Online Business

eBay Launches Series of Seller Events

eBay is starting a new series of events to help small businesses and part-time eBay sellers “accelerate their businesses” on eBay, which has 90 million active users. The series is called eBay: On Location, and has dates set for Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, and San Jose.

“eBay sellers are creative entrepreneurs who understand that eBay’s global reach and dynamic marketplace offer the ideal setting to start and build a business online,” says eBay Marketplaces President Lorrie Norrington. “We invite our sellers to eBay: On Location to connect with each other and to take the next step in making their eBay businesses even more successful.”

The goal of the series of events appears to be to let sellers network with one another and share ideas for maintaining a successful eBay business. There are also courses on “top seller secrets”, productivity to boost sales and reduce costs, and utilizing social media to drive sales.

“eBay sellers have become savvier about how to use eBay in ingenious ways,” says Jim Griffith, eBay senior manager, Seller Strategy and Dean of Education. “eBay: On Location is a great way for the seller community to come together and share those strategies—and learn something new from experts.”

They are only letting in 500 people per event, and registration is offered on a first-come, first-served basis. It costs $45 to get in.

Does the Facebook Application Dashboard Hurt Privacy?

Update 2: Facebook has responded to the privacy concerns with the dashboards: “To ensure that the dashboards meet user and developer expectations for a trustworthy experience, we’re giving developers the ability to hide their applications in the Friends’ Recent Activity, Friends’ Applications, and Friends’ Games sections of the dashboards. We’re also working on giving users the ability to control how their application activity is featured in the dashboards, and it will go live shortly after the dashboards launch to users. “

Update: According to Nick O’Neill at AllFacebook, there is a “slight privacy oversight” (which he also says is “not a minor bug”) that lets users view the latest apps that their friends have been using. He notes that Facebook will probably resolve the issue before full launch.

Original Article: Facebook will be launching the Games Dashboard and the Applications Dashboard in the coming weeks. The company says these will make it easier for users to interact with their apps, and will provide new communication channels from the home page.

“Once launched to users, the dashboards will serve as a personalized destination on Facebook for users to interact with their favorite applications, discover news ones and receive application updates related to recent activity,” a spokesperson for Facebook tells WebProNews. “For developers, the Applications and Games dashboards will provide new opportunities for communication with users, as well as discoverability of their applications.”

On the Facebook Developer Blog, Jordan M. Alperin outlines the following features:

• Recently used applications and games: The top section of the dashboards will prominently display applications that a user has recently interacted with, making it easy to reengage with the applications they use most often. This section will also include a link to a page where users can see all of the applications they have interacted with, whether or not they have been bookmarked.
• News items: Applications will have the ability to display news stories, giving you the ability to communicate with your users and alert them to news related to your application, such as, “It’s your turn in a game against Jared” or “The leaderboard was reset 6 hours ago, come play!” You’ll have the option to set global news items, which will be visible to all users, or personal news items, which target a specific user. The news component will appear as a text field next to each application in the dashboard.
• Mentioning Users: Using simple syntax, you can render users’ names and links to their profiles in news and activities.
• Your Friends’ Recent Activity: The dashboards will display some of the applications that a user’s friends are using along with information about relevant activities within the application. You’ll set these activity stories via the Dashboard API.
• Your Friends Play: Another way we’ll help users discover new applications is by showing them a number of their friends who frequently use applications, and the applications those friends use.
• Directory: The Directory section of the dashboard will show the applications that currently appear in the “Applications You May Like” section of the Application Directory. We will also link to the Application Directory in this section.
• Suggestions: On the right hand side we’ll have a Suggestions area where Facebook will highlight applications we think users might like, based on the applications they and their friends are using.
• Counters and home page placement: “Games” and “Applications” links will appear on users’ home pages and will link to the dashboards, once the new home page launches to users in the coming weeks. Bookmarked applications will also have prominence on the home page, and can be accompanied by Counters that you can set to let users know there are actions for them to take within your applications.

