Meet with eBay at Insite 2008
August 5, 2008
eBay are to spend the entire day at each of the ChannelAdvisor Insite conferences to be held around the country this summer. With no eBay Universities in 2008, Insite at London on the 21st August and then Newcastle, Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester, is the one opportunity where you’re guaranteed plenty of time to speak to eBay staff this year.
As well as a short presentation they’ll be hosting an all day round table at each event giving sellers the opportunity the sit down and chat in detail.
If you’re unable to make the event but have a general (not account specific) question you’d like asked let us know in comments as TameBay will be at the first event in London. If you are attending the London event make sure you come and say hello to us.
Amazon, Etsy, eBay and the eCommerce Land Grab
July 25, 2008
With much doom and gloom pervading comment about eBay, it’s easy to forget that ecommerce is still a frontier. The IMRG forecasts year on year ecommerce growth (in Britain, Europe, America and Asia) all the way to 2012. And even the very real threat of recession in the UK and US doesn’t seem likely to dent that. Even though eBay is languishing, Amazon has proved that the old guard can still find accelerating growth. The ecommerce land grab is still underway and there’s everything to play for.
With that in mind, an article from Y Combinator (a respected venture capitalist firm) called ‘Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund‘ makes for interesting reading. Not only does the piece prove that there’s still money out there for winning ideas but the comments regarding online auctions will be familiar to eBay sellers:
“Online auctions have more potential than most people currently realize. Auctions seem boring now because EBay is doing a bad job, but is still powerful enough that they have a de facto monopoly. Result: stagnation. But I suspect eBay could now be attacked on its home territory, and that this territory would, in the hands of a successful invader, turn out to be more valuable than it currently appears. As with dating, however, a startup that wants to do this has to expend more effort on their strategy for cracking the monopoly than on how their auction site will work.”
Y Combinator thinks that eBay’s dominance can and should be challenged. But it’s the belief that only the monopoly stands in eBay’s favour that should be most disquieting. eBay doesn’t have brilliant marketing, a superior product or a vibrant culture of innovation to protect it from an onslaught, it would seem.
One company that certainly can’t be criticised for lacking innovation is the crafts marketplace etsy, which has been in the news this week. Chad Dickerson, a former Yahoo executive, is joining etsy as Chief Technical Officer. Much of the coverage, mindful of Yahoo’s current difficulties, make much of this being a blow to Yahoo. And while that’s true, it’s also a huge boost for etsy: they’ve hired a talented operator from a big firm and that can only a be a vote of confidence. Even before this, etsy has been encroaching onto eBay’s territory and doing it with style, inventiveness and generating not a little admiration.
What does all this mean? Whilst eBay is struggling to find a little bit of ecommerce growth, expending a great deal of energy tinkering with feedback, search and fees, Amazon is successfully taking a good chunk of the fixed price action and attracting professional eBay sellers. Auctions are, it seems, up for grabs and yet eBay isn’t defending this flank and is concentrating on the faster growing But It Now business. Critically, eBay seems to be losing the battle: Amazon is growing faster than ecommerce and eBay isn’t. As for etsy, they’re a shining example of a specialist site taking some of eBay’s action and looking at a bright future.
eBay Inc. might be enjoying great results from Skype and PayPal but meagre growth in the marketplace business should be sounding alarm bells. eBay’s challenge is not just defending existing territory but squaring up to the frontier again and aggressively joining the land grab. Regrettably nothing in the Q2 results, report or investor call suggested that was the plan.
Dan Wilson is a writer and consultant and the bestselling author of ‘Make Serious Money on eBay UK’.
eBay and designers hold talks over counterfeits
July 20, 2008
The Telegraph reports that eBay are holding talks with representatives of some of the UK’s biggest luxury brands next week, in an attempt to find a way to cut down on sales of fake merchandise via the site.
The Walpole Group comprises some of Britain’s best known brands, from designers Jimmy Choo and Thomas Pink, to Wedgwood, Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Discussions are expected to focus on who bears the responsibility for tracking down fakes sold via the internet: a French court recently fined eBay for not doing enough to stop the sales of counterfeit and unauthorised merchandise, whereas an American court absolved eBay from responsiblity for sales of fake Tiffany jewellery.
Frederick Mostert, chair of the Walpole IP and Brand Protection Working Group, said that the way forward lies in the two sides working together. “The answer lies in constructive co-operation. Brand owners and auction sites need to work together and share the responsibility to stop fakes to avoid a restraint on the progress of society. The answer for assessing responsibility lies in the middle - both sides should in equal measure diligently confront the online counterfeit problem together.”
