Hello to all from Vegas,
Things are as vibrant and as hectic as ever here at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). I don’t remember it being as big as this 10 years ago but the energy is definitely the same. Despite the big smile on my face above, it’s not all fun and games here while on the road. I’ve been meeting with a number of folks over the past 24 hours and have some great video to share with you all over the coming days.

eBay at CES
On a day in which eBay announced it generated nearly $2 Billion in global mobile sales in 2010 – more than triple the GMV in 2009, it should be pointed out that eBay’s presence at CES is primarily on the mobile side of things. Our booth is a “lounge” in the lobby of the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center and it is all about RedLaser…

The Lounge is set up for demos of our barcode scanning tools and the integration of RedLaser with eBay Mobile. It is great to see so much RedLaser activity happening at the show. Even the coffee cup sleeves from Starbucks have QR Codes on them for use with the RedLaser technology…

The RedLaser SCANenger Hunt
An interesting promotional activity to attract more attendees into the booth for demos and education is the RedLaser “SCANenger Hunt” that invites attendees to download the RedLaser app onto their mobile phone and then scan special QR codes located throughout the three main convention halls as they follow a QR Code scavenger hunt. Upon the successful completion of the hunt, attendees are then entered to win a free Apple MacBook Air.

It took me approximately 60 minutes to complete the hunt (there are 5 clues along the way) but I think 30-40 minutes is a more realistic timeframe given that I kept stopping to say hi to folks along the way.

The PepCom Digital Experience Demos
Last night was the annual Pepcom Digital Experience. Held each January on the evening before CES opens, Digital Experience! showcases the latest innovations in consumer electronics and computers. eBay Mobile was on-hand to demonstrate a number of its apps including the RedLaser application. Here is some behind the scenes footage from the event…

I’ll keep adding photos to the eBay Ink CES Flickr set.

Chat with you soon.

Cheers!
RBH

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…

@ColderICE
@PowerSellingMom
@thesavvyseller
@galleriagifts
@auctionwally
@katskloset

You can view the page by clicking HERE.

You can follow the eBay Ink Social Media Seller Twitter feed here: http://twitter.com/ebayinkblog/smsellers

I’m providing our SM Sellers with badges that they can put on their blogs, websites, etc. to drive traffic to their social media seller profiles and/or their ecommerce stores…

About the program:
The adoption of social media tools over the past 24 months has been unprecedented. It has given individuals the world over, the ability to create strong, impressive brands online that had been otherwise reserved for large companies and budgets. This has never been more evident than in the world of ecommerce. A large group of online sellers have embraced these new social tools to enhance their reach online and, ultimately, increase traffic to their online stores and content. It’s no surprise, really, social networking is part of eBay’s DNA. One could argue that the first online social network back in 1996 was the introduction of AuctionWeb/eBay.

Over the past 2 years we’ve been seeing an emergence of individuals taking these social media tools to the next level and transferring their entrepreneurial instincts to the world of Twitter, Facebook, blogging and podcasting. As a result, I wanted to start highlighting some of these sellers here on Ink; ask them questions about how they got started; and see if they could share some of their tips and tricks. This list is by no means exhaustive and I intend to grow it regularly over the coming months and years. If you feel you should be considered as an eBay ink Social Media Seller, please contact us at ebayink@ebay.com.

Let me know what you think and please let me know if you’re interested in joining the program.

Cheers!
RBH

Cheers,
RBH

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

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.

Back to it…

Cheers,
RBH

Here, he talks about the first few hours of reaction to the eBay Seller Release of earlier today…

Cheers,
RBH

Lynda gives an overview of the eBay Buyer Protection announcement…

Lynda discusses how the program differs from PayPal Buyer Protection and how this differs from last year’s initial launch…

Lynda talks about how this will benefit both buyers & sellers on eBay…

Cheers,
RBH

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. This excludes funds raised for charity sales on the site, and reflects only cash donations through Give at Checkout and Donate Now.

PayPal
A reminder that PayPal is waiving fees for all U.S. 501(c)3 charitable organizations collecting for disaster relief in Haiti. For fee waiver consideration, send an email to nonprofit@paypal.com. To date, PayPal donations are at $4.5 Million.

I realize that the need for relief and help in Haiti is still in its infancy but what individuals have accomplished together over such a short period of time is nothing short of remarkable. I’m sure in a few weeks you’ll be resetting my expectations once again. For now, I just wanted to say thank you and let’s keep giving in anyway we can.

-RBH

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.

Cheers,
RBH