eBay will keep Half.com subsidiary open indefinitely
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EBay announced Thursday that it will keep its Half.com subsidiary open indefinitely, scrapping previous plans to shutter the e-commerce site in mid-October.
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(InfoWorld) - When Sandy Scarce began selling apparel on eBay three years ago, she planned to use the company's marketplace as her only sales channel, but today, deeply discouraged, she is moving away from it. Upset at what she perceives as misdirected policies and clunky services from eBay, Scarce opened up her own online storeÂ this week. She's also moving inventory to a rival marketplace from Amazon.com, whose operation and sales climate she finds superior. "I'm transitioning away from eBay," said Scarce, ranked as an eBay Silver PowerSeller, which means her Sandy's Closet eBay store generates between $3,000 and $9,999 in average monthly sales and provides a high level of service. Among her chief complaints is an effort announced by eBay in July of last year to prioritize its core auction listings over its stores' inventory, which she said has hurt her sales. "If you're not an eBay auction seller, eBay doesn't want you on their site. eBay has disadvantaged store owners over the last year to drive them away," Scarce said. To boost traditional listings, eBay began marketing them more aggressively, increased their exposure on the eBay Express specialty site, and raised store listing fees. "As an eBay store owner, this hasn't been a good development for me," Scarce said. "They're hiding store owners and their merchandise, making it harder for buyers to find them." She is also disappointed with the tools and applications eBay provides to sellers, many of which she considers clunky, and with the performance of the site, which she finds has deteriorated in terms of response times and availability. Scarce is not alone. On Thursday, as eBay kicked off its annual eBay Live conference for merchants in Boston, the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (PESA) posted a scathing paper on its Web site, blasting eBay for what the group considers a significant deterioration of the marketplace. "The eBay marketplace has continued to degrade, and the current state is unhealthy," reads the paper. In the document, PESA, which includes many large eBay merchants, says the buyer experience on eBay leaves a lot to be desired and blames eBay for failing to address this issue and make the necessary investments to fix the problems. PESA is concerned that the eBay marketplace will fall into "a permanent decline." PESA considers as major problems eBay's search functionality, which it rates as subpar, and a lack of incentives for merchants that provide superior service. PESA also faults eBay for failing to fully leverage for the marketplace companies it has acquired, such as Skype and Shopping.com. In eBay's defense, eBay spokesman Hani Durzy said the company is in the midst of a "multiquarter" effort to improve the buyer experience on the marketplace. For example, eBay is actively laboring to improve its search capabilities with an effort it calls Finding 2.0. Some of those enhancements are already being tested with small groups of buyers and will be rolled out to all users progressively this year, he said. With Finding 2.0, eBay wants to improve the relevance of search results without sacrificing what Durzy calls "serendipity," which eBay considers a key ingredient of the eBay experience: Stumbling upon a product that happily surprises you. Another part of the buyer experience improvement effort is the continued reduction of fraud on the marketplace, in order to increase trust and safety. "We've always been good at this," he said. But as online crime becomes more sophisticated, eBay is stepping up its efforts, becoming more proactive in areas like detection of counterfeit products, he said. Regarding the gripes of store owners like Scarce, Durzy said that eBay in no way wants to get rid of those merchants. Instead, it just wants to "reignite" eBay's core auction activity, he said. Back in July, eBay officials explained that store listings take longer to sell and are more costly for eBay to host compared with traditional listings. Thus the reasoning behind the measures it has implemented to better balance auction and store listings. Still, the strategy makes little sense for those high-volume merchants that are distancing themselves from eBay. Designer Athletic generated about 80 percent of its sales from its eBay store a year ago, and today that is heading toward 50 percent, said George Trantas, president of the footwear and apparel vendor. "Our goal is to grow our off-eBay business," Trantas said. "eBay conversions aren't as great as they have been in the past." In addition to selling on eBay, where it is a PowerSeller, the company sells from its own Web site and from the Amazon Marketplace and others like it. Like Scarce, Trantas has found that the traditional eBay buyer requires a lot more customer service attention before a sale is closed when compared with sellers on the Amazon Marketplace and other venues. That adds to the cost of doing business on eBay, he said. Both Trantas and Scarce attribute the difference in buyers to the fact that customers generally feel safer on Amazon than on eBay, so they require less assurances from the seller. Adding to merchant concerns is the decision by eBay this week toÂ turn off all of its paid search ads on Google's U.S. ad network. One of the worried ones is Jonathan Garriss, PESA's executive director and CEO of Gotham City Online, an apparel store on eBay that also has its own site. "This is very concerning for me as a seller that eBay is willing to shut off a lot of traffic to its sellers and listings. This doesn't necessarily hurt eBay, which still collects its fees, but rather the merchants on its site," Garriss said, adding that eBay should reinstate these ads immediately. A source told IDG News Service on Wednesday that the decision was made to punish Google for planning to throw aÂ now-canceled party in BostonÂ for eBay Live attendees that want eBay to allow them to offer the Google Checkout online payment system to their buyers. Durzy said that the ad pullout remains in place as of Thursday afternoon. "I very much hope they work it out. Google and eBay have a lot to offer each other," said David Yaskulka, vice president of product marketing at Kompolt, an online auction agency. eBay says Google Checkout is too new, while Google says eBay is just trying to protect its own PayPal online payments system. Garriss, who is evaluating Checkout for his own site, believes eBay should reconsider its position. "Google has proven there's room for improvement on the online payment side, and if another option makes shoppers more comfortable, as a merchant, I'd like to add that option," Garriss said. Scarce, meanwhile, decided to stay home and not attend eBay Live. Today, her eBay inventory is down to half of what it was a year ago. After only six months, Amazon Marketplace already generates 25 percent of her sales. She'll maintain a minimal presence on eBay to drive traffic to her own store. "I see no reason to go to eBay Live. The events of this past year have made it painfully obvious that eBay isn't interested in what I do."
