Former NBC Entertainment President Scott Sassa will take the reins at the popular social networking Web site Friendster with a mandate to make the fast-growing and well-funded start-up profitable, the company said on Thursday.

Information overload will drive e-mail into the ground unless software vendors act now and make major changes to the 30-year-old technology, warned a leading Internet expert Wednesday.

Google Inc. today is unveiling a souped-up version of a search product that businesses and other entities can use to identify and find documents and other information quickly within their own computer networks.

The number of newspaper websites around the world has doubled since 1999, a study has found.

Pending solutions to spam could reopen opportunities for legitimate marketers.

When spam first started showing up on the technology radar as a problem, it was mostly a problem for consumers and individuals whose personal data (especially e-mail addresses) was easy pickings for spammers building databases. But it wasn't long before corporate e-mail systems were overwhelmed as well. Now, spyware is apparently following in spam footsteps.

Phishing scammers cast a wide net, luring victims into a nasty snare that often costs them critical financial data. Preventing the scams may be harder than anyone has imagined.

Unwelcome e-ads now clog instant messaging systems, Internet logs and cellphones.

So, you want a piece of Google, but you don't want to pay an arm and a leg? You're not alone. Many fund managers I've spoken with recently are considering sitting out on the Google auction process for fear the price they'd be receiving isn't much of a discount than what retail buyers would get.

Online marketing is all about getting traffic, right? Get your website optimized for the right search phrases, bid on the relevant pay-per-click keywords, then sit back and watch as orders roll in.