eBay Lifts Ban on Teachers Manuals?
eBay banned the sale of teachers manuals on its marketplace in 2006, which was a big blow to parents who home-schooled their children. Amazon.com also bans teachers manuals - according to its ...
Do you have a pen and paper handy? I’ll give you time to find them… OK, make sure the pen works.
Now, click on the following media file to listen to a conversation between Randy Smythe of Buy.com & John Lawson of ColderICE.com.
Sure, they’re are some moments in the discussion that are less than positive when referencing the eBay Marketplace. But I feel that the themes and analogies given in the discussion are vital whether you’re just getting started selling online or have been doing it for over a decade. I particularly liked the music industry analogy from Randy and the baseball analogy from John. Good, insightful stuff all round.
Looking forward to catching up with them both down in Atlanta next Friday.
The full blog post is HERE.
Cheers,
RBH
Do you have a pen and paper handy? I’ll give you time to find them… OK, make sure the pen works.
Now, click on the following media file to listen to a conversation between Randy Smythe of Buy.com & John Lawson of ColderICE.com.
Sure, they’re are some moments in the discussion that are less than positive when referencing the eBay Marketplace. But I feel that the themes and analogies given in the discussion are vital whether you’re just getting started selling online or have been doing it for over a decade. I particularly liked the music industry analogy from Randy and the baseball analogy from John. Good, insightful stuff all round.
Looking forward to catching up with them both down in Atlanta next Friday.
The full blog post is HERE.
Cheers,
RBH
An update to the eBay Announcement Board went up yesterday afternoon that I wanted to share with folks:
Improvements to the process when you open an unpaid item claim manually
* If a buyer doesn’t pay and you cancel the transaction, the buyer will no longer be able to pay for the item.
* If you open an unpaid item case, it will be closed automatically when the buyer pays using a safe electronic payment method such as PayPal or Moneybookers.
The new Unpaid Item Assistant is expected to be available to all sellers by the end of March.
You can read all about the Unpaid Item Assistant HERE.
You can read the full post HERE.
Cheers,
RBH
All,
This morning I joined a round table discussion entitled “The Death of Trust in Social Media” hosted by Val-Pierre Ganton of “the grilling” blog. Panelists included:
Richard Brewer Hay, Chief Blogger at eBay
Michael Brito, VP of Social Media at Edelman Digital
Michelle Broderick, Marketing Director at Yelp
According to a survey by Edelman, just 25% of consumers say they trust their friends to give them good information about a company, compared with 45% in 2008. Social marketing is built on the idea that people trust their friends more than they trust official voices so what does it mean for the future of social media? Our discussion was aimed at providing insights on how we’re using and trusting social media today and what the future holds for this space.
We tackled the following questions:
** Is trust in social media dying?
** Do social media platforms need to change in order to adapt to peoples’ behavioral evolution on the web? How so?
** Is there a difference in the community’s trust when we compare transactional and non-transactional social networks?
** Is the future of trust likely to be the migration towards official voices or your friend’s recommendations?
Here is an archive of our conversation. Apologies for the poor sound quality at the beginning… I’ll be getting a cleaner version shortly. For now…
<embed src="http://www.brighttalk.com/dc/swf/dotcom_base.swf?234" type="application/x-shockwave-
eBay launched the Green Team Challenge earlier today and, in doing so, committed to saving up to a quarter of a million acres of rainforest for consumers who choose to reuse. For the first 250,000 people that pledge to reuse on eBay, an acre of rainforest will be protected in their name through a new collaboration with Team Earth, a unique coalition of NGOs, private sector companies and individuals convened by Conservation International (CI).
