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While Washington considers a uniform national sales tax on internet sales, many struggling states aren't waiting, instead pushing forward their own legislation. One of the major companies that stands to lose business from such a tax, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), has begun to send messages to these states threatening to quit doing business with partners based in these states rather than accept the responsibility for collecting and distributing these taxes.

North Carolina and Hawaii have already received such notices. According to the Wall Street Journal linked above, these states are considering new laws that would required companies that have "online marketing affiliates" in the state to collect and return tax to the state. Amazon has thousands of such affiliates, web-based vendors who display links to Amazon products and receive a commission for each sale.

While MySpace still has an enviable user base, the future is looking dicey. Facebook continues to grow at a relentless pace -- and appears to be the de facto social network. There is also the sudden emergence of Twitter (which, by the way, is even putting pressure on Facebook).

To deal with this, MySpace's owner, News Corp (NYSE: NWS), is taking action. Just last week, the company slashed about 30% of the U.S. workforce.

As for this week, about two-thirds of the global work force will be fired, going from 450 to 150 employees.

This post is part of a featured report on stocks in the Chinese online gaming sector.

"China's online gaming market is slated to surge," says Andy Obermueller, an analyst with Street Authority's newly-launched advisory service, Government-Driven Investing.

"In China, internet users understand and embrace the 'come, stay, pay' model; that's where a site allows users to access a few things for free, but they have to pony up for the good stuff.

"This works particularly well with games. One of the leaders in this space is Shanda Interactive Entertainment (NASDAQ: SNDA). Gamers at its site use prepaid cards -- available at more than 320,000 vendors -- to add money to player accounts that can be used to access all of the features of its games.

This post is part of a featured report on stocks in the Chinese online gaming sector.

"For our latest recommendations, we're fishing in the strongest sector, China," says Timothy Lutts.

In The Cabot Stock of the Month advisory, the stock advisor looks at Shanda Interactive (NASDAQ: SNDA), a leading players in the Chinese online gaming sector.

"Global video game software revenues hit $26.5 billion in 2008, just a hair behind the film industry's $26.7 billion. The largest market for video games is still North America, but it's a slowing market, growing at 17% last year.

This post is part of a featured report on stocks in the Chinese online gaming sector.

"One lesson we learned long ago is that it often pays to recognize stocks showing unusual strength -- one such stock is NetEase (NASDAQ: NTES)," says Mike Cintolo in The Cabot Market Letter.

"In terms of stocks, NetEase is showing unusual strength. The stock started moving ahead in a powerful manner as soon as (actually a bit before) the market bottomed in March.

"In fact, NTES recently notched nine straight up weeks, all on above-average volume, breaking out of a three-year base in the process!

This post is part of a featured report on stocks in the Chinese online gaming sector.

"Perfect World Co., Ltd. (NASDAQ: PWRD) is a leading online game developer and operator in China; is our latest 'stock of the month' feature," says Dennis Slothower in his Stealth Stocks newsletter.

"The company primarily develops three-dimensional, or 3D, online games based on its proprietary Angelica 3D game engine and game development platform.

"Its strong technology and creative game design capabilities, combined with its extensive local knowledge and experience, enables the company to frequently and rapidly introduce popular games designed to cater to changing customer preferences and market trends in China.

This post is part of a featured report on stocks in the Chinese online gaming sector.

John Reese assesses stocks based on the criteria of a select group of well-known investors with very strong track records of long-term success.

In his Validea advisory, he looks at Chinese gaming stock, Netease (NASDAQ: NTES) based on the investment strategy of Martin Zweig, a long established growth investor. Here's his review.

"Netease operates an interactive online community in China, and is a provider of Chinese language content and services through its online games, Internet portal and wireless value-added services businesses.

This post is part of a featured report on stocks in the Chinese online gaming sector.

"When it comes to numbers, Giant Interactive (NYSE: GA) is the kind of company that accountants can only dream about; with a profit margin above 70% and huge cash reserves, the stock is selling well below book value," says China expert Jim Trippon.

In his The China Stock Digest he explains, "Giant was founded in November 2004 and as become one of the fastest-growing and most profitable companies in the Chinese online game industry."