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eBay exceeded Wall Street&#39;s earnings and revenue expectations for its fourth quarter and,&#160;as expected, announced that Meg Whitman will step down as president and CEO at the end of March, ending a 10-year tenure at the helm of the e-commerce giant.For the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2007, eBay had revenue of $2.18 billion, up $461 million from the fourth quarter of 2006 and above the $2.14 billion consensus estimate from analysts polled by Thomson Financial.Revenue grew across the board, but PayPal, StubHub, Skype, and advertising performed particularly well as eBay enjoyed strong sales during the 2007 holiday season, the company said Wednesday.New income was $531 million, or $0.39 per share, up from $346 million, or $0.25 per share, in 2006&#39;s fourth quarter. On a pro forma basis, which includes one-time items, net income was $611 million or $0.45 per share, topping the consensus expectation by $0.04.Whitman will hand over her CEO and president titles on March 31, but she will remain on the company&#39;s board of directors. She will be succeeded by John Donahoe.Whitman joined eBay in March 1998, when the company operated only in the U.S. and had 30 employees and $4.7 million in annual revenue. It now operates worldwide with more than 15,000 employees and almost $7.7 billion in revenue.Donahoe has been with eBay since February 2005, coming from Bain &amp; Company, where he was worldwide managing director since 1999. He is president of eBay Marketplaces, which generates more than 70 percent of the company&#8217;s global revenue.Rajiv Dutta, PayPal&#39;s president, has been named eBay executive vice president and will also replace Donahoe as president of eBay Marketplaces. Scott Thompson, PayPal&#8217;s CTO, will take over as PayPal president.Meanwhile, Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America, will step down and retire from the company at the end of the year. Lorrie Norrington, currently president of eBay International, will become president of eBay Marketplaces Operations and assume Cobb&#39;s responsibilities, eBay said.
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EBay Inc. became the latest Web site to say it will stop using Microsoft Corp.'s Passport user authentication system, as Microsoft continues to scale back the service.
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PayPal, the online payment system owned by eBay Inc. (EBAY.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , on Wednesday said it has fixed most of the problems that for five days left some users unable
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NEW YORK -- You might call it the ultimate full-circle moment: Two guys fed up with paying eBay listing fees are now selling their own alternative to the online auction business -- on eBay.
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Mega-auctioneer eBay could turn the business upside down.
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With eBay&#39;s stock lingering near an all-time high of $96.60, investors have been holding their collective breath since the third quarter closed Sept.
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By RACHEL KONRAD SAN FRANCISCO - EBay Inc. is expected to announce plans Tuesday to open a new Chinese Web site as part of a joint-venture with a Beijing-based Internet company, signaling a strategic shift in the online auction company's Chinese operations.
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Blog: The Business.com site is on the auction block; it could fetch $300 million to $400 million, according to reports.
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EBay will close its China site and begin a relationship with Tom Online to create a replacement, news reports indicated Tuesday.
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EBay Inc., the world's largest online auction company, will upgrade its website to placate sellers and revitalize the company's slumping sales growth, chief executive Meg Whitman said.
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Bids topping more than $3,500 were pouring into eBay last night to help care for a seriously ill Sterling boy when the Web site's officials announced that they were halting the auction.
