Beth Cox

Internet portal Yahoo! is moving aggressively to overcome relatively flat ad sales, and is making one move after another to broaden its revenue base, even offering premium real-time services in its financial area such as the recently launched MarketTracker. And clearly the moves are needed in light of the slowdown in Internet ad spending. In […]

An increase in visits to e-commerce sites – up 35 percent year-over-year in May – has prompted Goldman, Sachs analysts to predict that results for top online retailers should get better from here, with a re-acceleration in year-over-year growth rates in the coming months. In fact, GS said in an advisory to clients that “we […]

Scoring its third big deal in as many weeks, Seattle-based Loudeye Technologies Inc. signed an agreement to provide music samples for the MSN network. And once again, Loudeye’s stock leaped on the news, climbing 24 cents in mid morning trading to $1.75. At one point earlier in the trading session, it was going for $2.20 […]

The online edition of the Wall Street Journal, one of the few Web sites that has been able to lure a sizable number of paying readers, is considering asking for more money from its viewers. A Dow Jones news service report quoted an executive at the operation as saying that no decision has been made, […]

Cambridge, Mass.-based Akamai Technologies Inc. was tapped by consumer electronics retailer BestBuy.com Inc. for its flagship EdgeSuite e-business service, which delivers dynamically generated Web content on the fly. Akamai said its EdgeSuite service will enable BestBuy.com to simplify its front-end infrastructure by off-loading traffic to Akamai’s globally distributed network and reducing utilization of its back-end […]

In a move designed to enhance its revenues and streamline the sales process for users, auction leader eBay is launching eBay Stores, designed to be customized shopping destinations that “will significantly expand the way goods and services are traded on the site.” “eBay Stores is the next step in eBay’s evolution,” said Meg Whitman, eBay’s […]

Ailing online real estate technology and services provider HomeSeekers.com effectively gave control of the company to privately held E-Home.com Inc. (also known as HomeMark) in exchange for a $20 million equity investment. HomeSeekers, its stock price trading at 65 cents a share at mid-morning, had reported a loss of $14.7 million or 45 cents per […]

Online insurance marketplace operator InsWeb said today it expects to report a second quarter net loss between $7 million and $7.4 million, or 16 to 18 cents a share, worse than analysts’ expectations of 13 cents a share. The company said that the rate of expansion in its auto insurance offering this quarter “has been […]

Loudeye Technologies Inc. was roaring on Wall Street today, up 70 percent at one point, after it was selected to provide digital “fingerprints” and related descriptive data to file-sharing network Napster for use in its planned membership service, scheduled to launch this summer. Seattle-based Loudeye stock was up 85 cents to $2.06 in mid-morning trading. […]

After three months in beta, new travel site Orbitz went live this week, only to run head-on into one of those classic Internet good-news, bad-news scenarios: traffic was huge, exceeding expectations, but the servers and call centers were overwhelmed by the crowd. The new site, backed by a consortium of airlines, said that the number […]

Priceline.com stock was soaring Wednesday after Hong Kong companies Cheung Kong Holdings Ltd. and Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. agreed to buy more than 25 million shares from the e-commerce company’s founder, Jay S. Walker and his trust. The company’s stock was also sent skyward by a report from analysts at Goldman Sachs, which raised priceline.com’s second […]

Amazon.com began a day-long meeting with analysts in Seattle today by reiterating its forecast of pro forma profitability in the fourth quarter and disclosing that its average U.S. customer shops 2.7 times a year, with an average order size of $54. Amazon execs told the assembled analysts that about 15 million customers have shopped at […]