The Seattle e-commerce giant has recently been developing a wide-ranging lineup of gadgets — including two smartphones and an audio-only streaming device — to expand its reach beyond its Kindle Fire line of tablet computers, said people familiar with the company’s plans.

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The company on Sunday said it sent tens of millions of emails urging its active U.S. sellers to push for changes to a bill now before Congress that would allow all states to collect sales tax from online merchants, whether they have operations in that state or not. eBay said the bill’s sales threshold for triggering the tax is too low.

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The streaming-video service, which recently dodged a bullet from the Securities and Exchange Commission over a Facebook posting, told investors Wednesday in a regulatory filing it may use the social-networking site or Twitter to disclose material information.

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The streaming-video service said Wednesday it will allow users to open up their viewing history to friends on Facebook. Those that opt in won’t have to spend their Saturday nights watching romantic comedies alone any more.

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Two publishing industry groups, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, are objecting to the online retailer’s request for ownership of new top-level domain names that are part of a long-awaited expansion of the Web’s addressing scheme. They argue that giving Amazon control over such addresses — which include “.book,” “.author” and “.read” — would be a threat to competition and shouldn’t be allowed.

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Microsoft and Google are increasingly trying to unseat Amazon in the lucrative business of renting out computing storage and number-crunching to thousands of companies.

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“Netflix is down for some customers this Christmas Eve, thanks to an outage of some of Amazon’s cloud infrastructure,” the company said on its Twitter account.

A Netflix spokesman added that the outage stretched “across the Americas.”

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But now that Facebook Inc., Zynga Inc. and Groupon Inc. have fizzled in their first year on the stock market –even though they were considered on the cutting edge of some of those tech trends — the hype over “SoLoMo” has subsided.

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The Seattle-based Web giant on Monday tapped capital markets with its first bond offering in nearly 15 years, raising $3 billion for what it said were “general corporate purposes.” Among other things, the company is set to complete the purchase of a headquarters complex for $1.16 billion by year-end.

The bond offering was Amazon’s first since May 1998, when the company was “junk” rated and offered debt at discounted rates. Amazon appears to be taking advantage of low interest rates to build its cash reserves, even as its Web site, Kindle and Web-services business continue to bring in more revenue.

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But the overall increase wasn’t as robust as last year’s. And some indicators showed a decline in spending at stores on Black Friday itself, leading to questions about whether retailers’ new tactics are simply shifting spending to different days and sales outlets.

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While bigger online audiences and efficient shipping operations have enabled categories like pet food and diapers to become viable Web businesses, selling wine over the Internet remains thorny. Chief among the hurdles is a patchwork of U.S. and state regulations governing alcohol sales that makes shipping bottles directly to consumers’ doorsteps a mind-boggling proposition.

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Some of the ingredients to success include ads that play on the unique properties of mobile gadgets, including location, or ads disguised as a game, coupon or information that consumers want, say ad executives and industry observers.

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Amazon hosted a workshop on Monday at a resort in Napa, Calif., and invited members of the Napa Valley Vintners association, said Terry Hall, a spokesman for the group. He said about 100 wineries attended the event.

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But it may not matter anymore. A new survey by Wells Fargo analyst Matt Nemer showed that consumers in Texas, the second most populous state in the nation, essentially haven’t changed their buying habits since the online sales tax went into effect in July.

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The Internet company may allow consumers who are under 18 years old to set up accounts and access the eBay.com website to buy vintage T-shirts, jewelry, school supplies or other products, said Devin Wenig, eBay’s president of global marketplaces in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

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On Wednesday, venture-capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Insight Venture Partners invested $150 million for a 10 percent stake sports-apparel website Fanatics.com at a $1.5 billion valuation. That’s more than four times what it was worth a year ago.

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In a sea change for consumer behavior, the amount of time spent making old-fashioned voice calls has fallen every year since Apple Inc. introduced the iPhone in 2007. The rub for carriers is that voice billings still account for about two-thirds of what they charge cellphone customers every month.

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Sprint will announce this week it will offer the popular smartphone on its Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go brand as soon as July 1, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. The Overland Park, Kan., carrier follows Leap Wireless International Inc. in selling the device with prepaid service.

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The two sides still have until 5 p.m. Monday to reach a deal that would keep LightSquared out of bankruptcy court, and there were some indications over the weekend that a final decision hadn’t yet been reached on the company’s fate. Still, the two sides remained far apart and people involved in the negotiations expected LightSquared to begin making bankruptcy preparations in earnest.

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Mr. Falcone’s compromise is expected to prompt LightSquared’s lenders to approve a one-week extension on a debt-term violations waiver that expires Monday morning, the people said.

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The trend follows a more aggressive push by larger carriers, such as Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA, to capture users at the lowest end of the market, by such means as free phone offerings to those on government subsidies. Investors sent shares of MetroPCS and Leap sharply lower on Thursday.

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T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, has slated the airwaves, or spectrum, for its development over the next several years of a high-speed mobile broadband network to keep pace with its larger rivals. The spectrum will bolster T-Mobile’s network in 12 large U.S. markets, according to a statement from the Bellevue, Wash.-based carrier.

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Clearwire has been hunting wholesale customers since at least September, when Chief Executive, Erik Prusch, said he was in discussions with AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless and MetroPCS Communications Inc. Leap, which operates the Cricket brand, is the smallest U.S. carrier with a national reach, with roughly half the customers of MetroPCS, its nearest competitor.

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