tinyComb » Ebay

Google Wave Invites For Sale On eBay!

Jason Wilk — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:39:46 +0000

If this isn’t a sure sign of another Gmail success story, Google Wave invites are going for sale on eBay for upwards of $25. The first auction for a Wave pass went for $157. Not a bad deal for the seller who just had to sign up early for the Beta (which I signed up the first day and have still yet to receive mine. What’s the deal Google?)

Revolution Money. Set To Not Take Over

Jason Wilk — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:20:03 +0000

Is there room for another payment processor in the market? There’s already the market leader PayPal, followed by Google and Amazon and a slew of open source solutions. AOL co-founder Steve Case thinks there is room for one more with his latest venture Revolution Money. First announced in 2007, Case announced today that he has raised a Seres C round of $42M from a Goldman Sachs affiliate, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley as well as individual investors Case (himself), Revolution Money Chairman Ted Leonsis, former Charles Schwab Chief Executive David Pottruck and former JP Morgan Vice Chairman David Golden. WSJ
Case says he can stir up the industry by cutting payment processing costs by up to 75% for merchants who get involved with his platform. He is aiming directly at Visa and MasterCard, as well as knocking PayPal off the top. Here is the gist:

RevolutionCard is a general-use credit card that charges no interchange fees and only a half-percent processing fee per transaction to accept – compared to a 1.5% to 4% fee charged by traditional companies. Merchants turn some of these savings into customer loyalty and cash-back programs. For example, cardholders can save three cents per gallon at the nearly 1,000 Murphy USA and Murphy Express gas stations typically located in Wal-Mart Supercenter parking areas across 20 states. RevolutionCard is accepted at more than 650,000 merchant locations and 85% of all ATMs throughout the U.S.

Revolution MoneyExchange is a free online peer-to-peer payments service that enables users to exchange money for free. Users can also access their online funds at all merchants and ATMs on the RevolutionCard Network. Leonsis said MoneyExchange essentially serves as a customer acquisition mechanism for the company. Once consumers register for MoneyExchange the company can pitch RevolutionCard.

Leonsis, who is also an owner of the National Hockey League’s Washington Capitols, is offering his season ticket holders an autographed jersey if they use Revolution Money to renew their seats. It can potentially save him $8,000 per person if they do so. The company is already aggressively targeting new retailers and expects to reach 80% of the merchant community in three years.
Currently, participating retail locations include Barnes & Noble, Bed Bath & Beyond, Bloomingdale’s, Buy.com, CVS, KOHL’s, Macy’s, Marshalls, Walgreen’s, Nordstrom, Office Depot, Office Max, T.J. Maxx and Whole Foods.
Is this really going to be the next big thing? Not sure that I truly believe in Case or his concept. Leonsis was quoted as saying “It’s such a big opportunity and big play. There hasn’t been a new entrant since PayPal, which was about a dozen years ago.” He must have a boatload of confidence to not even mention Google and Amazon’s payment platforms as potential threats to his venture which is nearing 3 years old and I’ve never heard a peep about it. Furthermore, let’s not forget BillMeLater, eBay’s latest billion dollar acquition, which as of 2007 already had a 28% market share for online payment processing. Whether or not retailers save big money, at the end of the day it’s going to be about consumer convenience and $$$ in the pocket. If there is a guarantee that retailers will be slashing prices for a lengthy defined amount of time for using Revolution Money (terrible name by the way), they may see some adoption in this down economy. In addition, the Revolution Card idea seems like it will be as popular as the PayPal bank cards (ever seen anyone using one of those?). Nice job with your press and your big money backers Case, but I think this may have worked right around the time you were owning the dial-up game.

eBay Seals The Door On Its Affiliate Program

Jason Wilk — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:13:20 +0000

eBay caused quite a stir in the affiliate community when it ended it’s relationship with Commission Junction in March of 2008. On April 1st 2008, eBay began managing its own affiliates with the eBay Partner Network. As of the launch, they had over 100,000 members globally and continued to grow….until now. While facing a struggling economy, eBay has sealed the door shut to new applicants wanting to get into the eBay Partner Network.
Managing the program for eBay was expensive. The payouts offered to publishers are very high compared to the industry average, not to mention a lot of the money coming out of the network is paid off to blackhat members.

Sometime in the last week it seems eBay pulled the plug on allowing new applicants into the network. I received an anonymous tip from a friend in the affiliate space, so I decided to go investigate myself. I applied to their program both directly and through PepperJam (the only remaining partner they have). I applied under two different names and was denied both times, receiving an email that contained the message above. It’s been 10 days now on PepperJam and my account is still pending with eBay’s program (image below). eBay would not comment on the situation, however one of the managers of the program @ PepperJam said that she didn’t know what was going on, and as far as she knew, the program was still accepting applicants.

