Gawker
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flackery
Amazon.com Says 'Embarrassing' Error, Not Hacker, Censored 57,310 Gay Books
After gay-themed titles disappeared from Amazon.com's search results this weekend, everyone looked for someone to blame. One hacker took credit. Some faulted an Amazon engineer in France. One source thinks it was the Conficker worm.
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By Owen ThomasComment by cdmunch: I think it's adorable that all you butt pirates and twitterers still read books. 14 Responses | Other threads
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censorship
Why It Makes Sense That a Hacker's Behind Amazon's Big Gay Outrage
Twitter had a big tizzy yesterday over Amazon.com's supposed censorship of gay and lesbian titles, did you hear? Just one problem: A well-known hacker has come forward and claimed the whole thing was his prank. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by DrEngine: First, I untied and tied my laces an even amount of times, before flipple-bashing the revert to the Gung-ho.Then I... 9 Responses | Other threads
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cubicle culture
Zappos.com Reveals Secret to Selling Overpriced Shoes
The dotcom dream is alive! Zappos, the Las Vegas online shoe retailer, has free food, on-site massages, and a life coach! Employees are even paid to Twitter. Just don't mention the November layoffs, okay?
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By Owen ThomasComment by probablynotcontagious: you're late to the party. zappos has been widely adored as an amazing place to work since its inception.... 2 Responses | Other threads
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jeff bezos
The Revenge of Amazon.com's 'Chuckling Maniac'
Jeff Bezos turned up on the Daily Show couch to promote Amazon.com's newest Kindle e-book reader. And as this clip shows, he laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Why wouldn't he? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Schmalerie: I had heard about Kindle before, but never really made an effort to learn about it. After watching this... 5 Responses | Other threads
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recessionomics
Lingerie shots show a founder's dilemma
Times are tight for Web startups: Catalina Girald couldn't afford to hire a model for her fashion site's lingerie collection. So she stripped down to her designer skivvies.
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By Owen ThomasComment by fashionistaontheprowl: Alright male founders, let's see you don your skivvies. Having second thoughts? Yeah, I thought so. 5 Responses | Other threads
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naughty
Amazon.com's holiday sweatshop horror
Freshly laid off? Things could be worse — like, for example, if you were working as a temporary employee at an Amazon warehouse.
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By Owen ThomasComment by 18thCFox: I lived in England for a year (and not in London or Oxbridge with a lot of other Yanks) and... 2 Responses | Other threads
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ebay
The pop-culture junk pile of 2008
When we overdose on celebrities and overindulge in gadgets, where's the vomitorium to hurl it up? Why, it's eBay, on whose shores the flotsam of every shipwrecked trend lands. Here's what was formerly hot in 2008:
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By Owen ThomasComment by Figaro: I don't have a clue who that blonde is. Oh, I'm so proud of myself :D 3 Responses | Other threads
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e-commerce
Cyber Monday crashes an online-shopping tradition
As white-collar workers return desultorily to their desk jobs, they waste time by shopping online. To capitalize on this, a group of online retailers invented "Cyber Monday," a day of Internet discounts to match Black Friday's in-store deals. You'd think that the planned traffic from such a staged event would go off smoothly. But you'd be wrong.
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By Owen ThomasComment by Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate: But it's 40% off boxed DVD sets at Borders! And it doesn't work! 2 Responses | Other threads
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stats
October e-commerce up a humiliating 1 percent
The accompanying chart from TechFlash says it all: Online sales just aren't growing anymore. October's 1 percent growth over October 2007 is the worst performance measured by ComScore since they began tracking stats in 2001. TechFlash quotes Gian Fulgoni, chairman of the research firm: "We can only hope that the recent sharp drop in oil prices will cause a continued easing of inflation and a strengthening in consumer spending as [we] enter the critical holiday shopping season." We can only hope? Dude, we can get down on our knees and pray.
