eBay today invited some San Francisco users to a new same-day shipping service called eBay Now. An iOS app, eBay Now’s beta will let SF residents get $5 same-day shipping on products from local stores. It’s now signing up users for an “exclusive beta”. It seems that anyone can currently register, and those admitted should get a download link soon.
Startups like TaskRabbit and Uber have given… → Read More
eBay has just released its second quarter 2012 earnings report, in which the eCommerce giant outpaced expectations for yet another quarter. Revenue increased 23% to $3.4 billion, compared to the same period of 2011. Non-GAAP earnings came in at $0.56 per diluted share. Analysts expected earnings of $0.55 per share on revenue of $3.36 billion. Net income came in at $692 million for the… → Read More
Yardsale, a mobile app to help folks sell goods to local buyers, is now available throughout the U.S., after a long, long period of testing in the San Francisco Bay Area. The latest version of the app, which hooks into Craigslist and enables users to easily list items for sale, hopes to take on other local marketplaces by reducing the friction associated with creating listings, and then dealing… → Read More
Quikr, India’s largest online and mobile classifieds portal, announced today that it has raised $32 million in series E financing, led by New York City-based private equity giant Warburg Pincus. The company’s existing investors, which include Matrix Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and eBay, also participated in the funding.
The investment is Quikr’s fifth and largest financing to date… → Read More
Back in in 1999, just as Ebay was coming into bloom, William Gibson wrote a piece on his experiences buying expensive watches online. He called the article My Obsession and it details his youth as a picker in the 1970s.
He writes:
When I was a young man, traversing the ’70s in whatever post-hippie, pre-slacker mode I could manage, I made a substantial part of my living, such as it was, in a… → Read More
eBay was one of the first e-commerce giants to launch an iPad app following the device’s debut in 2010. As we’ve heard many times, mobile commerce is a huge growth area for eBay and the company is placing some pretty big bets on the mobile shopping experience. Today, the company, which says that its mobile apps have reached 80 million downloads, is debuting version 2.0 of its flagship iPad app… → Read More
Last year,eBay acquired Magento, developer of an open-source e-commerce platform for around $180 million. Magento became part of X.commerce, a combined open platform business from eBay and PayPal. A year after the acquisition was announced, Magento co-founder and CTO Yoav Kutner has left eBay. While fellow Magento co-founder Roy Rubin sent Kutner off with a warm farewell, Kutner doesn’t have such… → Read More
eBay has sold off one of its properties today, real estate listings site Rent.com. The buyer is Primedia, which helps people find apartments, houses for rent or new homes for sale through websites, mobile and print publications. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
eBay originally bought Rent.com for $415 million in 2004. At the time, Rent.com fit in with eBay’s classifieds… → Read More
There’s been lots of debate about whether mobile apps or the web have the upper hand when it comes to making content for smartphones, and when it comes to using it. Some interesting insights from Nielsen out today on how in the case of mobile shopping, for now the main audience in the U.S. seems to be much more interested in using the mobile web over store-specific apps.
The research, which… → Read More
Over the holidays, eBay and PayPal both pushed the term ‘couch commerce,’, in which consumers use their tablets and mobile phones from the comfort of their couches. In fact, eBay launched a new feature of its iPad app called Watch With eBay, which allowed users to shop a selection of items on the marketplace related to what they are currently watching on TV. Today, eBay is separating out the… → Read More
When Groupon was gearing up for its IPO last year, there was a lot of talk about whether the company would be able to sustain its business on a diet that mainly consisted of daily deals. Today, a little sign of what Groupon might be cooking up for its next course.
Over in Germany, Groupon has launched a new site, Groupon Deals, an Amazon-like storefront that sells a range of goods, from boots… → Read More
Personal recommendations have always been a part of ecommerce, but there has been little innovation since Amazon introduced retail and product personalization 10 years ago. But with the increasing mountains of data at digital retailers’ fingertips, ecommerce is about to get even more personal.
The fact is that right now there is little iteration from personalized ecommerce beyond what is taking… → Read More
eBay just reported fourth quarter and fiscal year 2011 earnings today, which were above analysts expectations. eBay posted revenue of $3.4 billion, up 35 percent from the same quarter in 2010. The company reported fourth quarter net income on a GAAP basis of $2.0 billion, or $1.51 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income of $788.6 million, or $0.60 per diluted share. Net income was up 15 percent… → Read More
At his CES keynote yesterday evening, eBay CEO (and new interim PayPal CEO) John Donahoe revealed a number of new mobile payments forecasts for both eBay and PayPal. As we heard from PayPal VP David Marcus a few days ago, PayPal surpassed its expectation of $3.5 billion in mobile payments in 2011, reaching $4 billion for the year. Donahoe said in his keynote that eBay reached $5 billion in mobile… → Read More
As online retail sales continue to soar, brick and mortar stores are seeing margins dissipate. Online holiday sales are expected to grow 15 percent to $37.6 billion this season while retail sales in physical stores are only expected to increase by 3.8 percent to $469.1 billion. Best Buy recently reported a 29 percent drop in profits because of discounts and sales of top grossing electronics. The… → Read More
It’s no secret that eBay is pushing mobile in a big way. Especially during this holiday shopping season, the e-commerce giant is seeing record mobile engagement. And today, eBay is announcing that more than 1 million listings are now made every week through eBay mobile.
