Marketing

Since its conception in 1996, Google's search engine has played a key role in redefining not only the role of the Internet, but also the accessibility of the Internet to the end-user. Its unofficial slogan is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Google...

Blogs and online review sites have proliferated in recent years, as ostensibly "with-it" influencers offer "independent" reviews, endorsements and testimonials that increasingly drive consumer traffic to a wide variety of product sellers. However, as consumers are learning with great disappointment,...

The products that fueled first-generation e-commerce -- books, software and music, to name a few -- are all simple to understand items that can be easily shipped to consumers. Today, we are at the outset of a second wave of online growth, as consumers push beyond these simple transactions to researc...

Microsoft has initiated a civil lawsuit in the Western District of Seattle seeking $750,000 in damages from three individuals in Vancouver, British Columbia, for committing click fraud. The three alleged fraudsters are two brothers and a mother -- Eric Lam, Gordon Lam and Melanie Suen -- who, accord...

In the midst of the U.S. economic crisis, cautious spending and downsizing have left the retail industry in dire straits. The Commerce department recently reported that retail sales continued to fall in March -- down 1.1 percent from February's sales figures. March 2009 saw a 9 percent decline compa...

Social marketing offers a new way to interact with consumers, but aside from being another channel, it requires a different mindset to achieve results. This is Web 2.0, where the consumer is in charge of the message and will angrily resist big brand pressure and broadcast marketing. Content needs to...

ICANN, the Internet naming authority, is up against the wall. It may simply drop its greatest revolutionary idea of offering a brand new type of designer domain name to accommodate the cyberrealities of the widely expanded Internet of tomorrow. This new proposed platform would surely revolutionize m...

Fresh off its attempt to sideswipe Apple with its "Laptop Hunters" ad campaign, Microsoft is apparently now gunning for Google with its upcoming search engine, Bing. Announcing Bing on Thursday, Microsoft promised a worldwide launch by June 3 and pointed readers to a Web site where the service would...

There are more signs that the unveiling of Microsoft's revamped Live Search -- codenamed "Kumo" during its development phase -- is at hand. It's been widely speculated that Steve Ballmer will introduce it this week at the Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference. Rumors about the launc...

After weeks of striking a conciliatory and cooperative tone, Craigslist is going on the offensive in the controversy over its erotic services section. Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster filed a complaint in a federal court in South Carolina, seeking declaratory relief and a restraining order against the ...

Scribd.com, the online document-sharing site, plunged into the world of e-commerce Monday with a store designed to help both established publishers and independent authors make sales. The Scribd Store allows content creators to set prices and digital rights for their works and follows closely on arr...

Everyone talks about building an online community that drives "viral" marketing -- but how exactly do you accomplish that? Viral marketing is not about setting up a forum and hoping people will come. It's not about launching the 3,009th Facebook application that will sink quickly into obscurity. It'...

Overnight, things suddenly changed. The overexposure of a slew of corporate credibility and governance crises is thumping the global populace into sheer panic -- like Richter scales gone wild -- while shattering thousands of mega corporate name brands worldwide. The good and sober companies of the...

In an abrupt about face, Craigslist has announced it will take down its "erotic services" ad category. In its place will be a new adult services section that will be screened by Craigslist staff before publication, according to a statement made by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who...

Google, which has never been one to show much regard for Microsoft, could well be feeling sympathetic toward Redmond now that it finds itself under the antitrust gun. Microsoft has been beleaguered by antitrust investigations in the U.S. and Europe for decades. To be sure, Microsoft brought much o...