Search

The Internet was supposed to allow us to have a world without borders. A world in which a guy in New Jersey could buy tea from London and sweaters from Switzerland with a few simple keystrokes. Unfortunately, the borderless nature of the World Wide Web -- arguably the attribute that makes it s...

Competition among online travel companies is a mutual back-scratching model that other industries would do well to watch. It's as if the various players are indirectly working together to create a solid playing field that cannot be toppled. Once in place, the field will likely be the site of som...

Although people can argue over how old the Internet is, if you say 1994 was the birth year, the Web is 7 years old. The age that everyone agrees is the Age of Reason. When growing an emerging industry like e-commerce, some weeks are better than others. Yet the past few days have been really good...

The annual uproar among online consumers who try to return merchandise bought via the Internet generally occurs around the Christmas holidays, but some e-tailers make it tough on buyers all year long. Wading through the often hard-to-find return policies can be a nightmare. The polices are usua...

For those who think Koogle, Singh, Rubenstein and Mallet is a law firm, Yahoo! wants you to know otherwise. This mighty quartet of international Internet business minds once helmed one of the most powerful new economy companies in the world. Now, all but one, chief operating officer Mallett, h...

Is it just me or is Amazon chief Jeff Bezos' wide-eyed, Andy Kaufman-like, perpetual grin starting to wear a little thin? What once was the quirky face of the revolutionary potential of electronic commerce is now simply an eerie plastered expression of who knows what. I have a feeling behind t...

Last week, online delivery service Kozmo locked up its bikes, cashed in its dreams and became another footnote in the work-in-progress version of electronic commerce history. Kozmo's ticket was punched not long after the demise of NBCi.com, the Internet arm of NBC Television. So, with dot-coms ...

Last week, online delivery service Kozmo locked up its bikes, cashed in its dreams and became another footnote in the work-in-progress version of electronic commerce history. Kozmo's ticket was punched not long after the demise of NBCi.com, the Internet arm of NBC Television. So, with dot-coms ...

Last week, online delivery service Kozmo locked up its bikes, cashed in its dreams and became another footnote in the work-in-progress version of electronic commerce history. Kozmo's ticket was punched not long after the demise of NBCi.com, the Internet arm of NBC Television. So, with dot-coms ...

Change is in the air, and that is good news for e-commerce. Internet-based selling is about to start Act II. You remember Act I -- the era when e-tailers were going to change the world? After the curtain came down on Act I, assorted naysayers hobnobbed smugly about the foolhardiness of trying...

News stories about dot-com layoffs and closures have so frequently stormed the business pages that many have become numb to the downside of e-commerce -- and have even stopped thinking about what to do about the decline. However, as the shakeout dust begins to settle, it is time to ask why why...

Are Americans ready to exchange "I dos" or pay their last respects to loved ones via the Internet? Probably not, but an increasing number of computer users are finding their way to the Web to plan weddings and funerals. If it sounds too gimmicky, consider the possible impact these two industri...

As the New Economy fights its way into mainstream American commerce, minority-owned businesses are experiencing a struggle similar to the one they have endured offline for years. It's an old story in a new setting: a scenario with which Americans are all too familiar. The potential cultural dang...

Once again, e-commerce is getting just a bit too comfortable with itself. Just when the dot-com shakeup seems to be leveling off, surviving companies are neglecting one of the key issues that could prove to be their undoing: children's privacy. Research has confirmed that children do not discri...

If you blinked last month, you might have missed a small item in the news about venerable entertainment trade publication "Variety." The company's Web site, Variety.com has started charging users for content. Surprised? Why? Because suddenly words are not free on the Internet any longer? Get u...

What do comedians like George Carlin know that more serious e-tailers don't seem to grasp? Maybe they understand that business and humor can go hand in hand -- that the way to a consumer's bank account is directly through the funny bone. In fact, if the debut of Laugh.com is any measure of the ...

Pundits, powerhouses and assorted talking heads were already predicting the demise of retail e-commerce before the current economic downturn. Now, with the conventional wisdom suggesting more doom and gloom, the word on the street -- yes, that Street -- is that e-commerce was great fun, but it...

Playboy's flashy new online casino will be launched in Great Britain, and due to the unreasonably stringent gaming laws in the U.S., safeguards will be put in place to prevent any bets from being accepted from this side of the pond. That's unfortunate, since the online gambling market is curre...

Amid the unfortunate prognostications about the fate of e-commerce sites, smart marketers are setting their sites on capturing untapped markets. So what about the up-and-coming market, the one that promises to be more tech-savvy and computer literate than ever before? What about kids?

After surviving the dot-com shakeout and now a slowing economy, many e-tailers are too distracted to remember one of the essentials of running a smart business: Listen to the customer. Why is it that online merchants can't seem to hear what their current and potential customers are telling them...