Ryan Naraine

With the public market spurning Internet stocks in general — and online advertising plays specifically — Silicon Alley ad sales and marketing shop Phase2Media Inc. has pulled plans for a $57 million IPO. Last March, in a move best described as surprising and bold, Phase2Media announced plans to go public, registering with the SEC to […]

Shares in e-commerce software firm LivePerson, Inc. slipped as much as 19 percent to 93 cents this morning on news that the company’s president and COO Christopher McQuilkin had quit the post after only two months on the job. In a filing with the SEC today, the New York-based LivePerson said McQuilkin left the company […]

New York-based MarketCentral.net Corp., a firm which sells financial products and services on the Web, said it would purchase e-mail security play FCOM Inc. in an all-stock transaction. MarketCentral (OTCBB:MKTS) said it would exchange approximately 2.5 million new shares of its common stock in exchange for all issued and outstanding shares of FCOM, a privately-held […]

At a time when technology plays are stuggling to raise funds to their heads above water, New York-based Always-On, Inc. announced it had secured an additional $13.5 million in a third round of equity financing. Always-On, which operates a data center to manage software applicatons for small businesses, said venture capital firms Star Ventures and […]

In what was described as “strategic and organizational shifts” at online music retailer CDNow, Bertelsmann AG’s e-commerce group (BeCG) has eliminated the company’s advertising sales force and laid off 55 employees. Bertelsmann, which acquired CDNow for $117 million last August, said it would continue CDnow’s co-marketing programs, which includes a high-profile commerce link with the […]

SurfKitchen Inc., a software firm with eyes set on the burgeoning wireless market, said it raised $3 million in seed money from ADD Partners, a European-based venture capital firm. The start-up, which employs 20 people in the Alley and in Switzerland, said the money would be used to market its services, including wireless middleware offerings, […]

In yet another bid to diversify beyond its Voice-Over Internet Protocol (Vo-IP) business, Net2Phone said it would offer speech recognition services to corporate customers. The New Jersey-based Net2Phone said it purchased a minority equity stake in Los Angeles-based voice technology company HeyAnita, as part of its jump into the B2B voice recognition space. Financial terms […]

PhoneFree.com, a telephony company which built its brand by burning phone bills on TV, has started charging for PC-to-phone calls routed over the Internet. “We probably won’t be burning bills on TV in the near future,” PhoneFree CEO Jan Horsfall told atNewYork this morning, one week after the company started charging a flat fee of […]

Two weeks away from Super Bowl Sunday, a market research firm says Internet companies are wise to largely be avoiding the big bucks required for an ad buy during the game — since they didn’t make much of an impression last year. A survey by online market research firm InsightExpress released Thursday concludes that dot-coms […]

On the verge of being delisted from the NASDAQ exchange, online video and DVD retailer BigStar Entertainment Inc. has sold its direct marketing spin-off Advaya to Expression Engines. Expression Engines, another Silicon Alley play in the e-mail marketing space, said it purchased the Advaya technology to ramp up its offerings. Financial terms of the transaction […]

Hours after thumbing its nose at a buyout offer from a Beverly Hills-based M&A firm, Alley apparel network Fashionmall Inc. appears in serious play with a $52.5 million offer emerging from GenesisIntermedia.com, Inc. Genesis, a marketing firm headquartered in Los Angeles, announced Friday afternoon it had acquired a 7 percent stake in Fashionmall and was […]

In what is considered a major shift in strategy, Voice Over Internet Protocol (Vo-IP) telephony play Net2Phone Inc. announced it plans to stop offering free PC-to-phone calls. However, PC-to-PC calls would still be free. In a conference call with investors, Net2Phone’s CEO Howie Balter said the company will gradually wind down free PC-to-phone services in […]