Blue Nile, WebMD Seeing Success With Mobile Apps

According to Forrester, online retail sales in the United States will increase 16% over the year to $52 billion this holiday season. In a survey of 4,700 U.S. online consumers surveyed for the report, 37%said they expect to make holiday purchases on the Web this year, compared with 30% in 2009. Mobile phones are also

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Blue Nile Struggles Amidst Luxury Industry Collapse

MasterCard’s SpendingPulse recently reported that the 34% decline in sales of luxury items was the highest year-on-year decline of any retail category during the holiday season and that the reduction was led by falling jewelry sales. In such conditions, it is not surprising that Blue Nile (NILE) recently announced a lackluster Q4 performance.

Catching Up on Readings: Hydro Alchemy

Since the last catching up list on April 26, you may have accumulated more backlog. What’s with the Yahoo-Microsoft frenzy? Here’s a quick cache of the articles since then that you may want to make sure you read:

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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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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Blue Nile’s Remedy

David Philips wrote an article on Seeking Alpha, called On Blue Nile’s Lackluster Business Strategy last week. Those who have followed the company for a long time, know, that Blue Nile (Nasdaq: NILE) is one of those rare gems, a dotcom era survivor. In many ways, they are a posterchild of a business that exploited

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Tiffany vs. Blue Nile

Both Tiffany (TIF) and Blue Nile (NILE) sell diamonds. Tiffany, however, is a high end brick and mortar retailer, against Blue Nile’s scrappy online play. Let’s look at how their stocks have done, ever since Blue Nile became public in the spring of 2004: The graphs show a dramatic similarity, raising the question: Does Online

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