Let’s talk about communicating
June 28, 2008
If there was a theme to this year’s eBay Live, it was “talk to us”. “We want your feedback.” “We could have done a better job of communication; we’ll try harder in the future.” “We crave information about what people think.” (John Donahoe, Brian Burke and Jamie Ianonne respectively) By the time that Ryan stood up in the PowerSeller Panel to tell us about his innovations for Customer Service, and in particular about some changes which should match eBay customers with agents who can answer their question the first time, without multiple irrelevent cut and paste emails beforehand, eBay was sounding like a company that had really changed: I thought they not only wanted to speak to their customers, but they were busy figuring out just how to do that.
By coincidence, that same day, I received an email from a PowerSeller (who we’ll call Mike). He wrote
I have been a loyal and trusted e-bayer for over 4 years with 1340 positives and just 3 negatives (one of which has now been resolved) with an average feedback % of 99.6 !!
Despite numerous e-mails back and forth I have not been able to resolve the problem, or indeed find out exactly how I have breached their policy.
I took a look over the account and unless there are some PayPal issues he’s not telling me about, I don’t see why Mike’s been suspended. But more importantly, I don’t see why eBay haven’t told him why he’s been suspended.
As eBay take steps to clean up the site, most sellers who lose their accounts are going to know exactly why that’s happened: but some, the dolphins, the “edge-cases”, are not going to understand. If eBay are going to suspend selling accounts for a neg or two, or a small handful of neutrals or 1s and 2s on DSRs, they need to be prepared to deal with that properly: they need to explain to sellers exactly what the problem is, and what they need to do to rectify it. We need out-bound customer service calls, not just for those with account managers, but for everyone. And if they are going to put people on a month’s warning, that too needs to be followed up with a phone call, explaining you’ve had too many PayPal complaints, or your DSRs have slipped badly. eBay need to communicate when we need to communicate, not just when it suits them.
Someone, somewhere at eBay is now reading this and shaking their head and asking if I know how many CS agents that would take. No, of course I don’t because I don’t know how many sellers you’ve suspended. But I would respectfully suggest that if it is more sellers than half a dozen agents could deal with in a week, then you’ve suspended too many people. In your rush to do the right thing, you’ve caught up too many innocent sellers in your net. Change the criteria. Get rid of the really bad people first, and then you can look again at your edge-cases and see if they’re really deserving of suspension, or if they just had a bad month last month.
This morning, I had another email from Mike, telling me that his account had been reinstated. Good news, but he still didn’t know why he’d been suspended. Though eBay support had phoned him, they “were totally unprepared to give any explanation as to their actions and flatly refused to discuss the matter any further”.
eBay’s upper management say that they are committed to communicating better with their members. They ask us to let them prove that. But they seem to have a problem themselves communicating this to the rest of their staff, who act in the same Kafkaesque arbitrary way, totally failing to communicate with the ordinary users whose livelihoods are being put at risk by these policies.
Yes, eBay talk a lot about communicating, but where they really need to start doing it, is amongst themselves.
Live day two: a short post about love
June 21, 2008
I have to confess my holiday romance. I know next week I’ll be back home with the France I love, but right now, this thing me and Chicago have going just feels special. I love the way the lions outside her art museum glow green in the night. I love the way that when she rains, the raindrops are warm. I love her tall, tall buildings that go all the way to the sky.
And actually, I’ve fallen in love with eBay again too. For many sellers, the relationship with eBay is the so-over one that you can’t quite bring yourself to end. As one seller put it, “I feel like an abused wife. I know I should leave but I have nowhere else to go.”
It’s time to face reality. We’re not 14 anymore and eBay isn’t Donny Osmond/Simon le
Bon/someone from McFly (pick your own decade). We don’t plaster our walls with posters torn out of Jackie magazine, and sellers at this year’s Live are not groupies; they’re not covering themselves with ribbons and pins, and they don’t appear to be even slightly interested in the execrable sticker book. This is suddenly a relationship with some perspective to it; eBay’s not the hottie we once raved about, it’s done bad things and hurt us in the past, but it is - or can be - now a business partner we can work with. I feel as though this week we quietly turned a corner. Let’s make this thing work.
