Yahoo sells HotJobs service to Monster Worldwide for $225 million

In a continuation of Yahoo Inc.'s strategy to lighten its corporate load, the Web portal company has sold its job search site HotJobs to online employment firm Monster Worldwide Inc. for $225 million in cash.

Yahoo bought HotJobs in 2001 for $436 million, outbidding TMP Worldwide Inc., which at the time was the parent company of Monster.com, the industry-leading job site.

As part of the agreement, Monster.com will also become the supplier of career search listings and content on Yahoo's homepage in the U.S. and Canada. 

Yahoo has been shutting down and selling various units as part of an effort to regain focus on traditional Web content like news and entertainment. Last month the company sold e-mail technology unit Zimbra to VMware Inc for an undisclosed amount. Yahoo had acquired Zimbra two years ago for $350 million.

-- David Sarno

VeriFone follows Square's lead with its own iPhone credit card payment system [Updated]

PAYware Mobile. Courtesy of VeriFone

Not to be outdone by tech visionary Jack Dorsey -- one of the brains behind Twitter -- and his Square cellphone payment start-up, point-of-sale  veteran VeriFone struck today with the announcement of PAYware Mobile.

Not dissimilar from the Square iPhone application and accessory, which The Times profiled last week, PAYware targets small businesses with its subscription-based model.

The PAYware app and device, which plugs into the iPod dock connector and cradles the phone, is free when users sign a two-year contract.

Along the lines of a cellphone contract, users pay an activation fee of $49, a monthly fee of $15 and 17 cents on each transaction.

The subscription model makes it an unrealistic option for the casual Craigslist seller, which Dorsey pegged as his target market. Indeed, VeriFone is going after cafes (as is Square), home repair and door-to-door salespeople.

Twitter creator wants to give away Square, his credit card payment gadget

Twitter was just the beginning. After dreaming up the innovative communication medium, Jack Dorsey is looking to revolutionize another core aspect of society -- money.

On Tuesday, Dorsey announced his new start-up, Square, which will let anyone with a cellphone or iPod become a merchant and accept credit card payments.

Square is a small plastic device that plugs into a gadget's headphone jack. Buyers swipe their credit cards through the machine, which then transmits the payment data to an application running on a connected iPhone or iPod Touch. (Android and Blackberry apps are in development, and computer software will be available later.)

You don't have to have the Square gadget or app to pay. You just need a credit card and an e-mail address to receive a receipt.

A select few cafes and small vendors are among Square's first beta testers. Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea in Venice will be one of the first in Southern California, starting as early as next week.

Beginning sometime early next year, Dorsey wants everyone to use Square.

"I think we're going to give the Squares away for free," Dorsey said on the phone from San Francisco on Tuesday, "because they're pretty cheap for us to make."

Cyber Monday sales up 13.7%, says Coremetrics

Cyber Monday shoppers spent less time but more money this year, giving online retailers a bit of holiday cheer in the gloomy economy.

Total online sales were up 13.7% versus last year, with clothing and jewelry retailers leading the way, according to market research firm Coremetrics. The average shopper spent $180.03 this year, up a whopping 38% from last year's $130.04.

It seems buyers were more efficient this year, spending 10% less time browsing than last year, with the average shopping session lasting 7.5 minutes, down 51 seconds from 2008. Peak browsing time: between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. PST, just as West Coasters were sliding into work and East Coasters were starting their lunch breaks.

What's driving consumers online? Convenience and bargains, said Coremetrics Chief Strategy Officer John Squire. He said he expects another bounty of online orders mid-December, right before the shipping cutoff dates for Christmas delivery.

We'll update this post with new figures as they roll in.

-- Alex Pham

Image by Bartelme Design

Follow my random thoughts on games, gear and technology on Twitter @AlexPham.

So long, Cyber Monday?

Need a lift? Online retailers continue to rely on Cyber Monday to give holiday sales a boost. Credit: Dan Hontz via Flickr.

As long as there has been e-commerce, there has been Cyber Monday. But is that old gem of the new economy endangered?

Online retailers for the last decade have counted on the Monday after Thanksgiving to deliver for Web merchants what Black Friday does for bricks-and-mortar stores -- a turbo boost into the holiday shopping season. Back then, many people hopped onto their employers' fast Internet connections to do some quick holiday shopping when they returned to work after Thanksgiving.

But with more than 60% of U.S. homes now sporting high-speed Internet, more people are now flipping through those online catalogs at home, said Ken Cassar, vice president of Nielsen Co.'s online research division.

As a result, more online stores aren't waiting until Monday to get the party going. They're throwing their own Black Friday events. Some, including Amazon.com, are doing deals every day this week.

