However, I still thought the images and video would be of interest and you can now access at: http://blog.ebay.com/ebaylive/

Thank you to the internal comms team for sharing all the files and making it possible to be accessed publicly. This is a first.

Secondly, I would like to take a moment to personally thank my blog support team at Voce Communications. I realize it looks like I’m doing this solo here at eBay but I actually have a team that specializes in social media that helps me keep eBay Ink running and humming along. They’re the group that helps me incorporate the “you say” and “we say” modules. They also help me with all of the rich media content (such as the video module) and are responsible for incorporating the eBay Live! map into eBay Ink.

Cheers,
RBH

And so my first eBay DevCon and eBay Live! came to a close on Saturday night. I managed to make it home to SF safe and sound last night (albeit with a bit of head cold – I’m typing this from my couch with a lot of tissues and hot water with lemon).

There was a lot to take in over the 7 days I was in Chicago. I got to meet with sellers and buyers; developers and co-workers; and bloggers and reporters and it was incredibly inspirational to be honest. During the Town Hall meeting on Saturday, Griff said something that resonated with me: “this is 7 eBay Lives for me now, and I’ve learned more at this one than the last 6 combined”. I had anticipated a week of back-slapping (and possible face-slapping) but instead I was mostly witness to emotional but rational conversations and dialogue between attendees and eBay executives and colleagues. Worthwhile and needed conversations were taking place. Sure, Todd Lutwak became famous over night on YouTube, but nearly every question asked was well-thought out and the executives really were engaging in conversations before, during and after the different sessions.

TameBay’s Sue Bailey obviously attended the same conference I did because I couldn’t agree with her more in her final assessment of the week in Chicago. She quotes Lorrie from the Power Seller panel on Saturday afternoon: “people are working their backsides off to make you successful… there are a lot of new faces up here. We’re sorry for the mistakes of the past, come join us for the future”.

I really hope – for both employees and attendees – that this was more than just an opportunity to get to know the new executives more; more than just an opportunity for some individual eBayers to get a chance to do in-person what they’ve been doing on blogs and messageboards for the past 6 months – vent about recent changes. I believe it was. I really do. Things were put on the record at this eBay Live! (“absolutely no PayPal-only in the USA;” “we’re going to address the Feedback system in time for the Holiday season;” “we realize that neutrals may need re-evaluation”) and it became so much more than a “cheerleading” session (although, if I hear the Batman theme song one more time…) and turned more into a business conference.

I got the impression in talking to some people, that they missed the elaborate hats and fun-and-games of past eBay Lives (although still here, it was definitely tempered a bit) but the majority of attendees that I spoke with were more appreciative of the serious, down-to-business attitude that was coming out of the panels and sessions.

On Saturday afternoon I had a great sit-down conversation with Marcia Cooper, president of GeneralEnterprises.net and Harvey Levine, vice president. I’ll write more on that in a seperate post but Marcia left me with this sentence to describe her week in Chicago: “we arrived at eBay Live! feeling like combatants and leave feeling like we’re in this together as partners and friends.”

I’ll leave you with the eBay Ink photo collections on flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/ebayink/collections/. I tried to break out each collection into appropriate sets for you (Town Hall, Clapping Tunnel, Feedback Panel, etc.).

Cheers,
RBH

Another day is coming to a close here in lovely (but slightly overcast) Chicago and, with the exception of Monday night, I haven’t had a chance to see much of the city so I plan on getting out for a little R&R this evening… Before I do though, a few things to report on from day 2. I apologize for the length in advance.

The morning started off with the much anticipated keynote highlighted by presentations by John Donahoe and Lorrie Norrington and the presentation of awards to 2008 Hall of Fame winners. Both John and Lorrie took an extremely personal approach to their presentations (as a native of Chicago, John’s parents were in the audience and we got to see some rather candid, amusing photos from his childhood). His presentation borrowed much from yesterday’s stockholder meeting citing interesting facts and figures regarding the eBay marketplace. Lorrie’s presentation focused on a number of the announcements reported yesterday.

What was ever-present throughout both Lorrie and John’s presentations was a sense of genuine personality and good humor that was well received by the audience which brings me to something I’ve been thinking about a lot since I arrived on Sunday. DevCon and eBay Live! provide an opportunity for worlds to collide. Statistics on a presentation slide become human beings… and seemingly untouchable executives aren’t in an ivory tower. There is a palpable sense that we’re all in this together and we’re all doing what we think is best for the marketplace… and we’re not always going to agree on what that is.