“We are delighted that eBay continues to demonstrate their strong support for the environment by becoming a member of Team Earth,” said Julie Blackwell, Senior Director of Team Earth at Conservation International. “eBay’s passionate community has changed the way we shop and we have no doubt that they can change the way we consume. They are a perfect partner to rally collective action around some of the most pressing environmental issues of our day.”
eBay also introduced its new green shopping hub – green.ebay.com – designed to help consumers access the millions of green products available on the marketplace. The hub encourages consumers to follow three simple guidelines: first, choose items that are pre-owned, vintage or refurbished; second, check whether an item is made from sustainable materials, such as those featured on WorldofGood.com by eBay; and third, choose energy and other resource saving products.
I became an eBay Green Team member shortly after I joined eBay back in 2008 and it now boasts over 150,000 members!
Throughout March and April, eBay will additionally leverage its powerful eBay Giving Works program to generate funds for a variety of environmental organizations in an effort to extend the impact of the campaign further. A series of high-profile charity auctions will offer consumers the opportunity to bid on a variety of one-of-a-kind items and experiences that will benefit green nonprofits and causes, including The Nature Conservancy, Make it Right, and The Uniform Project’s beneficiary organization, the Akanksha Fund.
Related Reads:
NY Times: EBay Highlights Conservation as a Benefit of Buying Used
Cheers,
RBH
Met with folk in Trust & Safety today, then saw this article. Pretty timely to say the least. A very good read: Online Advertising Recall
Shopping Cart and eCommerce News | Will New USPS Plan Affect Your Ecommerce Business? http://ow.ly/1pIp5u
Heading off to a meeting with the Trust & Safety team. Wonder if they have any info nuggets for Ink.
@rksmythe You want the whole face? I’m thinking about adding the red shoes to the foot of the blog. Thoughts? ;)
From left: John Donahoe, Srivathsan Canchi, Anand Gangadharan, Pierre Omidyar
Demos in the Social Media & Finding and Internal Tools tent
Demos in the Mobile App room
To see all the photos from the event, click here. To view the video of the kickoff with Pierre and John, click here.
Cheers,
RBH
RT @Wes_From_VRG: 25% of America’s vc-backed, publicly-traded co’s (Google, Yahoo!, eBay and Intel) have been founded/co-founded by immigrants #StartupVisa
@Pierre I had hoped to show you the redesign of Ink when you were here yesterday. Would love your feedback.
I need to force myself into the habit of making all updates via the Ink API rather than Seesmic, etc. otherwise conversations get lost. Already messed up twice today.
Thanks for all the RT love @krystyl @irwebreport @jdnorton @ebay_andy @colderICE @andotherstuff!
The following is the first ever post I made to eBay Ink on April 2, 2008:
I thought I’d try and address two questions many of you have already expressed (or likely will) about this blog, its purpose and, well, me.
1. Why are we doing this?
It’s pretty simple really — we need to become better listeners. Period.This blog is just one way I’m hoping I can help the company achieve this goal, by listening to your opinions, insights and perspectives, and where I can, facilitating conversation and providing you with the access to those here, inside eBay, who need this information most.It bears mentioning, I think we need to become better communicators too. Again, this blog will help with that in time, no doubt. For now, we’ll focus on getting the listening part right…2. Why me?
Because I’m an outsider, frankly. While some people will see this as a handicap, I believe others will see it as I and others here do, as an advantage. I’m being provided with an opportunity here to approach and report this company’s story from the perspective that many of you share (i.e., from the outside looking in). I have no delusions of this being an easy assignment, nor beliefs that I’ll always be absolutely objective, but I’ll try…
Since I joined in January, 2008, my goal for eBay Ink has always been to help integrate opinions into the strategic discussion within eBay – ultimately strengthening the company for the better. I hoped to achieve this through 5 key objectives:
1. Tell this company’s story in our own words, in our own voice and from our perspective.
2. Provide new levels of access to all layers of the organization – from the top down.
3. Humanize our company by capturing and sharing/showing the people behind the brand (and their stories).
4. Open up a transparent conversation about eBay operations and business decisions.
5. Open up new feedback channels online and show that we want to both listen and engage in dialogue about our business.
We’re coming up on the 2nd anniversary of the introduction of eBay Ink and although I feel we’ve made a positive change in the openness of communication, I also feel that we can do a lot more – and we will. Although the interaction here on Ink has been strong over the past two years, the conversations I’ve been enjoying with people on Twitter seem to be more interactive and real-time. I wanted to try and capture that real-time conversation here on the blog itself, in order to better accomplish our original objectives set up more than 24 months ago. Working with the same great folks that helped me build the first iteration of eBay Ink, I’ve tried to create a kind of “life-stream” for our corporate blog to encourage more interaction and conversation similar to those found on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
It was actually Facebook that was the inspiration behind the new scrolling conversation feed. For those familiar with Facebook, you’ll notice that the new discussion engine here on eBay Ink – running down the center of the blog – resembles the Live Feed found on the FB homepage. I am now writing tweets, blog posts, uploading videos and images all through the eBay Ink interface. I can then automatically have certain updates & posts feed out to other social media channels like Twitter.
On the right side of the page you’ll see three new discussion boxes. The first, “recent Twitter responses” is fairly self-explanatory and captures recent retweets of discussions we’re having here on Ink. Immediately below is “popular thoughts” that breaks down the most popular conversation starters (blog posts) here on Ink based on the number of comments associated with each. “Inked” breaks down the conversation on Twitter in which eBay Ink is involved.
Because eBay Connect is now your place to find all blog posts coming out of the company and our landing page for our official blog roll, I felt Ink could focus on what matters most… hearing what you have to say and trying to give you the best behind-the-scenes seat at the corporate table.
As with everything we do here on Ink, it’s a work in progress and I’m continually striving to improve and enhance the experience here. Please let me know what you like – but, more importantly – please tell me what you feel it’s lacking. Where can we improve? What would you like to see more of?
Let me know. Looking forward to taking the conversations to the next level in the near future!
Cheers,
RBH
Heading into a meeting with Jim Larkin here at eBay. Good guy. Back in a few all. Cheers! RBH
The guys behind the “Green Sort on eBay Motors” proposal at eBay Innovation Demo Expo.
Cheers,
RBH
My beer belly on display at eBay Innovation Demo Expo:
Cheers,
RBH
In the first of a series of behind-the-scenes videos from the demos on display at this week’s Innovation Demo Expo at eBay HQ, I got a quick overview of a proposal from eBay Motors by Danny Chang (@eBayMotors). Before jumping into the video, I want to make sure that folks realize that none of the demos on display yesterday are live on site nor are they in development. Rather, this expo acts as a catalyst for good ideas to go beyond the idea phase and turns them into a reality.
I particularly liked this “green” idea from Danny Chang. Essentially, eBay sellers would get a boost in search & a badge in search results if they opt to buy CO2 offset credits for their cars. Buyers could apply “Green Sort” to rank results by miles per gallon (MPG) and CO2 offset availability. MPG info would also be included and displayed in the search results page. The tag line for this proposal is “Saving the Earth, four wheels at a time.”
Cheers,
RBH
Sending this tweet direct from the new #eBayInk http://ebayinkblog.com
I’ve covered the Innovation Demo Expo here at eBay for a couple of years now and yesterday’s event was the best one yet. The internal event is designed to encourage eBay employees to come up with new and innovative ideas that would benefit eBay buyers and sellers. There have been a few apps and technologies that came out of this event – most notable being the eBay iPhone application.
I was lucky enough to walk through the expo yesterday and peruse the unprecedented 81 demos on display. I took some videos of the highlights.
Here is a Behind the Scenes video of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and CEO John Donahoe kicking off the event yesterday. Look for more videos as I edit and upload for you here on Ink.
Cheers!
RBH
I am a notorious “pack-rat”. A fact that my wife finds little joy in. Maybe this is the promotion for her. eBay Classifieds marketplace, Kijiji, is currently running a promotion that enables people to “Take your Loved One to Clutter Court.”