So as far as she knows, the program is still on, but as far as I’ve tested, it’s not. What’s the deal eBay, is it true or not?

Why eBay Won’t Sell Skype

Jason Wilk — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:36:06 +0000

eBay CEO John Donahue is rumored to be selling Skype. In a recent interview with Wall St. analysts, he described the world’s most popular VoIP service as a“great stand-alone business”. When asked about how eBay contributes value to Skype, he said “the synergies between Skype and the other parts of our portfolio are minimal. We’re going to continue to run and operate the business. It’s not a distraction currently. And at such time when we have further announcements on that, we’ll let you know.”
eBay revenue was down 30% this past quarter, despite being the most high-trafficked shopping destination on the internet this holiday seasons. Meanwhile, Skype revenues continued to rise by 26% and membership continues to grow with it. Latest figures showing that Skype has 405 million user accounts worldwide, adding 30 million subscribers every quarter.
It’s tough to say whether or not eBay will actually unload Skype. As loyal auctioneers become continually frustrated with the company’s client service, fees and scams, eBay will continue to lose market share to niche destinations or Amazon. This means they want to surround themselves with as many rising opportunities in close proximity that they can. Donahue said that Skype is a great standalone business, then again so is StubHub, Kijiji and Craigslist which survive entirely on their own and are all strong eBay investments. Skype just happened to be an investment that eBay saw bright hopes for in the midst of their default operation and it flopped. They imagined everyone from major retailers down to Joe Plumber to have a shop set up on eBay, waiting for customers to enter their store and talk via Skype for customer service. Kind of like a weird reinvention of the 1950’s without brick & mortar. Nonetheless, it didn’t happen, but they are hit a home run anyways by turning Skype profitable. Skype is still groundbreaking, recession-happy and if I had to make my pick, I’d say it will not be sold until eBay is desperate.

eBay Founder Moves Into Micro-Blogging

Jason Wilk — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:05:38 +0000

Private Equity blogger, Dan Primack has discovered something interesting in an SEC filing names eBay founder Pierre Omidyar as an executive of a new stealth startup called Ginx. The service, which is currently available for invite-only participants is said to be a micro-blog management service that recomends news, images, and other items to users based on their interests.
Ginx is alreay being used as a URL shortener on Twitter by a handful of people including Omidyar, similar to Bit.ly and tinyURL. Could the eBay king really be getting back in the game for a venture in an industry that has valuations of pennies compared to his previous ventures and acquisitions? Check out this link, to see a sample of what the service does and see for yourself if this is something worthy of an eBay founder.
Hopefully with this venture, the same mistake that eBay made won’t arise. Here’s 10 Reasons Why eBay Died.

Why Meg Whitman Would Lose If She Runs For Governor

Jason Wilk — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:31:32 +0000

Former eBay executive, Meg Whitman, is planning to run for governor of California in 2010. Whitman would be taking on two other highly touted Republican front-runners, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former Rep. Tom Campbell.
What do we know about Whitman? Aside from making over $1 billion on her 2% stake in eBay, she has not fared well in popularity and success in the political scene. She most recently served as a national co-chair of McCain’s failed presidential campaign and previously had supported former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who lost to McCain in the GOP primary. Whitman was a supporter of the highly controversial Proposition 8, the gay marriage ban that passed in November going against many of her fellow tech executive comrades who were against stripping basic civil rights. Aside from politics, business hasn’t been a safe haven for Whitman either. Last January, she decided to step down from eBay after several years of poor decisions made for the auction giant. Many of the Ten Reasons Why we believe eBay to be dead have to do with decisions made by Whitman. It was a love/hate relationship with loyal eBay users and sellers throughout the several years that she was in charge. She left as the stock price was falling, and since she has left, the company has been doing even worse.
Other factors not in Meg’s corner include: California has not fared well under Schwarzenegger and Barack Obama won the state in the Presidential election by a near record 24 percentage points. California’s are not likely to be looking for another Republican candidate to run the state. If an when she decides to run, she will join Democrat Al Checchi and Republican Bill Simon as wealthy business people who failed in their bids for California governor.

