Jun 24 2008
I was reading a discussion thread over at eBay Seller Central board and a poster referred to this article from October of 2006. I figured you would find it interesting, as it was written nearly two years ago.
EBay’s ‘Best Match’ A Bad One For Small Retailers - Smaller eBay retailers might just have been dealt a swift one-two punch from the auctions giant.
Just my 12%
Jun 24 2008
The GigaSpaces XAP (eXtreme Application Platform) is now available as an Amazon EC2 AMI (Amazon Machine Image).
At the core, XAP implements a scalable, in-memory database which can be
used as a data grid, a messaging grid, or as a parallel processing
framework.
XAP makes it easy to scale the entire middleware layer (data, messaging, and services) of an application. It does this using an architecture which provides for just-in-time provisioning of processing resources, making it an ideal match for EC2. You can build and test an application on your laptop, and then migrate it to your own data center or to Amazon EC2 without any code changes.
The entire system runs under the control of an SLA-driven container. The container hosts applications, scales out to additional instances as needed, and manages partitioning, replication, and failover.
Applications can be built using C++, any .Net language, or Java via Spring, Hibernate, Tomcat, Mule, or J2EE. These applications […]
Jun 24 2008
Ed Whiting from Travel Remark put together this eye-opening video about Facebook travel applications. Just for fun, take a guess how many travel-related Facebook applications there are before you click play (the grand total will be revealed at the end).
And this is just one category of commercial applications, folks.
When Facebook applications were launched last year, first movers in ecommerce included Blue Nile’s Wish List and Backcountry’s Steep and Cheap. I give credit to these retailers for giving it a shot. Unfortunately, almost a year later you can count the number of daily users for these apps on one hand.
Other social shopping applications like StyleFeeder and Polyvore get a few thousand daily users - not bad, but they are definitely the exception.
Challenges in Social Shopping Facebook Application Marketing
1. Application Aggro - Requests to add applications from friends are no longer trusted. Much worse, in fact - it has turned friends […]
Jun 23 2008
It must be getting close to the end of the quarter, with all of the coupons coming from eBay and PayPal. Scot Wingo brought this up in a post this morning at his eBay Strategies blog.
Here are the list of current promos or coupons from Scot’s blog post:
10% off up to $100 to registered users.
$10 off S&H on more than 3 items.
PayPal discount of 1.5% if you pay with your PayPal balance rather than a CC.:
eBay Bucks where you can get up to 4%
MSN Live Cash Back 20% rebate through PayPal if you buy through their link. (I wonder who’s paying for that 20% discount?)
I thought that would be the last coupon I saw until a reader sent me one they had just received from PayPal.
Get 10% off on eBay*
Try eBay and save on your first purchase:
1. Go to eBay.com, and create an account using the same email address you […]
Jun 23 2008
Chris Brucia recently contacted me to let me know about some of Amazon.com’s niche blogs that had slipped under my radar for our roundup of 75+ e-Tailer blogs. The blogs are Omnivoracious (books), Aldente (food/kitchen) and Carlust (cars).
I fired back with some questions regarding Amazon’s blog strategy (thought it would make an interesting blog post, of course) and Chris sent through some thoughtful replies. Happy reading:
Linda: What are your primary goals for the blog? (perhaps put in order of importance or list your own) Customer conversation?
Branding?
Thought leadership?
Search engine optimization?
Sales?
Subscribers?
Comments?
Chris: Our primary goal for the blogs is to create a place where our editors can share their passions and interests with our customers and the larger community. Our editorial teams have a lot of collected experience and knowledge, and they love talking about it - which also becomes a great resource for our customers.
Linda: How do you measure blog […]
Jun 21 2008
I’ve been looking into the data from the 2008 Edition of Internet Retailer’s Top 500 list and this some fascinating info. This is a list of independent retailers so it only counts online retailers with their own Internet presence. eBay sellers who sell primarily on marketplaces rather than their own websites don’t show up in the list even though many of them would qualify based on revenue.
Number 500 on the list was KneeDraggers, Inc. with 2007 sales of $6.4 million. I know several eBay sellers who do more than that each year and Glacier Bay did $4.6 million in 2004.
Several members on the list got their start on eBay, but have expanded to their own web presence. Two examples are:
ShoeMetro is #471 on the list with $8.5 million in revenue in 2007
Rock Bottom Golf is #308 with $21 million in revenue for 2007
Several eBay sellers should be on the list:
eForcity, […]
Jun 20 2008
Greg Holden from Auctionbytes was in the session and blogging live when he posted this exchange between Griff and a seller.
Griff: We had to make these changes because, without buyers, there will be no eBay in two years. “Bullshit!” someone says.“No bullshit,” he responds; “absolutely true. The rate of decline in the growth of buyers…it was ripe for buyers going other places, and if the momentum starts, eBay is over.”
Someone from eBay, finally admitted how bad this problem is.
Jun 20 2008
A couple announcements before we dive into the link pool…
Our webinar replay for Ecommerce Innovations: What’s Now & What’s Next is up, check it out if you missed the call yesterday. You can also check out the Coles Notes version on the blog, or print it out for future reference.
The second announcement is for next month’s webinar with acclaimed author and Google Analytics ambassador, Avinash Kaushik. Sign up for your chance to win one of 5 signed copies of Web Analytics: An Hour A Day and to ask your questions from the man himself on July 17th, for 3 Things to Die For: Web Analytics Unleashed.
Thirdly, I want to welcome our new subscribers this week, I think we’ve added 200 since Internet Retailer. If you’re new, you may want to check out “The Best of the Blog” to your right, along with our […]
Jun 19 2008
Sorry, I haven’t posted much, but I’ve had a busy day and I’m just now getting a little bit of a break to post this.
Ina Steiner and the Tamebay Twosome of Sue and Chris, have some great posts that I won’t try and duplicate, but I will list them here for you:
Sue has a great post on how the conference is going over with sellers. There certainly isn’t any ra-ra going on here and I only saw one funny hat. As she says; many sellers are just trying to figure out how to make their business work with the new eBay and many are frustrated. I’ve talked to quite a few large sellers and the general consensus is “we’ve moved on” For some eBay has become a liquidation channel for others it is now the smallest part of their business.
They made some announcements about PayPal buyer protection, the Diamond power […]
Jun 19 2008
By now many of you are aware that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is fully supported by Red Hat on Amazon EC2. You can read more about the offering at http://www.redhat.com/solutions/cloud/. Jeff Barr blogged about this in November, 2007 (aws.typepad.com/aws/2007/11/red-hat-enterpr.html).
I’m posting this from Boston, where I am attending the Red Hat Global Summit — more specifically helping with a hands-on lab that teaches developers and IT staff how to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) on Amazon EC2. (It’s really easy.) It’s been fun to meet enterprise developers from all over the world, and surprising to find out that no matter what country the developer is in awareness about Cloud Computing is high.
JBossPerhaps you already saw the posts in other blogs… Red Hat announced that their JBoss Enterprise Application Platform is available in beta form as a service within the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).
Traditionally we think of Java […]