• Blockbuster Sued For Participating In Facebook's Beacon Program by Wendy Davis

    A Texas resident has filed a federal lawsuit against Blockbuster for participating in Facebook's Beacon program, which tells members about their friends' e-commerce activity. In the lawsuit, quietly filed last week, Dallas County resident Cathryn Elaine Harris claims that Blockbuster violated the federal Videotape Privacy Protection Act by sharing information about her movie rentals and sales with Facebook without first obtaining her written consent. ...Read the whole story

  • Userplane CEO Reflects On Potential Yahoo/AOL Merger by Laurie Sullivan

    As Time Warner and Yahoo weigh a cash infusion to seal an AOL/Yahoo deal, Userplane, an AOL subsidiary acquired in 2006 to lead the company into the social networking/ad supported business, prepares to release a video playback platform in May and a bulletin board platform in June. MediaPost caught up with Mike Jones, founder/CEO of Userplane, at ad:tech in San Francisco. He shared his thoughts on a potential Yahoo/AOL merger and what it would mean for the companies. ...Read the whole story

  • AT&T, Vizible To Launch Firefox-Based Browser With Ads by Tameka Kee

    AT&T has gone Pogo. The telecommunications giant has partnered with emerging tech firm Vizible to develop Pogo, a Web browser that adds a visual dimension to searching for and organizing info on the Web. Pogo is built on the Mozilla Firefox browser, and the free, potentially ad-supported application isn't geared toward the tech-savvy digerati. AT&T is aiming for the everyday users of the Web with Pogo--a factor that pits it head-to-head with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. ...Read the whole story

  • IAC And HealthCentral Partner For New Ad Network by Gavin O'Malley>, <Author: Mark Walsh

    Barry Diller's IAC and the HealthCentral Network, a collection of over 35 health and wellness sites, have partnered to launch an ad network for pharmaceutical and health-related marketers. The network's reach combines the 45 million monthly unique visitors across IAC's e-commerce sites---including Match.com, Evite and Ticketmaster--along with the 10 million monthly visitors across HealthCentral's condition-specific sites. ...Read the whole story

  • NY Likely To Face Battle Over Collecting Sales Tax From E-Tailers by Wendy Davis

    If New York goes through with its plan to make Amazon and other e-tailers collect sales tax from consumers, the state will almost certainly face a tough battle in court, legal experts say. The bill, passed recently by the state and awaiting signature by Gov. David Paterson, would require Web retailers that use in-state affiliates to collect New York sales tax. ...Read the whole story

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