Geoffrey Ramsey told the E-Commerce Times that Internet sales are now more dependent ...

Troubled toy e-tailer eToys (Nasdaq: ETYS) moved to the dot-com critical list Thursday, announcing that approximately 70 percent of the company's 1,000 employees have been informed that their jobs are being eliminated eToys said the layoffs were effective immediately for about 380 employees. The remaining number, approximately 320, will leave their...

Toysrus.com announced Thursday that its online sales for the nine weeks leading up to Christmas totaled US$124 million, a 218 percent increase over the previous year's holiday season The good vibes coming from Toysrus.com differ considerably from those of 12 months ago, when it was one of several e-tailers that drew heavy fines from the U.S. Federa...

So how bad a year was 2000 for e-commerce? Think about it like this: If e-commerce is your friend, you should be arranging therapy for it right now. As 2001 approaches, e-commerce is in need of some serious time on the couch....

High-tech stocks slid Tuesday despite the Federal Reserve's announcement that it is holding interest rates at 6.5 percent and the hint that itwill cut rates sooner than later The Nasdaq composite stock index fell 112.81, or 4.3 percent, to 2511.71, its lowest close since August 10th, 1999. The E-Commerce Times stock index, which charts the shares o...

Remember when people actually wondered if there would be a dot-com shakeout?Remember when you were Chicken Little if you displayed any anxiety about the New Economy? When the sky finally fell -- and fell hard -- you were not alone if you were caught by surprise. After all, most analysts and investors were....

Furniture.com. Garden.com. Mortgage.com. Pets.com. If any four e-tailers had reason to believe they could succeed by name alone, these four did Instead, within a 16-day span, all four companies announced they were shutting down operations. The closures came during the past three months, when dozens of dot-coms, including other higher profile compan...

Within the next month, a mess of online holiday sales figures will be released, to be scrutinized like tea leaves for signs of e-commerce's ultimate fate However, no matter how those numbers read, 2001 is shaping up as a year where traditional storefront and catalog retailers firmly take control of the online turf from pure-play e-tailers. The home...

Did you know that the current U.S. moratorium on Internet taxation does not ban taxes on goods sold via the Internet? If you did, count yourself among the lucky group that has not been confused or misled by the fragmented Net tax debate.

Online businesses unmistakably want to augment their customer relations with everything from instant messaging to real-time online voice conversations, as studies, analysts and experience have convinced the industry that high-tech customer service is key for retaining customers However, poorly instituted live interaction has the potential of aliena...

There's nothing quite like taking a Ferrari out on the open highway. There's also nothing quite like taking a Ferrari out on a muddy, potholed, traffic-congested road The dilemma facing a company doing business online today is that the temptation to build the flashiest Web site on the Net is tempered by the fear that the souped-up site will hit a d...

If you're any kind of television fan (and I'm not here to debate the merits of being one), at some point A.C. Nielsen and his data-gathering progeny have been a royal pain in your remote. The Nielsen ratings have the power to cruelly destroy a show, however brilliant, if the numbers don't meet expectations The good news is that Nielsen//NetRatings,...

A proposed law that would have forced businesses operating in California to charge sales tax for online transactions within the state was vetoed Monday by Governor Gray Davis Concurrently, Davis signed a bill extending California's moratorium on Internet access taxes for three years, although the latter bill would have become law only if the Intern...

Problems facing e-commerce seem to turn up as often as eggs on Easter Sunday Just since August, for example, 84 percent of Internet users surveyed by the Pew Internet & American Life Project expressed fear that Web sites will obtain personal information without their knowledge. The U.S. government's Internet Fraud Complaint Center said that it has ...

People all over the world travel to see the tombstones of celebrities, from Marilyn Monroe in Los Angeles to Jim Morrison in Paris. Why should online businesses be treated any differently? One of the Internet's quirks is that it offers easy access to the dot-com cemetery. Most deceased sites leave their Web sites up in some form long after the com...

In a ruling that could forever alter the digital copyright landscape, a U.S. District Court found Wednesday that Internet music download site MP3.com willfully infringed the copyrighted works of Universal Music Group and is liable for damages of at least $118 million (US$) U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff awarded Universal $25,000 in statutory damage...

New York City-based Jefferson Market, which began 60 years ago as a small neighborhood shop, has become the first grocer to make its services available to Internet-enabled cellular phones The announcement was made Thursday by Jefferson Market's online partner, Peachtree Network, Inc., which said it hopes by Labor Day to extend wireless service to a...