E-Commerce

Social media advertising revenues will double by 2016, and native ads -- such as sponsored stories on Facebook and promoted tweets on Twitter -- will be its fastest-growing segment, according to a forecast from BIA/Kelsey. The channel will grow from $4.6 billion in 2012 to $9.2 billion in 2016, pred...

Google is stepping up its game in the battle for cloud supremacy by slashing prices and beefing up the services it offers with Compute Engine. The Infrastructure as a Service product was first announced at Google's I/O show in June and is currently available in a preview version. Google hasn't set a...

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 $1.5 billion for the day, making Cyber Monday 2012 the biggest online shopping day in history, comScore projects. Including high online sales ...

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 K...

Google is adding its voice to a chorus of opposition to a proposal to update the International Telecommunication Union treaty in a way that could give governments more power to restrict the flow of information online. Next week, members of the ITU -- the UN organization that oversees international c...

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 ...

I have been taking a closer look at two of the brand-new technologies that are really shaking up the computer world. One is Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system with all those funky tiles. The other is the Lenovo Yoga 13 laptop. The changes are many. Some will think all this change is good, others...

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-cal...

How can classic retail, the brick-and-mortar physical stores dotting our neighborhoods, compete with the likes of Amazon and Zappos? Can real-world retail survive e-commerce? And if it can, what's the trick? How do retailers intend to meet this growing threat? We're now seeing something insidious t...

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...

United Airlines experienced a major computer problem this week, and the news no doubt sent shudders down the spines of would-be Thanksgiving holiday travelers everywhere. The glitch -- reportedly in its dispatch system -- led to the delay of a number of flights. United found and corrected the error,...

Amazon began shipping its 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD on Thursday, ahead of its original planned schedule. The specs and price point of the device are interesting enough that it will certainly make some inroads in the tablet market: Among other features, it sports a front-facing HD camera, 16-GB or 32-G...

Holiday shopping this year will take place on multiple channels, with many shoppers doing research and buying online or on mobile devices. That's according to Deloitte's 2012 Annual Holiday Survey, which found that shoppers who use multiple channels plan to spend more money than retail shoppers. Omn...

Last week, AT&T held a meeting for investment analysts. It will increase capital spending by about 16 percent to $22 billion a year over the next three years to upgrade its wireless and wireline networks. This would be a perfect advertising campaign. AT&T should consider creating an entire m...

Last week, AT&T held a meeting for investment analysts. It will increase capital spending by about 16 percent to $22 billion a year over the next three years to upgrade its wireless and wireline networks. This would be a perfect advertising campaign. AT&T should consider creating an entire m...