Trends

The U.S. House Intelligence Committee recently heard expert testimony on the growing threat posed by "deepfakes" -- altered videos and other artificial intelligence-generated false information -- and what it could mean for the 2020 general elections, as well as the country's national security overal...

The ACLU has released documents showing the NSA improperly collected Americans' call and text logs in 2017 and 2018. The unauthorized collections occurred just four months after the agency announced it was deleting more than 620 million call detail records acquired since 2015 under Title V of the Fo...

The most successful brands today are those that have created engaged audiences and an exceptional customer experience. They have managed to humanize the most unsentimental of buying processes, and somehow made it look easy. Providing a world class customer experience is so profitable that Gartner ha...

A Democrat and a Republican have filed a U.S. Senate bill to require companies to report to financial regulators and to the public what consumer data they collect and how they leverage it for profit. "When a big tech company says its product is free, consumers are the ones being sold," said Sen. Jos...

E-commerce by its nature involves a lot of packaging and shipping, and there are ways to make these processes more sustainable. The benefits might well be worth the effort. "E-commerce won't stop growing anytime soon," said Mark Bastiaanssen, CEO of Shiptimize. "Many models are currently being teste...

The T-Mobile-Sprint merger has been dragging on for quite a long time, but it finally may be in the home stretch. To get the deal approved, Sprint and T-Mobile might have to sell off some of their wireless assets, and many were surprised by Dish Network's interest. What would this mean for the merge...

Facebook's plans to mint its own digital coin next year will test the company's consumer credibility. After being savaged for months for its cavalier attitude toward users' privacy, the social network will be asking those same users to trust its new cryptocurrency. The currency, called "Libra," will...

The future is headless. As the world of commerce continues to mature, today's most successful retailers have one thing in common: They're getting better and better at meeting their customers whenever, wherever, and however they want to shop. Whether they're in a brick-and-mortar store, or using a de...

A personalized shopping experience gives e-commerce sites an edge, and businesses have been seeking new ways to make their customers feel welcome. "Every business should make their customers feel like they are the most important customer in the world," said Rob Maille, head of strategy and customer ...

It's easy to understand why so many retail organizations have moved their infrastructure to the cloud. Cloud-based architecture allows provisioning nearly infinite compute instances on-demand in minutes. There is no need for upfront licensing or infrastructure costs, meaning a faster ROI can usually...

I sometimes think personalization is the best thing that happened to humankind in terms of marketing. As a consumer, I love getting suggestions on what to buy, especially when it's exactly what I need. Sometimes I feel as though I'm under constant surveillance, however, so I turn on my ad blockers, ...

Recent events have led to many people learning about a long-understood rhetorical tactic called "Gish galloping." Named after creationist Duane Gish, it is the technique of confronting an opponent with a rapid-fire series of arguments -- including half-truths, misrepresentations and outright lies. C...

More than half the world's population -- 3.8 billion people -- have access to the Internet and that may not be a good thing, at least for business, according to digital savant Mary Meeker's Internet Trends 2019 report. Global Internet user growth has slowed to 6 percent year over year, down from 7 p...

While trade disputes between countries are nothing new and seldom are remembered, the ongoing one between China and the United States may change the course of the electronics industry going forward. In the beginning of the dispute proposed tariffs excluded electronics for the most part. The U.S. e...