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E-commerce and tech layoffs continue to mount, hitting a record number of 44,851 for the month of January, according to a report released by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The executive placement firm, which tracks daily job cuts in various sectors, found that layoffs in the combined e-commerc...

The recent service outages at Amazon.com, eBay and other e-commerce sites frustrated shoppers, lowered company revenues and raised media eyebrows. For e-commerce firms, downtimes are the worst of times. However, some companies are fighting back by questioning why the Net is being held to higher s...

Troubled toy e-tailer eToys officially moved to the dot-com critical list, announcing that approximately 70 percent of the company's 1,000 employees have been informed that their jobs are being eliminated. eToys said the layoffs were effective immediately for about 380 employees. The remaining nu...

Few people quibble over smart card functionality. The cards -- embedded with a memory chip that can store everything from bank balances to prescription information -- can be used for online shopping, network security access and even decoding paid-for digital content such as music and movies. On t...

A latecomer to the dot-com stage, discount e-tail site BlueLight.com is dancing as gracefully as it can through its first holiday season, sidestepping technical glitches caused by the seasonal shopping boom while displaying a variety of marketing moves that are drawing in more shoppers. A report ...

From corporate formation to business licensing to taxation, lawyers have a hand in nearly every aspect of a fledging e-commerce business. For many online entrepreneurs, working with attorneys is an enormous stumbling block. However, the more you learn to think and operate like a lawyer, the bette...

Online brokerage Ameritrade on Tuesday posted a loss of US$14 million for its fiscal fourth quarter ended September 28th, as revenues fell 33 percent to $92.2 million, compared with revenues of $138 million in the year-ago period. Ameritrade, like others in its industry, saw trading slow down sig...

On the Web, somewhere between the categories of financial information and pornography, is another key sector where people pay for access: online dating services. Rather than exchanging books or CDs for cash, these sites trade on the quite powerful desire of singles to connect.

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....

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 bu...

Gateway 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 ...

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 e...

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 f...

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 & Ch...

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. Even so, the high-tech desert has more than one venture capital oasis. In this art...

Amazon.com opened a travel store on its Web site Wednesday, featuring booking services and travel status information from travel site Expedia. "It makes perfect sense for Amazon to partner with one of the leading travel sites," Forrester Research analyst Henry Harteveldt told the E-Commerce Time...

To date, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has only gone after spam in cases in which deceptive advertising was being prosecuted. Unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) itself, regardless of its contents, has not been a target. Some experts think that should change. "The issue is crystal clea...

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, released Monday. "What we're seeing is the b...

At the beginning of the summer, billionaire Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal jumped into the Internet stock game with a king-size splash. On May 16th, the 43-year-old prince purchased a US$50 million stake in each of six companies: Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY), DoubleClick (Nasdaq: ...

The Pets.com Sock Puppet went one better than viral marketing. While viral marketing motivates every customer to refer friends and associates -- turning customers into salespeople, the Sock Puppet was both an advertising spokesperson and a product. Call the phenom a "spokesproduct" for short....