I've made a youtube video of images from eBay Live. I put most of my favorite images in there.
It's at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQDfyPl0auI
I wanted to do a medley of songs, but in the end it sucked up so much time that I'm going to have to leave it with this one song.
By the way, if you haven't seen or weren't aware of all the eBay and eBay Live related youtube videos up there, check it out. People have posted the clapping tunnel, bits of Kool and the Gang, employees dancing, etc.
Here is a photo of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and me at the eBay shareholders meeting on Thursday, June 14, 2007. Pierre was very gracious about signing my card and having his picture taken with me. I thank him again. And thanks to photographer Phil Davies of TIAS.com, who was at the conference taking photos for AuctionBytes.com, for taking this photo.
My take-aways from the photo:
1. Pierre is very nice and gracious.
2. To do before next year's conference: get a quick cheap facelift in Costa Rica.
Saturday at eBay Live was more craziness. I covered the Town Hall for AuctionBytes. You'll be seeing the story on the AB site most likely tomorrow (Monday). A lot of questions were about the perceived fairness (or lack thereof) of the new star feedback rating system, but the execs said buyers are happy with it overall. I'll be posting my thoughts about it later. I largely agree with them..I am mostly happy with the improvement as a buyer, but as a seller I think there is potential to be rated unfairly. Anyway, let's go to the pic:
eBay execs including Bill Cobb, Philippe Justus, Rob Chenut, Jim Ambach, and Jamie Jamie Iannone at the eBay Town Hall Saturday, with Griff moderating.
The crowd gets balloon hats made while they wait for the doors to the gala to open.
A gaggle of eBay execs gather for a quick group photo in the quiet hall before the gala crowd comes in and the joint starts hopping. It's been a busy week.
Triumphant eBay employees walk into the gala. The eBay sellers clap for them. It's a nice role reversal from the clapping tunnel to come. There's definitely two-way appreciation at these events.
Below, eBay Employee Cool Hair Guy and Me:
His hair is vertical.
I believe he said his name is Jimm, with two m's. Everything he does is exteme.
Kool and the Gang, below.
Who is Kool and who is the Gang? Did I really live through the 70s?
More pix tomorrow.
The eBay Live Town Hall is about to begin here this morning, but I wanted to post a few more images from the Friday madness before heading off to it.
Here is one of the most photographed guys at the convention ths year -- I don't know his name (I should have asked for his business card) so I'll simply call him "balloon hat guy" for now:
He was in the eBay Chatter newsletter this morning as well.
He works for Channel Advisor but also writes books. I ran into him talking to Ina Steiner of AuctionBytes in the Press Room at eBay Live.
To the immediate left, a couple of the Marketblast guys. They were in the booth next to me during my eBay Price Guide signing at the Hammertap booth. (Thanks again to Hammertap, makers of an awesome eBay research tool, for hosting my signing. And to all the members of the Hammertap team for being so nice and helpful at their booth).
Speaking of Hammertap, Jen Cano of Hammertap gave a presentation to a packed room about using research..here she is below talking to an attendee after the session:
She's also the author of her ownbook about research and I'll be posting an image of it soon. Off to the Town Hall..more soon!
Every time the "celebrate" song by Kool and the Gang plays, the crowd here at eBay Live 2007 goes crazy and starts moving like lemmings towards eBay booths and employees blessed with bags of the sacred pins. I haven't had nearly enough time to just hang out on the Exhibit Floor and collect pins, but I have been having fun and really enjoying the seminars. And..I had two book signings today!
Here are two of my favorite eBay employees, who came to my "eBay Price Guide" signing at the Hammertap booth today:
Naveen and Bret, two not only handsome, but powerful men. (See "Pretty Woman," the scene with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in the store on Rodeo Drive).
Here's an awesome shooting star seller holding a copy of my book:
I finally made it upright.
I have to go now but more pix coming soon.
The main event of the first day of eBay Live 2007 started off with eBay's own employee band, "Twisted Lister," who I thought was pretty darn cool. They've got the covers down; now they just need to start working on the originals. Because you know I always like to bring you visuals, here they are:
I think the guy on the left is the lead singer. I'm sorry but I didn't catch his name. If any eBay employees on there know it and are reading this, please email me or leave a comment on this blog. (An original...hmm..how about "She's snipey"...something along the lines of the Beastie Boys' "She's Crafty"? Only with a different melody. Ha.
