Look at Meg Whitman's grimace. Ouch.
For eBay, It’s About Political Connections in China - New York Times
Related, of course:
EBay Is Expected to Close Its Auction Site in China - New York Times
Recently in Ecommerce Category
Become.com , the main competitor to Google's Froogle product search (ecommerce search) has come out of Beta.
On first glance they look a LOT like Google in terms of their search results.
Susan Mernit's Blog: Become.com: 3.2 billion web pages from over 40 million web sites
John Battelle, who runs Searchblog and was a co-founder of Wired magazine and The Industry Standard, is chairing O'Reilly's newest conference, Web 2.0, which is looking at the web as a platform. It looks like a phenomenal event and I am sorry that I cannot be there.
HOWEVER, in my corner of the world, the cutting-edge web-as-platform producers include Alan Taylor of Kokogiak and Jun Kaneko of Goodpic. Both are leveraging Amazon Web Services, but in different and innovative ways.
Goodpic.com G-Tools
Jun has taken Amazon Web Services to bloggers in Japan by providing a simple interface to create the HTML needed to publish a link to Amazon Japan, called G-Tools. Within 3-4 clicks, or a search form, the user can specify aspects of the HTML that will be generated such as color of the background, text formatting, size of product image, etc. The default setting for the Amazon Affiliate ID is Jun's own ID, but that too can be changed to your own. Basically, Jun has created a faster and easier way to add Amazon Affiliate links to your blog. Amazon's own tool, up until the recent redesign, was way too difficult to use. Jun's tool is simple and easy, and has been so popular with users in Japan that he has had to upgrade and change hosting providers to deal with the massive amounts of traffic his free service generates. It is hard to imagine anyone else in Japan who understands Amazon Web Services better than Jun.
Kokogiak.com Amazon Light 4.0
Alan Taylor recently announced the second anniversary of his groundbreaking Amazon Light platform. The new features include integration of web services from Google, Yahoo! News, GMail, NetFlix, iTunes, Blogger, DropCash, del.icio.us and even the ability to search your local library. It is phenomenal! I cannot think of any other site on the net that is integrating more services than Amazon Light 4.0. Alan too puts his own Amazon Affiliates ID in as default, but allows the user to change it.
Making money
Both Alan Taylor and Jon Gales recently shared with us some information about their Amazon Web Services traffic that is worth noting.
Jon has been running Amazon Affiliates for 5 years and has sold over $46K in goods via his websites. He only receives a fraction of that as an affiliate, but that is impressive.
Alan's numbers over only 2 years are even more impressive:
Total recorded click-thrus: 87,832
Total number of orders placed: 8,975
Total Revenue (for Amazon): $124,620.00
He only receives a fraction of that amount, but a fraction of a big number is nothing to sneeze at.
In any case, I'd love to hear about other uses of web services that don't necessarily include Amazon.
Nice! I look forward to what will be done with these new hooks into ebay's and PayPal's APIs.
I forget who it was who said that retail ecommerce is still nascent, but moves like this tend to push me to agree.
When an item is sold via an affiliate's link to eBay, the auction company pays the partner a commission based on the size of the sale.eBay sold on Web services [News.com]Using the API, affiliates will be able to access the most current information on eBay's site, including real-time pricing, specific product details and bidding times for all listings, the company said.
...
The [PayPal] SDK includes applications to help developers integrate PayPal's tools, such as its Web-based payment and payment data transfer systems, into their own sites. The package also offers access to seven of PayPal's Web site site controls including its Buy Now, Add to Cart, View Cart, Checkout, Upload Aggregate Cart, Upload Complete Cart and Subscription services.
via Anil
The Economist has a set of articles on ecommerce starting with a fairly simple piece, "A perfect market," which basically reminds us that we overestimated the effect of ecommerce in the short term (hence the Internet bubble) and are underestimating it in the long term (Dept. of Commerce ecommerce stats do not include online travel, online finacial services, online pornography, online ticket-sales, online dating, onling gambling, etc.)
A second one, "Unlimited opportunities?" is also rather basic in scope, focusing on the major players in the industry and how some of them started from bedrooms and garages. I was hoping for something with a bit more insight from this most venerable of publications....
They also have a few other interesting tidbits including a background briefing on Sony, a very recently-updated country briefing on Japan, and a city guide to Tokyo (skip the restaurant recommendations- ugh! Go straight to Bento.com!) Who knew?
My god... an army of Amazon-ites!
- over 50,000 developers using Amazon Web Services
- between 2.5-15% comission
- 100-150 new developers daily
- XML or SOAP; 80% use XML
Ugh. The pain and agony of ecommerce travel sites... Poor Jeremy wastes an hour on Yahoo! Travelocity.
There is so much more to do to make ecommerce sites more user-friendly if Jeremy has this much trouble with his own company's site.
64. write pissed off weblog post about horrible on-line travel sites and tell people in charge of yahoo travelFuck!
I feel like Bart Simpson when Lisa electrifies the cookie jar.
Travelocity really doesn't want my money... (Jeremy Zawodny's blog) [zawodny.com]
Who's next... I forget, who owns kakaku.com again?
Presseportal - YAHOO! TO ACQUIRE KELKOO [presseportal.de]
Second largest economy in the world. More broadband Internet users than the US. Has eBay given up on Japan?
