Wednesday, January 30, 2008
eBay Changes Fee Structure To Drive Growth
eBay yesterday announced a major shake up in its fee structure in an attempt to revitalize their core auction business.
Amazon surpassed eBay in US traffic in December for the first time according to Nielsen, and growth rates on eBay have been either static or minimal over the last two to three years.Under the changes, eBay will slash listing fees by up to 50%, but in turn will increase its commission on items that do sell. Extras such as including photos with listing will now be offered for free. eBay will also increase fees on specific items, including goods sold for less that $25 to 8.75%, a 67% increase according to AP.
An example of the new price structure:Another AP report suggests that eBay sellers are not happy about the changes, with one eBay user saying that “It looks like what they are trying to do with the fees is make it more difficult and expensive to sell low-end items. The people that are selling low-end items are going to feel this fee increase the most.”selling a purse at auction for $25 would have cost the seller $1.91, including 60 cents for listing the item plus eBay’s commission of $1.31. Under the new structure, the seller would pay $2.74, including 55 cents to list the item plus a higher commission of $2.19.
comScore stats show that eBay still retains a lead of Amazon (graph right) but the gap is closing. Amazon has continued to build a non-auction based alternative to eBay, complete with independent sellers and a used items marketplace that has seen solid growth at Amazon at a rate eBay simply hasn’t matched. With new leadership at eBay after the announcement of long term CEO Meg Whitman’s retirement this announcement will likely be the first of more to come as eBay looks to find growth from what is still one of the leading Ecommerce providers on the planet.
Yahoo’s OpenID Service Launches Public Beta
I tried it out on Plaxo, and it’s definitely an improvement over previous integrations of OpenID. Versus needing to enter a URL such as username.myopenid.com before providing your username and password, you simply follow a “sign in with Yahoo ID” link, where you can enter your Yahoo credentials. Several pages of education on how exactly your Yahoo ID can be used to sign into other web sites follows, and from there you simply sign up for Plaxo and can then use your Yahoo credentials to sign in on future visits.
Kudos to Yahoo for getting this out quickly. Now we’ll see if they take the next step and start allowing users to sign into various Yahoo services with the OpenID provider of their choice.
Blogged with Flock
The New Browser War: Mobile Firefox vs. Opera Mini
Last October, Mozilla announced that they were working on a mobile version of the Firefox browser. As it turns out, they were working on two versions: one designed for touchscreen devices like the iPhone and another for traditional phones. Now Mozilla has finally given us a glimpse of their designs by posting the plans, mockups, and details of these two upcoming mobile browsers on the Mozilla wiki.
Non-Touchscreen Firefox Mobile
The non-touchscreen browser introduces a virtual cursor that is controlled with the keyboard navigational keys. Using short presses (clicks) on the directional pad's left key will quickly navigate through clickable elements. Longer presses on the left key will begin smooth scrolling. When scrolling, after a set amount of time the page will gradually zoom out to give you a view of the entire layout which will allow for faster scrolling. When you stop pressing the directional pad button, the browser will gradually zoom back in on the element that the cursor is positioned over.
The right key of the directional pad will bring up a menu that provides access to navigation functionality, including items like the Address Bar, Refresh, Back, History, Bookmarks, Tabs, Bookmark This, and Quit.
Touchscreen Firefox Mobile
The touchscreen version of the Firefox mobile browser seems to borrow from Apple's mobile Safari browser with some familiar-looking buttons which include the back and forward navigation arrows, a bookmarks button, and a retractable address bar. The star-bookmarks button will show you a list of your bookmarks if you tap it once; tap it twice and you can bookmark the current page you are viewing.
However, this UI also includes some new features like Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons, which are on the bottom toolbar, as well as a tabs button that will display up to four tab previews displayed 2x2 on your screen for fast tab switching.
Weave Integration to Come?
Although not detailed in these specifications, many sites are speculating that these new mobile browsers will provide bookmark syncing through Weave, Mozilla's new project for data and metadata portability. This is likely since mobile syncing was one of the listed "Use Cases" in the Mozilla Labs forum on the project. With Weave, though, bookmark syncing could really be just the beginning. Weave could, in theory, also sync up browser settings like sessions and passwords from desktop to mobile to laptop and beyond.
Another big possibility is the development of extensions designed just for Mobile Firefox. This would be a break-out feature that could make Mobile Firefox unique in this space. However, no plans for this type of development have been announced yet.
The Mobile Firefox browser should arrive sometime in late 2008.
...But Opera Mini Already Does That
What's interesting about the Mobile Firefox announcement and surrounding hubbub is that Opera Mini today offers nearly the same features that Mozilla is still developing.
