Blue Nile Needs to Up-Sell

Back in May I rated Blue Nile (NILE), the leading online retailer of diamonds and fine jewelry, very well in terms of Web 3.0. Blue Nile takes the approach of providing in-depth educational content and vertical search tools that aim to make consumers feel in control of the jewelry shopping process. Many males will admit

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eBay vs Amazon: My Take

So, I asked you to think about whether eBay or Amazon is a better company. I pointed out that Amazon’s stock is performing a lot better than eBay’s this year. One of you rightly pointed out that Amazon’s margins are a problem. Indeed, as I discussed at length in the series we just completed, Amazon

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Web 3.0 & Amazon (Part 5)

Conclusion We have reviewed Amazon’s strategy in the upcoming Web 3.0 world over the last few days. Amazon has been focusing on enhancing its technology, introducing new categories of products and services (recently introduced, Amazon MP3 and Grocery), increasing depth of selection in each category, opening new markets (UK, Germany, Japan), offering better shopping tools

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eBay of Latin America: Mercado Libre CEO Marcos Galperin (Part 7)

SM: Does PayPal operate in South America? MG: You can withdraw money but you cannot fund a PayPal account. They do not have a Spanish speaking site either. SM: What is your dynamic with eBay today? Competitive or collaborative?

Standing by WebMD

WebMD Health Corp. (WBMD) is a familiar home to anyone who has ever searched the Internet for a cure to bad food, a sprained ankle, the difference between a pulled muscle and torn hamstring, or between schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. I covered their business concept at length in an earlier comparison article on health websites

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Web 3.0 & Amazon (Part 4)

Acquisition Targets Amazon has been slow to acquire companies. Amazon acquired dpreview.com, a London-based digital photography review site in May 2007. Amazon needs to use acquisitions to enter businesses that have a higher profitability dynamic in their business models. For example, Amazon could consider acquiring on-demand, customized product creation company CafePress. CafePress.com is a growing

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eBay of Latin America: Mercado Libre CEO Marcos Galperin (Part 6)

SM: So you grew well through 2006, and in 2007 you went public. How was the IPO received in the investor community? MG: Very well. The stock went up quite a bit. We were quite unlucky in that we did our road show in the middle of the sub prime crisis. The day we priced,

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In France, Failure Sucks

We have had some discussions in the past here about how Silicon Valley’s success owes itself to the fact that risk-taking is encouraged here, and failure is not a stigma that you have to carry throughout your career. I recently attended a roundtable at Stanford with a delegation from France, where this topic came up

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