Articles by Mary Hillebrand

According to a new study by research firm Jupiter Communications, Inc., more consumers than ever plan to shop online this holiday season, but poor customer service could turn those eager spenders off Web sites have been slow to implement creative, effective new ways to address customer concerns, Jupiter says, noting that e-mail addresses are no lon...

According to Goldman Sachs and PC Data Online, the 1999 holiday shopping season kicked off the week of November 12-16 with a 17 percent spike in online gift buying. The uptick bucked an overall drop in Internet spending for that week The total amount of money spent online last week was $208 million (US$), down from $222 million the prior week. More...

The results of separate inquiries by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the New York State Attorney General are warning online trading firms to clean up their acts or risk regulatory crackdowns The SEC wants to see an increased amount of discussion between trading companies and SEC staffers to develop regulatory strategies that w...

Prodigy Communications Corp. announced the merger of its consumer and small business units with regional telephone company SBC Communications, Inc. today, becoming one of the first beneficiaries of a recent U.S. government order for phone companies and Internet service providers to share phone lines Prodigy will take over management of SBC's 650,00...

Online sales resource SalesMountain.com has forged a joint agreement with Val-Pak Direct Marketing Systems, Inc. to add 30,000 new coupon and sales listings to its online consumer discount guide Val-Pak, a division of Cox Enterprises' Cox Target Media company, lays claim to the world's largest database of local coupons, mailing out more than 13 bil...

Despite the fact that the U.S. Congress has yet to put the final stamp of approval on China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), Washington-based portal company China 2000, Inc. launched China2000business.com Thursday in an effort to promote electronic trade between the two countries The site is set up to be an encyclopedia of informati...

Online community GoToWorld.com launched its new Get Paid To Shop program Wednesday, a feature that offers shoppers cash dividends based on the amount of money they spend on the site Although it is patterned after GoToWorld.com's other multi-level referral programs, the Get Paid To Shop program's underlying premise is not unique. In fact, the compan...

The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary and Commerce Committees are gathering their troops for a showdown on the House floor over competing bills to control the use of online databases and other information stored on the Internet Rep. Howard Coble's (R-North Carolina) "Collections of Information Antipiracy Act" is set to square off against Rep....

Continuing its transformation from a free e-mail company to a multi-faceted Internet service provider, Juno Online Services, Inc. (Nasdaq: JWEB) announced a new shopping service today that will allow other online retailers to sell products on its Web site The new Shop@Juno service will provide three new revenue streams, the company said. Juno will ...

Web portal Lycos, Inc. (Nasdaq: LCOS) is attempting to cash in on a lucrative e-tail niche by lending its name to a new computer and software retail site The partnership with Virtual Technology Corp. will target both business customers and consumers, and offer more than 60,000 hardware products, 100,000 software titles, 25,000 office products and t...

About three quarters of new car dealers in the United States have Web sites, and that number is expected to grow to nearly 90 percent during the next six months The National Automobile Dealers Association, which released the results of its online retailer survey yesterday, said the number of online auto dealerships has grown nearly 25 percent over ...

Allstate Corp. (NYSE: ALL), the nation's largest personal property insurance company, announced yesterday that it plans to cut back its call centers and non-sales staffs and replace some of those functions with direct-response call centers and the Internet Allstate will invest in new agent and claim technology, as well as new online marketing and a...

The U.S. Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce received a proposal from a broad coalition of anti-tax advocates yesterday that would lump general telecommunications taxes in with the Internet taxes that many politicians and consumer groups now oppose The E-Freedom Coalition, which consists of the Heritage Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise...

Former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale and a handful of Internet heavyweights have formed the Internet Policy Institute to examine Internet issues and the Web's impact on society The new "think tank" will kick off its efforts with a research project on the Internet's economic impact and an initiative designed to educate the presidential candidates on In...

British Telecommunications PLC, the United Kingdom's dominant telephone and Internet carrier, announced a deal today with San Francisco, California-based LookSmart,Inc., to launch Internet portal services in Europe and Asia Under the equal ownership joint venture, BT and LookSmart will create country-specific Web navigation sites based on search si...

In a new poll by @plan (NASDAQ: APLN), nearly two-thirds of people using the Internet say that online privacy should be market-regulated, rather than legislated The @plan poll shows that consumers on both sides of the political fence feel the Internet community should police itself. Nearly 60 percent of registered Democrats and more than 70 percent...

Only days after becoming the most recent and volatile example of a company abusing consumer information, RealNetworks, Inc. (Nasdaq: RNWK) announced new software and a new privacy initiative designed to rebuild some of the Web community's eroded trust The company's November 1st revelation that it had been secretly gathering and transmitting persona...

The debate over online privacy policies is taking shape in Washington today as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce host a day-long workshop on "online profiling," the practice of collecting consumer information based on their online activities and using that data to create targeted marketing efforts The Direct Marketing...

According to a new study by investment firm U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, the frenetic pace of online trading is slowing despite the fact that more people are participating Online brokerages added 1.1 million new accounts in the third quarter, bucking the cyclical slowdown that the trading business usually sees in that period. However, the overall nu...

The U.S. House of Representatives Commerce Committee convened yesterday to examine ways to crack down on mass junk mailers and prevent such so-called "spam" from thwarting efforts to build consumer confidence in electronic commerce As it considers an anti-spam bill introduced by Rep. Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico), the committee is consulting a hand...