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Posts Tagged ‘ebay’

This time last week, prompted by Luke Wroblewski’s research, I asked you to suggest Mad Lib style sign-up text for your favourite websites. By way of encouragement, I promised to dig around my hotel room and find some kind of prizes; a signed copy of my eBay-auction-winning book, a TechCrunch tshirt, a little bottle of shampoo – stuff like that.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the quality of the prizes on offer, the competition was flooded with entries. Over 30 of them in fact, almost all of which were from people who had actually understood the entry requirements. Some had even got within a mile of being funny. Well done, them.

And so to the winners, in reverse order of funniness…

For effort alone, third prize goes to Tommy Vallier for this suggestion for LinkedIn:

Hello! My name is ____ and I’d like to join LinkedIn. My email address is ____, my website is ____, I have an RSS feed at ____ and I am on twitter as @____. I’m interested in ____, ____, ____ and expertise requests.

I am currently employed as ____ at ____ and as ____ at ____. Before that I was employed as a ____ at ____ and prior to that I did ____ for ____.

I went to school at ____ where I received a ____ in ____ and also at ____ where I received a ____.

Because I worked with ____, ____, ____ and ____ at various points in my life, I’d like to be connected to them – even though I hardly speak with them anymore. Oh, and connect me with ____, too, as they’re my current boss and I don’t want to look unprofessional.

In the last short while I’ve worked with ____ and ____, so please send them a message telling them I’ve signed up and ask them to give me recommendations for the ____ I did for them. I’d like give my own to ____ for ____.

I want to join a group devoted to ____ – because that’s what I currently do, and ____ because that’s what everyone thinks I should be doing. Have me join a ____ group too, because everyone else is doing it.

I think that’s everything about me. Please let me know when you’ve found me a new career.

Thanks.

Second prize, largely thanks to the dig at Yahoo!, goes to ‘Laura’ for her Flickr sign-up suggestion…

I feel dark inside, like this photo of a ______ with an emphasis on the shadow(s).  This is the only reason I would conceivably have a Yahoo ID, and it is __________.  Please make my password an anagram of Ansel Adams or ________.

And last, but the exact opposite of least, the winner. An entry that understood the spirit of the competition, right down to the use of punctuation as comedy timing. For that, and for masterful use of tautology, take a bow Matt Shaw. You win first prize for your proposed sign-up text for DeviantArt…

My name is __________. I feel the dark powers compel me to join this site, to post my angstily-drawn pictures of half-naked ________s and faeries, all of which are elaborate metaphors for the constant state of _________ in which I perpetually, endlessly, forever find myself. I don’t expect you to understand; no one understands. Please make my password “unicorns”.

Kudos Matt, Laura and Tommy. Assuming the email addresses you used when you commented are genuine, you’ll be genning an email from me in the next day or two to make prize arrangements.

Efficiency is a business school idea that suggests a company is running smoothly. It’s absolutely terrific when you’re talking about a coal mining operation or a Supercuts. But when it comes to a company like Yahoo it’s not a positive. The Internet is still in its wild west days, and the “ready, fire, aim” game plan of Facebook and the other young guns is eating their lunch. Even the massive Google is still trying to shake things up with new and controversial products.

Yahoo’s strategy seems more like “ready, aim, aim, aim, aim…”

Yesterday Jordan Rohan at Thomas Weisel Partners described Yahoo in his first analyst report on the company. He thinks this is the right management team to bring more efficiency to Yahoo. But he spends most of his time talking about the negatives, and there’s no excitement around new products or ideas:

For the record, we happen to believe the current management team is the right one at this stage in Yahoo!’s corporate evolution. The team is bringing efficiency to a massively inefficient company. Yahoo! is weighed down today by dozens of code bases, thousands of revenue-producing properties, at least three sales force factions (display, search, ad network), and a few thousand “extra” employees needed to run the media company today due to its complicated legacy assets and far-flung acquisitions.

On the upside, he notes that a cyclical upswing in advertising is likely to help Yahoo.