Which leads to the elephant in the living room (aka the McCormick Conference Center here in Chicago): changes to Feedback. It wasn’t all sun and fun during the keynote. When Lorrie reported on the successes eBay has seen with the changes introduced earlier this year there was audible heckling but there was also genuine applause to the following statement:

“When we first announced the PowerSeller incentives in January, we knew that 60% of PowerSellers had DSRs of 4.6 and above,” Lorrie said. “Today, that number is 67%. Also, in January, 15 percent of PowerSellers had DSR of 4.8 and above and today that number has more than doubled with 33% with DSRs of 4.8 or greater.”

Lorrie encouraged all attendees to go to the Feedback panel taking place immediately following the keynote to discuss further… which was very encouraging. However, the room in which that panel was taking place was not large enough to house the number of people wanting to attend (candidly, it should have been at least twice the size it was) and only an hour was allocated for the panel discussion (it could have been at least an extra half an hour to accommodate the extra questions that would have been asked). I managed to get a spot at the front of the room after the presentation period ended (I’ve asked Brian Burke if I can get his slides to share with Ink readers) but before the Q&A panel began.

As anticipated it was a heated discussion at times with calls coming from the audience sometimes drowing out both panelists and people asking questions at the microphone. Having said that, I thought it was a great discussion and pretty productive with a lot of the same questions that came up here on Ink last month. Griff played devil’s advocate to the rest of the panelists which made for some good back-and-forth. My question got asked about half way through by a longtime PowerSeller (why not get rid of neutral feedback all together?) and Chris Dawson from TameBay asked “Shouldn’t every communication of importance be in “My Messages”? (Take it out of email all together)”… which could actually go a long way in dealing with the lack-of-proof issue that comes when reporting extortion. Essentially the issue of forged emails wouldn’t be a factor if all of this was captured in the My Messages tool.

There was also talk of being able to debit a PayPal account when an auction closes starting early next year which seemed to excite a number of folks too.

If you weren’t able to follow my “Tweets” from the panel, you can get a blow-by-blow account at Greg Holden’s live blogging report HERE.

Tomorrow, I look forward to getting out of the classrooms and onto the Solutions Center Expo floor. I’ll also be live blogging from the Town Hall Meeting at 11am CT and the PowerSeller Panel with Execs at 3pm CT tomorrow so if you haven’t done it yet, please go to http://twitter.com/ebayinkblog and start “following me.” But, it is Saturday tomorrow, and I will not be offended if you choose to do something better with your time than to read what I have to say in 140 characters or less every 60 seconds.

Cheers,
RBH

One would think that a conference center in a hotel in downtown Chicago would allow you to connect to the outside world. One would think that and one would be wrong. I arrived at the ballroom at 7am this morning ready to set up my “blogging station” so I could report live from eBay’s annual stockholders meeting only to find that the room was two floors below the lobby and was void of cell reception and internet connection. As a result, what follows is a collection of notes I took during the meeting.

Pierre Omidyar opened the meeting and introduced all executives, senior management and board members that were present (including Meg Whitman, John Donahoe, Rajiv Dutta, Bob Swan and Scott Thompson, among others).

There were three proposals approved in the meeting:

1. Election of Fred D. Anderson, Edward W. Barnholt, Scott D. Cook, and John J. Donahoe as directors to serve until the 2011 meeting – each director was approved with over 91% approval rating
2. Approval of 2008 equity incentive award plan – a 90% approval rating
3. Ratification of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the independent auditor of eBay through 12/08 – approx 99% approval rating

John Donahoe then took the stage and acknowledged Meg’s tenure as CEO for the past 10 years before going into his presentation. He began with a financial performance overview before going into some interesting facts regarding eBay.com:
- Every 26 minutes a Ford Mustang is sold on eBay;
- Every 2 minutes a major appliance is sold;
- Every four seconds a pair of shoes is sold;
- eBay gets over 1 billion page views per day.

John indicated that eBay is improving the health of our marketplace by focusing on 3 things:
1. Trust
2. Search
3. Selection

After giving a Marketplaces overview he addressed PayPal that is now in 190 markets dealing in 17 different currencies. There are now 141 Million PayPal users and payment volume for 2007 was $47B. One-third of the adult population of the United Kingdom has a PayPal account.

John then admitted excitement to the ease-of-use and security of PayPal by relaying two personal stories during a visit to Australia in which he purchased flowers from a local florist online and a plane ticket from Southwest.com all using PayPal which was good because he had left his wallet in his wife’s backpack.

John then moved on to talk about Skype, citing some impressive figures:
- Over 300 million users as of June, 2008.
- Skype video represents 28% of all calls made on skype.
- 30% of users use Skype for business.
- 100 billion minutes of skype-to-skype calls in the 4 years it has been functional.

