Exciting Commerce // Unlimited

ShopExchange: Amazon, eBay and QVC on Shopping Spree

Lots of activity at the "Online Shop Exchange".  Amazon, eBay and QVC parent company Liberty Media are busier than ever stocking up on online businesses.  Particularly high on their shopping lists are underperforming niche etailers and innovative high tech startups:

• Amazon announced to take over Fabric.com (see press release) to tone up its needlework and handcraft area (via).

At the beginning of the year, Amazon already bought out audio book shop Audible and recently made some investments in startups like Animoto and The Talk Market.

• As reported by The Next Web blog last week, "Ebay secretly acquires visual media company VUVOX" (via).  Such a company fits well to the planned capsulizing of eBay site elements into widgets and apps.

In an interview with BusinessWeek in March, eBay’s mergers chief Lorraine McDonough stated that eBay is on the lookout for take over targets to complement its core business.  In January, eBay bought Fraud Sciences for $169 million. 

In total, eight or nine acquisitions are expected this year, roughly double the usual amount.

• Recently, the QVC parent Liberty Media not only took over the remains of insolvent gift website RedEnvelope (see press release), but also last week announced a $31 million cash take over of Celebrate Express, a specialty mail order company for party supplies (via).  The enterprise most recently registered an annual revenue of $85 million.  John Cook has some good background info.

"The Celebrate Express acquisition represents another step in our stated strategy to acquire niche e-commerce businesses whose value we can enhance," says Michael Zeisser, senior vice president of Liberty Media.

Related posts:

• ShopExchange: When Will QVC Acquire HSN?
• Amazon Invests In Video Shopping Platform The Talk Market
•  Backcountry Launches Chainlove, Its Third “One Deal at a Time” Site

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, translated by Jason Soo.

Google Trends: Surfing Habits of Woot! Fans

What are the 10 most visited live shopping sites used by American Woot! fans? According to Google Trends:

1. yugster.com
2. thingfling.com
3. midnightbox.com
4. (cykian.net)
5. stootsi.com
6. 1saleaday.com
7. shnoop.com
8. dodtracker.com
9. ihavetohavethat.com
10. steepandcheap.com

Source: Google Trends

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, translated by Jason Soo.

ShopExchange: When Will QVC Acquire HSN?

IAC, one of the biggest online TV conglomerates, is on the verge of splitting into five independent companies.  With that move, QVC would finally be able to take over the home shopping network HSN and become one of the world’s largest mail order houses.

Last week the balance sheets of the new IAC entities have been revealed, among which are the latest figures from HSN (see table).  HSN, the second largest home shopping network in the US, and the IAC catalog busines Cornerstone Brands will form the new company HSNi (HSN Inc.).

Interesting to see, that Shoebuy and the shares of Japanese shopping network Jupiter Shop Channel, which both have been part of the IAC retailing division, will remain with IAC.  Also remaining with IAC are Pronto, Gifts.com and other promising e-commerce businesses.

Thus HSNi represents the weaker parts of the portfolio:  Despite several management re-orgs, HSN continues to perform below expectations.  It was also known for some time that IAC overpaid for Cornerstone Brands.  IAC has now reported a goodwill impairment of $300 million.

It is expected that as soon as HSNi is split from IAC, Liberty Media (QVC’s mother company and one of HSN's current share holders) will execute a take over.  With such a move, QVC would become one of the world’s largest mail order companies - and catch up with the likes of Amazon.

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, translated by Jason Soo.

Exciting Times: Atoms are the New Bits

"Atoms are the new bits. Think of it as World 2.0 instead of Web 2.0." - Hank Williams

"Atoms are the new bits. Think of it as World 2.0 instead of Web 2.0." - Hank Williams

Social Shopping: Polyvore Shows Off Its Figures

Polyvore, one of the most exciting social shopping ventures, released some new figures in its blog:

"Polyvore is growing very quickly. Here are some of our stats:
- 1 million unique visitors per month
- 40 million monthly page views
- 250,000 registered users
- 9 minutes average session time on site
- 20 average pageviews per visit
- 1.8 million sets created
- 2 million products"

Maybe even more impressive is their team:

"The Polyvore team consists of 6 ex-Yahoo, ex-Google and ex-eBay employees.
- Pasha Sadri, Co-Founder (creator of Yahoo Pipes)
- Jianing Hu, Co-Founder (Yahoo Travel)
- Guangwei Yuan, Co-Founder (Yahoo Travel)
- Shiv Ramamurthi, Software Engineer (Yahoo Search)
- Jess Lee, Product Manager (Google Maps Product Manager)
- Josh Wetzel (Director, eBay's Distributed Commerce business unit)"

Polyvore raised $2,5 million from Benchmark Capital and shares its offices with Friendfeed

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, translated by Jason Soo.

EBay Live! 2008: eBay Facebook Apps, the Next Generation

Like so many others, eBay's first attempts in Facebook (see: eBay Marketplace) have failed miserably.  But unlike so many others, eBay hasn’t given up and is briskly testing out other applications with the help of external creativity (see: eBay's Micro Project Program), that look much more promising now.