"Despite constantly rising earnings as more and more Chinese log on to the Internet, Giant Interactive is reasonably valued with a P/E multiple of 12.5.

This post is part of a featured report on stocks in the Chinese online gaming sector.

"We're increasing our bet on Asia through Shanghai-based Chinese gaming company, Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd. (NASDAQ: SNDA)," says international stock expert Nick Vardy in The Global Bull Market Alert.

"I expect this small-cap stock to be a solid, risk-return trade, especially if you are willing to endure some volatility.

"First, Shanda operates online games in the People's Republic of China and is a pioneer in the hugely complex role-playing games that people play over the Internet.

Last week it was announced that the long-anticipated separation of AOL from Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) is set to happen before the end of the year -- then what?

If all goes well, AOL will set its own course sustaining what's left of its internet prominence, after falling from what was once internet dominance before its merger with TWX, and the continuous contraction of its dial-up subscriptions.

AOL still attracts more than 100 million Internet users to its online content portal, which includes BloggingStocks, so the adventure will continue. And, an AD-venture it is sure to be.

The same is true for Time Warner, the world's largest media conglomerate with operations spanning film, television, cable TV, and publishing. It will have an AD-venture of its own.

Around for decades, SCORE is an organization that -- for free -- provides mentors for small business owners. Hey, even top entrepreneurs Bill Gates and Michael Dell got help from mentors. It's crucial.

Well, this week SCORE launched a social network to help with the process. In fact, they formed an alliance with PartnerUp, which has already built its own small business networking platform.

The U.S. recession has hit just about every sector fairly hard, save health care; internet services have certainly not been immune.

Still, Wall Street has been known to overdo it somewhat on the downside, particularly when a growth play runs into a recession, and that's why Ciena Corp. (NASDAQ: CIEN) is worth a review.

Ciena supplies communications networking equipment, software and services to communications service providers, cable operators, governments and enterprises. The company specializes in helping organizations transition from old-world architectures to high-bandwidth services. Hence, CIEN is largely a broadband play, and now that it looks like better days are up ahead for the U.S. economy in a quarter or two, firms will begin to make the investments they need to stay competitive in a decidedly broadband world. The First Call F2009/F2010 EPS estimates for CIEN are a loss of 21 cents and a profit of 15 cents.

The privately held Craigslist Internet classifieds will be changing due to the very public eye being focused on it after the much publicized murder of a masseuse by a would-be client who preyed on the unsuspecting.

The change comes as Craigslist has become the whipping boy by Attorney's General in a state near you. The change they seek is a banishment of all services advertised that are of a direct or indirect sexual nature. Instead, what has been volunteered is that Craigslist will be dropping 'Erotic Services' ads.

The company will set up a new "adult services" section that will be closely monitored. New postings in the "adult services" category will cost $10, but once a posting is approved, customers will be eligible for re-posting at $5.

Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist's CEO, said the agreement preserves a place "for legal businesses to advertise" while incorporating suggestions from law enforcement, free speech advocates and Internet law experts. He went on to say, "The record is clear that use of Craigslist classifieds is associated with far lower rates of violent crime than print classifieds, let alone rates of violent crime pertaining to American society as a whole,".

Priceline.com (NASDAQ: PCLN), an online booking concern that competes with Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE), reported Q1 earnings on Monday. The stats were all right, I have to say.

Revenues increased over 14%. According to this article, earnings on an adjusted basis came to $1.09 per share. Analysts were looking for 93 cents per share. Year-ago adjusted income was 76 cents per share, according to the press release. Priceline not only expanded its bottom-line income, but it increased its net cash from operations. That figure went up by a nice 71%. Gross travel bookings as a whole jumped by over 10%. They did even better in the U.S. market.

Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU), a Chinese equity dedicated to internet search, has been one hot stock. As of this writing, shares of the company are up over 90% over the three-month frame! Talk about being in the green. And this is a stock that closed on Monday at $224.86.

Baidu reported Q1 earnings after the bell yesterday, and the release was full of high growth rates (the growth rates should be high considering the run-up of the stock). Revenues increased over 40%, operating profit went up by over 30%, and net profit rose over 20%. On a per-share, adjusted basis, Baidu delivered 86 cents per share for its investors, beating analysts' expectations by two pennies.