Here is what the Games Dashboard looks like:

Earlier this week, Facebook announced that users can receive notifications from apps in their email. Also, they will phase out updates from apps in the notifications channel on Facebook.

More Than Just a Redesign Going on with Facebook This Week

It’s been a pretty big week for Facebook. Not only is there a lot of talk about Facebook’s potential for becoming the top news source on the web, but the company celebrated its sixth birthday, is passing the 400 million user mark, and began rolling out some new design changes. In addition, the company is said to be rewriting its messaging feature and preparing to launch a webmail product, but first things first.

The Birthday and 400 Million Users

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed it in a blog post last night. “Today we’re celebrating our sixth birthday, and this week there will be 400 million people on Facebook. Just one year ago we served less than half as many people, and thanks to you we’ve made great progress over the last year towards making the world more open and connected.”

“Facebook began six years ago today as a product that my roommates and I built to help people around us connect easily, share information and understand one another better.” he added. “We hoped Facebook would improve people’s lives in important ways. So it’s rewarding to see that as Facebook has grown, people around the world are using the service to share information about events big and small and to stay connected to everyone they care about.”

Facebook hosted a celebration and announced some releases at the Facebook headquarters last night. This was followed by a hackathon where Facebook staff stayed up all night coding and building new ideas for products.

Do you like the direction Facebook’s gone in for the past six years? Let us know.

Design Changes

Facebook announced some new changes to the design of its homepage. Users can find their newest notifications, requests, and messages in the top menu. When a user receives a notification, they will see a red bubble appear in the left-hand corner by the search bar. When the icon is clicked, a drop-down menu appears with the most recent notifications. The Home/Profile links are in the top-right corner with the Account menu, which includes privacy settings and the log out link.

The menu on the left-hand side of the screen has been completely reworked. “The left menu has been organized to make it easier for you to communicate with and discover content from your friends. You can now access your messages and other core features all in one place, to the left of your News Feed,” says Facebook’s Jing Chen. “With the Photos dashboard you can browse recent photos of your friends, and the Events dashboard lists your upcoming events along with events your friends are attending. The Friends dashboard will help you find friends, see which of your friends have recently updated their profiles and filter your News Feed by Friend Lists you may have already created.”

Chat has also been made more prominent with a list of online friends displayed on the left. The new apps and games dashboards, which have been discussed lately, can be accessed from the menu as well. The dashboards feature personalized updates from the apps, and they have launched with new privacy settings.

The changes are still rolling out, so it’s possible that you do not have them yet, but you will soon enough.

What do you think about Facebook’s design changes? Good Move or bad? Tell us what you think.

The Webmail Product

Michael Arrington is reporting that a “source with knowledge of the product” says Facebook is launching a webmail product. If MySpace can do it, surely Facebook can too. It’s being referred to right now as “Project Titan”, although the name will likely change.

Facebook’s messages as they stand right now, lend to email notifications. When you check your email, you find that someone has sent you a message on Facebook. If Facebook gets you using its own email service, it’s cutting out the middle man, and that means…you guessed it – more time spent on Facebook.

Would you use Facebook for email if they offered a full webmail product? Tell us why or why not.

Facebook As the Web’s Top News Source?

I’ve already written on this topic this week, but basically, the more time people spend on Facebook, the more convenient they may find it to simply get their news feeds there. If Facebook enters the email game, that’s only going to get people using Facebook that much more, and even open up yet another way for them to get their news on Facebook, through email newsletters and news alerts.

Do you see people increasingly getting their news on Facebook? Share you thoughts.

Will Facebook Be the Biggest News Source on the Web?

I have a question for you. Where do you get the majority of your online news? Is it from a feed reader? Is it from Twitter? Is it from Google News? Yahoo News? Do you spend your time simply checking specific news publications? There is talk that Facebook could become the number one place online for people to get their news.

