dmc500hats

eBay Watch: Q3 Listings Recover, New 52 Week High

you must also have been the same kid who said 'there's gotta be a pony in here SOMEwhere!?!'...

seriously, you think being able to raise prices to maintain revenue in the face of overall declining growth is somehow a good thing?

lock-in ain't forever, player.

they can paint themselves into a corner, but eventually the quarters will get a bit cramped.

What If Facebook Can’t Sell Any Ads?

Couldn't disagree more with McIntyre... he's missing it completely.

His point that the traffic "can't be organized" is dead wrong, and he obviously doesn't understand how the Facebook News Feed integrates with facebook apps & the social graph information made available by facebook.

For more info on this, read my piece on <b>Marketing Facebook Apps</b>, and also Justin Smith's article on News Feed Optimization (NFO).

People who think the Facebook model isn't working or isn't worth anything are going to look like even bigger fools than people who criticized YouTube before they got bought for $1.5B, and also the same folks who stood on the sidelines when GOOG opened at $85. Just because Henry Blodgett is pimping the MSFT-FB acquisition story -- which i don't think will happen, Zuck won't sell -- doesn't mean that his intuitions are wrong.

to be clear: Facebook really *IS* the Second Coming, and Silicon Valley knows it. It's the first time i've ever seen Googlers doubt whether they're the coolest company in the valley. Every VC &amp; startup entrepreneur is either excited as hell or scared shitless by Facebook, sometimes both at the same time.

People who underestimate what Facebook means to the Web will be wishing they paid more attention as the evidence of their impact becomes more clear.

- dave mcclure
500hats.typepad.com/

YouTube: When Will the Media Stop Raining on Google's Parade?

yep, particularly when you consider that Google's market cap went up about 5x on the original announcment what it paid out in stock for YouTube. whether or not that bump was one-time or continuing perceived incremental value, certainly seems like a small price to pay for market share / leadership position in online video / advertising.

as they were with paypal (same folks, mind you), popular media opinions are dead wrong on this deal:
500hats.typepad.com/50...

Viacom Suing Google For $1 Billion? Yawn.

nice summary, and agreed.

Deciphering Yahoo's Restructuring Announcement

just imagine... wouldn't it be great if companies issued re-org announcements with a simple Orgchart (+ delta), instead of all that gobbledygook? would be so much simpler... not to mention very 2.0 ;)

someone call me when the CogMap chart for Yahoo is in sync with the new announcements:
cogmap.com/chart.php?i...

eBay's Blunder May Help Google

david, your analysis is right on target.

over the past few years, eBay has gradually moved to more &amp; more fixed-price formats (more eBay stores w/ store inventory format listings, buy it now, ebay express, off-eBay marketplace PayPal sales, even half.com formats coming back now). primarily this move happened because that's what eBay sellers were asking for, and where the internet retailer market was going -- merchants are most familiar / comfortable with fixed-price formats, rather than the more editorialized auction formats ebay has been historically known for with its collectible items &amp; used goods. fixed-price formats are just simpler &amp; easier for most merchants to deal with.

while it may be true that auction listing formats are more attractive to some ebay buyers due to one-of-a-kind items &amp; principles of scarcity, it's just not the majority customer experience (either online or off) -- most transactions are fixed-price purchases of standard items. delayed gratification auctions are the exception, impulse buy-it-now items are the rule.

by eBay's own admission, fixed-price listings formats are now the majority of its overall inventory (~83%). however, that's also a segment where eBay faces competition from other marketplaces with fixed-price offerings such as Craigslist &amp; Amazon, as well as from non-marketplace PPC advertisers Google, Yahoo, and others that drive customers directly to internet retailer websites.

so does it make sense for eBay to raise prices in a segment where it faces competition &amp; has decreasing pricing power? that would appear to be a capitulation to optimize for profit in the short-term over revenue / market share growth in the long-term. interesting strategy, not sure i agree with it tho...

it's a good thing for eBay that PayPal growth is still going strong, and that Skype user growth appears to be continuing, albeit without as much detail as many of us might like. (full disclosure: i used to work for PayPal, and i'm also an avid Skype user &amp; fan)

for those betting on the future of eBay, perhaps they should be looking to the Power of Two (PayPal &amp; Skype), than the Power of Three...

- Dave McClure
500hats.typepad.com/

Google Launches ValueClick Killer

dunno if it's a ValueClick killer, but if Yahoo &amp; eBay don't wake up it' might kill them (or at least hurt them a lot):
battellemedia.com/arch...

curiously, CPA-based advertising *should* have been something either Yahoo or eBay (or Amazon) were much better positioned to do way ahead of Google.

eBay, Yahoo, &amp; Amazon all have the point-of-sale data necessary to do CPA-based costing for ads, eBay &amp; Amazon both have substantial audiences with payment acct data (eBay has PayPal, Amazon has 1-click buy acct info), Yahoo has an existing ad solution (Overture), and all 3 have tons of eyeballs they could use for ad inventory.

why any of them either individually or in combination haven't been able to pull this together ahead of Google is frankly rather surprising... the recent eBay-Yahoo partnership is smart, but rather late. it may take Google a few years to figure out payments &amp; fraud prevention, but still no reason to wait for them to be first to market.

in any case, i'd expect all of them to be in the CPA game withing another 12 months.

- dave mcclure
500hats.typepad.com