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By Paul BoutinComment by loslosbaby: We're in the e-commerce business as a store provider and its looking good for our stores now. It all... more » | Other threads
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e-commerce
The Singularity arrives as TiVo adds Domino's Pizza to menu
For decades, mankind's brightest minds have struggled to crate the ultimate convergence device, a machine so powerful that it could play Simpsons cartoons and order an extra-cheese combo at the same time. Today, November 17, 2008, that convergence has arrived. First Obama/Biden, now Tivo/Domino's. It's a great time to be alive. More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by WeaKnees: If it's a starting point for TiVo to develop partnerships with other companies that also bring revenue to TiVo. If... more » | Other threads
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layoffs
Rearden Commerce cuts 50 people
A tipster sent in word that Rearden — an e-commerce startup from Foster City — is rumored to have cut 72 people. We hear the actual number is closer to 50 out of 375. The company provides a "personal assistant portal" that streamlines travel planning, reservations, and general logistics within corporations. Or something. Our tipster's contention is that no one, especially customers, is quite sure just what exactly the company does. Rearden raised $100 million in funding back in April of this year and claims to have signed off service contracts with 1,700 companies. Let us know if there's anything more.
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Comment by DagnyTaggart: Actually, no severance is highly logical - it's all about supply and demand. Right now there is an excess of people... 2 Responses | Other threads
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we read twitter so you don't have to
Zappos layoff turns into lovefest
Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, has a promising career as a cult leader. In a blog post, the online shoes-and-clothes retailer's boss acknowledges the layoffs his employees were Twittering about this morning, writing that the company had laid off 8 percent of its workforce. He all but admits the cuts were forced on him by investor Sequoia Capital. The severance packages are generous in comparison to most startups; two months or more of pay, and six months of health insurance. Sweet enough, perhaps, that people won't ask a key question about the layoffs. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by DenisePlatypus: Well, lets be clear, at $1Billion/year, Zappos is hardly a start-up---and shouldn't be at the mercy of an investor who... more » | Other threads
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patrick byrne
Overstock.com chief lying about company's finances since 2001
When Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com, isn't issuing paranoid rants about "naked shorts" ruining Wall Street, or admitting that his online store's buggy software has been producing false financial reports, he keeps busy lying to journalists. Including yours truly. Back in 2002, I interviewed Byrne for Business 2.0 magazine, a tipster recently reminded me. Here was the exchange: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by RaleighRullus: Byrne didn't lie. He wasn't deliberately being misleading. He had no clue because his POS company is basically... more » | Other threads
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stats
Online shopping down
Online shopping is now mainstream enough to be a solid barometer of consumer sentiment. So this news from Hitwise, the website-measurement research house, is disturbing: Traffic to e-commerce sites has been dropping for eight straight weeks. -
bill me later
Why isn't Amazon.com talking about its $150 million windfall?
Amazon.com got a big payday when eBay bought Bill Me Later, the payment service, for $945 million earlier this month. So why isn't it admitting it? In an SEC filing, Amazon.com didn't name Bill Me Later as the source of a $150 million cash payment it will receive in return for an investment. But it's obviously Bill Me Later, which Amazon.com invested in last December. Here's the curiously vague wording of Amazon's disclosure to shareholders, and three possible reasons for it. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by SheridanCotys: I heard that the lst round was valued at a 1bbl so Amazon lost $$$ . more » | Other threads
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earnings
Amazon.com predicts bleak Christmas
In its third-quarter earnings call, Amazon.com executives say they expect sales between $6 billion and $7 billion for the December quarter. A consensus of Wall Street analysts had predicted $7.05 billion. The stock is down 14 percent. [Silicon Alley Insider] -
e-commerce
eBay to ban check and money orders, except for vibrators
Starting next month, eBay will no longer allow most transactions to be paid for by check or money order. Now you must used one of the approved electronic methods, especially PayPal and certainly not Google Checkout or Checkout by Amazon. Makes business sense: Mail transactions are probably a sink on customer service resources, as payments don't arrive or bounce bounce when they do. And eBay earns no vigorish from check or money order transactions as it does with PayPal, marginally increasing per-transaction profit — as the release states, "Ultimately, it's eBay's goal to have buyers always pay for their purchases within the secure confines of eBay." There are a few exceptions, however, notably including the "Mature Audiences" category. Because really, who wants to buy a used dildo with a credit card?