Here’s one for discussion. Facebook users can set up a news list, which will aggregate stories from different news sources who publish their stories to their Facebook pages. All a user has to do is be a fan of that page. Would this be any different than other news aggregators linking to stories? If a news source is willingly putting up a Facebook page with its stories, wouldn’t that be the exact opposite of the argument against aggregators using content? Facebook serves its own ads too. Both the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press have Facebook pages (hopefully they don’t mind me linking to them).

Sure, these publications have control over just what content actually appears on these pages. It’s a bit different than Google or another news aggregator simply crawling the content, but how different is it really? The publications also have the power to block the aggregators. Is there a double standard?

Regardless of that debate, users are increasingly flocking to Facebook to get their news (news is also one of the most popular reasons for using Twitter by the way). The reason Facebook could be the biggest news source is that it has a massive user base – way bigger than Twitter’s, and for all intents and purposes, it operates the same way when it comes to news (albeit, with room for more text in each update).

According to research from competitive intelligence agency Experian Hiwise, 3.52% of upstream visits to News and Media websites came from Facebook last week (that’s compared to 1.39% from Google News.

“Facebook was the #4 source of visits to News and Media sites last week, after Google, Yahoo! and msn. News and Media is the #11 downstream industry after Facebook, receiving 3.69% of the social networking site’s traffic,” says Experian Hitwise’s Heather Hopkins. “To offer a comparison, 6% of downstream traffic from Facebook went to Shopping and Classifieds last week and 6% to Business and Finance and 15% went to Entertainment websites (YouTube in particular).”

“Facebook could be a major disruptor to the News and Media category,” she adds. “And with the Wall Street Journal already publishing content to Facebook, perhaps the social network can avoid the run-ins that Google has suffered recently with Rupert Murdoch.”

Lately Facebook has been encouraging users to set up news lists. They want to be your news source. “You can even create a ‘News’ list to filter news-oriented Pages into one view on your News Feed,” noted Facebook’s Malorie Lucich on the company blog. “Simply add relevant Pages to the list, just as you would with a friends list. The next time you sign on to Facebook, you can click the ‘News’ filter to see stories from all of the news outlets of which you’ve become a fan.”

“In addition to reading news on Facebook, you can share news with your friends on external sites with Facebook Connect,” says Lurich. “Outlets like The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, USA Today and countless blogs have become more social by adding Facebook Connect to their websites and iPhone applications. You can sign in with your Facebook login to see what articles your friends are reading and comment on articles with your authentic identity.”

Facebook has a huge advantage for being the go-to place for news. Everybody is already there, and they’re spending more and more time there checking their feeds, messing with apps, sharing their own updates, etc. If their news-news (Facebook refers to highlights from friend updates as the “news feed”) is right in their feed, they’re going to see articles frequently and get their news there almost inadvertently at times. Plus, if they set up an actual news list like Facebook wants them to, it’s only a click away, and suddenly the average user gets to enjoy the same kind of functionality that users of RSS feed readers have been enjoying for years (they never quite made it to the mainstream did they?).

Do you use Facebook to get news? Can you see it becoming the most widely used platform for online news?

Click Economics: The Last Click

Sorta an old post that I forgot to publish until today! Having the site closed to new members has given me time to start working through a few of my almost done posts that were never published yet. It’s hard to have time to do everything while growing a few businesses…and thus the blog needs a little TLC

Media has traditionally been afforded a wall between editorial and advertising due to limited marketplace competition. But, as Jim Spanfeller stated, the perception of value in “last click marketing” where search gets most of the credit for the entire demand creation and fulfillment cycle, is killing the value of online content:

A publisher can and should price their inventory at levels that will meet the market expectations and drive their business model. What they should not do is allow some sort of invisible hand (or should I say hands) to price their inventory against a backdrop of objectives that can and often does change at a moment’s notice. This practice has fundamentally driven pricing down across the web and, perhaps more importantly, changed the success metrics from ones based on “demand creation” to ones driven by “demand fulfillment.”

Worse yet, the leading metrics most closely track how the poorest members of society interact with media, creating a media ecosystem designed to exploit the poor. The above linked article states “we now know that 16% of web users generate 80% of clicks and that this 16% represents the lower income and education segments of the total user base.”

