Jerry Yang will step down after the company finds a replacement, following a tumultuous and short tenure that included the company's rejection of an offer by Microsoft Corp. to buy the company. - Trisha Okubo
Apple was expected to release an application from Google that allows iPhone users to initiate a Google search by voice. The system uses advanced voice-recognition software and, in some cases, can determine the location of the cell-phone user and suggest possible points of interest that are nearby. - Trisha Okubo
Research indicates that marketing that targets people who are in communication with each other -- active social networks -- is likely to produce outcomes as good as or perhaps even better than traditional demographic segmentation. Data from social networks and applications that run on social networks are seen as a tool to help marketers run campaigns. - Trisha Okubo
Retail growth, even online retail, is declining. However, the decline is steeper if you are losing market share and customers to Amazon. The Morgan Stanley reports customer satisfaction and recommendations are key drivers to Amazon gaining market share. - Trisha Okubo
Sellers of luxury goods say they're giving up on the aspirational teen shopper and new money hubs like Dubai and Moscow. Instead, they plan to pamper their traditional base: the very rich. "I really think the foundation of luxury is customer service -- that is what we are hearing," said Cori Galpern, worldwide marketing director for Tom Ford International. - Trisha Okubo
Mobile phones could serve a critical role in boosting retail sales over the holiday season. "It's really developed into a wonderful marketing tool that not only gives you text messages about products, but since mobile Web browsing is now available, you can find out when it goes on sale and where it's available," NRF spokesman Scott Krugman said. Wal-Mart and Amazon have launched text-message services to alert customers to special deals and prices. - Trisha Okubo
A drop in retail sales usually lags behind slumps in other economic sectors, and many people have expressed surprise at the recent crisis, according to one writer. Factors contributing to the trend have been building and include advertisers' inability to boost demand, a saturation of products in the U.S. and the onset of peer-to-peer commerce. - Trisha Okubo
Luxury-products manufacturers are cutting U.S. prices on designer clothing, handbags and footwear as even wealthy customers pull back on spending. The move is not likely to affect European profit margins because the U.S. dollar has made gains against the euro over the past six months. - Trisha Okubo
The U.S. online display-ad segment would be "lucky" if it manages to meet projections of a 6% growth rate in 2009 and could sink by as much as 40% compared with this year, according to a blog post by Nick Denton, head of Gawker Media. "Executives should be planning now on a decline of up to 40% in advertising spending during this cycle," Denton writes on his personal blog. "Instead they're sleepwalking into economic extinction -- even those lean online ventures which were supposed to take up the mantle and preserve New York's position as a media capital." - Trisha Okubo
The researchers claim the new program could actually improve traffic congestion, by helping drivers make better decisions. Here's how it works: as drivers pass certain locations marked with GPS coordinates, the phones will send speed and location information to computers, which will compute the data, determine speeds and travel times, and then send the aggregated information back to drivers' phones. Privacy safeguards keep the data from being linked to a particular phone. - Trisha Okubo
Microsoft Corp., as part of its effort to play catch-up to search leader Google, is teaming with Sun Microsystems Inc. for search. The deal calls for users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser who download Sun's Java technology platform to be given the choice of also downloading the MSN Toolbar - Trisha Okubo
eBay faces operational challenges, though they are hardly insurmountable. But in the context of the company's prodigious cash flow and strong balance sheet, shares are now so deep into value territory that they are bound to start emerging on the watch lists of all the value-focused money managers. - Trisha Okubo
What eBay needs is more disruptive innovation. - Jim Norris
...and a host of other things too long to list here. I'm on it :) - Trisha Okubo
