Spotlight Features

Since starting a massive pop-up and pop-under advertising campaign early this year that brings Web traffic to its site automatically, e-tailer X10.com has gone from a relatively unknown seller of home networking and security devices to a leader in the quest for Internet clicks. However, analys...

Priceline.com has been working hard to improve its customer service and find the right product mix, but analysts still disagree about whether the "name-your-own-price" e-tailer has a business model that will succeed. "I don't believe Priceline has a long-term business model," Jupiter Media Metrix...

In a world where Internet-only players are flying off the screen at an alarming pace, Amazon.com is likely to succeed where other pure-plays have failed, analysts from Jupiter Media Metrix told the E-Commerce Times. The e-tail giant itself said this week that it is on track to deliver pro forma ...

Despite interest in the subject dropping as fast as the Nasdaq and word that some universities are already planning to abandon their newly formed digital business divisions, few people are willing to write off e-commerce education just yet. In fact, in a campus trend that reflects what is happen...

One year ago, Goldman Sachs released a report highlighting 10 well-known e-tailers that were facing a cash crunch and likely to fail within a year, unless they got an infusion of funding or a new business model. As it turns out, Goldman Sachs was half right with its dot-com "Death Watch," which ...

Covisint, the business-to-business (B2B) automotive e-marketplace backed by the major car companies, is taking longer than expected to ramp up -- and experts agree that the delays could mean that Covisint will not be the driving force it had hoped to be. Covisint is moving "slower than they shoul...

Despite the heavy losses realized by venture capital firms in the dot-com shakeout, analysts say that there is actually a great deal of capital available in the VC market for both startup and later-stage funding. However, even with a renewed spark of optimism in the e-business sector, many obser...

Is e-commerce finally and unquestionably here to stay? With rejuvenated stocks, high-profile strategic alliances, television advertisements, and an overall sense of acceptance from consumers and the business community, the arrows point in that direction. By small steps and not the big, noisy le...

E-shoppers remain a forgiving lot when it comes to e-tail outages, according to analysts, if those interludes are not too frequent. "As long as outages are not consistent and persistent, e-tailers should be okay," Forrester Research analyst Christopher Kelley told the E-Commerce Times. Kelley ad...

Because software piracy and online fraud can cost companies millions in profits and lost goodwill -- and because government agencies do not have the resources to keep pace with cybercriminals -- many high-tech companies have formed their own investigative units to catch Internet con artists. Fo...

As dot-com executives continue playing their version of musical chairs, the question many investors are asking now is: what happens when the music stops? Will these "new leaders" breathe new life into stagnant e-commerce companies, or will they simply be the new faces of failure? "I think it wi...

Pick up virtually any major media publication covering the dot-com shakeout of the past year and you're likely to come across a slight variation on the following theme: "the New Economy was a bust." But was the New Economy really a complete hoax? Many economists actually consider e-commerce to be...

Few things are more annoying than opening your inbox and finding dozens of solicitations for credit cards, weight loss products and other goods and services. Unfortunately, no national law exists outlawing or regulating spam. Instead, spam is regulated by "a patchwork of state laws of varying ...

While there might be more hand-wringing over dot-com layoffs than is truly warranted, e-commerce watchers have as much right to be concerned about recent job-cut trends as anyone in other segments of the high-tech sector. According to John Challenger, chief executive officer of job placement firm C...

What's in a name? Plenty, when it's an online name. At least that's been the conventional wisdom. But with many of the best-known e-commerce brand names -- from Pets.com to eToys and Furniture.com -- now resting in peace, and without the piles of money needed to fuel the type of name-building ...