commerce

Chinese hackers target U.S. Chamber of Commerce, report says

The United States Chamber of Commerce, the country's largest business-lobbying organization, was hacked by Chinese hackers, the Wall Street Journal is reporting, citing sources.

Although details are scant, it appears that the hackers had access to the Chamber's network for over a year before they were cleared out in May 2010, the Journal's sources say. The hackers stole six weeks of e-mail from four Chamber employees who were focusing their time on Asia, and could have gained access to all the information the Chamber has on its 3 million members. Although officials are unsure exactly what was … Read more

Best Buy's online conundrum: Nailing e-commerce

Best Buy's fiscal third quarter wasn't stellar and heavy promotions took a toll on profit margins. The company's biggest challenge may be doubling down on online sales as it tries to fend off Amazon, which is a big electronics threat.

The focus on e-commerce was evident on Best Buy's earnings conference call. Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn portrayed a company that's transitioning to a multichannel strategy.

Dunn said:

As I mentioned earlier, we took a number of actions to drive our business including--running effective promotions across multiple channels; significantly expanding our online assortment; and ensuring … Read more

Tablet owners cool with buying items through their devices

Tablet owners are quite comfortable buying goods and services through their devices, a trend that's fueling the growth in mobile shopping, says mobile media firm JiWire.

As tablet ownership has doubled over the past year, a new study from JiWire found that 82 percent of tablet users are OK buying items through their mobile devices (either tablets or smartphones), compared with 76 percent of smartphone users.

Further, tablet owners aren't afraid to spend big bucks. A full 67 percent of the tablet users are willing to spend $50 or more on a purchase, compared with just 57 percent … Read more

Reporters' Roundtable: Holiday tech buying update

We are in the middle of the holiday buying season right now, between the first rush of gift-buying that happened on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and the "Oh, crap, I need to start buying presents!" feeling that happens in about a week.

This is the most important month for the consumer tech economy, but this December will be different from all the ones that came before it.

Why? Mobile devices, online shopping, social networking, improved analytics, changing tax laws, and changing behaviors among both buyers and sellers, among other reasons. Today we are talking about how the gadget economy is evolving.

My guests are: Claire Cain Miller, a reporter at The New York Times who's been writing about this topic, and a returning guest to the Roundtable; and Mike Fridgen, CEO of one of my favorite tech startups, Decide.com. This company runs a service that can tell you if the price of a tech item you're looking at is good today and if it will be going up or down in the near future.

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SOPA's most aggressive defender: U.S. Chamber of Commerce

There is no more influential business lobby group in the world than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which boasts that its "core purpose is to fight for free enterprise" and "individual freedom."

Which is why the Chamber's unflagging--even unyielding--support of a controversial copyright bill loathed by Silicon Valley might come as something of a surprise. Not only do critics view the Stop Online Piracy Act as antithetical to the individual freedom the Chamber applauds, but the technology industry has contributed more to economic growth and free enterprise in the last decade than Hollywood has. … Read more

Cyber Monday rules U.S. commerce with $1.25B in sales

Cyber Monday officially rules the U.S. online-shopping season, racking up $1.25 billion in sales yesterday--a 22 percent increase over the previous year, according to ComScore data.

Monday's spending reflected both an 11 percent increase in the number of people shopping online and a significant jump in how much they spent. More than 10 million people bought something online yesterday, the online-marketing research firm said. Those shoppers made an average of 1.9 purchases apiece, in total worth an average of nearly $125--a 9 percent increase over per capita spending on Cyber Monday 2010.

The ComScore data differs … Read more

E-shoppers go mobile on Thanksgiving, Black Friday

Apple's iPhone and iPad helped make mobile devices a key driver of Thanksgiving and Black Friday e-commerce this year, according to a report from IBM Coremetrics.

Online Thanksgiving shopping grew by 39.3 percent year over year, creating momentum that continued into Black Friday, where online sales grew by 24.3 percent compared with the same period last year, said the report (PDF).

And Black Friday witnessed the arrival of the mobile deal seeker, who embraced his or her mobile device as a research tool for in-store and online bargains. Mobile traffic came close to tripling year over year, … Read more

Reporters' Roundtable: The rise of the connected consumer

We're in the middle of a revolution in consumer commerce. The connected consumer (all of us) no longer relies on catalogs for prices or salespeople in stores for advice. Now we use our social networks to get advice from friends and friends of friends, and we have access to scanners and price comparison engines on our smartphones that are turning retail stores into showrooms, not necessarily places you go to buy.

There's a smart guy who's been tracking these trends for years, and he's my guest today. Brian Solis is author of The End of Business as Usual: Rewire the Way You Work to Succeed in the Consumer Revolution.

Brian was on the Roundtable about a year and a half ago discussing social media. Currently, Brian is principal at Altimeter Group, a research-based advisory firm.

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Givvy taps Facebook's social scene for gift-giving app

Good things come in small packages, and that just might be the case with Givvy; a two-man, self-funded startup. Today they are launching a Facebook-based gift-giving network that lets people on the social network discover and list gifts based on their friends' recommendations.

CTO Larry Rubin handles development and UI design while CEO Claudio Miranda handles everything else: graphic design, marketing, accounting, merchandising, legal, and PR. Miranda was the co-founder and CMO of Organic Bouquet, an online retailer of eco-friendly flowers & gifts. Rubin recently built Socializr.com with Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams.

Rubin and Miranda hope to tap … Read more

American Express pledges $100M for digital-commerce startups

American Express plans to dabble in mobile payments and other forms of digital commerce at an arm's length, preferring to throw cash at startups rather than launch its own major initiatives.

The company said today that it will invest $100 million in startups that are designed to address mobile and online payments, security, reward and loyalty programs, and other forms of digital commerce.

This represents American Express's primary stab at the booming digital-commerce business, a potentially lucrative area that has a large number of players all vying for position. American Express's low-key approach stands in contrast to … Read more