Amazon’s Latest Blow To eBay, Stops Offering BillMeLater

Jason Wilk — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 23:08:12 +0000

Amazon.com, which fared the best out of all online shopping destinations this holiday season, has stopped supporting BillMeLater, eBay’s latest questionable acquisition which ran a bill of nearly $1 billion. It was widely speculated that Amazon would drop the ‘buy now, pay later’ service considering their move in the past to cut Paypal after eBay acquired it. Amazon now has their own payment system in place.
Before eBay’s purchase of BillMeLater, Amazon had retained a 10% stake in the company. They had never held a board seat, thus their ties to it were limited beyond equity and good faith to use of the service.
On Tuesday, Friedman Billings Ramsey said Amazon let merchant partners know about the change, which went into effect Wednesday. BillMeLater’s top customers without Amazon, still include OfficeMax, Apple, Newegg, and QVC.
BillMeLater still has strong promise however without the giant retailer. Last year they had $31.6 billion in addressable sales, compared to $26.1 billion for PayPal. eBay couldn’t ignore those numbers as many speculated that BillMeLater could eventually surpass PayPal as the dominant payment processor on the web due to it’s ability to quickly process payments and instantly adjust credit ratings for consumers. Whether or not it succeeds in the long run, eBay could not ignore the acquisition which could have fell into the hands of a viable competitor, threatening one of their most profitable arms.
We still speculate that eBay is on the fritz, however the company was the top destination traffic wise for the holidays with 85 million visitors compared to Amazon’s 76 million (ComScore).
Was this a message from Amazon to eBay that competiton is heating up even more between the two giants?

No Resolution To Craigslist Vs. eBay Case?

Jason Wilk — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:16:16 +0000

Remember when Craigslist sued eBay? The following was back on May 13, 2008 of which there was no public resolution. What really happened?

We filed a complaint in California today, charging eBay with unlawful and unfair competition, misappropriation of proprietary information, deceptive passing-off, business interference, false advertising, phishing attacks, free-riding, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and breaches of fiduciary duty.We respectfully ask the Superior Court in San Francisco to enjoin this conduct and order eBay to (1) make full restitution to craigslist, (2) disgorge their related profits (3) restore to craigslist all shares of the company acquired by means of, or for the purpose of unfair competition, and (4) pay punitive damages for their malicious behavior. PDF here.

Craigslist On The iPhone Arrives

Jason Wilk — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 20:59:51 +0000

The first iPhone app to capture the full experience of Craigslist by NextMobile. Contains all the standard web features of Craigslist. See your history, post an advertisement directly from the phone, and even use the iPhone’s location to see craigslist entries nearby (this feature only for San Fransisco and Manhattan). The app is not availale on your phone yet, but if you go to this link on your iPhone you can download it for free. Very well done.

eBay Closing French Counterpart

Jason Wilk — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 20:32:37 +0000

Hot off the Le Web Conference in Paris, where European entrepreneurs, start-ups and industry kings strut their stuff, news from the French eBay team led some to believe it’s on the fritz.
eBay France has seen it’s share of problems, from a lawsuit in 2007 which attempted to get the site shut down for operating illegally, to dismal traffic since its inception (eBay.com recieves 70M visitors a month compared to France’s 140K). Rumor has it (coming from employees), the site is going to close along with other European eBay counterparts that share similar product from the French euro flagship.
We have already talked about the 10 Reasons Why eBay Died, however I didn’t expect the company to be digging out it’s own graves so soon. We will see how this plays out in the next few weeks. Certainly a weak holiday season won’t help eBay in changing their decision.

10 Reasons Why eBay Died

Jason Wilk — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:37:39 +0000

It’s November 25th, 2008 and eBay is going down in flames. Traffic has dropped off 20% this year alone with no hope in sight. What went wrong with the company besides those awful commercials? Here’s 10 Reasons why. Feel free to add to the list.

1. Overpopulated. Ebay got out of control 4 years ago with the whole ‘eBay Millionaires’ hype that spawned into ‘Sell Your Stuff On eBay’ brick and mortar stores and ultimately led to a massive influx of ubiquitous products.

2. Poorly Regulated. Counterfeit items and fake products flooded eBay all the way through 2006. Luxury brands have actually had to hire employees specifically to find people selling illegitimate items claiming to be ‘Real’. I prefer the term ‘Not Guaranteed Authentic’, but either way, it was detrimental to eBay.

3. Scams. Next we saw the Nigerian scandals popping up. For the last 2 years, it has been such a task to resell any technology item like a mobile phone or a laptop. Countless times I tried selling my Blackberry or Apple Macbook only to find the winning bidder is located in Nigeria and is trying to pull off some scam with a foreign bank account.

4. User Experience. Once eBay had it’s millionaires, along came the businesses that made their living off of it. New software was built for on-demand mass listings on eBay where eRetailers were clearing out their warehouses for decent margins. Now, when I search for a golf club or a pair of sneakers on eBay, I may as well be on Shopzilla, sifting through professional listed products. The whole ‘Auction’ experience on the users end has become entirely depleted. The original eBay users went there because it was an ‘event’ and if you were able to get the item, you actually felt like you won something. Now I feel the same budget guilt buying something on eBay as I would buying a Cinnabun. Sometime worse because I waited 7 days for an auction to end and found a better deal on another web site.

