eBay Strategies

Live blogging from.... The iPhone 3G line! II

6:10am - line is around the corner so I don't have visibility - at least 40+ now.

AT+T manager told us everyone in line so far will get an iPhone 3G!

Episode II of the Adventures of Tank Stikman!

Note to feed readers this post contains an embedded video you will need to click through to see.

rumor: ebay being acquired by yhoo

The Wall St. Buzz is that msft and yhoo are bidding for eBay. My source tells me that Yahoo! Has bid 1.76 shares for ebay ($40-41) and is expected to win at that price.

Looks like yBay!, eHoo! Could happen in 08!

**Update: Several people have emailed saying the economics don't make sense because ebay has a larger market cap ($41b) than Yahoo! ($46b) so the acquisition should be other way or it will be massively dilutive for Y! shareholders (thus the 1.76 y/e shares).

I agree that it may not make sense, but I've heard it from a pretty good source so wanted to alert folks that at least it's out there making the rounds, no matter how unlikely.

Couple of ChannelAdvisor news items and eBay/Gmarket speculation

1. Our UK team continues to do extremely well.  Today we announced that ChannelAdvisor UK is welcoming one of the UK's top sellers, Ace Electronics UK into the ChannelAdvisor family.  Welcome Ace!!
2. I'm heading out to Phoenix to present our thoughts on the world of paid search at the Citigroup annual media/internet/tech event.  We were proud to be one of a handful of private companies invited to present.
3. Our CFO, Bill Brown, is heading up to New York for Needham's growth stock conference to tell the ChannelAdvisor story.
4. I'm starting to get a lot of questions about eBay's rumored acquisition of Gmarket. I don't have any information to share here, but do think it's a smart move as it kills many birds with one stone:
   1. It's a core investment, unlike Skype
   2. Gmarket would get eBay's growth engine going again in Asia
   3. Gmarket seems to have cracked the 'low listing fee', high fixed-price, but keep auctions alive formula that eBay is going to need to crack to start growing again in the USA. The only other company that seems to have cracked this considerable nut is Mercado Libre.  Maybe eBay acquires both?  I say it's time to go big or go home!!
5. Vishesh Kumar over at Thestreet.com has a good article on the financial merits of the gmarket rumored transaction.

Happy Holidays from ChannelAdvisor - The Adventures of Tank Stikman...

We just published our holiday Flash animation, introducing Tank and his adventures the last year.  You can see it in original flash here.

Or hit play below on the embedded youtube version:

eBay takes write-down on Skype and changes team

Back in 2005, it was pretty clear that eBay had 'jumped the shark' with the big Skype acquisition that was going to bring internet calling to eBay and reduce friction in transactions.

Well, today eBay announced  that they are going to pay $530m of the $1.7b earn-out and take a $900m one-time charge on the decreased value of the Skype asset they paid a whopping $2.6b for back in 05.

One thing I've never understood about this acquisition is it seems like eBay didn't get any lock down on the intellectual property/IP as the founders seemingly took the peer-to-peer Skype technology and started Joost, which eBay doesn't enjoy any upside on.  I've also heard rumors that eBay doesn't even own/have exclusive on the general Skype technology/idea (inet calling) and the Skype founders could start a competitor if they choose to.

Along that thread, eBay today also announced that Niklas Zennstrom has stepped down as CEO (probably spending all his time on Joost anyway) and they are yanking Henry Gomez back to San Jose as well.  For the interim period they have placed Michael van Swaaij, eBay's Chief Strategy Officer ("Hey this skype thing was your idea!") to run Skype until they can find a new CEO.

At eBay seller get-togethers, at the end of the day drinking beers at the hotel bars, this topic always comes up: "What if eBay had spent that $3b to fix the core site instead of  buying Skype?  Would they be in the pickle they find themselves in today?"

Well, to quote the Fonz, all I can say is:  "Aaaay!"

Holiday Webinar tomorrow

A quick reminder that tomorrow (Tuesday - 9/24) we are hosting a webinar on Holiday success.  We'll also be covering some of the changes coming to eBay.  If you haven't started your holiday sales planning yet, you are behind the eight ball and need to tune in to help prioritize what to work on for the next 30 days!

Rumor: Rob Chesnut MIA? (file under brain drain)

UPDATE: Heard from Rob this evening. He is just on sabbatical this summer and will a) be at eBay Live and b) back in the Fall (phew!)

So file this one under "Brain recharge vs. drain"

Original post follows:

There's a rumor circulating in the eBay community that Rob
Chesnut has left/is leaving eBay.  If true, it would be a major bummer as Rob+team have seriously cranked up the efforts to thwart the bad guys on eBay and it seems to be having some impact.

Can anyone confirm/deny this one?  I wonder where a guru of online fraud would go... hmmm.

ChannelAdvisor's Michael Jones on CNN!

Today CNN is featuring a snippet of a session that we were invited to participate in with Business 2.0 called "The New Disruptors".  This is a great series where the B2 team travels the country and talks to entrepreneurs about their disruptive new technologies, how they came up with the idea, etc.

We were honored to be in the same group as Bob Young (founder of Lulu and Red Hat), and DayJet CEO Ed Iacobucci.

Panama!

Since Yahoo! announced Panama (their new quality-score based search system) we've been inundated by financial and industry analysts asking about what we've been seeing.  At ChannelAdvisor we have 80+ large retailers that leverage our paid-search technology to manage their campaigns so we have a front-row seat for the impact these kinds of major changes are making.

Our standard reply has been that we don't have enough data to report anything, but we are now able to report some of the findings we are seeing.  Mike Shapaker has a full report over on the CA corporate blog.  Thanks to Mike for taking the time to do a deep dive on Panama and thanks to David Lee Roth for coming up with the code name.