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Posted
Jun 15 2009, 04:05 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The U.S. Postal Service, which has been dying for years due to the advent of the fax, e-mail, and overnight delivery, may finally be close to its last act.
The agency lost nearly $2 billion in its last fiscal year and is faced with the serious consideration of cuts of up to 3,100 offices, potentially eliminating thousand of jobs. Media reports say that first class mail volumes are plunging.
What is killing and will probably eventually finish off the Post Office? In a word: “broadband,” the high-speed Internet system that the current Administration plans to build out in the next two years.
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Posted
Dec 13 2007, 10:14 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 It's about time eBay cleared the trash from its site.
The online auctioneer plans to improve the "user experience" next year. At the top of the list: getting rid of sellers with "unethical or questionable business practices," including the ones that charge huge shipping fees.
EBay should have been more aggressive in this area long ago. I've heard lots of stories about buyers who pay big shipping fees, only to see on the delivered package that the actual postage was less than $10. Buyers have to be really savvy to figure out the minefield of shipping ripoffs on the site, and that's not a good user experience.
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Posted
Jan 03 2008, 03:21 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
There's been some talk lately about whether eBay CEO Meg Whitman should resign. EBay would be invigorated if she did. Recently, she's been criticized for signing on as the financial co-chair of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. Whitman met Romney years ago when she consulted for his private equity firm. At BloggingStocks, Gary Sattler thinks that Whitman might request a paid leave of absence from eBay to work on the Romney campaign. I really doubt that. It's ludicrous to think that a CEO of a major public company would do such a thing. If Whitman indeed asks for time off to campaign, eBay shareholders have every right to be angry. Putting politics aside, is it time for Whitman to step down? If you're an eBay shareholder, you might think so. The stock was abysmal in 2006 and continued to disappointment in 2007, staying mostly in the $30-$35 range when companies like Amazon saw shares go through the roof. (Ebay closed yesterday at $32.49.)
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Posted
Feb 25 2008, 12:24 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The weeklong boycott of the eBay auction site ends today. But did it accomplish anything? Fed up with recent fee hikes and other policy changes, some eBay sellers decided to boycott the site from Feb. 18 through today. Third-party tracking sites say auction listings have dropped about 13% since the strike started to 13 million items listed. Ebay shares dipped slightly over the past week, but have returned to where they started -- at just under $28. The share price closed up 30 cents to $28.01 today on news that Shopping.com CEO Josh Silverman will now run eBay's Skype online telephony unit.
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Posted
Jul 31 2009, 12:36 PM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 This article was written by Minyanville's Scott Reeves
A Michigan teen has a novel excuse for not getting his homework in on time: Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle ate his book report. Justin Gawronski, 17, is a contemporary kid, so he got an attorney to press his claim against Amazon in federal court. Mixing high-tech and lawyers suggests the old ways are best: Pen, paper, and the family dog have served generations of slackers admirably. Gawronski, an advanced-placement student, said his notes lost all relevance when Amazon deleted electronic copies of George Orwell’s "Nineteen Eighty-Four" from his Kindle during a copyright dispute. Gawronski says he used the electronic book reader’s note function to make comments and annotations as he read the book, when -- zap! -- the text of the novel disappeared, thanks to the Thought Police at Amazon. This left him with comments referring only to empty disc space.
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Posted
May 18 2009, 03:30 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
It is the classic face-off between the king of bricks-and-mortar and the ruler of the e-commerce world. Wal-Mart (WMT) is about to up its bet on consumer electronics, a highly profitable and growing part of Amazon’s (AMZN) business.
At stake is whether physical stores can take back business from e-commerce sites which have been besting them at sales growth rates for nearly a decade.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart is "revamping the electronics departments in its more than 3,500 U.S. stores this week, ramping up an aggressive battle with Best Buy Co. (BBY) and Amazon.com."
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Posted
Nov 03 2008, 01:25 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
I should have known a movement was afoot when my mother called me raving about a bookreader she had just seen on Oprah. How many other mothers had that same conversation that day, and will receive Amazon's Kindle reader in a brightly-wrapped package next month? (Don't worry, my mom doesn't read this blog.)
"I'm telling you," Oprah said on her Oct. 24 show, "it's absolutely my new favorite thing in the world."
Advertising Age looks at the Oprah effect, and predicts brisk Kindle sales this holiday. Amazon's Web traffic jumped 6% that day compared with the Friday before. The number of Google searches that included the word "kindle" grew 479% on Oprah day and went up even more the next day.
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Posted
Mar 07 2008, 06:08 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Selling wine online in this country is pretty screwed up. Or, as the Financial Times so elegantly stated, it's "a business fraught with regulatory complexities and littered with the wreckage of previous failures."
But Amazon is up for the task, and is recruiting a senior wine buyer on its site. I'd like to volunteer, but my knowledge of wine basically comes from what I learned in "Sideways." Amazon has been interested in this area for some time, having spent $30 million nine years ago for a 45% stake of Wineshopper.com. Oops, Wineshopper was folded into Wine.com the next year.
Maybe Amazon can help straighten out the convoluted mess that is selling wine online. Retailers can only ship wine to 26 states. Wineries and retailers follow different rules. FreetheGrapes.org has a nice summary of this complex issue. And the competition is nasty. Online wine retailer Wine.com went so far as to conduct its own sting operation, telling state regulators whenever it found that its rivals were violating wine-shipping laws.
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Posted
Jan 22 2008, 12:22 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
EBay chief executive Meg Whitman will retire from the post soon, the WSJ reported today. And that means eBay is at the most critical point in its history. The retirement news isn't a surprise; we discussed the idea of her resignation earlier this month. Whitman, 51, has been giving her top executives more responsibilities recently and could be grooming one to replace her. EBay investors weren't too thrilled today. The company's shares fell more than 4 percent to close at $27.13. I thought the market would react more favorably, considering that eBay's share price has dropped by almost a third since October. Whitman's legacy has some black marks, such as the overpriced Skype acquisition and the increasing anger among a user base irritated by high fees. I don't think she's done enough to improve the user experience, and as a result companies like Amazon have become a serious competitive threat. But what outshines those flaws is this: Whitman has kept the company growing and profitable, which is exactly what a CEO should do.
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Posted
Oct 23 2007, 09:46 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
I love rooting for Netflix. One reason is that in five years of being a customer, I've never had a bad experience. But the bigger reason is that Netflix has doggedly pursued its business model to become a worthy rival to BOB, also known as Big Old Blockbuster. After losing ground to BOB this year, Netflix has regained its momentum.
The company surprised analysts last night with stronger-than-expected quarterly results and a 24% increase in subscribers, to 7 million. Its shares are up more than 9% today to above $25 as investors applaud the news.
Netflix's outlook seemed bleak three months ago, when the company missed revenue targets and had its first drop in subscriber numbers. BOB, meanwhile, said its online subscribers rose by 600,000 to 3.6 million. Netflix's share price dropped below the $16 mark in July in response.
Netflix has cut some subscription plans by $1 and reduced marketing costs to save money. A bit of a risky strategy, but one that seems to be paying off. Still, Netflix's position has always been volatile, and in the future the company faces increased competition from Amazon and others.
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