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By Jackson WestComment by sinical: I think Melissa would have covered this in more depth. more » | Other threads
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search
Baby's first gay porn, courtesy of Google
A tipster tells us his boss searched Google Products for a "'Spit Happens' t-shirt" for his infant. Google found him a suitably innocent bodysuit on CafePress.com. It also found him a pair of gay porn videos, one called Nasty Nasty featuring "a stunning young man, the spitting image of a young Ben Affleck," and another called Bedrock, featuring actors who "take turns pounding each other on a bunch of iron beds," — ouch. We're not sure who to blame for the confusion here. More » -
social networks
Facebook makes as much as $42 million off pointless "Gifts"
After too much math, Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners estimates that Facebook earns between $28 million and $42 million allowing its users to buy icons as gifts for each other. Lightspeed came up with the revenue numbers by watching how much users spent on the icons for a week and then multiplying that number by 73.3. Uh, why not 52? Because Facebook Gift sales go up during the holidays, just like real useless merchandise. We'll let Liew explain the rest of his math, below. Bring your coffee: More »
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Comment by evotech: Hm, i always get the free ones... But again, this sint anything new, Blizzard knows this pixel = moneys all... more » | Other threads
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e-commerce
Botched software upgrade costs J. Crew $3 million
Luxer-than-thou retailer J. Crew has mostly avoided the economic pinch, since its customers barely notice that they're paying $4 a gallon for gas. Instead, the retailer has been laid low by buggy software, reports the Business Technology blog. One outraged customer, shown here, was billed $9,208.50 and shipped baby-size shirts, not the mediums he'd ordered. J. Crew's net income in its most recent quarter fell 12 percent from the same period last year to $18.1 million, and the company said it spent $3 million to fix the problem. Do the math: Had J. Crew not had the software problem, its income would have been up 2.5 percent. It's a shameful comeuppance for J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Motoko Kusanagi: Yeah, well, J. Crew has a long history to making shitty IT decisions. Anyone else remember this guy? ... more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
Netflix shipping system crashes for two days running
Woe be unto Netflix if my parents don't get the latest installemnt of Foyle's War. In an email sent out to customers and a notice posted to the site, the DVD-by-mail company says it is having problems with its shipping system affecting around a third of the company's customers. It has now persisted for two days. So if your friendly mail carrier doesn't show up with a red envelope or three today, don't blame it on a Postal Service "blue shorts of death" error. Graciously, the company has preemptively offered a credit for any delays. Why not tout its online-video offerings, like Watch Now streaming on its website or the Roku set-top box? Oh, right, website outages and inventory problems. But hey, at least if your request gets returned "404 Not Found," it won't cost you a stamp. Netflix's alert, after the jump: More »
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By Jackson WestComment by amillians: @caesar32: Say what? Their back-end is custom + Oracle apps. They f'd up a DB upgrade. And funny, but I've never... more » | Other threads
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acquisitions
eBay trying to buy into billion-dollar Korean auctioneer
eBay, having failed to catch on in the heavily-wired nation of South Korea, is in talks with Korean site Gmarket. A few days ago, Gmarket announced Q2 sales of nearly $1 billion, which generated $35 million in revenue. Yahoo bought 10 percent of the company in 2006 for approximately $60 million. [NYT]
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By Paul BoutinComment by buzzzkilll: Gmarket has been spanking eBay's ass since '05. This would've been a better idea then. more » | Other threads
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lawsuits
Tiffany, eBay extend unstylish spat
Luxury goods-maker Tiffany — you know, the one which sells the gays their wedding rings — is appealing a federal district court's decision clearing eBay of responsibility for counterfeit product listings. The jewelry company sends eBay 135,000 takedown notices a year, and wishes eBay would do more of the work for it. eBay's play-it-cool response: "Tiffany's decision to carry this litigation on after the District Court's decision doesn't do anything to combat counterfeiting." Much like eBay itself. [Atlanta Business Chronicle]
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Comment by internetlawattorney: Interesting how these kind of suits will play out around the world. I think it is a dead end to... more » | Other threads
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e-commerce
Amazon offers 1-Click, PayPal-like services to other online stores
Checkout by Amazon and Amazon Simple Pay are two different levels of PayPal-like services Amazon.com quietly launched on Tuesday. No press release, no front-door promo. Simple Pay works a lot like PayPal — customers at another e-commerce site can use it as an alternative to entering a credit card number. Checkout by Amazon goes further, letting websites make use of Amazon's 1-Click ordering and allowing shoppers to put Amazon.com purchases in the same virtual cart. Previously, Amazon had required retailers to set up on Amazon.com itself. Now, the company is looking to get a piece of the action any way it can.