Google puts the boot into eBay
May 31, 2008
As part of eBay’s request that the ACCC approve their request to implement a PayPal only policy on eBay all interested parties were able to make submissions which the Commission would consider when forming their decision.
Following eBay’s response (and after the deadline for public submissions expired on 3nd May), one more 38 page anonymous report was submitted, which set out in detail why they considered eBay’s move to be anti-competitive.
It didn’t take too long though for one eBay user to expose the culprit, examining the hidden (but easily accessible) meta data of the document he found the phrase “ACCC Submission by Google re eBay”. The document has been replaced with an amended version with Google’s name removed.
This has to be embarrassing for Google, all the major banking institutions that made submissions did so publicly, and it looks much worse have your intentions revealed in this manner than it would do to be up front in the first place.
(Thanks go to Richard for spotting this story)
eBay staff moonlighting via Craigslist?
May 17, 2008
File this one under “unverified but irresistable…”
Yumio runs Product & Marketing at MyThings.com, and previously launched Yahoo Answers. She writes:
Every time I post on Craigslist for a part-time position for Web work (coding, design, etc.) I get a ton of replies from CURRENT eBay employees who all say they can work up to 20 hours a week on moonlighting freelance. One person we hired for a facebook application was absolutely horrendous - but I still am amazed at how he often came to our office in the middle of the work-day (long lunch???) to do milestone meetings.
Found via Shripriya, an ex-eBay employee, who writes:
When I worked at eBay , none of us had time to breathe. It was go-go-go all the time. … I wonder what’s changed over there. Once apathy sets in, reversing it is going to be really, really hard.
Accounting solution for Amazon & eBay
January 21, 2008
Platformone have announced the latest version of Tradebox Finance Manager which has the ability to import orders from Amazon, as well as eBay. Tradebox links to both your eBay and Amazon sales and automatically updates Sage accounting software with your sales at the click of a button.
Stephen Bales, Director of Platform One, said, “The ability to import orders from Amazon addresses the needs of many of our existing customers, who sell across both eBay and Amazon. The next step is to roll out the subsequent version of Tradebox which will have the ability to import orders from websites”.
Many eBay sellers are starting to discover Amazon as a second selling venue, and for many it’s even more successful than eBay. Managing sales accross multiple venues is always a challenge but Tradebox makes this simple. It can download your sales from eBay and import sales from Amazon, and even update Amazon when you mark the orders as despatched. For volume sellers accounting is made simple with customer records created automatically, invoices generated for each transaction, stock management and of course VAT liability for each product and buyer calculated accurately.
On top of this Tradebox also captures and holds data from the online sales platform and provides the user with a raft of analysis, graphs and reports of their online sales.
If you’re looking to automate your accounts in 2008, or are already a Sage user it’s time to take a look at Tradebox to simplify your finances.
Rumour - eBay fee Changes
January 16, 2008
Everyone is on tenterhooks waiting for the news on the 2008 eBay fee changes and no one knows for sure what they’ll be…. or do they?
We’re getting thus far unsubstantiated rumours that one of the changes in the offing is bulk discounts for sellers. Could this be the end of eBay’s famous level playing field? We’re also hearing that listing fees will decrease somewhat although probably balanced with higher final value fees.
Stay tuned for more news as we hear it and get in touch if you have any snippets of information to add.
Is eBay up for sale?
January 10, 2008
Scot Wingo over on eBay Strategies says Microsoft and Yahoo! are bidding to buy eBay, with Yahoo! the expected winner.
Could eBay be sold and how would that change the auction business landscape? Would it be a good thing? Only time will tell, but sellers should be prepared for change in 2008. Whether the change comes from normal site changes which sellers have learnt to take in their stride or from a buy out, change is the one certainty of trading on eBay.
Yahoo! and eBay team up in Japan
December 4, 2007
eBay are going back to Japan having pulled out of the territory in 2002. This time however they’re not going it alone but will partner with Yahoo!
By March next year the Japanese will be able to bid for items listed on eBay through Yahoo! Auctions, and in a reciprocal arrangement by the middle of 2008 US eBay users will be able to bid for Yahoo Japan auction items through the eBay. Meg Whitman said of the deal, “We are excited to partner with Yahoo Japan in providing Japanese users with localized site designed to enable them to shop on the eBay marketplace with ease and convenience”.
It’ll be interesting to see how the differences between the site mesh, and how clear it will be if an item is listed on eBay or Yahoo! One thing is for sure though, and that’s that a whole load of new buyers and sellers in Japan will be accessing eBay in their own language.