It may have cost Google 1 day of revenues to create the default analytics tool, which by default has a last click wins behavior that few people know how to edit. They can even add more features like tracking SEO rankings without risk because they know few people will use them.

Google’s web domination is so impressive that experienced and well trained journalists writing for publications like Wired mistake Google’s mission statement as the goal of the web. Literally…

The Internet’s great promise is to make the world’s information universally accessible and useful. So how come when you arrive at the most popular dating site in the US you find a stream of anonymous come-ons intermixed with insults, ads for prostitutes, naked pictures, and obvious scams?

Gary Wolf should know that was actually Google’s mission statement, not the goal of the web.

Sure data mining and sentiment analysis can be parts of the web, but the best bits are often scattered messes and weird stuff we accidentally bump into.

New AOL (or is it Aol.?) Logo Revealed

AOL has shown off a new logo, which it considers a significant part of its new “brand identity.” That is of course to go with its newfound independence from Time Warner. The logo is simple. Aol. That’s it – capital A, lower-case o, lower case l, and a period.

“Our new identity is uniquely dynamic. Our business is focused on creating world-class experiences for consumers and AOL is centered on creative and talented people – employees, partners, and advertisers. We have a clear strategy that we are passionate about and we plan on standing behind the AOL brand as we take the company into the next decade,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO of AOL.

Curiously, in the press release, AOL still uses the all caps method of spelling its name. That doesn’t seem like the best way to kick off this new brand identity. To be fair, the company says that identity will be fully unveiled on December 10th, so I guess such trivialities will have to wait until then. That’s when AOL’s commons tock begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Here are a few instances of the new logo, placed on various images:

“Historically brand identity has been monolithic and CONTROLLING, little more than stamping a company name on a product.  AOL is a 21st century media company, with an ambitious vision for the future and new focus on creativity and expression, this required the new brand identity to be open and generous, to invite conversation and collaboration, and to feel credible, but also aspirational. We’re delighted to have worked so closely with the AOL leadership team to create something bold and exciting that sets AOL apart,” said Karl Heiselman, CEO of Wolff Olins.

Wolff Olins is the consultancy firm that AOL partnered with to develop the new brand identity. According to AOL, some of the “world’s best creative artists” created the art and animations for the new brand look.

Report: Microsoft, News Corp. Plotting Against Google

The companies behind search engines sometimes try to attract more traffic by advertising.  Establishing a partnership is another strategy, as is improving the actual search results.  Microsoft might be ready to try something a little different, however, as a new report’s indicated that the company is interested in making Google’s results worse.

Remember the days when arguments about search engines centered on the size of their indices?  Well, according to Matthew Garrahan and Richard Waters, Microsoft does.  “Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company’s being paid to ‘de-index’ its news websites from Google,” the pair reported.

They then continued, “Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search engine.”

This idea seems plausible enough, given that Microsoft has a history of paying for users (think of its popular and long-running cashback program).  There’s also the simple fact that Microsoft, with its market cap of $263 billion, could possibly outspend Google (which has a market cap of $181 billion) if a bidding war erupted.

What’s more difficult to say is whether the idea is any good.  There’s no word on how much money News Corp. and other publishers would receive, and it’s anybody’s guess how many searchers would switch engines to retain easy access to their content.

Related Articles:

> 80% Of Consumers Would Not Pay For Content

> Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: ”I Think We Will”

> Google Okay With Blocking News Corp.

eBay Completes Skype Sale

It looks like the eBay-Skype spectacle has finally come to a close.  Despite all of the arguments (legal and otherwise) that cropped up at one point or another, representatives of both companies announced last night that the sale of Skype to an investor group is complete.

Josh Silverman, the president of Skype, adopted a rather enthusiastic approach when breaking the news.  He wrote on the Share Skype Blog, “Great news – we’ve closed the deal with the new investors. . . .  Our journey continues: say hello to the future!”

