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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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:

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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Venky Harinarayan on Kosmix and Vertical Search (Part 2)

SM: Where did you get the idea for your current venture? What is your domain experience in the segment? VH: We started with the thesis that the Web is like the library of Alexandria – the repository of all human knowledge. The only window people have into this repository today is search. Our vision was

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Web 3.0 and Verticalization

I have worked with the Web 3.0 framework for months now, and taken a crack at defining how the web is likely to evolve in the future. So here’s a recap of the thesis so far. I will be adding a dimension to this framework shortly, so it is a good time to stop and

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WebMD Has Tremendous Growth Ahead

If you have the problem of head lice or are looking for some of the best diet tips ever, chances are that you would head to WebMD’s (NASDAQ: WBMD) health portal to find your answers. More serious illnesses like Diabetes and Cancer drive tremendous traffic on health portals, WebMD being one of the largest in

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Web 3.0 & Online Health (Part 5)

M&A and VC activity Increased traffic and stickiness of online health sites have led to a number of deals in the current year. In July 2007, NBC Universal and GE Commercial have jointly invested $25 million in Healthline, a fast growing health vertical. In June 2007, Meredith, a leading media and marketing companies acquired Seattle-based

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Web 3.0 & Online Health (Part 3)

Business Model Online health sites earn majority of their revenues from advertising and sponsorship programs. They also earn revenues by licensing and retailing products through their site. WebMD (Nasdaq: WBMD), the leading portal for online health, for example, saw its advertisement and sponsorship revenues grow by 45% to $52.4 million and licensing revenues increase by

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