Beth Cox

The grim layoff news expected from Detroit this week is a clear indication of just how difficult the recession has made things for the automakers. But if job cuts aren’t enough, perhaps high tech could help boost sales and improve the Motor City’s bottom line. Certainly Microsoft is making a play in that direction, teaming […]

The always-competitive online travel business was one of the first e-commerce areas to demonstrate that success could be had using the power of the Internet. And now it’s more competitive than ever, as witness a proliferation of ads such as those from discount travel site Hotwire and the pop-unders being used by airline consortium site […]

LendingTree Inc., which this week signed contracts with five lenders that will integrate its Lend-X Automatic Decision Engine into their loan processing software, reaffirmed its financial guidance, calling for a fourth-quarter loss but first-quarter 2002 EBITDA profitability. The Charlotte, N.C.-based online loan operation said that it expects a cash operating loss of $2.5 million, or […]

1-800-Flowers.com, which said a week ago that its fiscal second quarter earnings will be in line with analysts’ estimates of 2 to 3 cents per share, today announced a distribution of about five million shares of stock held by Benchmark Capital. The addition of the shares into the marketplace sent the stock down $2.08 in […]

Portal company Yahoo! Inc. is hoping to take home some gold of its own from a newly signed deal with the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) that includes linking to one of the official U.S. Olympic Team stores. The deal, signed just 31 days before the Winter Games begin, usolympicteam.com, also means that Yahoo! will offer […]

Homestore.com Inc. stock plummeted today as trading resumed after its top exec quit and the troubled company named a new chairman, chief executive and chief financial officer, as well as a new COO. The Nasdaq Stock Market approved a 12:30 p.m. resumption of trading in HomeStore.com stock, which last traded at $3.60 in December. The […]

If traffic were sales, e-commerce merchants had plenty of reasons to smile this holiday season as one measurement firm reported today that the number of visitors to shopping sites was up 50 percent from 2000 and 95 percent from 1999. New York City-based Jupiter Media Metrix said that on average, 51.3 million unique visitors went […]

As the online auto sales sites jockey for position in a market that has not been kind to anyone selling cars and trucks, informative content increasingly seems to be a sine qua non if you want to be an Internet player in this game. For proof, just look at recent announcements by MSN Carpoint — […]

Travelocity.com Inc. said its fourth quarter revenues are expected to come in at $68 million, about 9 percent lower than previous guidance, but analysts at Goldman, Sachs were relatively sanguine about it. The online travel operation said that despite the reduced revenues, “pro forma earnings per share are expected to be within the guidance given […]

Both pure-play Internet retailers and brick-and-mortar merchants with online operations struggled to keep up with customer service e-mails this holiday season, according to data from an industry tracking firm. In fact, only 30 percent of all retailers tracked resolved basic customer service requests online within six hours, according to December figures from the Jupiter Media […]

Amazon.com was the No. 1 shopping destination on the Internet in November, hands down. No. 2 was Internet portal Yahoo!, followed closely by eBay, according to Nielsen//NetRatings figures. The Web measurement firm says that Amazon scored a unique-visitor audience of 31.4 million people for the month, while Yahoo! Shopping and eBay scored 27 million and […]

Online brokerage and financial holding company E*Trade Group Inc. enhanced its customer service operation for the new year, rolling out a new Web-based interactive channel called Service Now. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company said the service allows online customers to interact in real time with E*Trade service reps (the company calls them Financial Services Associates) […]