That doesn't mean Cyber Monday will evaporate, however. That's because some people still shop at work, away from the prying eyes of family members. "Mondays still tend to be busier shopping days," Cassar said.

It's also a good marketing hook that retailers want to keep alive.

"Retailers liked the marketing focus," Cassar said. "It remains a big shopping day, but it's now fueled more by retailer marketing and promotion."

That means online merchants will be out in force trumpeting Cyber Monday specials.

More merchants say they plan to offer some type of promotion such as free shipping or extra discounts on Monday, 87% compared with 83% last year, according to a survey by Shop.org, the online division of the National Retail Federation. Check out Shop.org's Web page listing Cyber Monday specials offered by 650 of its member merchants.

The shipping promotions are likely to come with fewer...

U.S.' $7.2-billion broadband stimulus program risks waste and fraud, GAO says

A.J. Bowen of Schupp's Line Construction works on fiber-optic installation in Norton, Vt. Credit:  Toby Talbot / Associated Press.

Federal programs to bring broadband Internet service to areas without it lack basic information and adequate safeguards to ensure that the money isn’t wasted, a new government report said.

The Commerce and Agriculture departments were given $7.2 billion to expand U.S. broadband availability as part of last February’s federal stimulus package.

But they have been scrambling to review a crush of grant and loan applications while facing tight deadlines to distribute the money, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released Monday.

The first allocation of funds, originally set for Nov. 7, has been delayed until December.

The agencies have had just two months to review 2,200 applications for the first round of funding alone, the report said.

By comparison, the California Public Utilities Commission took four to six months to review just 54 applications in a $100-million broadband program.

Under Congress’ mandate, all $7.2 billion must be distributed by Sept. 30, 2010.

The programs “present risks of waste, fraud and abuse,” the GAO said, due to the compressed timetable for distributing the money and because of inadequate data on what areas actually lack broadband service.

Officials “will be awarding loans and grants before the national broadband plan or broadband mapping is complete,” the report said.

Program funds are intended to be spent on expanding broadband network wiring, developing public computer centers in places such as libraries or schools, and “innovative projects to stimulate demand for, and adoption of, broadband.”

To prevent waste and fraud, the GAO urged the two entities responsible for distributing the money – the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service – to develop a way to review and measure the effectiveness of fund recipients beyond the year 2010.

The full report can be viewed here.

-- Scott J. Wilson

Windows 7: Can Microsoft reboot reputation and give the tech sector a jolt?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer speaking at CeBit in March. Credit: Kay Nietfeld / European Press Photo Agency.

With more than 8 million "beta testers" using Windows 7 since January and dozens of reviews already published, virtually every aspect of Microsoft's new operating system is already public knowledge prior to this morning's "launch" -- except one.

Can Windows 7 repair Microsoft's reputation and trigger enough sales to pull the technology sector out of the economic funk?

Steve Ballmer certainly hopes so. The Microsoft chief executive and impresario known for his highly energetic speaking style this morning kicked off the launch of its latest computer operating system by saying, "Today is an important day for the computer industry, certainly for Microsoft and I hope perhaps even most importantly for all of the customers around the world."

Much rides on the success of Windows 7. Microsoft is counting on it to lift its sales, which fell last fiscal year for the first time since the company went public in 1986. Computer makers and software companies are praying that Windows 7 will set off a wave of demand for their products, which have been dampened by the recession as buyers postponed PC purchases or opted for ultra-cheap netbooks over full-fledged computers.

Even consumer electronics companies see Windows 7-based computers as a way to make their devices sexier as gateways for entertainment programs on-demand.

"Windows needs to be an incredible opportunity innovation for hardware companies and software companies," Ballmer said at the company's kick-off event in New York. "Windows 7 takes us a step closer to the vision we articulated ... around the three screens -- the PC, the phone and the TV, all communicating across the cloud, the Internet backbone."

Ballmer tried to nail the point home by ...

KaChing aims to shake up the mutual fund industry

Venture capitalists love to use the Internet to disrupt traditional businesses. But surely by now no business is left undisturbed.

Not so, says Andy Rachleff, a founder of Silicon Valley’s Benchmark Capital. He thinks he’s found a big one, what he says is “a $10-trillion market that has not had any innovation in the last 25 years and has not been affected by the Internet.”

It’s the mutual fund industry. And some valley heavyweights have joined Rachleff in his bid to rock that world: Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, Hewlett-Packard executive Ben Horowitz, Open Table CEO Jeff Jordan, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers partner Kevin Compton.

This team believes that mutual funds take investors’ money, but only tell them what their holdings are on a quarterly basis. The funds also charge all sorts of hidden fees. The Internet is famous for bringing transparency to a variety of businesses, but mutual funds, Rachleff says, are as opaque as ever.