After the band did their thing, the incomparable Griff (eBay's "Uncle Griff" and one of its earliest employees -- oh, you know who he is...came out and did a great ad-libbing audience interaction thing. I don't know if things behind the scenes were going late or not, but they sent Griff out a second time to do more ad-libbing before Meg came out, and he did it with humor and grace as always. Plus, he had a cool sparkly jacket on...it made me think of last year's eBay Live in Vegas:
Then Meg came out and did the traditional feedback countdown in the audience..everyone stands, and she asks people who have 100, then 500, then 1000, then 10,000 feedbacks to sit down. After 10,000 feedbacks, several folks were still standing and they all got a big round of applause. Then they went up to 100,000 feedbacks and about six folks were still standing! Whew.
Meg showed a video and talked a lot about the Giving Works program. Then she introduced the head of PayPal, Rajiv Dutta, who had some juicy stuff to announce about PayPal, especially in the Trust and Safety areas. Let's sum them up:
- They're bringing the PayPal security key out of beta tomorrow -- it's a small electronice device, which adds an extra layer of security. It will be available to eBay customers.
[Since] they introduced online dispute resolution, there's been a reduction of complaints by 50%.
And they're launching payment review, highlighting those transactions that may pose a risk. "You'll be protected, 100% guaranteed," said Dutta, to much applause.
- And while PayPal has expanded comfirmed addresses by 50%, "I'm committing PayPal will deliver we'll make every address in the system confirmed." This got even more applause.
Dutta then intro'd Bill Cobb by reminiscing about the time he first met him. Meg asked him "what do you think?" and he thought he was great but "is it just me or does he have a really loud voice?" Then he quipped that "back then he was just a tad thinner."
Cobb came out and joked "I'd like to thank my friend Rajiv who just called me fat."
I'm getting low on time to I'm going to summarize the major stuff he said. I'd like to come back later and add in some of the anecdotes:
- There will be no increases in selling fees this [July] (I think he said this July; he may have said this summer).
- eBay is now holding some items most favored by criminals before they go into the search
- they already eliminated private feedback [much applause].
Then he unveiled the new marketing campaign, based on a concept called "Windorphins" (in case you don't know what the heck that means, I believe it's a pun on "endorphins," those feel-good chemicals in the brain; and "win," as in winning an eBay auction. It could also be a pun on "windows" as in computer windows but I'm just pointing that out. They showed a video of a commercial that was coming and it seemed very cute to me.
Also there will be new features such as visual navigation, and a cool thing calld eBay countdownm that has a more graphical representation of the bidding interface. Here's a visual:
- Also, a featgure is coming where you can place a bid WITHOUT HAVING TO WAIT FOR YOUR COMPUTER TO REFRESH! (Cobb's emphasis).
- He also plugged the new video in listings feature by showing a very funny video of a guy selling an acoustic guitar...he showed himself in all kinds of states of dress including...er..without pants. (But Cobb urges us to "keep it clean.").
- Anchor Stores will be discounted $200 to $299.95.
- eBay will offer customer support to top buyers who buy 50% of merchandise on the service.
Here's something really cool. I shouldn't bury this in the bottom so later I'll try to blog about this separately. They're testing "Pricing and Shipping sort" - so it can sort search results according to the shipping and handling. This to me is very big, because the price of shipping can be a factor that is relatively hidden, and when added to the total cost of an item can totally skew the price results in the search. A $1 may have $39.95 shipping and make a similar $10 item with $2.95 shipping look relatively expensive.
- UPS is announcing savings up of to 31% on UPS ground and air by as much as 22%.
- The PowerSeller program - will be based now on both unit volume and dollar amounts, and they'll offer the option to high-level seasonal sellers on a seasonal basis.
Lastly (for now), starting in August, powerseller status will come with a "rebate" for unpaid item fees.
