All,
We’ve been working on a program behind the scenes here at eBay that I’m hoping will help promote all of the great online sellers that are embracing social media tools as a way to augment their presence online, ultimately promoting their stores and sales. It’s something that we’re hoping to build upon over the coming months so I’m launching with 6 “eBay Ink SM Sellers” while we iron out some of the potential kinks. I am excited to launch with the following 6, social media savvy individuals…
Melinda Jackson of RRBradio interviewed me at eBay: On Location Dallas a few weeks ago and just posted the resulting footage up over on her blog… We talk about the eBayOL events, the history of eBay Ink and the possible future developments to the corporate blog… Here you go.
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…
All,
I’m still answering specific questions through email and comments here on Ink but in the meantime, I wanted to share a little sneak peak into what is happening behind the scenes. In addition to our usual Customer Service call center and PR efforts around news like this, we have also established two dedicated Communications rooms to allow for real-time collaboration across social media platforms and chat rooms to ensure we could get answers out to folks as quickly as possible. These have been staffed since 6am PT yesterday morning and include folks, such as myself, focused on communicating through a specific channel (forums, blogs, Twitter, email, etc.).
I took a quick video of our Comms Room here in San Jose HQ to give folks a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re working together to communicate information in real-time. The desks are set up in a horseshoe so we can easily ask questions to anyone in the room (representatives from the Buyer & Seller team, Corp Comms, Social Media, Engineering, eBay Annnouncements, etc. are all in here) for quick response…
Out in Salt Lake City, in addition to the Customer Service center, we have another comms room devoted to social media outreach and response. What follows is a sequence of photos taken out of that room where you can see folks on Twitter, Facebook, etc…
Personally, it has been great to see so many people involved in proactively communicating information – regardless of channel or platform. As a global organization, I am hoping we can build on this for the future.
The following video was recorded earlier today at eBay’s Customer Service HQ in Salt Lake City, Utah. Andrew Chase (aka @ebay_andy) has joined me on past podcasts to help answer seller questions around previous announcements we’ve made in the marketplace. I find him an extremely knowledgeable and unsung hero for our community – similar to a number of Customer Service folks out in SLC – who has made it his mission to get information out to as many people as possible.
Here, he talks about the first few hours of reaction to the eBay Seller Release of earlier today…
All,
I was also able to spend some time with Lynda Talgo, Senior Director of Resolutions at eBay, to discuss the eBay Buyer Protection news coming out of today’s Seller Release in more detail. What follows is a 3-part, face-to-face with Lynda in the lobby of the Community building at San Jose HQ. Again, like the video conversation with Dinesh, I’ve embedded the questions right into the videos. (More …)
Every time I think I’ve seen it all, the power of the individual, coming together with their fellow man/woman, comes face-to-face with my expectations and blows them out of the water. I received a very brief but powerful email overnight that contained two statistics I wanted to share with all of you.
eBay
A reminder that you can buy, sell and/or donate items via a dedicated landing page on eBay.com, with proceeds going to Save the Children, The American Red Cross, and other nonprofits involved in the relief effort. The eBay Community (over 326,000 donors) has now raised over $1 Million as of Midnight EST last night across the US & UK sites. (More …)
This twitter session contains non-GAAP measures relating to the company’s performance. You can find the reconciliation of those measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures here.
This Twitter session may make forward-looking statements relating to our future performance that are based on our current expectations, forecasts and assumptions and involve risks and uncertainties. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding expected financial results for the first quarter and full year 2010, the focus the Payments and Marketplaces business units going forward, and future growth in the Marketplaces and Payments businesses.
Our actual results may differ materially from those discussed in this Twitter session for a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to, the further impact of the credit crisis; continued or worsening global economic downturn; changes in political, business, and economic conditions; foreign-exchange-rate fluctuations; the impact and integration of recent and future acquisitions; our increasing need to grow revenues from existing users in established markets; an increasingly competitive environment for our businesses; the complexity of managing an increasingly large enterprise, with a broad range of businesses, our need to manage regulatory, tax, IP and litigation risks (including risks specific to PayPal, Bill Me Later and the financial industry); and our need to upgrade our technology and customer service infrastructure at reasonable cost while adding new features and maintaining site stability.
You can find more information about factors that could affect our operating results in our most recent annual report on our Form 10-K and our subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q (available at http://investor.ebayinc.com). You should not unduly rely on any forward-looking statements, and we assume no obligation to update them. All information in the presentation is as of January 20, 2010, and we do not intend, and undertake no duty, to update this presentation.
eBay Inc. announced earnings for Q4 and full year ended December 31, 2009. Fourth-quarter revenue was $2.4 billion, up 16% from the same period last year. This includes the $112 million in revenue from Skype during the period that we still fully owned it. The year-over-year increase was attributed primarily to “excellent growth in PayPal and StubHub and improvement in growth rates in the core eBay business, as well as the positive impact from foreign currency movements.”(More …)
The NRF Foundation/American Express 2009 Customer Service survey was designed to gauge consumer attitudes toward retailers’ customer service and to provide a listing of the top customer service retailers. The survey, which polled 8,600 consumers, was conducted by consumer marketing intelligence firm BIGresearch in September 2009 The consumer poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.0 percent.