Most notably, Opera Mini 4 can already sync your mobile phone bookmarks with the bookmarks on your computer by using something called Opera Link. Although not as seamless as the possible Weave setup (perhaps), syncing bookmarks with Opera is fairly simple.
You click "Synchronize Opera" on the Start Page and then sign in with your Opera Account. Opera Mini will continue to synchronize your data until you log out.
Opera Link Photo via Opera.com
A virtual mouse is also provided: you can move the cursor towards what you want and it quickly snaps the view to the link or the content. When you first visit a web page, Opera Mini shows you an overview and suggest where to begin reading. Click once and you can zoom in on the content.
Opera Mini also has several keyboard shortcuts. Power scrolling shortcuts (2, 4, 6, and 8 keys) let you quickly move around the web page and the 5 key zooms you in and out. Pressing 1 bring up the Context Menu where you can hit reload or switch to Mobile View. This unique Small Screen Rendering feature lets you fit any web page to your screen's width. Opera Mini 4 will adjust the page structure on the fly, so you can browse up and down without having to also deal with horizontal scrolling.
Blackberry users have built-in menus designed just for them and for Windows Mobile/Symbian users, there's an even more feature-rich Opera Mobile browser to use.Why Firefox Might Win
Although Opera Mini is a great mobile browser with tons of features, back on the desktop, Firefox has more users. So, when it comes time to choose a mobile browser, the one that syncs with your desktop browser of choice is likely to win out. Plus, if add-ons are developed for Mobile Firefox, it has the possibility of becoming a killer mobile app.Vicito News: Personalized News Aggregation Via IM
Vicito News is a new personalized news aggregation service that operates over instant messenger using an IM robot. The service currently works with AIM, Google Talk, and Windows Live Messenger. Vicito is something akin to Google News alerts for IM -- you tell the service what to watch for, and it updates you at preset intervals via instant messenger when it finds new news matching your query.
Vicito would fall under the single stream aggregation category of news aggregators, in that it combines news from multiple sources about a specific topic into a single stream. You set up Vicito entirely through IM by telling the bot what keywords you want to track, how many stories you want maximum per update, and how frequently you want updates.
I told Vicito to track stories related to "baseball" and this afternoon I compared the results to those from SportsSpyder's MLB page. Not surprisingly, they were both dominated by news about the trade of Johan Santana -- baseball's top pitcher -- to the New York Mets. Somewhat surprisingly, though, I actually found Vicito's news to be more varied. Beyond Satana I was getting stories about Roger Clemens visits the Astros training camp, pitcher Andy Pettitte, and Major Leaue Baseball's umpire background check policy that were nowhere to be found amid the Santana noise (or were buried) on SportsSpyder.
Tracking "yankees" news on Vicito.
A lot of that might have to do with the source list. Vocito right now is drawing from 750 large and mainstream news sources that cover the gamut in terms of topic. SportsSpyder, on the other hand, is drawing from specialized sources that deal exclusively with baseball -- so certainly the overlap and number of reporters covering the same big story will be greater.
But the experience does highlight one major problem with single stream aggregators like these: there is a lot repetition. Because Vicito is just posting a river of news that matches your search query, you end up getting the same story from multiple source. Unlike with meme-style aggregators like Google News or Techmeme (or perhaps, more on topic, Ballbug), which group similar stories, Vicito's stream loses some appeal once you've seen the same story 5 times.
Even with the noise problem, though, Vicito remains a useful service for getting breaking, topically filtered, news updates over IM. If instant messenger is your preferred method of communication, then you might find some utility in Vicito. Vicito is free to use, with a premium for-pay package that ups the limit on the number of news stories you can receive per update and how often.
MySpace opens doors to developers
MySpace will open its doors to software developers allowing them to create games and media-sharing applications for the popular social network. 
MySpace will formally launch its "Developer Platform" next Tuesday but is already allowing people to sign up.
The tools have been developed with Google and will allow programmers to create programs similar to those used by millions on rival site Facebook.
Facebook opened up its site to outside developers last year.
It has since had great success, with nearly 15,000 applications written for the site.
These include photo-sharing and music recommendation tools as well as games such as scrabble.
However, despite its popularity, Facebook still lags behind MySpace in terms of overall users.
MySpace has around 200 million registered users, compared to 63 million who use Facebook.
MySpace was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for $580m in 2005.
Last October it announced that it would join OpenSocial, Google's platform designed to allow developers to build applications that will work on any website.
Other networks such as Bebo, LinkedIn and Orkut already use the tools.
The tools, available from 5 February, will allow developers to build applications that make use of MySpace member profile information and their connections with other users.
According to the new CTO of MySpace, Amit Kapur, developers will also be able to make money out of their applications.
"I will be focused on making a platform for developers to monetize and promote their applications," he told Reuters.