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(InfoWorld) - A massive computing grid helps eBayÂ make changes to its auction Web site on the fly while maintaining a 99.94 percent up time, said Paul Strong, a distinguished research scientist there. While eBay designed most of its grid infrastructure, the company also wants to participate in standards-setting communities to bring more improvements to computer grid technology, Strong said Tuesday during the GridWorld conference in Washington, D.C. EBay's core business is hosting Web-based auctions, not in creating new grid technologies, he said. "We don't see ourselves as an IT development shop for development tools," he said. By working together on grid standards, participants can help "transitions be less painful," he added. On Monday, the Open Grid Forum standards body officially opened for business, delivering on its commitment made in June to detail its goals during GridWorld. EBay has made great strides in its back-end technology since the late '90s, but the company still wants more improvements, including the ability to change the site's code nearly instantaneously, Strong said. Right now, the company, with more than 15,000 servers in its production environment, distributes new application code to its Web site every two weeks, he said. EBay developers write about 100,000 lines of code each week, and using a traditional grid made up of about 350 Windows, Linux and Solaris computers, the site takes about 20 minutes to update with the new features, Strong said. With 104 million items listed for auction on eBay every day, the company needs to keep the site running while those changes are happening, he added. "We can't afford to take the site down," he said. "It's like changing the engines on a jumbo jet mid-flight." About $1,608 worth of merchandise sells on eBay every second, and a vehicle sells every two minutes on average, Strong said. A trading card sells every six seconds, and a pound of the Korean food kimchi sells every minute. The site has seen huge growth since the late '90s, he noted. Ebay.com has gone from 54 million page views a day in June 1999 to 874 million in December 2005, Strong said. The site sent out 35 million e-mail messages a day in December, compared to 1 million a day in June '99. And the site's up time went from about 97 percent to 99.94 percent in that time period. Still, the company would like more grid functionality, Strong said. EBay would like to get closer to that mythical 99.999 percent up time, he said. "We break almost anything we use," he said. "We're pretty much at the extreme limit of what you can do with off-the-shelf technology." And eBay doesn't want to wait to update the site every two weeks, he added. "We want to be faster; we want to be more agile," he said. "If someone comes up with a cool change that's not that big, I'd like to be able to roll it tomorrow." Improvements in grid computing is where community standards can help, he said. "We believe everyone has something to contribute," he said to the GridWorld audience. "We'd like to share ... with the community." GridWorld is organized by IDG, the parent company of IDG News Service.
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(InfoWorld) - EBay has pulled all of its paid search ads from Google AdWords network in the U.S inÂ an eyebrow-raising move likely to be interpreted in the industry as a sign of deteriorating relations between the two Internet giants. However, eBay has kept its AdWords campaigns outside of the U.S., eBay spokesman Hani Durzy said Wednesday. Durzy characterized the decision to pull the U.S. Google ads as an instance in a continued experiment eBay does to determine the best allocation of its advertising and marketing budget. ButÂ a source familiar with the situation said the move is an angry reaction by eBay's management to Google's decision to hold a protest party concurrent with the start of eBay Live, the company's annual conference for merchants. Google has been reaching out to media to promote the party, aimed at eBay merchants who are upset that eBay doesn't allow them to use Google's Checkout online transaction system. eBay Live begins Thursday eveningÂ in Boston, which is the time and place Google has chosen for its protest party. ThisÂ source also said the situation is fast-developing and fluid, with high-ranking eBay executives holding meetings right now to discuss the extent of the decision. EBay has said that Checkout, introduced about a year ago, doesn't have enough of a track record yet, while Google argues that eBay is just trying to protect its own PayPal online payment system. Durzy said the decision to "reallocate" the Google ad budget elsewhere isn't tied to the Checkout protest party, but he acknowledged that the Google event hasn't gone down well inside of eBay. "This is a regular thing we do across the different channels we use for marketing, but, having said that, we are disappointed that Google has chosen this time to detract from our annual event that gives online sellers a chance to learn how to grow their business in eBay and in other channels," Durzy said. "It's not the kind of activity one partner normally does with another." Relations between eBay and Google have been strained in recent years, as Google has morphed from a partner into a partial competitor with new products like Checkout and its Google Base listings service. In May of last year,Â eBay and Yahoo struck a wide-ranging partnershipÂ that, among other things, made Yahoo the exclusive provider of search and display ads within U.S. eBay sites. Although Google performs a similar function for eBay sites outside of the U.S., the eBay-Yahoo tie up was seen as a defensive move by eBay and Yahoo against Google. EBay doesn't have a timetable for when it might reinstate its paid search ads in Google's U.S. AdWords system, Durzy said. "We need time to evaluate the impact" of the pullout, he said. "We don't have a time for when we might turn them back on." EBay pulled the ads "a couple of days ago," he said. "We're in the midst of an experiment and we'll see how it goes," he said. Â
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A small Virginia company in a patent fight with eBay Inc. asked a federal judge Tuesday to stop the online auction powerhouse from using its "Buy It Now" feature allowing shoppers to buy items at a fixed price.
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EBay Inc. plans no near-term rate  increases for online auction sellers, Bill Cobb, president of  its North American business, told the company&#39;s annual sales  conference on Thursday.