To attract even more Japanese buyers a new site called Sekaimon is being jointly launched. A collaboration between Yahoo! and eBay the Sekaimon site will translate items on listed on eBay into Japanese and help with payments, shipping and customs clearance for Japanese shoppers. Sekaimon literally means “Global Shopping”, which is after all eBay’s ultimate aim.
Where eBid have got it right
November 21, 2007
The good news for me is that I won my beanie hat. The good news for you is that vzaar have bunches more eBay swag for auction for Children in Need, so grab your chance.
eBay t-shirt, by Skypephone
All of which got me thinking about eBay merchandise, and wondering just why it’s so damn hard to get hold of. If you shell out £49 to go to eBay University, you’ll get an eBay pen, and possibly an A4 pad with the logo in the corner. You’ll also get the opportunity to pay for a mug, or a fleece. And that’s your lot. If you go to Live, you’ll see grown adults fighting over eBay-branded pins: why restrict that to just three days a year? eBay’s own merchandise store won’t ship outside the US. I don’t get it: if people want your advertising so much they’re prepared to pay for it, why stop them having it?
If I were eBay, every buyer of a car on eBay Motors would get a bumper sticker with “I bought this on eBay” written on it. Cost in money, about 50p a pop: value in free advertising, priceless.
eBid, on the other hand, have actually got this about right. eBid run their own eBid store, where you can either pay money for eBid merchandise, or spend your “buddy points” (sorry guys, -10 for that name), which you earn by referring friends and buying on the site. I might never say this again, but eBay could well take a leaf out of eBid’s book.
Should eBay sell Skype?
November 20, 2007
Prompted by an article in the Guardian, rumours are flying around that eBay are in talks with Google to sell Skype. The response from PR is that “we don’t comment on rumours or speculation”, and in truth I’d be surprised if they did have anything to say before an official announcement to investors.
So putting aside speculation, should eBay off load Skype to Google, or indeed to anyone? Firstly Skype is now profit making, not a lot, but it’s not losing money. Following a $900m write down in October this year eBay, Skype is all paid for and far from being a drain on finances it’s starting to earn it’s keep.
The original Skype management team have now all departed the company leaving it in the safe hands of eBay CSO and acting Skype CEO Michael van Swaaij. There are no distractions such as Joost for the current management team.
Skype have been increasing their user base, and with partnerships such as 3 with the Skypephone and MySpace, market awareness is growing. Finally all eBay listings are Skype enabled with sellers able to add Skype Chat and Call buttons to the existing email link in the sellers information box.
So all is rosy with Skype (or as rosy as it could be), so why sell it off? It’s the same as suggesting eBay divest themselves of PayPal. The businesses sit well with eBay’s core auction business. If you want to trade you need to be paid and you need to communicate. I can understand the arguements that both PayPal and Skype could be floated off as standalone companies, but together they enhance the eBay offering and better to keep control of them than let them go and wish you hadn’t. Meg strikes me as a lady who likes to keep control.
The eBay story on BBC Radio 2
November 7, 2007
Last night on BBC2 a programme presented by Kate Thornton traced the story of eBay and online selling with the giants eBay and Amazon. It dispels the rumour that Pierre Omidyar started eBay for his wife to trade Pez dispensers with the truth that he wanted to create an online trading site for ordinary people.
Pierre wrote the code for “Auctionweb” the original name for eBay over a holiday weekend. His first listing was for a laser pointer he’d bought as a cat toy. When it was broken he listed it on Auctionweb for $1 and it then sold for $14. The buyer… a collector of broken laser pointers! He announced Auctionweb on online forums and users started to visit the Auctionweb site which launched with just a dozen items listed on the first day.
When Meg Whitman joined eBay it was still called Auctionweb and since then the site has changed immensely including the name eBay. At that time the site was still black and grey and even the original eBay logo lacked the bright primary colours so familiar to eBay users today. The first Auctionweb logo was simply a white to black gradient with the words Auction web.
It’s a far cry from the colourful feature rich eBay site so familiar to millions around the world today.
The program covers everything from unusual items sold on the site to celebrities who have traded and even been kicked off eBay. David Baddiel explains how he got banned from eBay when his emails ended up in his junk email folder. The program also covers some of the more common scams on eBay warning how to stay safe on the site. Meg Whitman explained that most sales are perfectly reputable and safe.
