Results for online businesses: 320

The news is slowly sinking in that Twitter can help small businesses succeed beyond answering customers' questions, networking and providing education. Within a fairly short period of time, Twitter could permanently change how small businesses operate to include hyper-local marketing, advertising, financial information, customer service, data mining, product and service alerts and micropayments.

Confronted with a dumbfounding 90 percent drop-off in revenue at his high-end, custom bicycle business in San Antonio, Texas, Kevin Saunders could easily have closed his shop and resumed a career in finance or aircraft component design.

Google's new operating system has serious small-business potential. First it was a web browser. Then it became an operating system. But look a step further, and it鈥檚 not hard to see how Google鈥檚 Chrome could potentially become the springboard for an entirely new generation of entrepreneurs.

By Chen Xiaomin Chinese consumers seem to be shedding their hang-ups about using third-party payment on the Internet mainly because they're realizing it's a convenient and safe way to shop, analysts said. 鈥淣early 80 percent of online shoppers in China prefer third-party payment. It keeps buyer...

Want to earn customer loyalty? Read this. Paula Courtney found "wow" when she took her daughter to the employee washroom at her local grocery store. A sign by the door instructed workers to remain physically by the side of any customer experiencing a problem until that problem was resolved.

Even small investments in technology can make a big difference in turning your inventory.

Twitter is the easiest form of social media to measure, so make sure you're getting the most from it.

Ning helps build fan groups online. Now it wants to help more advertisers find them. Gina Bianchini runs an Internet-based social network of affinity groups. Ning, as the company is called, attracts people who want to share their passions and interests, from stock-picking to roller derby.

The software giant prepares to showcase free, Web-based programs to write documents and tinker with spreadsheets on the go.

By Sherman So and J. Christopher Westland Editor鈥檚 note: This article has been adapted from the book Red Wired: China鈥檚 Internet Revolution co-authored by Sherman So and J. Christopher Westland. The to-be-published book is aimed at helping readers gain firsthand understanding of how the Chin...