Articles by Elizabeth Blakey

From corporate formation to business licensing to taxation, lawyers have a hand in nearly every aspect of a fledging e-commerce business. A small businessperson has to wear many hats and unfortunately, one of those is being a client to a lawyer or bunch of lawyers.

U.S. businesses are more concerned about the impact that online security problems have on consumer confidence and trust in e-business, than about suffering an actual financial loss due to a security breach, according to a study released Wednesday by Internet measurement firm Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI) Just over 12 percent of U.S. companies...

E-tail site Shopping.com will cease to exist as a standalone site on the AltaVista network because e-commerce shopping is "no longer part of [Alta Vista's] focus," AltaVista spokesperson David Emmanuel told the E-Commerce Times on Monday. "We are focusing on search functions for consumers and businesses," Emmanuel said. "As you can see from our si...

Gateway (NYSE: GTW) said Thursday that its third-quarter loss will be far worse than earlier Wall Street's expectations and blamed the shortfall in part on a drop in demand following the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States. The No. 4 computer maker also said it would take a charge of $100 million to $130 million in Q3, in additio...

Travelocity.com (Nasdaq: TVLY) said Friday that it would cut 10 percent of its non-customer-service workforce and institute a hiring freeze, as well as reduce its discretionary expenditures. "Reductions in staff are difficult in any situation, and particularly difficult in this one because our entire team has rallied to support our customers durin...

Despite promises to the contrary and a number of state laws making it unlawful to send unsolicited, commercial e-mail, the California Attorney General and the California Department of Consumer Affairs (DOCA), including its newly formed Office of Privacy Protection, appear to have done little to fight the crush of spam that is burdening businesses in the state...

Dot-com job cuts fell to 2,986 in September, the lowest level since July 2000 -- the month that marked the beginning of the dot-com job-cutting spree that has claimed more than 125,000 jobs in 15 months -- according to a report released Monday by executive placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas (CGC) September job cuts decreased 39 percent fro...

At mid-year, in terms of dollars and number of deals made, venture capital funding for U.S. investments was less than half of what it was in 2000, according to VentureWire, which tracks private equity investment. Moreover, the return on investment for the first quarter of 2001 showed nearly a 9 percent loss -- a figure not likely to entice a lot o...

Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) opened a travel store on its Web site Wednesday, featuring booking services and travel status information from travel site Expedia (Nasdaq: EXPE) The store also offers discounted travel through Expedia rival Hotwire and cruise vacations through National Leisure Group's The Vacation Store.

When spam is mentioned, most business owners immediately get a bad taste in their mouths. Spam costs companies time and money, from employees sifting legitimate e-mail from junk, to the technical and legal procedures used to fight spammers But to date, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has only gone after spam in cases in which deceptive adve...

Sites offering contests and promotional offers, financial management tools and multi-state lottery information were the newcomers to the Internet's Top 50 Web sites, according to the latest online audience measurement report from Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI), released Monday "What we're seeing is the bigger, traditional firms using the Inter...

Analysts agree that Internet and technology investment is a virtual desert these days. Although editor Ken Andersen of VentureWire recently pointed out that the VC industry overall is on track to tally approximately 3,200 deals and US$35 billion in the United States alone this year, according to figures released by Venture Economics and the Nation...

Dot-com firms announced 8,697 job cuts in July, the lowest monthly figure since October 2000 when 5,677 jobs were lost, according to a report released Friday by executive search firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas (CGC). "I think the decline suggests that we are in the latter phase of the shakeout," CGC chief executive officer John A. Challenger tol...

Membership targets for Project ACTION -- a program through which consumers and businesses would initiate payments to a seller via their own financial institutions, rather than authorizing the seller to debit their accounts -- have been reached, the Electronic Payments Association announced Tuesday According to the not-for-profit association, also k...

According to published reports, a federal court in New York ruled on Friday that a state law prohibiting mail-order, Internet and telephone sales of cigarettes is unconstitutional because it places an undue burden on interstate commerce. The permanent order to halt enforcement of the law came after a five-day trial that concluded April 30th. Accor...

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 was based on the securities firm's analysis of the ca...

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 observers agree that scars from failed e-commerce investme...

The opening night showing of "Startup.com" in Los Angeles on May 18th was full of dot-com workers who were probably looking for a chance to laugh in the mirror. Instead, they got socked with raw footage of incompetent people mistreating one another while wasting a lot of investor money. A whole lot of investor money.

The venture capitalists who got blindsided when the dot-com bubble burst lost a whole lot of money -- real money, to be sure -- from staggering losses at companies such as Priceline and Webvan, to complete wipeouts like eToys and Pets.com. The question is, who were VC's biggest losers -- the companies and individuals who poured dollars into e-comm...

Despite years of success at the business of matchmaking, real-world dating services are in a losing battle with the Web for a couple of reasons. Well, actually three reasons. Wait, make that four or five or six reasons The bottom line is that offline dating services simply cannot compete with what's being offered by their Internet-based competitors...