I also came on the blog, firmly planted a stake in the ground regarding eBay Ink, and then seemingly vanished for the rest of the week. (Meetings will do that to me but all for good reason. Looking forward to sharing the results here on Ink in the coming weeks).

Some other highlights that are worth mentioning…

Motorola is possibly prohibiting the resale of its new phone online.
I still don’t know if this is actually happening and if anyone does know more, please share here or shoot me an email because I can’t imagine that EU Law doesn’t have a policy in place to prevent something like this… similar to the first-sale doctrine here in the United States. Mathew Ingram has a great take on exactly that here.

The eBay Developers Blog had a couple of key announcements this week.
First, they announced that PayPal had added support for eBay Coupons to Express Checkout. The blog used examples and artwork to show how this would look moving forward.

Secondly, they also announced ways in which folks could celebrate the 8th year anniversary of the eBay Developer Program and the eBay API platform. The program launched in November of 2000 and since then:
• Over 70,000 developers have registered as members of the eBay Developers Program
• Over 26% of all listings on eBay.com currently come from our third party eBay developer community
• eBay now serves up over 6 Billion API calls monthly

Finally, for those occasions like this week when I am in back-to-back planning meetings, please remember that we do have the “eBay You Say” and “eBay We Say” modules at the bottom of the eBay Ink homepage. The We Say module captures every blog post by eBay’s family of official blogs (see the blog roll to the right of the page) and updates in real-time, automatically. The You Say module captures the latest (and what I find to be the most interesting) external blog posts for readers.

Cheers,
RBH

Read the full press release here: eBay Inc. Reports Second Quarter 2008 Results

To listen to the Q2 2008 Earnings call at 2pm PT this afternoon, please click here. If you’re unable to listen at 2pm but have access to a PC, I’ll be live-blogging via Twitter starting around 2pm: http://twitter.com/ebayinkblog.

Quarterly business highlights (from the press release)
• eBay Inc. repurchased approximately 19 million shares of its outstanding common stock at a cost of approximately $566 million. Since the inception of the share buyback program in the third quarter of 2006, the company has repurchased $4.7 billion of its common stock.
• eBay announced initiatives to enhance the safety and vibrancy of the marketplace including: new rewards and discounts for PowerSellers and expanded protections for customers using PayPal.
• eBay Motors completed agreements to feature certified pre-owned inventory from Chrysler, GM, Lexus and Ford on its showroom hub.
• The company’s global classifieds businesses averaged 81 million unique visitors per month during the quarter, representing and increase of 121% year-over-year.
• StubHub announced a deal making it the official online secondary ticket marketplace for Madonna’s 2008 North America Tour. The company reached a milestone with its 15 millionth ticket sold.
• PayPal Merchant Services signed deals with Delta Airlines, Blockbuster.com, Arcadia Group (U.K.) and William Hill (U.K).
• Skype launched 4.0 in Beta, the largest redesign of the Skype interface since the company’s inception.
• Skype named former Motorola veteran, Scott Durchslag, to the position of chief operating officer overseeing product strategy and marketing.

UPDATE:
Rajiv Dutta is retiring from eBay. Lorrie Norrington to succeed. Full post here

Cheers,
Richard.

Related Reads:
* eBay profits up 22 percent on listing gains
* Skype Annualized Revenues Now Top $500 Million
* Ebay reports 338 million Skype users
* Earnings: eBay Q2 Revs Up 20 Percent; Income Up 22 Percent; Skype Up 51 Percent
* eBay: Q2 Beats Street; Q3 Outlook a Bit Light