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Layoffs. Consolidations. Tumbling stock prices. When will the madness end? According to industry analysts, the dot-com shakeout is going to get much worse before it gets better -- and it won't be getting better anytime soon. More shutdowns and layoffs lie in wait for the online world. "If you lo...

Internet auctioneer eBay will be looking for more than the usual exposure when it combines with its real world auction arm, Butterfields, to auction a series of five nude Marilyn Monroe photographs online in March. Gartner Group analyst Robert Labatt told the E-Commerce Times that the Monroe auc...

Illustrating the extent of evolution that online business is facing, a report released Wednesday by IDC found that the number of private corporate Web portals might eventually surpass the number accessible by the public via the Internet. "There are only so many portals that are going to make it ...

In October, about six months into the dot-com stock downturn, the E-Commerce Times asked industry analysts for their prognosis of several of e-commerce's most prominent stocks. The stocks had fallen so low, we could not help asking when they would rebound. Analysts responded that prices in the e...

Raising questions about the Internet's ability to sell tickets to major international events, technical problems on the official site of soccer's 2002 World Cup have left fans in the co-host countries of Japan and Korea unable to order tickets online for the championship of the world's most popu...

The news of labor strife at Amazon.com, Webvan and Etown has industry observers asking this question: Are unions responsible for the struggles of online businesses, or do e-tailers only have themselves to blame for the dot-com union movement? Because investors are usually sitting on the fence abou...

Brick-and-click sellers dominated the online holiday season in the UK, according to a new study released this week by Nielsen//NetRatings. "Clicks-and-mortar retailers were able to start their holiday preparations and marketing earlier and with higher visibility than their pure play competitors. T...

U.S. lawmakers are considering the launch of a federally funded e-commerce pilot program designed to help small and mid-sized manufacturers take their businesses online. The Electronic Commerce Enhancement Act, if passed, will require the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to ...

When you examine the state of e-commerce today, one thing is abundantly clear: traditional brick-and-mortars are making the greatest inroads online. According to research firm Media Metrix, six of the top 10 gaining retail sites for the holiday shopping season were traditional offline brands suc...

In response to several lengthy January outages, online auction pacesetter eBay announced Thursday that it is increasing the scope of the fee credits it offers customers in the event of a site crash. With eBay users reeling from several unpopular policy changes and major outages in 2001, the new ...

Are e-tailers at the mercy of a market that dramatically overreacts to economic news? Does the Nasdaq lead to inflated e-commerce pessimism or optimism? Most importantly, are e-tailers straying from their business models to appease the sensitivities of their investors? Bear Stearns analyst Jeff ...

Nominations for the Oscars -- the film industry's most glamorous honor -- are big business. The Internet would seem to be the perfect place to generate Oscar ammunition while keeping marketing costs down. Guess again. "If they're doing anything in particular [on the Net] for Oscar buzz, I don't...

The news this week that MVP.com is closing its site and selling the remaining assets to rival Sportsline.com came as no surprise to those familiar with the rash of consolidations sweeping through the online sporting goods arena. With Sportsline.com, Quokka Sports, Global Sports and a handful of o...

Take a look around Dot-Com Island. There isn’t an e-tail site still alive that hasn’t been affected by the recent shakeout to some degree. However, some of the Web merchants are more likely to survive than others. The defining characteristics of those companies vary slightly, but one thi...

With the latest round of dot-com layoffs and the current assault on the viability of Net advertising, e-business is undergoing a genuine public relations nightmare. But is the recent bad rap justified? Or is e-commerce simply an easy target during uncertain economic times? Michele Pelino, direc...

Despite a fourth-quarter 2000 loss that came in just ahead of Wall Street expectations, Amazon.com announced Tuesday that it is laying off 1,300 workers -- 15 percent of its total staff -- and closing a distribution center in McDonough, Georgia and a customer service center in Seattle, Washington. ...

How can dot-coms continue to lure the nation's top senior executives without the continued promises of millions in stock option payoffs? And even more importantly, how can they keep the executives they already have? The answer may surprise you. "You would assume that because so many dot-coms are lo...

The ability to use an Internet auction to solicit sealed electricity contract bids played a crucial role in helping bring some order to California's protracted energy crisis, state officials told the E-Commerce Times. "If you waited for the normal paper process, it would have taken much longer and ...

Seventy-five percent of children are willing to disclose private family information online in exchange for goods and services, according to a new report released by eMarketer. "Children and teens were very casual about revealing family information," eMarketer analyst Rob Janes told the E-Commerce...

Following one of the hottest trends in e-commerce, Internet grocer Webvan.com announced Monday it had joined forces with another e-tail site, in this case Petsmart.com, to open a pet store on the Webvan site. However, while other online partnerships have generated mutual benefits, there is some dou...