Oh wait...one more thing! Summer relief: 1st traunche of listing fees will be lowered from 5.25% to 4.25%.
eBay's annual shareholders meeting took place as scheduled this morning at 8.a.m, just before the start of the eBay Live 2007 convention later in the morning. I was there with Ina Steiner of AuctionBytes and Phil Davies of TIAS, who is taking photos and video for AB at the convention.
After a very rote series of votes of four proposals including elections to the board (including Meg Whitman), an IRC code matter, and an ESPP (employee stock purchase plan) extension, Meg Whitman got started with a presentation.
She joked it was a little early in the morning, especially for folks from the west coast (such as her), for whom it was really 5 a.m.
eBay's new mission statement is (you know you were wondering): "eBay's vision is to help people connect, discover and interact through commerce."
The three pillars of the system now are "Buy - Pay - Communicate."
Under the "Buy" umbrella, you have things like eBay, Kijiji, Marketplaatz, and Loquo. "Pay" is "PayPal." (duh). "Communicate" is "Skype."
Of course there are the stats: eBay's "large and growing" core biz:
- 37 global markets
- $1800 GMV per second
- 6.4 million daily new listings
- 80,000 API developers
If eBay were a retailer, they would be the 9th largest retailer in the world. In Q1 07, $14 billion was traded.
She acknowledged, however, there were some things they could do better. One of them was search. E.g., if you type "Madonna" currently, you can find some 60,000 listings.
That's why eBay is working on new search features, including:
- new search results
- new search landing page
- new relevancy-based listings sort - best match
Also they have some things coming to improve the shopping experience. When I heard about this one it reminded me of the "bid groups" you could set up with auctionsniper. the sniping service I use.
What they're doing is "bid assistance" -- "what if you bid on 3 items but you only want one?" In other words, I think, let's say you're chasing down a certain thing like an iPod and hedging your bets by bidding on multiple iPods of the model you want, but you only want to win one auction.
Feedback 2.0 - another thing they've introduced. "Feedback was one of the key innovations" said Meg and "sellers jealously guarded their feedback ratings." With 2.0, buyers can rate sellers on a number of different areas such as shipping time, etc.
Whitman said they have 70% adoption of this -- "I think buyers find it useful." She did acknowledge she'd had some feedback from sellers that "this is an extra burden, but I think this is the right thing to do."
They plan to streamline checkout --- I think she said something like from about 15 steps to 6, but don't quote me on that.
eBay Motors 2.0: this category has the most GMV -- sellers sold over 1 million cars, mostly used. An overhaul of the experience is coming.
Trust & Safety: they're doing things like safeguarding member id's, setting limits on the numbers of the types of items that can be sold which are favored by counterfeiters. "The bad guys are becoming more sophisticated," she said.
"We're only letting a small number of luxury brands [be] sold at a time because that probably weeds out the counterfeiters," she said.
She said when you pay with PayPal you're covered up to $2000.
Other things: with eBay Express, there are new search engines and shopping cart for the convenience-oriented buyer.
eBay acquired StubHub -- they wanted to augment the ticket experience; a best in class buyer-selling experience.
Growing beyond GMV - Shopping.com is the leading comparison shopping engine in the US, with 60 million products.
She also touched on eBay's growing Classifieds empire, including its stake in Craigslist, Marketplaatz (in the Netherlands), Kijiji, and Loquo. These are the #1 or #2 classifieds players in about 400 cities -- "this strategy pays off over time," she said.
She wrapped things up talking more about PayPal and Skype, and Skype growth statistics like it's in 28 languages and nearly every country (not North Korea, she said, quipping "that may be a while," to laughter from the audience.
Overall it struck me as a fairly sedate, rote annual meeting, with no big surprises. Even the couple of tough questions from the audience are the kind that come up every year...a lady from Peta got up and protested eBay's continued tolerance of the sale of animals on the eBay China site-- animals who are abused horribly ("beaten, strangled, or boiled") -- yikes! Meg said they would continue to engage in a dialogue and they did go by the laws of each country.
Another guy, with the Parents Television Council, complained about eBay advertising on tv shows with "foul language and graphic violence." He used CSI as an example.
The unflappabe Meg gave her usual calm response -- saying they would think about it and engage in a dialogue, and she'd be interested in what other companies of their size, such as Disney, do.
Well that's it for now. I'll post more soon.