And that future appears to be a bright one, by the way.  As had been agreed earlier, the transaction valued Skype at an impressive $2.75 billion (impressive if you ignore the fact that eBay bought it for $2.6 billion in 2005, anyway), and $1.9 billion in cash actually changed hands as the investor group acquired a 70 percent stake.

What’s more, the investor group (which was led by Silver Lake) includes such interesting organizations and people as Andreessen Horowitz, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Joltid Limited, and Skype’s original founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis.

This would appear to make it much more likely that SkypeIn service will expand into Canada, and there’s no telling how else the new owners will try to grow and improve the company.

Related Articles:

> eBay And Skype Settle Litigation

> Skype Founders Reportedly Close To Settlement With eBay

> eBay Sells Skype, Which Is Worth $2.75 Billion

Americans’ Social Media Habits Highlight Business Potential

Euro RSCG released some interesting findings from a study exploring the different ways Americans are using social media to “redefine their lives.” The study looked at 1,228 social media users in the United States.

“Word of mouth has always been the most powerful marketing tool; what social media has done is dramatically increase the scale, velocity and immediacy with which people can influence each other and create the biggest revolution to hit our industry since television,” said David Jones, global CEO of Euro RSCG. “One of the interesting findings of the study is that it’s the combination of online and offline experiences that creates the biggest impact.”

Other findings include:

- Even though 53.5% of respondents have met new people through electronic media, face-to-face interaction is still the “gold standard”

- Consumers are engaging more in multi-way exchanges of ideas and opinions among consumers and brands

- Consumers are not only move involved with family and friends, but they have increased involvement in political and humanitarian issues.

- 40% agree that social groupings online can be truly social, while only 14% disagree. According to Euro RSCG, figures varied little across age, gender, ethnic, or income groups.

“Online social networking has become part of our culture so quickly, it’s easy to forget just how new it is and how much it’s a work in progress. People are still experimenting with the different options and finding ways to make it part of their life,” said Marian Salzman, president of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, North America. “Forget the images of sad antisocial types. Smart consumers are mixing and matching the tools that come available to meet their social needs. Electronic tools are making them even more socially active, just as the telephone did back in the day.”

Perhaps more interesting than the statistics provided by the firm, are the key takeaways it cites. This includes things like the fact that social media is an important consideration for any communications strategy, and the fact that it’s impossible to predict how bits of communication will spread across social media.

The firm also says that even though the web is world-wide, its emerging power is hyperlocal. This is because this is the space where online and offline most often meet. That is a key reason why businesses, particularly local businesses should not ignore social media.

Related Articles:

> If You Care About Search, You Must Care About Social Media

> A Few Guidelines for Drafting Social Media Guidelines

> Businesses Benefit From Reviews On Their Website

Facebook Sends Cease And Desist To Friend-Seller

uSocial is a controversial advertising company that specializes in social media.  For a fee, it promises to get stories on the front page of Digg, direct followers to a Twitter account, and/or find someone Facebook fans (among other things).  But Facebook’s put at least a temporary stop to the sale of friends.

The BBC reported this afternoon, “Facebook sent Cease and Desist letters to USocial claiming that the way the marketing firm operates violates its rights by sending spam, using web tools to harvest pages, getting login names and by accessing accounts that did not belong to the marketing firm.”

As a result, “USocial defended itself against Facebook’s claims, saying that it did not spam users or use web tools to gather information about profiles. . . .  However, in response to the legal letters, USocial said it would delete the login information it had collected and broadly stop offering to sell Facebook friends.”

This is an interesting development insofar as, three months ago, Twitter also tried to crack down on uSocial.  Its back-channel methods apparently didn’t succeed, but now that Facebook’s established a precedent, we might see another attempt.  Delicious, Digg, and Reddit could well join the fight, too.

Of course, the hubbub around such a scuffle would act as free advertising for uSocial and might spread the notion that these social media sites can be gamed, so it’s also possible that absolutely nothing will occur.

Related Articles:

> Facebook Puts Privacy Policy In Users’ Hands

> Facebook Blocks Popular iLike App

> Want More Facebook Friends?