Kenneth Corbin

It’s almost game time. Patriots vs. Giants. New York vs. New England. An undefeated season and a claim to the best team in football history hang in the balance. Yet looking at the towering ad buzz swirling around the Super Bowl, you can’t help but feel like the countdown to kickoff is something of a […]

Call it social media à la carte. With the release of version 3.0 of its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) suite, KickApps is courting Web publishers looking to build a social dimension into their sites by adding widgets, media players, blogging or other user-generated content. But you don’t need an engineering degree to give your site a Web […]

UPDATED: Oh, it was a very merry Christmas for Amazon, yet somehow investors still found coal in their stockings. Propelled by strong holiday sales, Amazon posted net income for the fourth quarter of $207 million, or 48 cents a share. That’s a 112 percent increase from the same period last year, when the Web’s largest […]

We knew it was coming — the only question was when. MySpace has started accepting pre-registrations for its developer platform, and plans to take the developers’ site live next Tuesday, Feb. 5. Starting then, MySpace will provide developers with open APIs and documentation to begin building widgets on the world’s most popular social network. Once […]

As it digs in for a year of rebuilding, Yahoo plans to cut jobs and revamp core businesses to better meet the threat of Google and other rivals. Jittery investors remained unconvinced, however. While the company’s quarterly earnings topped analyst consensus, the news wasn’t good enough to keep the stock from slipping 10 percent in […]

Digital marketing for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) isn’t easy. Working under a limited budget, small companies have historically struggled to match the production values their larger competitors can include in their interactive ad campaigns. Emma, an e-mail marketing company that caters to SMBs, is looking to change that through a new partnership with StudioNow, […]

Caveat emptor? Not on Donahoe’s watch! Speaking at eBay’s third annual e-Commerce Forum in Washington, D.C., newly minted President and CEO John Donahoe outlined a series of sweeping changes to eBay’s fee structures, seller rankings and feedback mechanisms that will take effect in the coming months. In this morning’s keynote address to some 200 of […]

On Monday, eBay announced that its PayPal payment-services unit would acquire Fraud Services, a privately held Israeli company, for $169 million. Based in Tel Aviv, Fraud Sciences is a venture-capital-backed startup formed in April 2006, specializing in online risk assessment. Fraud Sciences’ technology is designed to ferret out fraudulent credit card purchases by verifying that […]

With the announcement that it will make its online music store available to customers worldwide, Amazon took another important step in its effort to dethrone Apple’s iTunes as the premier digital music store. Launched in September, Amazon MP3 will begin rolling out international versions this year, the company said Sunday. “We have received thousands of […]

If the enthusiasm and creativity of Facebook’s developers are a big reason why the site continues its meteoric growth, maybe it should give something back. Well, it has. Facebook on Friday announced a partnership with Amazon to provide its developer community with a direct pipeline to build applications on Amazon’s Web Services architecture. Facebook announced […]

MySpace is getting serious about its television portal. Yesterday, the world’s largest social networking site announced that it had signed its first worldwide content deal with the BBC. The BBC channel will launch on MySpaceTV with short-form content of new and archived programming. “This is MySpaceTV’s first global network deal, and it reflects a fast-approaching […]

Let the bidding begin! The long-awaited wireless spectrum auction began today, with the Federal Communications Commission accepting bids for slices of airspace in the coveted 700 MHz band. Verizon Wireless, Google, AT&T, Cablevision and other heavy hitters representing a cross section of the communications industry will vie for the airwaves that the government is freeing […]