Amazon is featured as the only real alternative to eBay, unbelievably when they started Amazon had a beeper that went off every time a sale occurred on the site. That soon had to be disconnected as Amazon employees were driven mad by constant beeping! Unlike eBay the programme highlights that it took years for Amazon to make a profit, eBay was profitable from the start. Richard Ambrose explained how dumping their own payment system Billpoint and buying PayPal drove the business even faster.
Pierre Omidyar became an overnight billionaire and the richest 31 year old in the world. He quietly stepped down from the day to day running of the eBay business and since 2004 has spent his time giving his wealth away though the Omidyar Network.
You can listen again to the first three programmes in the series including “SHOP TILL THEY DROP: eBay and the online retail revolution” on the BBC Radio 2 website. If you’re wondering what to do for your lunch hour it’s well worth a listen.
eBay open microfinance website MicroPlace
October 24, 2007
Today eBay launched a new website to enable ordinary people to buy investments aimed at improving conditions in the world’s poorest countries. MicroPlace (currently only open to US residents) aims to enable the poor to pull themselves out of poverty. It involves making small loans (less than $200) to the those in developing countries to establish or expand small businesses that generate additional income for their family.
The MicroPlace website claims to offer individuals the ability to invest in poorer countries while making a positive social impact on the world. There’s plenty of information on the site, including a history of microfinance tracing it back to Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and his work with the “Village” Bank. Yunus was inspired by seeing the difference very small loans could make to enable poor people to start businesses and become self sufficient.
eBay are running the MicroPlace website with the aim of breaking even. If in the future profits arise from MicroPlace they intend to reinvest any profits back in further social initiatives.
How to recognise a spoof email
October 8, 2007
Yahoo! promised, back in June, to be the first ISP to implement Domain Key checking on emails to protect their users. PayPal and eBay have announced in conjunction with Yahoo! that all Yahoo! Mail users will be protected from spoofs.
Domain Keys provide a unique way to verify the authenticity of email messages to determine if messages are real. The collaborative effort between Yahoo!, eBay and PayPal will result in the blocking of unauthenticated email, reducing the volume of spoofs for Yahoo! Mail users and reducing the risk that they’ll be tricked by fraudulent emails. If the user doesn’t receive the spoof email it becomes that much harder for a phisher to hack into their account.
John Kremer, Vice President of Yahoo! Mail said “By reducing the risk of phishing scams, Yahoo! Mail now offers a much safer Web mail service for eBay and PayPal users, and this protection will benefit the larger Yahoo! Mail community as well”
Other ISP’s should follow suit and implement Domain Keys technology in the near future. In the mean time Michael Barrett, PayPal’s Chief Information Security Officer has some tips on how to identify phishing emails and stay safe online.
By any other name
October 1, 2007
You’ve probably been there: you have a superb idea for a new eBay ID, but when you go to register it, it belongs to someone who hasn’t used it for about a decade. eBay’s line on unused IDs has always been that they won’t release them because someone, someday, might come back to claim them. But now we have some good news for you: eBay UK’s new head of trust and safety, Richard Ambrose, has just said that* eBay will be “releasing several million long-dormant IDs in the next few weeks. Have a look at some of your favourite short, snappy IDs - they might suddenly be available.”
We don’t yet have any details of exactly when this will be, but if I find out, I’ll update the post… after I’ve got the ones I want, of course 
*Sorry, link not accessible if you’re not a Powerseller.
Updated Tuesday: I’ve just heard back from eBay, and it’s not good news. Though this will happen at some point, there’s not yet a date set for the release. So keep checking, but don’t hold your breath.
ChannelAdvisor Insite Conference booking now open
August 1, 2007
ChannelAdvisor have announced the 2007 Insite Conference dates for the UK, and if you haven’t attended previously and are serious about building your ecommerce business then I’d highly recommend attending.
The events will focus on areas key to expanding your business both on and off eBay. The agenda covers topics such as eBay, Amazon Seller Central, Google Checkout, PayPal Express Checkout, Paid Search Marketing and Shopping Comparison. There’s time for networking over lunch and a further networking reception (with drinks) in the evening.
ChannelAdvisor hold many events throughout the course of the year including online seminars and the annual Catalyst Conference. The Insite Conferences are designed for small groups to encourage networking and group discussions. Spread around the country in Bristol, London, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham and Dublin there’ll be an event near you.
