Category Archives: ebay

PayPal and eBay will Separate in 2015

ebay,

PayPal and eBay logosIt is true – eBay and PayPal are going to separate from each other. This was announced by eBay in a post on their blog that was titled: “Ebay Inc. to separate eBay and PayPal into independent publicly traded companies in 2015.” PayPal posted the same thing on their blog The “new” eBay and the “new” PayPal are each getting their own new CEOs.

Why is this being done? According to both eBay and PayPal, it is because they believe that each entity will “benefit more and create greater value from the strategic focus, speed, flexibility and agility that come with being independent publicly traded companies.” The blog posts also say that eBay “expects to complete the transaction as a tax-free spin-off in the second half of 2015”.

The CEO of the “new” eBay company will be Devin Wenig, who is currently president of eBay Marketplaces. Dan Schulman has been named as President of PayPal, effective immediately, and as CEO-designee of the standalone “new” PayPal company after the separation.

Still collecting those old games? Here is a “deal”

ebay, Gaming, , ,

Nostalgia is big business these days and perhaps there is no bigger tech nostalgia field than old games and gaming systems. If you were smarter than me and didn’t give away your original Atari and all of the games then you may be able make some money off of these devices. There is no better example than a current Ebay auction.

The auction consists of what the seller calls a “Complete US Super Nintendo (SNES) collection with all boxes and most manuals”. The sale claims that the collection consists of “all 721 games sold at retail in the United States, Canada and Mexico”. The games are mostly in good condition and man even contain the original manuals, inserts and boxes.

Now for the tough part, the price. The auction is set for a “Buy it now” price of a mere $24,999. An entire list of every single game included and even what each contains and the conditions can be found on the auction site. Do you have your wallet out yet?

People Search For Facebook?

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Experian Hitwise LogoBusiness intelligence company Experian Hitwise recently released the top 10 searched for brands in the UK. Top of the pile came internet giants Facebook, YouTube and eBay with four British brands showing; catalogue store Argos, fashion shop Next, news and media organisation the BBC and tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail.

Here’s the full top 10.

  1. Facebook
  2. YouTube
  3. eBay
  4. Amazon
  5. Argos
  6. BBC
  7. Google
  8. Hotmail
  9. Daily Mail
  10. Next

According to Hitwise, around 2% of all searches in the UK were for “facebook”, and variants such as “facebook login” and “fb” made three of the top 10 searches overall.

While it’s not 100% clear from the press release how the data was gathered and what search engines were involved, the research suggests that lots of people use search engines in preference to the address bar, even when the web page is simply the brand plus .com or .co.uk. You can begin to see why there is so much money to be made from advertising in search: every time one of these people goes to a web site, they’re using Google, Bing or Yahoo to get there.

Frankly, the one that really amazes me is “google” at #7. People are using search to find a search engine? This doesn’t make sense and my only thought is that large numbers of people don’t know that it’s possible to reset their default search engine (or home page). Consequently, they’re using Bing to find Google instead of changing the settings in their web browser. Amazing. If anyone has any alternative thoughts, let me know in the comments.

Ebay Acquires Hunch Recommendation Engine

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hunch
hunch

Auction site eBay announced it has acquired  Hunch, for an undisclosed price. Founders Chris Dixon, Tom Pinckney and Matt Gattis, will stay on at eBay and remain based in New York

Hunch is an online recommendation platform launched in 2009. It uses web data to create “Hunches” and map them so it can start to predict the products, services, websites, or just about anything. The program can then focus your searches to popular items, or items tailored on your history.

“We are engaging consumers in innovative ways and attracting top technologists to shape the future of commerce,” said Mark Carges, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President, Global Products, Marketplaces. “With Hunch, we’re adding new capabilities to personalizing the shopping experience on eBay to the individual relevant tastes and interests of our customers. We expect Hunch’s technologies to benefit eBay shoppers as they browse and buy, and to bring sellers on eBay new ways to connect the right products with the right customers.”

The staff at Hunch believe this will be a great integration to eBay. They will be able to integrate into search, advertising and more. For instance, Hunch has a Netflix engine, in which you sign in to your Netflix site, then it will search for movies you might want to watch.

Hunch Netflix Engine
Hunch Netflix Engine

 

blogs.ebay.com Sorry I don’t get it?

Commerce, ebay,

I have not read the daily commentary yet, as I have been to busy dealing with a sick kid, a speech and presentation that is in final markup and about a million things to do with Podcast Awards and our pending new site launch. Yea life is good. Not to mention I am way overdue on a submission to Chris.

Anyway had a reader IM this to me tonight, and I’m sorry who the heck wants to have a Blog on ebay, building someone else brand is not my idea of good business sense, then againI have only bought 2 items off ebay in the past year, and the only reason I did was because I did not need new equipment.

My prediction blog.ebay.com will bomb and I have not even explored the site. Sad but it does not even excite me enough to go beyond the landing page. [blogs.ebay.com]