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By Paul BoutinComment by technobee: This capability has been around for more than a year and hardly anyone's used it. Looks like they just made... more » | Other threads
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amazon.com
Amazon.com and TiVo enable couch-potato lifestyle
Finally realizing the dreams of advertising professionals since the 1950s, Amazon.com and Tivo announced new features to closely integrate shopping with TV watching. Viewers of talk shows — where pitching movies, music, or books vaguely masquerades as entertainment — will now have an opportunity to buy exactly what's being discussed on TV! Fancy the newest obsession of Oprah in her book club or like the CD being flogged by David Letterman's new favorite band? Just buy it with one click of TiVo's remote, and Amazon will deliver. If you like obvious product placements now, you're going to love the future. [NYT]
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Comment by mrfomoco: Hmm, impulse ordering? [Note to self: if they're listed, buy shares of Extenze.] more » | Other threads
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lifecasters
Justin.tv to let users launch their own home-shopping networks
At first we found lifecasting the most depressing thing around; now, the practice of living your life attached to a camera seems depressingly popular, Silicon Alley Insider reports. Justin.tv has reached 1 million registered users. The site still has no business model, but CEO Michael Seibel says the company is working on an online payments system that will let lifecasters hawk wares to their viewers. Cancel that bit about lifecasting being a downer: The prospect of letting a million QVCs bloom is far scarier. -
e-commerce
A Facebook payments system? Zuckerberg not sure he wants your money after all
Facebook will not launch a payments system for its platform application developers at the upcoming F8 conference. Inside Facebook says though Facebook engineers are working on a system, it just won't be ready in time — even though Facebook began asking developers to participate in a payments beta test last December. Silicon Alley Insider offers a stranger explanation: The Facebook payments system hasn't come out yet because Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg "hasn't bought in to the idea completely." More »
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Comment by Widget Economist: why do we need the middleman to be facebook? haven't we been through this? we already have e-mail. we already have... more » | Other threads
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earnings
eBay profits rise 22 percent, in line with seller rage
eBay's second-quarter net income rose 22 percent to $460 million, as PayPal and other newer businesses led broad-based growth. The total value of all goods sold on the site in the quarter was $15.7 billion, up 8 percent from a year ago — which suggests that the sustained whining of smaller sellers who are displeased by the inclusion of listings from the likes of Buy.com, which pays lower fees to sell items on the site, has mattered less than new sales generated by the larger merchants. [Wall Street Journal]
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By Paul BoutinComment by FiveStarEggRoll: eBay should pick up some of Yahoo's Asian assets - especially their Japanese auction site (and I think one in... more » | Other threads
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lawsuits
eBay cleared on counterfeit lawsuit
"In a long-awaited decision in a four-year-old trademark lawsuit against eBay brought by the jeweler Tiffany and Company, Judge Richard Sullivan of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled Monday that the online retailer does not bear a legal responsibility to prevent its users from selling counterfeit items on its marketplace." [New York Times]
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By Paul BoutinComment by FiveStarEggRoll: Take that Frenchies! Harry "loves how eBay haters like the French ruling even though it is stifling for all in the... more » | Other threads
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e-commerce
Facebook's marketplace quits updating and nobody noticed
Facebook has a Craigslist-like marketplace where users can buy and sell things. Or, at least, for now it does. Product manager Jared Morgenstern launched the marketplace in May 2007, but Facebook hasn't updated marketplace listings since the middle of last month. AllFacebook's Nick O'Neill wonders if that means Facebook plans to phase it out with its upcoming site relaunch. If so, it's going to be great loss for all those Facebook users depending on "Natural Techniques You Can Try @ Home To Re-grow Lost Hair." -
e-commerce
Why outsource when you can replace humans entirely?
