Group-buy site Mercata: We're done too
Envisioned as the future of commerce, "group buying" e-tailer Mercata.com will cease operations at the end of the month. The company says the private funding it sought in the wake of canceling its IPO dried up. The site had patented its group buying technology, under which shoppers could name the prices they were willing to pay for consumer goods such as kitchen wares and electronics; the prices would fall if enough customers expressed willingness to pay similar prices. Customers can still order merchandise from Mercata until Jan. 31; it will accept returns until Jan. 20. The company’s 100-plus employees will lose their jobs. Mercata officials blame the company’s failure upon the unwelcoming environment on Wall Street and in the venture capital sector. The site launched in May 1999 and tore through about $89 million in the course of its existence.

Study: Online holiday spending tops $10 billion
Shoppers spent $10.7 billion during the 2000 holiday season, according to a Goldman Sachs/ PC Data study. The figure is more than double holiday spending in 1999, when consumers spent $5.2 billion. In the last week of December 2000, consumer online buying hit $878 million, in contrast to $542 million for the same period the year before. After Christmas, consumers increased their spending on computer hardware to $232 million from $116 million. The same week, Dec. 25-31, consumers spent $121 million on clothing, compared to $98 million the week before. On home and garden products, spending increased from $10 million the week before to $22 million; spending on game software increased from $19 million to $21 million. The economy may be down, but analysts say spending met their expectations.

NFL tackles Cincinnati Bengals spoof site
The NFL has sent its attorneys after a site that makes fun of the lowly Cincinnati Bengals.  Faced with the threat of legal action over trademark violations, Dave Young, creator of Mikebrownsucks.com, has complied with most of the demands the NFL makes in a cease-and-desist letter. The NFL wants the web site, named for Bengals' owner Mike Brown, to quit cribbing content from the official Bengals site and erase his links to it. Young has now done both. But the NFL also wants him to sideline his send-up of the Bengals mascot--the "Fraidy Cat," a cartoon tiger wearing a frightened, bemused expression. Young has stopped selling T-shirts featuring the Fraidy Cat logo, but he refuses to remove the logo from the web site. Since Young put the site and the logo to commercial use by selling T-shirts, experts say the First Amendment might not protect him.

Culturefinder: What the hell, we're a nonprofit
Flat-broke, near-death dot.com Culturefinder.com is being faithful to its negative balance sheet: It’s becoming a nonprofit, a dot.org instead of a dot.com. Transforming into a nonprofit is an 11th-hour measure that could prolong Culturefinder’s life, allowing it to be a leaner operation with fewer employees and a budget a fifth the size of what it once was. The site will use its existing infrastructure and technology. But there's no guarantee the move will succeed. To begin with, Culturefinder will now have to charge arts organizations $150 to $500 a year for listing performances--a service that had previously been free for the 4,000 fine-arts groups that have been posting events on the site. And Culturefinder will still need an influx of money only now it's considered philanthropy rather than investment. The organization's CEO Eugene Carr says he is after $500,000 in the next three weeks. Carr conceived the plan after the site’s last backer pulled out in late December. The company sells $3 million in tickets a year; 1 million people visit the site monthly.

Turkish kids detained for chillin’ at net cafes
Turkish police arrested 130 children earlier this week for loitering in internet cafes in the town of Kirikkale in the Anatole--for the kids’ own good, ostensibly. Locals had complained that when kids tarried in the net cafes, they were being exposed to cigarette smoke and online pornography. After hauling the children to the station, the cops sent them home, telling them to do their homework and to stay away from the corrupting influence of the online access parlors. The town’s chief of police cautions that the force again will arrest the children if they dare to hang out in online cafes again, or video game parlors either for that matter. "We want you to become people who do some good for the state," the police chief was quoted as telling the children. "We want to see you in nice places, not bad ones."

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