Here are a few of the negatives:

• “Morale may have rebounded a bit from the trough, but our conversations reveal that morale has a long way to go.”
• “Our recent discussion with Yahoo! management focused more on costs and efficiency than growth.”
• “User behavior is shifting strongly to social and mobile media and away from traditional portals.”
• “Efforts to become more meaningful in social media have been unsuccessful”
• “U.S. assets make up only about onethird of Yahoo!’s $21 billion value today”
• “Yahoo!’s stock compensation expense is approximately equal to 25% of its annual EBITDA, compared with 11% for GOOG and 13% for EBAY”

More worrying are the metrics comparisons to Facebook. Rohan notes that total minutes spent by U.S. visitors to Facebook are set to surpass Yahoo. And the worldwide numbers are even worse. Facebook now has 160 million daily visitors and 227 billion monthly page views worldwide (Comscore), compared to 160 million and just 94 billion for Yahoo. Yahoo still has tons of daily visitors, but they are spending 12% less time on the site in aggregate compared to a year ago. In the same period Facebook has grown total page views by 217%.

Yahoo will continue to shrink as sites are sold off and shuttered, and CEO Carol Bartz works on those efficiency gains. But this is no longer even close to an exciting company that thrives on chaotic creativity. Yahoo’s foundation is rotten. They have no plan to get back into the game. Or if they do have a plan, no one knows about it.

Sadly, the first site many of us ever visited on the Internet is turning into little more than a business school study in financial engineering. It deserved a better fate.

Yesterday, Luke Wroblewski – Chief design architect at Yahoo! – wrote a blog post singing the praises of audiosharing site Huffduffer. But it wasn’t Huffduffer’s service that got Luke W animated, so much as their sign-up page.

While most sites use a standard form with text-boxes and radio buttons for new sign-ups, Huffduffer presents its questions as a ‘Mad Lib’ style statement…

“I would like to use Huffduffer. I want my username to be _____________ and I want my password to be _____________. My email address is _________. By the way, my name is ______________ and my website is ___________.”

…which is kinda neat.

But Luke, being a ‘chief design architect’ (one of the world’s more tautological job titles), wanted to find out more. Specifically, he wanted to know if this style of form actually encourages more people to sign up than the usual Name: ___________ / Email address: __________ format. So he persuaded Ron Kurti at Vast.com to do some A/B testing and, whaddya know?, it turns out the conversational fill-in-the-blanks form increased conversion by 25-40%.

Given those impressive numbers it’s a cast iron certainty that in the next few months dozens of sites, starting probably with Yahoo!, will consider upgrading their sign-up pages to this new, friendlier format. The trick, of course, will be to get the wording just right – to customize each sign-up page for the site’s particular audience.

…which has given me an idea for a ‘fun’ weekend contest! Hurrah!

Your challenge is this: suggest some Mad Lib-style wording for the sign up page of your favourite web 2.0 site. The funnier the better. Post your entry in the comments and his time next week I’ll pick the funniest (say) three and award some excellent prizes.

Prizes that will include (but are not limited to): fame, recognition of your brilliance and whatever crap I can find in my hotel room – a signed copy of my eBay-auction-winning book, a TechCrunch tshirt and maybe one of those little bottles of shampoo you get.

Here are some examples off the top of my head to inspire you. Yours should be better…

Twitter:

“I do everything Oprah tells me to do so I’d like to use Twitter for three days. I’d like my username to be __________ and my password to be ‘password123′, or the name of my dog which is ______________. Please autofollow me to Oprah, Ellen Degeneres and Taylor Swift.”

Google:

“My name is ___________ and I would like to sign up to use Gmail/Google Buzz. The name of the person I am secretly having an affair with is ___________ and my social security number is _______________. Please display this information on my public profile.”

YouTube:

“LOL!!!! My n@me is ____________ & I wanna join yutube becos this video sukkkssss!! I think _____________ is GAAY!!! LOLLZ”

Livejournal:

“My name is ______________ and joining Livejournal is my only hope of getting anyone to read my poetry. My birthstone is ____________ and my current mood is _____________ and lonely. No one understands me. I hate my life.”

MySpace:

“My name is ____________ and due to some kind of administrative error I would like to join MySpace.”

Go, submit!

World of Good, a five-year old venture that connects artisans from developing communities with mainstream retail markets, has been working with eBay for the past few years, with the ecommerce giant essentially powering the company’s multi-seller marketplace for socially and environmentally responsible shopping.

This morning, World of Good announced that it is selling its wholesale division to GreaterGood/Charity USA, while eBay has moved to fully acquire its main brand and related assets. The terms of neither transaction were disclosed.

eBay’s acquisition of the World of Good brand results from a two-year long collaboration between the two companies. The online marketplace is said to host hundreds of sellers, with tens of thousands of products from 85 countries at present day.

