Kelly Black

In a smidgen of grandstanding, seal-of-approval privacy firm TRUSTe ran to the Federal Trade Commission to tattletale on Toysmart’s plan to auction off its customer list under bankruptcy proceedings. Now the FTC has filed a lawsuit against the failed dot-com toy store to straighten this whole mess out. Talk about piling on. The whole issue […]

di•vine (di-vin’) 1. Heavenly; perfect. Any idea where I’m going with this one? If not, let me be frank. There’s an IPO offering in the pipeline that’s overstayed its welcome. So, I’m giving my two cents and spreading the word on this slight of hand. You’d do better to hit the track and bet the […]

Amazon.com took some ribbing from a handful of analysts who criticized the e-tailing giant’s money-spending ways over the handling of the Harry Potter epic The Goblet of Fire. The theory goes, Jeff Bezos has been promising to curtail Amazon’s customer acquisition “at any cost” strategy ever since Wall Street started demanding profits from profitless dot-coms. […]

Retail investors have been treated to a dizzying number of flavors of the month since Internet mania initially took hold of the market a couple of years ago. With each new trend comes a tsunami of me-too competitors, but after the music dies down, the other shoe falls. It’s like watching a stampeding herd stumble […]

Internet appliance maker Netpliance is drawing fire over its recent price hike on its flagship i-opener device. Billed as a one-stop, plug-n-play ramp onto the information superhighway, the newcomer’s i-opener product retailed for about $100 during its IPO debut. Now that the confetti’s been swept up and the champagne bottles corked, the company has to […]

NTT Communications, sibling to Japan’s telecom giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone , is getting the probe over its proposed $5.5 billion cash acquisition of Web host provider Verio . The rubber glove treatment comes from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a mixed bag of nuts from the Beltway that normally […]

NetZero announced plans to acquire RocketCash in a $35 million stock deal yesterday. The free ISP is looking to add RocketCash’s e-pay technology and Gen Y eyeballs, but I think this land-grab shows a distinct lack of understanding when it comes to teeny-bopper buying habits. Here’s RocketCash’s bread and butter in a nutshell. If you […]

WebTrends announced plans to acquire OpenSoft Communications in a stock-for-stock deal valued at roughly $1.7 million. Under terms of the deal, UK-based OpenSoft will change its name to WebTrends UK Limited, while the company’s 14 staffers will stay put in London. OpenSoft has been a WebTrends product reseller for nearly half a decade, providing sales […]

I’m not sure how I feel about the proposed $400 million stock-swap deal between Media Metrix and Jupiter Communications , but I do know how I feel about both Web firms. Both start-ups are a couple of nothing burgers. For the sake of fairness, let’s just take ’em in alphabetical order. There’s hardly a prospectus […]

Webvan pulled its squeaky wheeled shopping cart up alongside HomeGrocer Monday, before double-bagging its rival and heading to the check-out counter to the tune of 1.2 billion bananas. Actually, it would be more appropriate to say Webvan stuffed its rival down the front of its pants and strolled out the front door with a steal. […]

Amazon.com’s share price got hit with the ugly stick last week by an angry mob of jittery investors already smarting from a prolonged market correction in tech stocks. Ravi Suria, a Lehman Brothers convertible debt analyst took a peek under the e-tailing giant’s hood and shed some light on the company’s “extremely weak and deteriorating” […]

When asked how things are shaking between Terra Networks and Lycos , Terra execs said the billion-dollar courtship is still on. Now that the honeymoon celebration has subsided, many industry analysts are wondering aloud whether both companies will actually follow through with the merger deal. CMGI’s David Wetherell is still lounging poolside waiting to see […]