One of the current efforts, “StyleSlam”, was presented (PDF) at eBay's Developers Conference with the motto:  "Fun game with virtual item linked to real eBay searches".

More on StyleSlam, which was developed on behalf of eBay UK, can be found in the developer`s presentation:

"StyleSlam is a fashion application, hinged around gaming and competition, tied to the social interactions within Facebook and linked to the eBay concept of trading and getting a bargain."

The application appears all-in-all to be somewhat overambitious, but is conceptually on the right track.

Related posts:

• ThisNext Scores with I Want Application

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, translated by Jason Soo.

EBay Live! 2008: How Open Can eBay get?

According to eBay, "User Generated Content is an industry wide problem", and eBay feels particularly afflicted.  How “open” is eBay wanting and able to be in the future?  The question of openness is not only valid for applications on the eBay Open Platform (“Project Echo”) but in particular also for regular eBay sites.

As eBay indicated at this year’s Developers Conference with its Roadmap for User Generated Content (PDF), eBay - in comparison to Amazon and Etsy (!) – provides the most flexibility with respect to customization of product websites.

Nevertheless, eBay struggled with policies on whether or not users could freely link to external sites and to which extent slideshows, YouTube videos and other rich media elements were allowed to be bound into product descriptions.

Now it seems a decision has been made.  The so-called UGC-Roadmap (PDF) defines guidelines which will help clarify what (and what is not) allowed.  EBay will start tightening the rules as of next year:

• No Flash, Javascript or otherwise uncontrollable code will be allowed in standard code.  A specially created eBay ETML-Standard (“eBay Safe Markup Language”) will be implemented to enforce this.

• Permitted will be widgets that are both hosted with eBay and also have the eBay nod of approval.  The widgets, for which a special directory will be created, will allow for a “Rich User Experience” on eBay sites.  And just to be perfectly clear: "Rich content will only be provided by few select developers, must be turned into widgets and vetted by eBay."

The guidelines raise a few interesting questions.  Are YouTube videos which are not hosted with eBay allowed or not?  And on which conditions can one become a trustworthy widget partner?

EBay promises with the new rules “better control” – permeated throughout the whole presentation (PDF) there is a clear aggressiveness towards User Generated Content.  Nevertheless, over the short or long term, eBay’s current stance could be relevant for other shopping platforms, too.

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, translated by Jason Soo.

EBay Live! 2008: eBay’s Micro Projects Program

Often more enlightening than eBay's User Conference is the Developers Conference which takes place in the days before.  It’s at the Developers Conference where future plans are revealed to third party developers.

The eBay PR people put “Project Echo” in the spotlight this year, a till now rather unspectacular directory for eBay applications which is supposed to bring eBay onto the same path of Facebook and Co, sometime in 2009.  More on "Project Echo", the "eBay Open Plattform", in the Feedback Forum.

More notable for the moment is the Micro Projects Program ("Be a Part of It!"), the future mechanism by which eBay will outsource interesting projects to external developers. 

In effect, a sort of mid-layer is created between developers who take part in the developer program (and normally work voluntarily on an idea they come up with themselves), and the developers who get pulled on demand into eBay development initiatives.

More info in the presentation (PDF):

"Micro Project is a term that eBay uses to describe projects or applications that are sponsored by eBay but developed outside the typical eBay product development process"

Ebay Countdown and the Ebay To Go Widgets are two of these outsourced micro projects.

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, translated by Jason Soo.

EBay Live! 2008: All Hail Paypal!

Interesting to see how aggressively the eBay management was pushing the eBay owned Paypal payment system at this year's eBay Live! Conference.

EBay would like to establish Paypal as the “safest” payment method for online commerce – and it would be near and dear to eBay if it could become the singular choice for all eBay’ers.

For 2 years, eBay has been under strong pressure from Google’s Checkout payment solution. 

And it’s only a matter of time until Amazon brings its own payment/checkout system officially to the market (see: "Is Amazon Planning To Go Head-to-Head With PayPal?").

Introduced at this year’s Developer’s Conference was eBay Checkout and Paypal Express Checkout.  The Checkout buttons came from this presentation (PDF).

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, translated by Jason Soo.

EBay Live! 2008: eBay on Reconciliation Course

It’s been a while since eBay presented in such an underwhelming way at its annual eBay Live! Conference.  The traditional keynotes were sprinkled with thinly veiled reconciliation efforts.  The Bits-Blog of the NY Times summarizes eBay's efforts with its post, "EBay Tries to Buy a Little More Love from Sellers":

"The key problem with eBay is that the value of what it offers has not kept up with the price it charges sellers."

It seems that eBay is busier than ever with itself.  In contrast to previous years, this year’s eBay Live! didn’t cast any ripples that go beyond eBay’s already shrinking borders.

Or as one observer put it: “eBay Live 2008 (or as I called it “eBay coma 2008″)"

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, translated by Jason Soo.