That means that now more than ever, eBay’s marketplace sellers are uploading items they want to sell via mobile devices. Last… → Read More
Online commerce giant eBay this morning ran a Cyber Monday deal for a white Apple iPad 2 WiFi 16GB, selling the popular tablet for $449 or exactly $50 off the MSRP (+ free shipping). Turns out a lot of people figured that was a great deal.
And they were right, too. After all, Apple only discounted the iPad 2 16GB with $41 on Black Friday, so you would indeed have been better off waiting until… → Read More
As we heard earlier today, Thanksgiving proved to be a lucrative day for online retailers. IBM reported online Thanksgiving 2011 sales were up 39 percent over Thanksgiving 2010, with mobile shopping on the rise. eBay and PayPal are seeing similar trends. PayPal Mobile just announced a 511 percent increase in global mobile payment volume when compared to Thanksgiving 2010.
On Thanksgiving in the… → Read More
eBay and PayPal are both pushing the term ‘couch commerce,’ in which consumers will be using their tablets and mobile phones from the comfort of their couches to shop this holiday shopping season. eBay is launching a new feature of its iPad app, which should help take couch commerce to another level.
A new “Watch with eBay” tab has been added to the e-commerce giant’s iPad app that… → Read More
Online holiday shopping reached record levels in 2010. And e-commerce spending is up this year. All signs point to consumers spending even more online this holiday season. I sat down with executives from Google, eBay, PayPal and ShopKick to discuss the trends that are expected to emerge in the e-commerce space over the next few months. They center around mobile, tablets, and deals.
PayPal has… → Read More
eBay reported third quarter earnings today, which were in-line with Wall Street expectations. Revenue for the third quarter increased 32% to $3 billion, compared to the same period of 2010. This was actually a record quarter for revenue, says the company. Net income on a GAAP basis was $490.5 million, or $0.37 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income came in at $628.2 million, or $0.48 per… → Read More
Today, at eBay’s new developer conference, Innovate, CEO John Donahoe told reporters that the company plans to roll out image-recognition technology for its mobile offerings by the end of the year. Yes, that’s right. Images, get ready to be recognized.
The image recognition integration will allow users of eBay’s mobile apps to snap photos of items they see in the real world on their mobile… → Read More
“We’re at an inflection point”, eBay CEO John Donahoe said from the stage at Innovate, eBay’s brand new developer conference that launched today in San Francisco. “We’ll see more change in how consumers shop and pay in the next three years than we’ve seen in the last 15 years”.
Donahoe’s prediction for the future came as context for giving a more complete introduction today to X.commerce, the… → Read More
eBay, Inc. is set to debut its brand new developer business tomorrow, X.commerce and we have many of the details that the e-commerce giant will be announcing at its annual developer conference. As we’ve written in the past, eBay, PayPal, Magento and GSI will be the pillars of the X.commerce platform, which will feature a “fabric” that stitches the platform together with other partners to… → Read More
Last week, I moderated a panel at the Planet Of The Apps conference in London, which included Steve Yankovich, head of eBay’s mobile business operations and development.
I caught up with Steve after our panel to talk more about eBay’s strides in introducing mobile commerce to a mainstream audience.
Yankovich tells me eBay is on its way to process around $4 billion in mobile sales (= gross… → Read More
eBay is adding a new member to its board today—Facebook executive Katie Burke Mitic. She joins current board members eBay CEO John Donahoe, Pierre Omidyar, Scott Cook, Fred D. Anderson, William Ford, Marc Andreessen, Edward W. Barnholt, Dawn Lepore, David Moffett, Richard Schlosberg, and Thomas Tierney.
Mitic currently leads Platform and Mobile Marketing for Facebook, with responsibility for… → Read More
Just… wow. It was sort of a given that Nike’s limited edition, McFly-inspired Air Mag sneakers would be fetching pretty pennies on eBay, but TMZ reports British rap act Tinie Tempah spent more than he thought he would on the first pair up for grabs. The cost of his impulse decision: a cool $37,500.
Mr. Tempah, a reputed Back To The Future nut and sneaker geek, received the sneakers and a… → Read More
In October, eBay rolled out its Instant Sale program, which allows you to sell old gadgets to the e-commerce giant. You simply identify the type of device you are looking to sell and its condition, and eBay will offer you a price for your gadget. After eBay receives the package, you’ll receive a payment deposited into your PayPal account. Today, eBay is launching a iOS app for Instant Sale, which… → Read More
Earlier this year, eBay and PayPal decided to merge their API and developer platform into a combined open platform business, X.commerce. At the time, eBay, which owns PayPal, wanted to developers one ecommerce solution that would offer a “complete approach” to online and offline business. Of course, since then eBay has acquired open source e-commerce storefront platform Magento as well as… → Read More
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