Simply submit a brief description and photo of the object in question, along with your contact information. We’ll then pick a deserving entrant to win an in-home consultation from one of our “Clutter Judges, ” who will help to reorganize your living space so that you two can live in perfect harmony.
If you’d like an opportunity to win an additional prize, simply follow @KijijiUS and retweet, “Take your loved one to @KijijiUS’s Clutter Court! Retweet for a chance to win a $50 organizing supply store gift card bit.ly/kijijicc ” Once you retweet, we’ll automatically enter you to win one of eight $50 organizing supply gift cards!
I can’t think of a single item I’d want my wife to submit… which kind of proves her point I guess. Maybe she won’t see this post and I’ll get to keep all my stuff.
Cheers,
RBH
As you know I was lucky enough to attend the Bloom Energy launch event yesterday at eBay Inc. in-person. In addition to covering the event on Twitter, I managed to capture some of the proceedings with my Flipcam.
I’ll update this page with additional clips as I upload them to our YouTube channel.
Cheers,
RBH
This morning, eBay hosted the unveiling of a new, state-of-the-art technology at its PayPal campus in San Jose. It’s called the Bloom Energy Server (or “Bloom Box”), and some are saying it will revolutionize the world.
Developed by Bloom Energy Corporation, the Bloom Energy Server is an SUV-sized box that corporations install outside their buildings to generate their own electricity from almost any fuel source. Bloom Energy introduced its groundbreaking technology at eBay Inc. headquarters along with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, General Colin Powell, and several of its early customers.
The Bloom Box was previewed on CBS 60 Minutes this past Sunday that included an on-location interview with eBay CEO, John Donahoe, as he showed the futuristic servers eBay has had in place for months now:
Fuel cells are effectively skinny batteries that can run at all times. Bloom fuel cells work by feeding air and fuel–often natural gas or biogas, but even energy from solar panels–into its system, which converts the two into electricity that can be used by homes, offices or even cities. What makes these fuel cells so appealing is how inexpensive yet efficient they can be. According to Bloom Energy, a stack of fuel cells the size of a brick would be good enough to power an average US home.
Unlike other fuel cell types, Bloom’s technology takes ordinary beach sand, bakes it and compresses it into a ceramic disc about the size of a Polaroid image. Special inks are applied to either side of the disc where chemical reactions will take place that will ultimately create energy.
In order to power a larger facility, hundreds of those discs get stacked upon each other and go into a box the size of an SUV. At eBay, five of these boxes were installed just behind the LEED-Gold certified San Jose North campus nearly nine months ago. In the first six months of having the system installed and running, it generated 2 million kWh of electricity, or enough to power over 150 average U.S. homes for over a year.
“eBay believes in the power of our business model to make a real difference in the world, and that includes how we embrace innovation to reduce our carbon footprint,” said eBay Inc. CEO, John Donahoe. “When Bloom came to us, it was an easy decision to become an early-adopter of their cutting-edge new technology. As a result, we’re meeting financial and environmental goals with the project while fueling a more energy efficient global marketplace. That’s good for us, our customers and the planet.”
According to Bloom, customers like eBay who purchase Bloom’s systems can expect a 3-5 year payback on their capital investment from the energy cost savings. Depending on whether they are using a fossil or renewable fuel, they can also achieve a 40-100% reduction in their carbon footprint as compared with the U.S. grid. Customers announced today include Bank of America; The Coca-Cola Company; Cox Enterprises; eBay; FedEx Express; Google; Staples; and Walmart.
Since the first commercial customer installation in July 2008, Bloom’s Energy Servers have collectively produced more than 11 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity, with CO2 reductions estimated at 14 million pounds – the equivalent of powering approximately 1,000 American homes for a year and planting one million trees.
I’ll be covering the live event this morning via Twitter. You can see the full Twitter conversation by searching the hashtag #BloomEnergy. Look for photos and video from the event shortly thereafter.
Cheers,
RBH
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