Shortly after Apple releases new products into the market, they find their way onto eBay — at a premium, of course. According to data released by eBay, the iPad 2 has been one of eBay’s most popular items over the last few weeks; eBay sold 12,000 iPads in the first two weeks (65% to US customers and 35% to international customers). → Read More
eBay has been quick to start integrating Milo’s local product inventory technology into its products after picking up the startup for $75 million in December. eBay added Milo’s local results in its barcode scanning apps, RedLaser for iPhone and Android, and GiftsNearby, as a shopping tool for consumers to find gift options available for pick up at local retailers in their neighborhood. Today, eBay is launching its deepest integration with Milo—on it’s search platform.
Milo’s local availability results will show eBay shoppers which local stores in their neighborhood currently have a desired item in-stock and how much it costs at each location. Milo currently provides access to millions of products from approximately 50,000 stores across all 50 states. → Read More
eBay has just announced that it has agreed to buy GSI Commerce, a provider of ecommerce and interactive marketing services, for $29.25 a share, or total consideration of approximately $2.4 billion. The acquisition, which will be financed with cash and debt, is expected to close in Q3 2011.
With more than 180 customers across 14 merchandise categories, GSI has long-term commerce services relationships with a wealth of retailers and brands. eBay says it expects GSI clients to benefit from eBay’s Marketplaces and PayPal services, particularly. → Read More
Similar to the relief efforts surrounding the Haiti earthquake last year, technology companies are actively encouraging their users to donate to campaigns coordinating relief efforts in Japan, which suffered a massive earthquake and tsunami a little over a week ago. As we learned this past week, Zynga’s gamers have raised over $1 million, and Facebook app Causes has raised $700,000 from tens of thousands of donors to the Japan relief effort. And today, PayPal and parent company eBay are announcing $1 million raised by users towards the the Japan earthquake and tsunami relief campaigns.
PayPal users have donated $793,000 via the payments giant’s web campaign, here. Users can donate funds towards the American Red Cross, GlobalGiving, HandsOn Tokyo and a number of other organizations helping with the relief efforts in the country. → Read More
I don’t even surf, but after reading this eBay UK listing for a slightly worn wetsuit I almost want to buy it. The seller, Dan Morgan, manages to work in “an old man’s testicle,” his own hygiene habits, and a “bear using a urinal.” The key to good advertising copy is to tell a story. He’s doesn’t just describe the “used XCEL 3-2mm Infiniti Drylock Summer Wetsuit” for sale, he wraps a narrative around the wetsuit.
And it’s hilarious. I’ve reposted the description from the eBay listing below for posterity. Remember, the key takeaway here is that he has “NEVER urinated in this suit.”
The listing is already going viral. Seeing a marketing opportunity, XCEL Wetsuits is donating a second, brand new wetsuit to the winner, and DryRap is getting in on the action too by throwing in their changing towel, so to speak. The bidding is up to 640 Pounds, even though Morgan bought the original for only 300 Pounds. He will donate 90 percent of the proceeds to the Red Cross for Japan relief. → Read More
Ecommerce juggernaut eBay this morning announced that it is making it free to list up to 50 items per month in auctions at any start price, and free to add the “Buy it Now” option to those listings. Effective April 19, 2011, the new pricing builds on free-listing promotions announced back in January 2010.
In related news, eBay is reducing Final Value Fee rates for Store and Fixed Price sellers (on July 6, 2011), and will apply the Final Value Fee to the total amount of a sale to encourage sellers to give buyers more options for low-cost or even free shipping. → Read More
RedLaser, the barcode scanning mobile app that eBay acquired from Occipital in June 2010, is nearing a significant milestone—nine million total downloads of its iPhone and Android apps. That’s up from 2 million downloads at the time of the acquisitions, which is nearly a 350% increase in downloads.
RedLaser’s barcode scanning technology allows users to comparison shop on the go. Anyone can scan a barcode on an item at a store and then automatically access any eBay listings and local availability (courtesy of Milo) of the product on the marketplace. Sellers can also use the scanning technology to scan and item and list the product in very little time. RedLaser’s technology was also integrated into eBay’s dedicated iPhone and Android apps. → Read More
The iPhone and fart applications. It’s hard to imagine one without the other. One of the companies that’s been on the forefront of the stinky mobile applications revolution for the iOS platform is now up for sale, and you can ‘buy it now’ on eBay for $1 million.
So what does that money get you?
In a quite humorous press release, the creators of the iFart Mobile app, first released in the App Store in December 2008, acknowledge that you can buy the entire iFart intellectual property and technology, including the iPhone and iPad application, add-on fart packs, all raw code, back-end server code,the iFartMobile.com website and all associated content and copyrights through the eBay auction. → Read More
eBay owns payments giant PayPal, and PayPal is deeply integrated within eBay’s marketplace but both companies have operated fairly separately when it comes to APIs and developer relations. But interestingly, eBay and PayPal are announcing that its API teams are joining into one combined open platform business, made up of the assets of both eBay and PayPal platforms.
