E-Commerce

At one point in the U.S.'s development, there were 1,400 or so railroads. Today, there are three major lines. Admittedly it is a leap -- but not a big one -- for Jeff Bates, cofounder of Slashdot, to apply that history to what is happening on the Internet today. "If the Internet has taught us anythi...

E-tailers are taking a new look at personalization these days as they hunt for more ways to cross-sell, upsell and encourage repeat business. E-commerce solutions providers and research firms are advocating the integration of personalization into online strategies as one way companies can optimize c...

Many e-commerce companies have boosted their fortunes by expanding their markets beyond the United States. Avail Intelligence is hoping to help such merchants boost profits and sales by doing the reverse. The move comes as e-commerce growth begins to slow, a function of the sheer size of the market ...

Microsoft has a new weapon in its advertising arsenal. The software giant has acquired Navic Networks, an interactive television ad developer that targets specific audiences with its service. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Navic uses audience measuring data to determine which broadcast commer...

In a reminder that investors remain hungry for chances to back social networking firms, LinkedIn announced it has closed a fourth round of funding worth $53 million. The investment places a valuation of "slightly over $1 billion" on the firm, which bills itself as a professional and business-focused...

Tens of thousands of fledgling job seekers have spent a great deal of time, effort and money devising video resumes, a variation on the decades-old task of letting a potential employer know a little something about you. However, while the new approach has garnered some sizzle, it lacks substance. "V...

Contextual targeting is widely used in both the offline and online advertising worlds. However, the wild-card nature of behavioral targeting could revolutionize how marketers interact with their target audience in an online world. Behavioral targeting is based on a proven assumption that the Web pag...

The world's largest online auction house, eBay, has announced plans to let third-party developers integrate applications directly onto eBay by giving their applications more direct access to the site's 700,000 professional sellers. The company revealed the details at its seventh annual eBay Develope...

The long-awaited merger of XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio may be on the cusp of winning approval, with the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission now saying he is on board with letting it go forward. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin will propose allowing the merger to proceed, but...

Talks have officially broken down between Yahoo and Microsoft over a potential merger. Instead, Yahoo has struck a partnership to have Google handle some of its search advertising sales. The two firms met on June 8 at a private airport in Silicon Valley, and Microsoft representatives made it clear t...

Today's savvy consumers want products from a business they can trust, learn from, relate to and "be friends" with. The two most popular social networking sites on the Internet -- MySpace and Facebook -- are potential springboards for friendly lead generation. These sites give online business owners ...

The variety of financial, business and operational risks inherent in the highly competitive global market, as well as the large and continually growing number of cross-industry mandates, governmental regulations and industry-specific regulatory guidelines have significantly impacted how organization...

Virtually no one objects to the concept of adopting laws and policies to stem the tide of child pornography proliferating on the Internet. So, the announcement on Tuesday that Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Sprint Nextel have agreed to block access to Web sites that harbor such content was uniformly...

Microsoft has fired off a slew of federal lawsuits -- 21, to be exact -- against resellers in 14 states. In the suits, Microsoft claimed the resellers are engaging in the sale of pirated software. Some of the lawsuits include eight possible repeat offenders that may not have learned their lessons th...

All over the world, with so many different meanings and perceptions of the word "branding," it appears that it has lost its true meaning; the terminology is more like a walk through a museum with a glorious past. Loose words like "economy" carry different meanings that speak differently to different...