E-Commerce

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006 by 321-101. If it becomes law, the bill will open the cable television market to further competition, allowing phone companies such as Verizon to offer subscription video programming.

The question for marketers today is not whether to make online communities part of the marketing mix, it's how to tap them and what kind to create. Communispace is creating private online communities designed to uncover valuable research metrics to stimulate marketing efforts, while also serving as ...

Search giant Google may seek to alter terms of the agreement it made in order to conduct its Web search business in China. Google co-founder Sergey Brin suggested the move after admitting the company's decision to agree to censorship conflicts with its philosophy and famous "do no evil" motto. Brin...

Jason Papier started his own personal finance podcast before Apple's iTunes Music Store began peddling podcasts. Today, Papier's show, Pro Money Talk, is the number one rated personal finance podcast on iTunes. Pro Money Talk targets successful people with knowledge, tools and ideas designed to give...

Adding a new twist in the music industry's search for the right way to sell digital tunes and prevent piracy, EMI Music said Tuesday it has agreed to become the first label to make its catalog available on an ad-supported peer-to-peer network. EMI said it would make music from its catalog available ...

An alarming failure rate for new products has corporations looking to consumers to drive innovation in their markets, according to report released by Forrester Research. "In the consumer products industry, upwards of 85 percent of new products fail after a couple of years in the market," the report'...

The Internet has made it simple for consumers to shop and in some cases to find the best deal when making a purchase. Comparison shopping engines collect information, such as product pricing, feature set and shipment costs, from various vendors, and then present that data to users. While consumers t...

Can you discern a fake e-mail from a legitimate one? Most consumers can't, but erroneously think they can, according to a new study by Bank of America and National Cyber Security Alliance, a copy of which was provided to the E-Commerce Times. The survey showed that 87 percent of consumers polled sai...

Choosing an e-commerce software system from among the wide variety of vendor offerings available in today's marketplace can be tricky. Once you've settled on a particular application, application package or enterprise system, choosing the form and function that best suits your business needs and org...

In a possible prelude to widespread Internet video offerings, Yahoo has revamped its online video site, creating television-like channels and offering users the chance to publish their own video where it can potentially be seen by millions. Focused for now on enabling viral video to be widely seen, ...

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the search company has no plans to develop its own browser, squelching long-simmering rumors that it would develop an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer but stopping short of ruling it out entirely. Speaking during a Webcast update with analysts on Wednesday, S...

E-commerce is alive and well. Holiday shopping sales were through the virtual roof last season and analysts predict continued growth in the online channel in 2006. There's only one problem: Security threats seem to be rising almost as quickly as e-shopping revenues. From phishing to pharming to hack...

Microsoft is considering making a bid to buy eBay, according to a published report, a move that could dramatically alter an e-commerce, Web portal and search space already in a state of flux. The New York Post was the first to report that Microsoft had held talks about a possible merger but that ant...

Consumers are saying that mobile music services are exceptionally overpriced -- at least 85 percent higher than they actually feel comfortable paying. A new research report by Strategy Analytics, entitled, "Mobile Music USA: Sprint Service Preferred to VCast But Price Premiums Too High on Both," ind...

Advertisers have been skeptical for years about the pay-per-click online marketing model. Finally, there may be a model that advertisers like -- one that is decidedly offline, however. It's called pay-per-call. Consumers are starting to get used to the technology as a way to obtain answers to questi...