The idea, according to PayPal’s head of platform, Matthew Mengerink (who lead the new joint platform), is to offer developers one ecommerce solution that will offer a “complete approach” to online and offline business. And PayPal Innovate X, the payments company’s popular developer conference, will now also include eBay’s developer conference as well. → Read More
eBay’s mobile reach in Europe is about to expand exponentially. The e-commerce giant has just announced it first ever mobile pre-load deal with Telefonica, which will equip most smartphones and feature phones sold by the Telefonica via its O2 brand with eBay’s mobile app or a link to eBay’s mobile page pre-loaded.
The company says the deal will include most Android, Windows 7, Symbian and Bada devices sold by O2 in the UK over the next two years. Telefonica will actually work with device manufacturers to pre-install the application. → Read More
No, these really aren’t any different from regular red-blue 3D glasses. If anything, they’re of lower quality. But it’s just fun to revel in the fact that you could do 3D back in the day (in such an awesome game, no less, plus these worked on 3D WorldRunner), so that makes these glasses just plain sweet. [via GameSniped] → Read More
While this particular item, like most electronics in the 80s, probably overstates its capabilities to some degree, it does seem like a pretty great little testbed for up-and-coming roboticists — at least in the early 80s. Time has rendered this little guy’s 8K of RAM rather inadequate, and I’m not sure people want to program their robot in BASIC any more. → Read More
Last month we wrote about The Gifts Project’s closing of a $1 million funding round. Today the company is finally able to lift the veil on a major accomplishment … turn out it is its gifting platform powering eBay Group Gifts.
The upstart also managed to have Index Ventures join the round, with Saul Klein actively advising. The actual amount is undisclosed. → Read More
eBay just posted strong fourth quarter earnings, announcing that revenue for the fourth quarter ending in 2010 increased a 5% to $2.5 billion, or up 10% excluding Skype, compared to the same period of 2009 (eBay sold Skype in Q3 of 2009). On a GAAP basis, eBay reported net income of $559.2 million, or $0.42 per diluted share. The company’s non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $638.8 million, or $0.52 per diluted share, representing a 24% increase excluding Skype, compared to the same period of 2009. eBay beat analyst expectations of $0.47 per share.
The company’s PayPal business ended the quarter with 94.4 million active registered accounts, adding approximately one million active accounts per month. PayPal’s net total payment volume was $26.9 billion in the fourth quarter (up from $21.3 billion in the same quarter in 2009), with nearly half of PayPal’s revenue in the fourth quarter was generated outside the United States. eBay’s marketplaces segment $15.0 billion in gross merchandise volume, with the number of sold items up by 10%, thanks to the strong holiday shopping season. → Read More
eBay has announced that global mobile sales generated nearly $2 billion in 2010, up from $600 million in 2009. To be clear, we’re not talking revenues here but gross merchandise volume. Nevertheless, a clear sign that mobile ecommerce has reached a tipping point.
eBay earlier announced that global sales were up 166 percent to $230 million from Nov. 25 to Dec. 25 from the same period last year, so the holiday season was a clear catalyst for much of that growth. → Read More
Facebook’s latest round of financing from Goldman Sachs at a $50 billion valuation, which is about the same valuation its shares are trading on SecondMarket, clearly puts it in the pantheon of the most valuable Internet companies. At $50 billion, Facebook is now worth more than Yahoo (which has a $22 billion market cap) and eBay ($37 billion), and almost worth more than both of them combined—and that is before it has even gone public. On the valuation scale of publicly traded Internet companies, however, it is still smaller than Amazon ($83 billion) and Google ($193 billion).
Facebook passed Yahoo in implied valuation last summer. And that feels about right. But is Facebook actually worth $50 billion? Its revenues for 2010 are rumored to be around $2 billion, which gives it a multiple of 25 times revenues. Google, in contrast, is trading at about 9 times estimated 2010 revenues. Of course, Facebook is growing much faster. And what really matters is profits. Facebook is believed to be profitable, but nobody really knows how profitable and there is still a sense that it hasn’t quite perfected its monetization model for social ads. → Read More
With eBay handling more than 2 billion U.S. product searches a quarter, the marketplace can show what items are most desirable in a given time. We recently wrote about what was trending on eBay during the holiday shopping period, and today the market place is releasing its most popular product searches in 2010.
Apple dominated the list, with the iPad and iPhone 4 taking the top two spots, respectively. These gadgets were followed by Victoria’s Secret, Nintendo Wii Games, Nintendo DS, Playstation 3, Nikon d90, diamond ring, sunglasses and laptops. → Read More
eBay’s mobile sales continued to grow during the holiday shopping season, according to a release issued by the company today. eBay is reporting that gross merchandise value (also known as GMV, the total sales dollar value for merchandise sold through eBay) was up 166 percent to $230 million from Nov. 25 to Dec. 25 from the same period last year.
In the U.S., sales from eBay’s mobile apps grew 134 percent over the same period last year, generating nearly $100 million in GMV. → Read More
In rather unsurprising news, the world’s most popular smartphone was the most popular item on eBay this year — or rather, it was likely the most popular search term. I suspect a vast majority of iPhone 4s were bought by more traditional means — but accessories like cases, headphones, and car kits thrive in the eBay environment.
The rest of the items seem to follow larger trends, but incredibly, only one item is shared with last year’s list: The Beatles.
Here’s the rest of the eBay “Top Shopped” items list. → Read More
