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To: majormember who wrote (26451)	11/17/1998 5:08:00 PM
From: llamaphlegm	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

<<<Tuesday November 17 2:51 PM ET Yahoo!'s one-stop shopping: Portal joins sites seeking new ways to make money By Matthew Broersma, ZDNet Yahoo! Inc.'s new motto might just be "click 'til you drop." The Santa Clara-based company Tuesday launched its entry into what is shaping up to be an online, holiday season horse race. Yahoo! Shopping lets users choose from among 2 million items, from more than 2,700 merchants, all with a single shopping cart. That means you only have to enter your payment and shipping information once -- a big plus if you're planning to buy from a number of online stores. Yahoo! expands its range "Yahoo! has clearly established itself as a trusted brand and a leader in online shopping. For millions of people, Yahoo! is the single source used to find, compare and buy products across the Web,'' said Jeff Mallett, Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO) chief operating officer, in a statement. "Through Yahoo! Shopping, we now offer our users a complete shopping experience, enabling them to easily access and purchase millions of products." The Yahoo! Shopping merchants, which include FAO Schwarz, Egghead.com (Nasdaq:EGGS) Inc., Tower Records and others, are divided into 14 categories, such as apparel, books and electronics. The Yahoo! announcement follows Excite Inc.'s (Nasdaq:XCIT) recent introduction of an online "wallet" on its site, which functions similarly to Yahoo! Shopping. Internet hubs such as Yahoo! and Excite are essentially advertising-supported businesses, similar to television networks. They increase their profits by encouraging their users to return again and again, using a variety of free services as incentives. Portals change stripes But the so-called portals have recently moved into the e-commerce business, as a way to get a cut of the more lucrative online retail market. On Monday, Excite signed a deal with Consumer Guide to include third-party product reviews in its shopping category. The same day, 911gifts.com, a one-stop gift shop, relaunched its online stores on the Web and on AOL. Most portals, including Lycos Inc. (Nasdaq:LCOS), Infoseek Corp. (Nasdaq:SEEK), Netscape Communications Corp. (Nasdaq:NSCP) and Snap.com already have consumer shopping guides directing them to other e-commerce Web sites. "Excite, [America Online] and the rest are hoping that recent increases in Internet shopping and the holiday shopfest will rev up that electronic commerce revenue stream," analysts from Zona Research Inc. noted in a report this week. "Electronic commerce revenues -- recurring revenues that keep on delivering -- are a highly attractive supplement to the stagnating market for advertising dollars." See Also: Portal shopping sprees -- it's all about name branding This time, it's personal portal mania AOL declares war with site overhaul, hopes to beat portals at their own game New study says portals are all the same, to their detriment >>> Oh, I see, amzn has no web savvy competition 8-}}}

To: majormember who wrote (26451)	11/17/1998 5:12:00 PM
From: llamaphlegm	Respond to of 164684

<<<Electronic commerce ho-ho-hum after holidays Investors have been betting big on e-commerce stocks in recent weeks. Their hope, it seems, is that holiday shoppers will choose to shop online rather than stand in line at real-world stores. But the Red Herring Online Insider News column questions whether Internet companies will ever make money. Writer David Simons says holiday shopping alone can't offset aggressive spending on marketing. He points out that some of the biggest winners in the stock market this month have been spending big money to market themselves. So big, in fact, that marketing costs alone outpace gross profits. Amazon.com (AMZN) reported marketing expenses as 107 percent of gross profits last quarter and says it will increase its marketing spending. CDnow (CDNW), meanwhile, is raising marketing spending by 527 percent, and fellow online music retailer N2K (NTKI) is upping its marketing spending by 1,550 percent. Simons says the stock market has chosen to view these as investments, but he wonders what will happen when the stock market realizes the risks may never pay off. Simons' question for investors is whether establishing an Internet brand will gain permanent customer loyalty or whether consumer behavior on the Internet will require perpetually outsized marketing budgets. More on this recommendation is available at redherring.com; cbs.marketwatch.com