Global Citizenship
eBay is the world’s biggest recycler when one considers that there have been $100 billion in resold items transactions on the site. After making reference to MicroPlace and World of Good, John addressed future goals for the company overall.

The Journey Ahead…

#1 in eCommerce
#1 in online payments
#1 in online communication

3 priorities for 2008:
1. Make eBay easier and safer to use
2. Expand our selection
3. Expand PayPal off and on eBay

Q&A
Some sample Q&As follow:
Q: Although I am impressed and appreciate eBay’s interest in charity… with the great profits why aren’t my shares worth more?

A: We’re trying to be responsible custodians of our business and our stock. We’re focused on building and continuing to grow our business over time so that your stock will be worth more. We actually believe our shares are currently undervalued which is why we conducted the share buy-back.

Q: How are you going to make it easier to sell on eBay?

A: Well, earlier this year, we reduced insertion fees significantly and we’ve made gallery free in the US and the UK. We feel there is the risk for sellers to list on eBay is lower and, as a result, we are seeing growth in listings. If we all focus on providing a great buyer experience, everyone wins.

Q: It feels like eBay is hurting itself through it’s interest in the online classifieds business. Aren’t you really competing against yourself? How are you making money through the Classifieds business?

A: Monetization occurs when people list employment opportunities or home listings because a fee is made to make those listings. The second way is through advertising onsite. There is some overlap on what is sold on a classified site vs eBay. But shopping locally (via classifieds instead of eBay.com) is more ideal for selling a couch or piece of furniture.

Q. Can you please confirm the relationship between eBay and Buy.com? There is documentation that states them as a competitor but there is also evidence that you have partnered with them and they’re selling on eBay.

A: They’re a competitor in so much as they are an online retailer with their own site. Any purchase from a site other than eBay is, by definition, a competitive transaction. However, they do now also sell on eBay and when that transaction occurs it cannot be seen as competitive.

There were additional questions and statements including one made by PETA expressing grave concern that eBay is not acting on its relationship with Tom Online and their allowance of sales of live animals on their site. John indicated that eBay has a minor stake in the company (with no operational control) but that he would make sure the PETA concerns were forwarded to Tom Online.

The meeting lasted exactly an hour and there were approximately 70 people in attendance. After the meeting wrapped up the executives and board of directors mingled with share holders, some of which were asking for photos of Meg and John and requesting autographs.

Then it was onto eBay Live…

Cheers,
RBH

Quite a bit of news coming out of the first day of eBay Live! 08 today. A press release was issued earlier today outlining how eBay plans to improve protections for buyers and sellers. Buyers who pay with PayPal will be protected on eligible transactions for 100% of an item’s purchase price – with no coverage cap. Additionally, US eBay sellers will receive improved seller protection for eligible transactions when they get paid with PayPal.

PayPal’s improved seller protection will cover ALL sellers (regardless of transaction size or sales’ volume) against claims, chargebacks and reversals due to an unauthorized payment or an item that was not received.

“Today’s announcement makes it simple for our customers – we’re providing protection whether a transaction costs $50 or $50,000,” said Scott Thompson, president of PayPal. “As PayPal celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, we’re pleased to deliver these new protections and allow customers to shop on eBay with even more confidence.”

Sellers with DSRs of at least 4.9 across all four categories will receive 20% off their Final Value Fees. Sixteen percent of PowerSellers will immediately qualify for this third tier of discount (the other tiers are 5% for 4.6 and above and 15% for 4.8 and above).

There is also a new level of PowerSeller – Diamond Level. It will apply to sellers of $500,000 worth of goods a month and who have a minimum DSR score of 4.8 across the board.

The news was given to a collection of attending bloggers at eBay Live! earlier today. Randy Smythe, Chris and Sue from TameBay, David White from eBay & Beyond and AuctionBytes.com all sat down with some key representatives from the company to discuss the changes.

The changes announced today seem to emphasize John Donahoe’s statement earlier this morning in the shareholder meeting where he expressed the company’s priorities for the rest of 2008:
1. Make eBay easier and safer to use
2. Expand selection
3. Expand PayPal off and on eBay

The news seemed to be pretty well received by everyone in the briefing and the follow-up questions were more focused on the recent changes to Feedback and DSRs earlier this year. There was even mention of possibly inviting 3rd party developers to develop APIs to enhance and improve the DSR interface… much like the Project Echo news announced earlier this week where the same is being done for Seller Manager.

A roundup of initial coverage, from the attending bloggers, can be found here:
- AuctionBytes here and here.
- TameBay here and here
- Randy Smythe’s My Blog Utopia!

