Low Yahoo earnings estimates rattle investors
Wall Street went haywire Thursday when Yahoo lowered its earnings expectations for 2001. At the same time, the portal reported that its first-quarter earnings would meet expectations. No matter: Yahoo shares tumbled 15 percent, or $4.53, to $25.97. Analysts and investors immediately downgraded Yahoo stock, as well as that of fellow ad-supported companies like CNET and NBCi. Terra Lycos stock slipped 88 cents to $11.75. Pronouncements such as this one from Internet.com CEO Alan Meckler abounded: "If Yahoo can't significantly grow, the pain for other consumer sites is going to be grotesque." Observers seem intent on pegging the entire industry's troubles on slow ad sales, which helps deflect everyone's attention from the fact that these web companies had been pumped up in value far out of proportion to their worth as businesses in the first place. In any case, Wall Street is now insisting that web sites find alternate sources of revenue and quickly. Even as Yahoo's new projections caused analysts to skewer the company, some believe the portal went with extra-low estimates to low-ball the Street so as not to have to fall short again. And one or two analysts resisted their peers' Cassandra-like pronouncements and expressed the belief that Yahoo's troubles are merely short-term and will alleviate as mainstream advertisers follow consumers onto the web, which they surely will.

Study: New economy is still growing
The so-called internet economy grew 58 percent in 2000, according to a study commissioned by internet infrastructure company Cisco Systems. Specifically, internet and technology-related companies poured $830 billion into the economy in 2000. More than 3 million people worked in the internet field in the middle of 2000 --twice as many as work in real estate. Researchers determined that the internet created 600,000 new jobs in the first half of last year. Just 28 percent of internet professionals work in technical positions, compared to 33 percent in sales and marketing. The study did not limit itself to pure-play dot.coms, which make up about 10 percent of the total internet economy. Rather, the study included the use of internet technology by traditional businesses, and concluded that more jobs are created as more traditional companies harness the internet to save time and money. The economic slowdown in the second half of the year tempered the sector’s rapid growth, the study notes.

Local news site Streetmail lays off and cuts back
Streetmail.com, an internet company that specializes in local email newsletters, has fired 16 staffers in its New York and North Adams, Mass., offices. The company has also scaled back on the number of contracts it will offer freelance writers. The email newsletters have focused upon off-the-radar-screen news from small and medium cities. But as part of the restructuring, letters in one-quarter of the companies’ markets will become regional. The dot.com has not revealed which of its 131 small and medium markets will be affected. All of the changes, according to Streetmail’s vice president of marketing, are cost-cutting measures made necessary by the much-ballyhooed dot.com downturn and investors’ insistence upon profitability. Streetmail CEO Barbara Johnson launched the site to fill the gap left as the number of offbeat, independent local newspapers that actually carry local news dwindles.

EBay opts in 6 million users, ready or not
About 6 million eBay users who signed up between April and November 2000 will receive opt-in company email --whether they thought they wanted it or not. Due to a bug on the registration page, users who had registered during that time frame were automatically opted out of marketing emails and newsletters, even if they had indicated that they actually would welcome such messages. EBay has fixed the problem so the registration page functions normally again and users can choose to receive or not receive promotional mailings. As for those who registered on the buggy page, eBay has decided unilaterally to opt all of them in. The auction site sent the users in question an email this week explaining the change. Those opted in by eBay can still manually can opt out of the emails, and the auction site says it won’t start sending marketing emails to these users as a group until Jan. 23, to give everyone some time. Still, the action has miffed privacy advocates and more than a few eBay customers; disaffected users have taken to message boards and chat rooms to voice their irritation.

A job site for the porn industry
Thanks to the internet, it’s a bit easier to find a job as a live, nude girl. In the tradition of straight career sites such as Monster.com, newly launched Adultstaffing.com lists lucrative job openings in areas such as phone sex, lingerie modeling and adult-film acting. Given that porn dot.coms are among the few consistently profitable types of internet companies, the money tossed around on this board can itself be enticing. In one want ad, a New York City escort service entices potential porn stars and dancers with a potential income of $20,000 a week. Phone sex operators can earn $1 a minute, and "pregnant or lactating" models can land $1,500 a day for posing nude on a fetish web site. Adultstaffing also publishes accounts of adult industry conferences. The site’s slogan proclaims it to be "the first of it’s [sic] kind in the industry." 

Printer-Friendly Version |  Send to a Friend
Cover Page | Contact Us

© 2001 Media Life