GreaterGood/Charity USA has basically purchased World of Good’s entire wholesale division, including its Global Girlfriend apparel line, and will re-brand the company’s line of designer, Fair Trade products. Both companies say they are committed to maintaining existing relationships with retailers like Whole Foods, Hallmark and Disney, as well as those that have been established with its artisan partners.

World of Good was founded in 2004 by Priya Haji and Siddharth Sanghvi, with the mission to help small artisan producers improve their lives by providing them with access to mainstream retail markets. According to the press release, the company has impacted more than 40,000 individual artisans across 70 countries by connecting them with millions of U.S. consumers.

There’s nothing like finding and getting rid of junk on eBay, especially if you’re a gadget hound looking to offload last month’s toys for the latest and greatest. While it’s entirely possible to manage your eBay account on your phone’s browser, a dedicated application would make life so much easier.

The new eBay app for Android could make shopping, paying and selling through the online auction site a breeze.

Read the rest of this story at MobileCrunch…

Last year, Yahoo still dominated display advertising on the Web in terms of sheer number of ad impressions on its properties, but social networking sites MySpace and Facebook came on strong. Some new data from comScore in its just-released 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review ranks the top Web properties by the number of display ad impressions.

Yahoo served up an estimated 521 billion impressions last year, according to the report, followed by Fox Interactive Media (i.e. MySpace) with 368 billion, and Facebook with 330 billion. Microsoft sites (No.4) only served up 218 billion display ads, whereas Google (No. 6) served up only 70 billion. (These numbers do not include paid search text ads)

Here’s the full ranking:

Top Ten Publishers Of Display Ads
in billions of impressions (comScore)
1. Yahoo! Sites: 521 billion
2. Fox Interactive Media (MySPace): 368 billion
3. Facebook: 330 billion
4. Microsoft Sites: 218 billion
5. AOL: 192 billion
6. Google Sites: 7o billion
7. eBay: 36 billion
8. Glam Media: 25 billion
9. Amazon Sites: 22 billion
10. United Online: 20 billion

Obviously, the biggest sites with the most visitors serve up the most display ads. This year, Facebook doubled in size to the point where it is well past MySpace and catching up to Yahoo in audience size. It is already bigger than Yahoo in terms of pageviews.

Facebook has more advertising inventory than it knows what to do with, although not all of it is desirable. But Facebook is now selling all of its display ad inventory itself after it renegotiated its ad deal with Microsoft.

Biggest doesn’t mean most profitable. Facebook might be serving up more ads than almost anyone else, but they are still selling at very low ad rates because they perform poorly for the most part. If Facebook can figure out a way to make the ads on its site become more relevant and useful, it has a lot of room to boost its ad rates.

You can download the entire comScore report at this 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Reviewlink.

Since the launch of the Nexus One, early adopters have likely had one question lurking in the back of their minds: who to take the phone to if it broke. You see, when the phone was first launched, Google was directing people to either T-Mobile (Google’s carrier partner) or HTC (the device manufacturer) depending on the problem, which could lead to an endless circle of hold times and few results. Today, Google has just rolled out its solution: it’s launching its own phone support line specifically for Nexus One customers. Call 888-48-NEXUS (63987) and within a few minutes, you’ll be talking to a real live Google support tech (the line is open from 7AM to 10PM EST).

This is, of course, a fairly major departure from Google’s standard protocol of making it incredibly difficult to reach anyone for phone support for most of its products. It doesn’t come as a total surprise though — last week there were reports of a Google job listing for “Phone Support Program Manager, Android/Nexus One” to be based out of its headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

The news was first reported at TMO News, and we’ve gotten a response from a Google spokesperson explaining the company’s logic behind the support number:

By design, we focused initially on providing the best possible customer support through our on-line channel, and our experience in the four weeks since the Nexus One launch enabled us to significantly enhance that on-line support offering. We have been able to address a large majority of customers’ inquiries successfully through on-line support, in combination with phone support from our partners, HTC and T-Mobile. That said, our approach with our new consumer channel is to learn fast and continue to improve, and we have, therefore, also been developing our capabilities to provide a number from Google, 888-48-NEXUS (63987) for live phone support for the Nexus One. Live phone support from Google, combined with an optimized on-line support experience, enables a superior Nexus One customer experience.

In other words, Google probably would have liked to have gotten away with online-only support, but it quickly became clear that wasn’t going to cut it.

