Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) said first quarter profit rose 30% driven by strong sales across the board. .

Amazon shares slumped in after-hours trading after the company lowered its operating income forecast for the year.

Net income at Amazon rose to $143 million in the first quarter, or 34 cents per share, from $111 million, 26 cents, a year earlier. Sales increased 37% to $4.13 billion. The results beat the views of Wall Street analysts who had expected a profit of 32 cents on revenue of $4.08 billion.

Amazon expects second quarter sales to be between $3.875 billion and $4.075 billion on operating income of $120 million and $160 million. For the year, the Seattle-based e-tailer is forecasting net sales of $19.1 billion to $20 billion on operating income of between $740 million and $940 million. Earlier this year, the company had forecasted operating income of $985 million, according to Bloomberg News. The operating income guidance was wide enough to drive an 18-wheeler through.

Once again, Amazon has left investors up the creek -- or river -- without a paddle.

Facebook brags about how it understands its vast community.

However, some members of the community have been perturbed lately, if not creeped out. Even MoveOn.org initiated an online protest.

The reason is Facebook's attempts to monetize things through its Beacon advertising system. Basically, it shows your online friends where you are shopping, such as from places like Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN).

True, this may be useful in terms of getting helpful information (think of Beacon as a recommendation service) – but it also raises serious privacy issues.

Well, Facebook has blinked. Now, the company will provide an opt-in option to its users.

All in all, I think it's a smart move and should help quell some of the protest. However, it's likely to make it tougher for Facebook to crank out more money for its investors -- such as Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) -- that have valued the company at frothy $15 billion. No doubt, the money-privacy balance will be a continuing struggle for the fast-growing website.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: eBAY) proved again in the first quarter that it's far from death's door. The company reported strong first quarter earnings. Here is a rundown of the conference call. All times are in eastern.

5 p.m. Usual disclosures.

Meg Whitman. The first quarter was a very strong one for the company. Great results across the board., net revenue of $1.7 bln. Top line org growth of 27 percent, expanded operating margins.

Marketplaces business. delivered revenus of 1.25 bln. Payment volumen on paypal rose 30 percent. number of accounts incresaed to more than 143 bln. Merchant services also grew. Skype performed very well, first quarter of profitability. "Optimistic" about the potential of business.

Marketplaces..eBay sites are pefroming, This is putting some pressure on listings and GMV gorwth. (fee hikes).eBay is "agressively" taregeting bad guys. Continue to improve user experience on sites. I'm confident that we've identified the areas we need to focus on to reaccelerate growth rates in the U.,S, and Germany.

Pleased with korea, Stub Hub acquisition. Shopping.com. 29 percent y/y growth, traffic is . Our partnerships with Yahoo and Google are performing well. Outside of US., international ad partnership with Google is on track.

PayPAl had another excellent quarter, 31 percent revenue growth more than 11 bln in volume. Pay Pal has 35 mln accounts in Europe, extremely popular in Germany.

Merchant services is doing well. (My wife uses it for her small business). PayPal continues to grow very nicely. incredibly pleased with the direction and trajectory. Skype is doing well. It is quite early in the life cycle of new products. Now can payments via Skype.For the next several qutres, skype will expand user base and enhance call quality. The compelling combination of our three business. EACh of the business units is making progress in achieving objectives.I am enormously excited and confident about our future