Chris Nerney

With the notable exception of B2B software vendor webMethods’ (WEBM) moonshot IPO last Friday (a first-day gain of 508 percent), the Internet IPO skies have been uncluttered in recent days, with a couple of Net debuts gaining modest altitude and several others misfiring altogether. Online loan middleman Lending Tree (TREE) rose 50 percent in its […]

A year ago this month, No. 2 search portal Lycos (LCOS) was being battered by negative reaction to a proposed buyout by USA Networks. The deal, which prompted a lawsuit from Lycos shareholders, was eventually abandoned, and LCOS shares spent most of the spring and summer treading water as investors waited to see if the […]

Last year witnessed the flourishing of a number of Internet “incubators” – private companies that provided funding, office space, advice and other resources for early-stage Net companies. This year you can expect a number of these Net incubators to join later-stage venture capital companies such as CMGI and Internet Capital Group on the stock ticker. […]

A year ago it was fair to argue that CMGI’s (CMGI) strategy of acquiring and investing in dozens of Internet companies, while not exactly haphazard, lacked clarity. Since then the aggressive Net venture fund’s game plan has come into sharper focus: It wants to take over the Internet. I exaggerate, but only slightly. CMGI is […]

Its IPO got a cool initial reception from investors last June, but lately Wall Street has been treating e-commerce services and software player AppNet like an emerging winner in its space. Especially Thursday, when shares of AppNet (APNT) soared 36 percent in the wake of a strong Q4 report showing narrowing losses and healthy revenues. […]

A couple of days ago I dismissed the threat to Internet commerce from hackers shutting down sites through the kind of “denial of service” attack that crippled Yahoo! (YHOO) for nearly four hours on Monday. But given the skyrocketing prices of shares in a number of Internet security companies in the wake of subsequent assaults […]

To survive in the increasingly crowded markets for business-to-business software and services, Internet companies must stand out from the competition in a meaningful way that attracts customers. webMethods, one of several Internet companies slated to go public this week, thinks it has that competitive edge by offering software based on Extensible Markup Language, or XML. […]

Like a supportive friend rushing to the side of a noble mugging victim, the market sent shares of Yahoo! up nearly 5 percent by early Tuesday afternoon after a hacker attack left the leading Web portal’s site down for three hours Monday. As they did in the wake of outages on eBay’s (EBAY) site last […]

Monday looks like a day of rest between Friday’s wild IPO fest and the flood of public offerings expected this week. Nine companies made their ticker debuts Friday, including several Internet players. And while the explosive gain for shares of optical networking vendor Avanex (AVNX) (up 378 percent) attracted the most attention – as one […]

The road from emerging technology to consolidating market is a short one these days. Just six months ago, there were no public companies built around the Linux operating system. Now there are several (with more in the pipeline), and already they’re starting to merge. VA Linux Systems (LNUX), which sells Linux-based computers and services, on […]

There’s little doubt that the business-to-business e-commerce sector is now the hottest Internet space among investors. Not only have most of the IPO moonshots of the past six months carried some kind of B2B payload, but some of the highest-flying stocks on the ticker have belonged to sector stars such as Commerce One (CMRC) and […]

The trading day isn’t over yet, but based on opening prices, the big loser among the five IPOs hitting the tickers Tuesday appears to be the only Internet offering in the group. SkillSoft (SKIL), a New Hampshire company that provides Web-based training courses and software to large organizations and corporations, began trading under the Nasdaq […]