When online shoe retailer Zappos isn't paying newly trained employees to leave the company, it's replacing them entirely. Robots developed by Kiva Systems zip around a Zappos warehouse picking up items and deliver them to their meatbag underlings for packing, and then move the packages to another small group of primates where the boxes are shipped. The only problem I foresee is that the robots have wheels, so when they inevitably take over, they won't be buying any shoes from Zappos. [CNET]
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By Jackson WestComment by Goose Spruce: Do they also pay robots to leave? Kind of like their managers. more » | Other threads
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e-commerce
eBay demolishes "level playing field" for Buy.com
On eBay, some merchants are now more equal than others. eBay signed up Buy.com to sell on the site with a special deal: no listing fees, a perk which has allowed Buy.com to litter the site with junk listings like a single AA battery — an offering that makes no economic sense under the rules that apply to other eBay sellers. That goes against the site's core principle of a "level playing field," reiterated here by founder Pierre Omidyar, in an interview with current CEO John Donahoe, just two months ago. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by mrfomoco: You've got to hand it to Omidyar - he's sneaky, but he's a prevaricator. more » | Other threads
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e-commerce
Auction site eBay gets out of brokering TV and radio ads
While the occassional videoblogger might put up sponsorships for sale through eBay's auction site, networks and radio stations weren't so interested, so eBay is cutting its few deals with cable networks loose and ending its partnerships with Bid4Spots in brokering AM and FM ads. Which is a shame, because I was totally going to buy some radio ads right after I purchased some Beanie Babies. [Industry Standard] -
e-commerce
Amazon.com invests in a home shopping network, but not Diller's
Amazon.com's new, new thing is straight from the 1980s: a home-shopping network. Live on your TV! Amazon today announced an investment in the Talk Market, which the flacks call "a user-generated TV Shopping Channel" because businesses can upload and edit commercials on the site. [PR Newswire] -
e-commerce
Bid for relevance
Through higher fees and other changes, eBay is trying to push auctioneers off its site, as consumers favor fixed-price purchases. [BusinessWeek] -
taxes
Amazon.com exploits corporate welfare in the Keystone State
Texas isn't the only state going after Amazon.com for abusing the Supreme Court decision that requires mail-order retailers to collect sales taxes only on purchases in states where the company has a significant physical presence. In Pennsylvania, which is about to become host to a new Amazon distribution center, a local editorial is questioning the legality of the company avoiding state sales taxes by putting the warehouse titles under the names of subsidiaries. More »
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By Jackson WestComment by sample032: Abusing? You mean the way Amazon is abiding by the constitution and the court's interpretation, while states aren't respecting... more » | Other threads
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crime
Vancouver couple offers baby for sale on Craigslist
A Vancouver couple listed their week-old newborn for sale on Craigslist for $10,000, prompting a horrified user to call the police. When the cops arrived, they found the tyke breastfeeding and the parents claimed it was a hoax. Which didn't stop the authorities from confiscating the baby. Susan MacTavish Best issued the by-now boilerplate statement that reads "Misuse of Craigslist for illegal purposes is absolutely unacceptable to us." Those kooky Canadians just hate the free market. When they aren't unjustly subverting self-interest with their free health care, they're criminalizing the trade in human babies. Once Peter Thiel builds his Objectivist paradise at sea, expect him to make another fortune on PayBaby. (Photo by Badr Naseem)
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By Jackson WestComment by raincoaster: At this point it appears they're covertly admitting placing the ad. So, obviuosly, the DNA isn't worth much. more » | Other threads
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e-commerce
Amazon.com encourages Kindle casual encounters
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos may not be a sexless monk, but what about owners of the Kindle e-book reader? Hoping to ignite the flame of consumer desire across America, Amazon has set up a page for people to "See a Kindle in Your City."Whether you want to meet at your local coffee shop, a public park, or your favorite watering hole is up to you. We hope you enjoy meeting your fellow Kindlers.
I give the program two weeks before "Kindle owner seeks Tina for PnP" hits the site. -
e-commerce
Zappos advertising in some unexpected places
Las Vegas-based e-tailer Zappos, which prides itself on innovative management techniques like paying new hires to leave, is also an "innovator" in the advertising space. Not for the company's TV ads, but for leveraging the post-9/11 security landcape to get the word out. "When I'm coming through security I know that it can be frustrating and this is to provide a little lightheartedness," senior marketing manager Andy Kurlander said of the ad-buy for space in the buckets used by travelers to feed shoes and other items through the x-ray machine. The company should also consider a market which can only buy mail-order that's an even more captive audience: Prisoners. Heck, they could order new kicks straight from a Microsoft TouchWall.
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By Jackson WestComment by Whocares: I saw these a couple months ago, the one I saw had little dashes in the shape of shoes. ... more » | Other threads
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e-commerce
Borders can't "out-Amazon Amazon," so why open a store on the Web?
Longtime Amazon.com partner Borders opened an independent storefront on the Web today. Analysts don't hold high expectations for the new Amazon rival and Borders Group Inc. president and CEO George Jones told the AP the company knows what's up its up against. "It's not the intent that we're going to out-Amazon Amazon at what they do," Jones said. So what is the intent behind Borders's store on the Web? Likely, Borders opened shop on the Web to help sell the company. Two months ago, Borders announced it was for sale and only last week, Barnes & Noble confirmed a team of its executives are looking into a deal.
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Comment by tibetcat: Amazon is in everyone's space at this point. So, by the logic of this headline, why does anyone open a... more » | Other threads
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