Cheers,
RBH

As the sun sets on this year’s eBay Developer’s Conference I need to splash some water on my face and get ready for eBay Live! staff orientation this evening.

I found the last couple of days incredibly informative and invigorating to be honest. Each conversation uncovered another layer of possibility for eBay users. For example, in a past life I worked at Microsoft’s WebTV so it was great to talk to folks that are incorporating eBay functionality into set-top boxes. I spoke with Dan Levinson, marketing executive for BIAP (Broadband interactive Applications) whose applications include “eBay on TV”:

eBay on TV – Using a digital set-top box and a remote control, registered eBay users can access an eBay account directly on their TV screen to view current auctions, watch lists and recent history. Viewers are alerted when they have been outbid and are provided the option of placing a higher bid. They can also be notified if they have won an auction.

I got the impression that this is still just scratching the surface on the potential of eBay on TV (currently no ability to complete a transaction after an item has been won) but if the BIAP folks can work with eBay developers on PayPal implementation and other advanced but essential features, then they’re definitely taking the QVC concept to a whole new level. On a side note, as a sports fan, I’d love to also check out their Fantasy Sports Trackers:

Fantasy Sports Trackers – Applications that give TV viewers the ability to personalize a roster of up to 25 players in a particular sport and view real-time statistics and alerts while viewing any channel.

Presentations were also very informative. Sue Bailey over at TameBay covered Adam Trachtenberg’s developer preview presentation of this morning. Check out her take on what he had to say by clicking here.

For those of you unable to attend this year’s DevCon, the eBay Developer team have compiled a comprehensive list of the majority of presentations from this year’s event. You can click here to view the PDFs of the various presentations.

I managed to speak briefly with Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, who invited me to tour their offices when I attend the RocketPlace conference in Las Vegas in September; a conference focused on all levels of eBay sellers. I also spent some time with the eBay developers involved in the Firefox eBay edition who were very excited to be promoting Firefox eBay edition on the same day Mozilla launched Firefox 3.

Granted there were a few technical presentations that went over my head a little bit but for the most part, I could see the business benefits of a large number of applications and news coming out of the conference. The big winner of the week was the Project Echo team who announced that third party application development was now open on eBay’s Selling Manager. The full brief can be viewed as a PDF by going to: http://developer.ebay.com/echo/project-echo-brief.pdf

It’s 5:10pm now and my eBay Live! work begins in 50 minutes. I look forward to providing updates over the next 3 days.

Cheers,
RBH

In February, I was introduced in Fortune Small Business as a “social media veteran”, which brought chuckles to pretty much everyone I know, myself included. Sure, I have spent the majority of my career at companies specializing in social media but I can think of maybe two people that could claim the title of “veteran” as it applies to social media and I’m not one of them (you have to be at least 40 to be a veteran of anything right?).

So, even though I have been involved in podcasting and blogging for a number of years now, I must confess that until Sunday, using Twitter was just a passing fancy in my life away from work. However, since I set up the Twitter feed for eBay Ink (http://twitter.com/ebayinkblog), I’ve been able to blog (or “tweet”) from every session, panel and keynote I have attended here at eBay DevCon08. I’ve been able to engage in real-time conversations with Ink readers and other bloggers as I sit in presentations. I’ve been able to ask questions at the end of presentations that were posed to me just moments before. I’ve even linked to the conference agenda and asked where readers wanted me to go next.

Although the Twitter feed is going to be used primarily when I’m on the road, when I get back to the office, I’m going to try and integrate into my daily work routine. A lot of readers have said they wonder what the heck I do when I’m not physically blogging at the office so I think I’ll use Twitter to give them an insight into what a typical day is like being the corporate blogger for eBay. Maybe I’ll put together a standalone post for Ink readers that covers that day but for those of you interested in the real-time, you’ll be able to follow on Twitter.

If you were wondering, I made 85 “tweets” during eBay DevCon08; let’s see how many come out of eBay Live! 08.

Cheers,
RBH

I’m now sitting in the ballroom watching Max Mancini run-through his keynote presentation for tomorrow. The schedule is pretty packed for me over the next 7 days (eBay Live! kicking off here on Thursday morning) so I’ve set up a Twitter account with the username “ebayinkblog” so I can live-blog from the conference center this week. You can also follow the DevCon on Twitter at “ebaydevcon08“.

I’ll be uploading photos each day that I’m here – for both DevCon and Live! – to the flickr feed that you can see on the eBay Ink homepage or you can subscribe directly at http://flickr.com/photos/ebayink.

Looking forward to my 7 days of blogging from Chicago.

Cheers,
RBH