Enter kaChing, a start-up that Rachleff has not only backed but has joined as its chief executive. KaChing has been around for about 18 months, accumulating 400,000 users with a Facebook application, but is now ready to unveil its business model.

The company offers up a website that any investor can use for free. The investors – some professional, some amateur – state their philosophy and show their stock picks. KaChing will then rate those investors, using a formula akin to the one that Ivy League universities use to evaluate their institutional fund managers, and anyone with a rating of 140 or more will be tabbed as a “genius.”

Any other investor can log onto the site and see what the geniuses are picking. But if you decide you like one of them, you can plunk your money down – minimum $3,000, which Rachleff says is far less than the institutional level typically required for such services – and invest like the genius of your choosing. Every time the genius makes a trade, you make the same trade at the same time, and get an e-mail alerting you to it.

To be sure, other companies out there have similar ideas. Other so-called social investing firms include Covestor, Cake Financial and PersonalRIA. Plenty of people have an eye on that mutual fund disruption.

And success is far from guaranteed. KaChing will have to persuade people to put their money behind stock-pickers who, while the site may call them geniuses, don't have the backing, brand names or Morningstar ratings of Fidelity, Pimco, Vanguard or other big funds.

-- Dan Fost

Huffington Post wants to help

 

anna Huffington. Credit: Huffington Post.

UPDATE: The section will go live at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Tuesday (not 12:01 a.m. as originally reported below.)

You've got to love the left. Even when they're running capitalist enterprises, they want to find some way to help the downtrodden.

Arianna Huffington is adding a new section to her eponymous A-list blog site the Huffington Post, and calling it Impact. She's partnered with Causecast, a Santa Monica venture that has both nonprofit and for-profit arms, and which will provide both articles and, more important, technology to make the section work.

The section will go live at 12:01  8 a.m. Tuesday, and will feature stories on a variety of subjects, including gay issues, helping the homeless,  stopping bullying in schools and flooding in the Philippines. Each story will come with a Causecast "widget" that will help a reader plot a course of action.

"We want to document the hardships and to provide the means and the tools for direct action, money and service," Huffington said.

Ultimately, every article -- not just those in the Impact section -- could feature a Causecast widget. A sample of the widget, seen at right, shows how it could be used with a story on this past weekend's National Equality March in Washington, D.C., for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. The widget is just a small box that runs with the stories containing buttons a reader could click to take them to a Causecast page that promotes other websites, such as the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that helps prevent LGBT youth suicide. 

"Every article has a cause behind it," said Ryan Scott, the founder and CEO of Causecast. "We’re going to show the actions that people can take to effect change on whatever that is. Say it’s a flood or a tsunami. Can they donate? Volunteer? Make calls? Make personal fundraising pages?"

Huffington said ads will run on the site, and the Huffington Post and Causecast will split the ad revenue. Any money donated to any cause goes directly to the cause, with nothing coming out of it. 

Her site continues to expand, reinvesting its proceeds in the product. "We’ve had a very, very good advertising year," she said. "We would be in the black if we were not expanding. Whether you are profitable or not depends whether you're standing still or expanding. This is a window we need to take advantage of."

In addition to Impact, the HuffPost started a Technology section and regional coverage in Denver in September, a Books section earlier this month, and new sections on Sports and Giving planned for November and December. Local news in Los Angeles is also planned for November, and a San Francisco Bay Area section could start before the end of the year, although it's more likely to hold off until early 2010.

Huffington said her audience is highly engaged, with 27 million people visiting the site each month and leaving 2 million comments. "We want to tap into that longing out there to give back," she said. "That was a big part of the success of the Obama campaign, when Obama promised to make service central. That has been slightly derailed with all the problems in the economy but we want to make it central. This is not the icing on the cake. It has to be baked into the cake."

-- Dan Fost

Internet ad spending continues slide

The recession continued to cut into companies’ resources as Internet advertising spending in the U.S. fell more than 5% in the second quarter, according to a report released today.

It is the second consecutive quarterly drop in online advertising, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers quarterly report. This is the first time since the dot-com bust in 2002 that online ad spending has dipped for two consecutive quarters compared with the same quarters of the previous year.

From April to June this year, 5.4 billion was spent on online ads -- down 5.3% from a year earlier, when advertisers spent $5.8 billion.

Despite the drop in numbers, online advertising is doing well considering the economic climate, said Randall Rothenberg, president and chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

“We are in one of the most difficult economic slumps in decades. Interactive is one of the advertising sectors that has been least affected,” Rothenberg said. “As the economy improves, we’re confident that brands will devote an even greater share of their budgets to reaching consumers as they make interactive media a larger part of their lives.”

-- W.J. Hennigan