Spotlight Features

With tax rebate checks from the U.S. government beginning to arrive in consumer mailboxes, some e-tailers are hoping the extra cash will make its way to their bottom lines. According to many industry experts, however, online businesses should not head for the bank quite yet. Due to the nominal a...

The growing use of "pro forma" financial results -- that is, when companies report income or loss figures excluding a host of supposedly "one-time" charges -- is drawing attention from critics who say companies may be publishing pro forma earnings to make quarterly earnings reports look better th...

Analysts agree that Internet and technology investment is a virtual desert these days. According to figures released by Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association, capital investments fell in the second quarter, cutting overall spending by 61 percent in the past year. The quest...

Securities analysts, once regarded as independent authorities on the value of publicly traded companies, are finding their status diminished amid investor lawsuits and reports of conflicts of interest, particularly regarding cases involving high-tech stocks. Merrill Lynch's recent $400,000 settle...

In mid-April, two days after Yahoo! announced plans to lay off 12 percent of its workforce in the face of a prolonged advertising slump, fellow portal iWon.com gave an Atlanta, Georgia man a US$10 million prize. While Yahoo! has given up only a tiny portion of its dominant market share to iWon so f...

Last week, the Internet Advertising Bureau released several studies backing up the argument that when it comes to online advertising, bigger is better. But is it that simple? Analysts say that while the evidence is mounting that larger ads get results, there are still many unanswered questions, ...

With the idea of consumers actually buying cars from pure-play Internet companies all but dead, analysts say that real-world car dealers should be accelerating their use of online technology to get more shoppers into their showrooms. Once-promising online car operations have now either merged or...

Despite the dominance of major players in the e-tail world, small, narrowly focused shopping sites still have a place in cyberspace, according to analysts. "[Niche sites] are not going to compete against Amazon, but they can stay in business," Forrester Research analyst Christopher Kelley told th...

Remember when e-commerce used to be about the technology? Never mind profitability ratios or shakeouts. In the beginning, it was all about the high-tech novelty of shopping online, the excitement of the "never before." Isn't that why we started paying attention in the first place? But the first...

There's a case brewing in Louisiana that may blow the lid off virtual casinos everywhere. A U.S. appeals court faces the question of whether a trial court in Louisiana was correct when it ruled in February that the 1961 Wire Act does not apply to all forms of Internet gambling, but only sports wage...

Today's e-commerce industry could not have been built without the interconnecting threads of partnerships, affiliate programs, marketing deals and other alliances. But the Web remains vulnerable in spots. eBay partnered with Eppraisals.com, only to see that site go under two months later. Investm...

In Part 1 of a two-part series, the E-Commerce Times began to dispel the seven deadly myths of B2B e-commerce. Analysts told us that, contrary to what many people think, B2B is less about making money than making business connections, and that success in B2C e-commerce might not translate into su...

Despite the importance business-to-business (B2B) dealings have in the e-commerce picture, several myths and misperceptions still exist, according to analysts. In a two-part series, the E-Commerce Times dispels the seven deadly myths of B2B. Myth #1: B2B is about the money. In fact, B2B is not ab...

In e-commerce today, one company is clearly the king of the online auction hill. And according to experts, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for rivals to stage a coup d'eBay. Rosalinda Baldwin, editor of The Auction Guild, told the E-Commerce Times that eBay could face challenges from ot...

At Amazon.com, the link to the privacy policy is at the bottom of the home page, in small print. At Buy.com, the policy measures 10 printed pages and 5,200 words in length. To read the full policy at Outpost.com, visitors have to click out and back into the policy page at least twice. Though the pu...