In other news, Google has also announced that the ETF charge for the phone is down to $150 from $350. But that’s still on top of T-Mobile’s $200 fee. The drop may have well been spurred by the ETF inquiry recently launched by the FCC.

We’re big fans of The Richter Scales, the musical group that have brought us Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Here Comes Another Bubble, and gut-busting songs at the 2008 Crunchies and most recently the parody of Silicon Valley at the 2009 Crunchies a few weeks ago. The group is releasing an animated video of its song ‘I’ve Got Mail and I’ve Got it Made,’ which was one of the two songs The Richters sang at the first Crunchies in 2007. As you may remember, it’s about what happens to a guy when he follows the instructions in all the spam email he receives. Enjoy!

eBay this morning announced that it will introduce free auction listings and reduced listing fees for fixed-priced items in the U.S., starting March 30.

The e-commerce giant says the ’success-based’ pricing is similar to changes implemented by eBay in Europe, changes that have self-reportedly driven strong growth for sellers in markets such as the U.K. and Germany.

Beginning March 30, eBay will offer two pricing packages in the United States:

“eBay Everyday” rates

Auction-style listings with a start price of 99 cents or less will be free (with no insertion fees for up to 100 listings per month).

When an item sells, the seller will pay a flat final value fee of 9 percent of the sale price – and never more than $50. If an item doesn’t sell, the seller pays nothing. eBay says these listings are typically are the ideal format for people who sell on the site occasionally.

“eBay Stores” subscription rates

For large volume sellers, eBay is to introduce insertion fees as low as 3 cents per listing for 30 days—a 90 percent reduction over current rates according to the company.

Subscription rates offer various pricing options, depending on the size of a seller’s business. With the new pricing, a seller with 250 listings per month would save $80 or $960 a year in insertion fees, eBay says. With these changes, eBay’s current store inventory format will be discontinued and will no longer have separate search functionality from core fixed-price listings. With the new eBay Stores rate package, all fixed priced inventory on eBay will have exposure through eBay’s main search functionality.

Sellers who want to determine which pricing option will work best for their listings when the changes take place in March can use eBay’s Fee Illustrator:

Along with the pricing changes, eBay announced that, effective today, it is expanding to all buyers its eBay Buyer Protection, which the company has been piloting over the past year. The program was first introduced in October 2009 and helps buyers identify sellers who consistently provide great service (as rated by other buyers).

Through the program, buyers will have access to customer support specialists seven days a week, as well as a money-back offer for most purchases should a problem arise and the seller is unable to resolve the issue. eBay Buyer Protection covers items paid with PayPal or any other approved payment method.

eBay this morning announced that it will introduce free auction listings and reduced listing fees for fixed-priced items in the U.S., starting March 30.

The e-commerce giant says the ’success-based’ pricing is similar to changes implemented by eBay in Europe, changes that have self-reportedly driven strong growth for sellers in markets such as the U.K. and Germany.

Beginning March 30, eBay will offer two pricing packages in the United States:

“eBay Everyday” rates

Auction-style listings with a start price of 99 cents or less will be free (with no insertion fees for up to 100 listings per month).

When an item sells, the seller will pay a flat final value fee of 9 percent of the sale price – and never more than $50. If an item doesn’t sell, the seller pays nothing. eBay says these listings are typically are the ideal format for people who sell on the site occasionally.

“eBay Stores” subscription rates

For large volume sellers, eBay is to introduce insertion fees as low as 3 cents per listing for 30 days—a 90 percent reduction over current rates according to the company.

Subscription rates offer various pricing options, depending on the size of a seller’s business. With the new pricing, a seller with 250 listings per month would save $80 or $960 a year in insertion fees, eBay says. With these changes, eBay’s current store inventory format will be discontinued and will no longer have separate search functionality from core fixed-price listings. With the new eBay Stores rate package, all fixed priced inventory on eBay will have exposure through eBay’s main search functionality.

Sellers who want to determine which pricing option will work best for their listings when the changes take place in March can use eBay’s Fee Illustrator:

Along with the pricing changes, eBay announced that, effective today, it is expanding to all buyers its eBay Buyer Protection, which the company has been piloting over the past year. The program was first introduced in October 2009 and helps buyers identify sellers who consistently provide great service (as rated by other buyers).

Through the program, buyers will have access to customer support specialists seven days a week, as well as a money-back offer for most purchases should a problem arise and the seller is unable to resolve the issue. eBay Buyer Protection covers items paid with PayPal or any other approved payment method.