I attended Insite last year and it was a throughly productive day. All too often it’s easy to get caught up in the day to day running of your business. It’s well worth setting aside just one day this year to review the industry and how you can move your business forward. If there’s just one event that you attend this year’s Insite would be a great choice to make a positive impact on your business.
Should eBay decide your morals and beliefs?
July 29, 2007
It’s not a question I’d ever given much thought to in the past. Sure there are certain restrictions on what you can list for example some products are prohibited to follow local laws (part used cosmetics in Germany), and the groundswell of public opinion (Concert for Diana tickets). Adult products are allowed on the eBay.com site but not on eBay.co.uk. I hear rumours it’s because policing the category is just too much work and retrospectively eBay wish they’d never allowed adult products on eBay.com rather than because they’re particularly prudish.
That’s just what you’re allowed to buy and sell on the site however, the question runs deeper than that. Should eBay control deeply held personal beliefs, convictions and make decisions on your morals? According to Life Decisions International (LDI) that’s exactly what they should do. LDI are calling for a boycott of eBay and PayPal because of “their support of Planned Parenthood, the world’s leading abortion-advocacy group”. LDI states it’s primary mission as “challenging the agenda of Planned Parenthood worldwide” and maintains a boycott list of companies it deems to support Planned Parenthood.
So what has eBay done to gain entry on the list? Well eBay has two programs to support charitable giving which have raised money for Planned Parenthood. The eBay Foundation enables eBay and PayPal employees to raise funds for their favoured charities with donations from the foundation to support the work. eBay Giving Works (known as eBay for Charity in the UK) enables eBay users to raise money for their favoured charities by donating proceeds from items sold on the site.
As soon as eBay start making judgement calls on which charities employees and the eBay community at large choose to support they are stepping into an area of your private life that goes beyond running a marketplace to enable commerce. Thankfully they do not do this and the criteria for a charity benefiting from fundraising is simply that - that they are a registered charity. eBay leave it to the individual to decide which causes they would like to support, and which causes they’d prefer not to.
That’s why LDI’s call for a boycott of eBay is wrong. It’s not about the right to life or the right to an abortion. It’s irrelevant whether you agree or disagree with their aims and objectives.
It’s about your freedom, your morals, your beliefs and quite frankly your right to live your life without eBay making judgements on your behalf.
Read more
Time to serve your community
July 26, 2007
ChannelAdvisor are looking for “bright, ambitious, tech-savvy individuals, with an interest in software and internet retail” to work in their Richmond offices. Positions are available in everything from product marketing to ecommerce sales and search and comparison shopping specialist.
If you’re an admirer of Scot Wingo and think you’ve got what it takes here’s the chance to work alongside his team in London. If you don’t fancy any of the positions available step right next door to eBay’s offices at the same location as they have a raft of career opportunities open as well.
Why Gary Sattler’s conspiracy theory is wrong
July 20, 2007
Sattler has lost the plot! I know he’s never been an eBay exponent, but his latest conspiracy theory has eBay taking over the Internet purely to unseat Google and give Microsoft a kicking into the bargain.
Piecing together a couple of industry partnerships he builds up a picture of Firefox, Yahoo! and Facebook mafiosi controlled by the all seeing eBay. The cartel bow down to eBay, even to the extent of Yahoo! closing it’s online auction business just so that they could build an eBay search tool.
The shadowy group have joined forces and in return for supporting eBay they’ve agreed to build Firefox’s market share. Already they’ve killed his Microsoft Internet Explorer with a new breed of digital images that forced him to use Firefox. Apparently viewing them instantly causes IE to close rendering it useless for today’s Internet.
Sattler concludes that the Internet is getting smaller as eBay gain control with the ultimate aim of knocking Google off the map. I don’t suppose it could be that there’s no conspiracy and it’s just too many dodgy downloads on his PC causing it to fall over?
As for Google - maybe the world is waking up to the fact that paid advertising (Adwords make up 98% of Google’s revenue) aren’t nearly as effective as personal recommendation. Whilst it’s great to have a yellow pages who only charge you for advertising when someone clicks on it social networking is much less obtrusive and many times more compelling.
Everything Google has done in recent years including Checkout has been designed to prop up Adwords and make Google the place to go for choice. They now have to start embracing social discovery and social commerce. The Internet is changing with the likes of Squidoo, Stumbleupon and innovations such as distributed commerce.
Sattler is correct, Google should be worried! Not because there’s a conspiracy - Just because they could be left behind.
