Articles by Keith Regan

A group of e-commerce trade associations and Internet companies -- including auction giant eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) and mega-travel site Orbitz -- launched a new coalition called NetChoice on Wednesday, with support from U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut) and U.S. Representative Jerry Weller (R-Illinois). NetChoice plans to represent the int...

The online auction world shrugged its collective shoulders when two of the biggest competitors of Internet auction powerhouse eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY), Yahoo! Auctions and uBid, announced that they had made a deal to share listings. The blase reaction proves how entrenched and invincible eBay has become. Right now, it appears that eBay's fiercest compe...

Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) said Tuesday it had struck a partnership designed to beef up its ability to stream audio, video and game clips as a way of improving the shopping experience for its customers. "Digital media streaming has enormous long-term potential for online retail," said Jeff Blackburn, general manager of Amazon's Worldwide Digital Gr...

E-commerce firms, among others, have yet to grasp the full value of Internet advertising because many do not recognize the overall impact that online branding can have, according to a report released Monday by Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI). Businesses that judge advertising campaigns solely on their ability to generate visits to Web sites, o...

Looking to narrow the gap between television and e-commerce, Internet portal Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) said Thursday it is expanding its relationship with ValueVision International (Nasdaq: VVTV), the third-largest home shopping network. ValueVision said it plans to re-launch its cable home-shopping network and online companion site on Friday as ShopN...

The era of e-business profitability has begun, but the gap between the most and least successful Internet companies is still growing, according to a study released Tuesday by McKinsey & Company. "Not all dot-coms deserve their current beating from investors," said McKinsey consultant Tilman Kemmler. "Twenty percent of them are making an operating ...

The worlds of e-commerce and online advertising are going through a bit of a phase, it seems. Experimentation is the name of the game, as e-tailers and others try to break free of "old" formulas in an all-out effort to re-stoke the growth engines that hummed so powerfully for a while.

Further beefing up its offerings as it squares off against Orbitz and other online travel competitors, Travelocity (Nasdaq: TVLY) said Tuesday it has made a deal to offer last-minute travel packages. Fort Worth, Texas-based Travelocity said it struck a partnership with Site59.com, which offers last-minute deals on travel packages purchased from 14...

At Amazon.com, the link to the privacy policy is at the bottom of the homepage, in small print. At Buy.com, the policy measures 10 printed pages and5,200 words in length. To read the full policy at Outpost.com, visitorshave to click out and back into the policy page at least twice Though the public's desire for privacy protection within e-commerce ...

Beleaguered electronics e-tailer Buy.com (Nasdaq: BUYX) suffered another jolt of bad news Thursday when it was informed by the Nasdaq stock exchange that the company's shares will be delisted. Aliso Viejo, California-based Buy.com said it had requested a formal hearing to fight the notice.

Since starting a massive pop-up and pop-under advertising campaign early this year that brings Web traffic to its site automatically, e-tailer X10.com has gone from a relatively unknown seller of home networking and security devices to a leader in the quest for Internet clicks. However, analysts have their doubts about whether all the traffic is t...

The e-commerce world got some good news in recent days when the Better Business Bureau (BBB) reported that it received nearly 4,000 complaints about e-tail sites last year, more than double the number from 1999. Good news? This might sound like the ultimate in spin control or a sarcastic slam. But think about it: The fact that people are bothering...

Seven months after launching a Japanese-language book-selling site, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) said Wednesday the site is adding music, video and DVD product lines, with more offerings to come before the end of the year. The expanded product lines will bring several of the features for which the original Amazon site is known, including customer pro...

Hoping to prevent customers from straying, and perhaps laying the groundwork for an e-tailer browser war, Half.com launched a price-comparison shopping feature Tuesday that alerts shoppers who click into a competitor's inventory that the item they're looking for is available back at Half.com. Called "Price Patrol," the feature is designed to alert...

News item: One of the richest people in Hong Kong plunks down a few million dollars to buy a bigger slice of potential turnaround story Priceline (Nasdaq: PCLN). Cause for optimism? You bet. Can we go so far as to say now that there's a reason to believe the bad days are all over for the name-your-price e-tailer? ...

Auction leader eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) launched its much-anticipated storefronts project, known as eBay Stores, on Monday. The project will begin with a two-week pilot program involving leading eBay sellers, and will be available to all qualified sellersstarting June 18th.

Further paring its focus to its strong suits of marketing and customer service, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) has outsourced part of its electronics fulfillment to Overstock.com. The agreement calls for Salt Lake City, Utah-based Overstock to fulfill orders for about 700 different items in Amazon's electronics category.

The Chrysler Group said Thursday that it has selected IBM (NYSE: IBM) to oversee an upgrade of its Web properties, with an eye toward improving its e-commerce initiatives. Chrysler, a Michigan-based division of automaker giant DaimlerChrysler (NYSE: DCX), said that IBM will work with software and service provider Cobalt (Nasdaq: CBLT) and Web cons...

There are two ways to read the news that just four Web properties -- Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO), America Online (NYSE: AOL), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Napster -- account for half of all the surfing time in the U.S. One school of thought sees the consolidation as a dangerous trend, one that threatens to make the Internet a homogenous, brand-name-ridd...

Given Stanford University's proximity to the epicenter of the digital economy, Silicon Valley, it is no surprise that the school would be among the first universities to embrace e-commerce business education. In early 2000, Stanford launched its Center for Electronic Business and Commerce with US$20 million in funding, including backing from eBay,...