5. Speedy Purchases. Once Amazon rolled out ‘one-click’ purchases versus ‘3, 7 or 10 day auctions’ on eBay, I could never figure out a reason why I would ever go back to eBay to find items. When eBay was one of the first movers in the online shopping place, it felt alright to wait for an auction to end so long as I was getting a good deal on something I wanted. Now sifting through good deals versus bad deals, combined with the hassles of eBay makes me always want to go to a reliable online Amazon type site, where I can count of my item being slightly higher priced (which now is rarely the case), but I know I purchased it, I get a legitimate receipt and I can can count on it arriving to my doorstep 99.9% of the time. ‘Buy-It-Now’ just didn’t make the cut man.

6. Business Model. As eBay progressed, they constantly were trying to figure out how to scale the business beyond just it’s core, which is auctions. They made a mistake by taking the old Geo-Cities mentality of, if you aren’t on our site, then no one will find you. eBay wanted to become the premier destination for small-mid size businesses to be found and make sales online. This created a mass confusion for consumers who once went to eBay for a unique experience. It became the ’strip-mall’ of the Interent.

7. Paypal Hassles. When eBay was hot, PayPal grew hot with it and became a household name for buying things easily online. Every eBay merchant was signed up to use it, and in turn, every consumer had a PayPal account. Still one of the most profitable arms for eBay to this day, PayPal too has had its share of problems with both business and consumer headaches involving payment fraud, disputes and more. But even PayPal is beginning to slip. Let me ask you one question. Can you even remember your PayPal username and password? Didn’t think so Mr.1999

8. Skype Confusion. When eBay bought Skype, everyone expected a revolutionary integration into shopping, where sellers and buyers could talk instantly over the internet to recreate a somewhat realistic experience. Everyone thought it would come fast, but it dragged on and on, and when it finally debuted, no one cared anymore. Skype is finally making some money on its own, but the dream was sadly never realized for eBay.

9. High Seller Fees. eBay became so focused on businesses, that Listing Fees for the individuals who actually wanted to sell an item or two went through the roof. Suddenly eBay didn’t care about those who helped create the foundation for an early age user generated success story. Note to eBay: Business generated is not the same thing.

10. Competition. Even Craigslist does a better job of filtering out garbage than eBay does. These are two web 1.0 companies that have taken on lives of their own. Craig is surviving due to low costs, not selling out to the corporate slick and letting users continue to sell event tickets. It also still looks like crap, which still makes users believe they may find a deal. Craig never tried to grow up out of what he knew his business was. Other than Craigslist, we have seen the rise of many similar online storefront providers such as Amazon who take care of shipping fulfillment as well. Not to mention, many brands have been able to survive on their own outside of aggregators by working hard on their search engine optimization and other online marketing strategies.

Ebay, StubHub Banned From Reselling Inauguration Tickets

Jason Wilk — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 02:45:58 +0000

Tickets for the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States have been banned for re-sale on eBay and StubHub
Under pressure from members of the US Congress, the the only way to get one of the Jan.20th event tickets is to grab one of the 240,000 that are being distributed on the steps of The US Capitol.

Yahoo | image via PaulyWally

VoxOx: Skype Killer On The Loose?

David Heyerman — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:38:57 +0000

Read the 7 bullet points above, and you’ll see that new beta service, VoxOx, may be worth a further look.
The service, which hopes to be a direct competitor to Skype, was launched by startup, TelCentris, out of San Diego.
VoxOx is supported by Mac and Window, with Ubuntu and mobile support coming soon.

Do VoxOx’s non-VOIP based services offer enough incentive to spark Skype devotee conversions?

Mashable

eBay Buys Its Danish Counterpart and Finally Buys BillMeLater

Jason Wilk — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:40:47 +0000

eBay has acquired Blue Avis, the free Danish newspaper company that owns DBA, the “eBay of Denmark” for $383 million
DBA has been around since 1995 and has about 1M unique visitors a month.
They have 275,000 new listings per day
Ebay has also acquired BillMeLater, and announced 10% layoffs
BillMeLater is an acquisition that has always thought would happen by eBay. The site’s aim is exactly how it sounds. Buy things online and pay for them later @ BillMeLater.

With a struggling eBay in the US along with a credit crisis, how would you rate these purchases?

T C

eBay Buys Two Companies, Fires 1,000 Employees

John Jorgensen — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:02:06 +0000

eBay has acquired Bill Me Later, a US online payment company, for $820M + $125M in outstanding options, and DBA, an online classifieds site that’s number 1 in Denmark for $390M.
Bill Me Later will flesh out eBay’s online payment capabilities by adding to their already large foothold in the space with PayPal.
eBay has also announced they are slashing 10% of their workforce (around 1,000 jobs).

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