Articles of the Day
ForeSee: Amazon, Netflix Tops In Consumer Satisfaction - Online movie rental company Netflix and retailer Amazon had the highest levels of online consumer satisfaction this holiday season, according to a report slated for release today by research firm ForeSee Results. For the report, ForeSee measured consumer satisfaction indexes for the 40 highest-selling U.S. retailers on a 100-point scale.
How Starwood is building the hotel of the future in Second Life - Starwood, creators of the upscale W Hotels brand, is using the virtual community Second Life to introduce its new brand, Aloft. The new hotel brand targets a hip thirtysomething crowd, offering wireless Internet service, chic areas for lounging and socializing, cool terminology (the pool is named “Splash” and the snack bar “Re:Fuel”), and loft-like architecture throughout. The chain wanted to get feedback and create buzz among its target audience before constructing a brick-and-mortar building. So Starwood began construction this fall on an “island” it purchased in Second Life, foreshadowing what it plans to do in 2008 in five North American locations.
Yahoo 2007: Is Panama Enough? - Panama may not be enough to clean up Yahoo’s mess. In the face of a slumping year on the stock market, deserting executives and a trouncing by Google in Web search and mergers and acquisitions, Yahoo needs a good 2007. The company has placed high hopes on Panama, its new ad monetization technology aimed at delivering better-targeted ads to its users in the hope that it will make Yahoo’s search and display ads more lucrative.
Possibility Of A Yahoo-AOL Merger in 2007; Google-AOL Change of Control Clause - So bets Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen, in a note titled “Is 2007 the year AOL and Yahoo are in play?” last week. She said that AOL and Yahoo could be open to a tie-up in 2007, spurred by AOL’s falling market share in Internet search and Yahoo’s lag behind Google. “We believe there are several trends that could push either AOL or Yahoo towards a major transaction, with each other or with another competitor…Although not without its problems, we believe that an AOL-Yahoo combination is one of the more logical combinations in this arena.”