How to stop phishing emails
June 20, 2007
According to yougov survey results out today 46% of the UK population don’t have a clue what phishing is. The good news is that only about 2% of UK residents have fallen for a phishing scam, but that 2% equates to millions of people demonstrating why our inboxes are still bombarded with spoof emails.
So what can be done to stop the flood of spoof emails? The first and easiest is if you receive an email that you’re not sure if it’s a spoof or legitimate is to forward it to spoof@ebay.co.uk or spoof@ebay.com. Within minutes you’ll have a reply confirming if your email is genuine or not, in addition if it is a spoof the fake website will be entered into an international database of known scam websites. From then on anyone with the latest browsers will be warned with a red address bar that they’re viewing a spoof site. Also anyone with the eBay toolbar will be warned if it’s a fake eBay or PayPal site. Currently only 5% of people who recognise they’ve received a phishing email forward it to the company it purports to come from alerting their anti-phishing taskforce. The two fold step of identifing new phishing sites and measuring the scale of phishing can only take place if more users forward the spoof emails they receive.
The next important step is the signing of emails with Domain Keys. Companies such as eBay and PayPal have already started to insert a signature which users don’t see within all emails they send to customers. Yahoo are the first ISP to start reading these signatures and will verify that the digital signature is valid and that the email originated from the company it purports to be from. If the domain key doesn’t match the email can be junked as a spoof. More ISPs will start implementing Domain key checking within the next few weeks.
There are also plugins available for many email readers such as Outlook and Outlook Express such as Iconix (which is free!). These programs perform similar checks to those ISPs will perform including domain key verification, and they visually mark emails that are known to be authentic in the users inbox. If an email is not marked it could be a spoof email, especially if it’s from a company whose emails are routinely flagged with the company logo to show when they are known to be authentic.
Spoof and phishing emails won’t disappear over night, but steps are being taken to protect Internet users and stem the tide. The one thing that will stop phishing in the long term is when users stop falling from them. The major incentive is it that only takes a few users each day to fall for a phishing email netting the fraudsters with a couple of hundred pounds - in countries such as Romania that’s well above the average wage so there is a huge temptation to turn to crime.
In the mean time PayPal have some tips on how to spot a phishing email:
Top tips to spot a phishing email
1. Generic greetings. Many spoof emails begin with a general greeting, such as: “Dear PayPal member.” If you do not see your first and last name, be suspicious and do not click on any links or button.
2. A fake sender’s address. A spoof email may include a forged email address in the “From” field. This field is easily altered.
3. A false sense of urgency. Many spoof emails try to deceive you with the threat that your account is in jeopardy if you don’t update it ASAP. They may also state that an unauthorised transaction has recently occurred on your account, or claim PayPal is updating its accounts and needs information fast.
- Michael Barrett, PayPal Chief Information Security Officer
CNET Webware awards eBay, Skype, PayPal, Stumbleupon
June 19, 2007
From more than 5,000 nominations Webware’s editors shortlisted 250 finalists. Users of Webware.com voted for the top 100 Webware sites for 2007.
eBay companies were well represented across many categories:
Productivity and Commerce: eBay, PayPal and Craigslist
Communications: Skype
Browsing: Stumbleupon
With Meg looking to the future the Community and Entertainment categories are awards eBay will want to win in the future!
eBay top in the world for privacy - Google worst
June 9, 2007
In a report due out today eBay joins the BBC and Wikipedia as some of the best companies in watchdog group Privacy International’s latest report. They are rated as “generally privacy-aware” along with Last.fm and LiveJournal, although this isn’t the top grade available which no company attained.
Google were alone in being awarded the worst possible grade given to companies with “comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy.” None of the other twenty-two companies in the survey which included both Yahoo and Microsoft sunk that low. According to Privacy International, Google has already embarked on a smear campaign to discredit and the report and the group.
Google is already under pressure to tighten up on privacy matters in the US and Europe and has recently agreed to only keep search information for two years. The latest report suggests that they still have a long way to go in this area. eBay however recently updated their privacy policy and it seems their efforts meet with approval, at least from Privacy International.
Five words from Meg Whitman
June 6, 2007
Meg has accepted a life time achievement Webby Award on behalf of the eBay community. Traditionally Webby acceptance speeches are limited to just five words so it’s hard to make a long blog post from Megs:
“Bidding starts at 99 cents.”
Very apt considering eBay’s commitment to go back to basics and bring the excitement of auctions back to the forefront of the eBay experience 
