When rich people sue rich people, it often seems that the only possible winners can be rich people.
Which perhaps doesn't engage the emotions of spectators quite as much as, say, when rich people are caught with their plus fours around their ankles.
Still, the current lawsuit between eBay and Craigslist does offer a small window into our own daily lives. You know, the one through which we decide whether we believe what someone is telling us.
This legal spatula is being flipped in Delaware Chancery Court, its essence revolving around how much of Craigslist eBay really owns. Is it 28.4 percent, on which they initially agreed in 2004? Or is it the 24 percent that appears to have emerged after what eBay believes was a "self-dealing" and underhand scheme by Craigslist to dilute the value of its stock?
eBay's executives have already protested both their innocence and niceness. On Thursday and Friday, it was the turn of Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster of Craigslist. (Oh, if you're in need of human fascination, it continues Monday and is being streamed live by the Courtroom View Network.)
So here we are having to decide who is, well, the nicest person, the one who isn't telling the odd fib or two.
Perhaps the most moving remark of the first couple of days came from former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who told the court that the moment she became concerned about the dealings between the two companies was when eBay founder Pierre Omidyar allegedly became frustrated with Craigslist.
"To be honest," she told the court, "I was starting to get concerned because really, nobody doesn't like Pierre."
And so we had eBay claiming the niceness higher ground. "We are sweet. We are lovely. We are kind to animals," seemed to be her refrain. The folks at Craigslist, though they might seem pleasantly libertarian at times, are not immune from a little folksiness of their own.
So when Newmark and Buckmaster took the stand, it was surely hard not to see them as the smaller, more idealistic Merry Men trying to avoid being slammed into the stocks by the big, bad Sheriff of Nottingham.
Newmark, he of the dour-colored suits and the slightly Elvis Costello-ish mien, sounded like Elvis at his lowest when he described how he felt betrayed by eBay.
He came to believe that his lady suitor's aim was not true. "eBay, specifically Meg Whitman, made commitments, and broke them," he told the court.
The Craigslist team, you see, became very concerned when eBay began to create its own classified site, with the slightly uncomfortable name Kijiji. Whitman, claimed Newmark, had promised exclusivity, but she was clearly playing around with Craig's confidential data and his feelings.
Buckmaster, Newmark's blessedly calm Friar Tuck, no doubt tugged at some heartstrings on Friday, when he described a correspondence between himself and Whitman.
On July 12, 2007, he allegedly wrote to the then-eBay CEO: "It is my sad duty to report that we are no longer comfortable having eBay as a shareholder." He went on to explain that Craigslist rather wanted to "explore options for our repurchase, or for otherwise finding a new home for these shares."
This all seemed like Whitman and her less than merry people were being dumped. Which is why you might be rendered somewhat insensate by her alleged reply: "We are so happy with our relationship with Craigslist that we could neither imagine doing anything to disturb our personal rapport with you or [Craigslist founder] Craig [Newmark], nor parting with our shareholding in Craigslist Inc. under any foreseeable circumstances."
She allegedly continued: "Quite to the contrary, we would welcome the opportunity to acquire the remainder of Craigslist Inc. we do not already own whenever you and Craig feel it would be appropriate."
Buckmaster told the court he found the cheery tone of this note to be "threatening."
So there you have it. Buckmaster continues with his possibly painful story on Monday. You, meanwhile, have all weekend to discern who might have slipped a little Rohypnol into their facts and who might be appealing to more fundamental human frailties.
You might also wonder what on earth these two sides were doing trying to have a relationship with each other. Somehow, it all seems a little like Angelina Jolie trying to get it on with Ross Perot.
The 2009 holiday season thus far is revealing much stronger online sales figures than what was witnessed in 2008, market-research firm ComScore announced late Wednesday.
According to the company, which has monitored spending for the first 30 days of the November-December shopping season, sales are up 3 percent to $12.26 billion, compared to the same period in 2008. Cyber Monday sales hit $887 million in online spending, tallying a 5 percent gain over the same day last year. That amount also matched "the biggest spending day on record, December 9, 2008."
"We've seen an encouraging start to the online holiday shopping season and it would appear that retailers' aggressive and early marketing efforts have so far succeeded in persuading consumers to open their wallets online," ComScore chairman Gian Fulgoni said in a statement. "Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday were atypically strong online sales days this year, and Cyber Monday has continued that trend by outperforming the season-to-date average growth rate and matching last year's record day of $887 million in online spending."
The good news doesn't stop there. Cyber Monday also saw an increase in the number of buyers, ComScore found. The total number of online buyers grew 6 percent to 8.7 million people. That said, the average amount each person spent dropped 2 percent to $102.19.
True to the day's origins, the majority of sales originated from work computers. The company found that 52.7 percent of all purchases were completed in the office. Just 41.6 percent of shoppers picked up items from home, ComScore said.
ComScore wasn't the only company reporting strong numbers this week. eBay said that Cyber Monday transactions outpaced Black Friday's by a whopping 35 percent. More than 2.4 million transactions were completed on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, eBay said. The site even has a heat-map graphic that shows how the transactions pored in over the course of those days.
ComScore and eBay's data follows another strong report from marketing-optimization company Coremetrics, which said earlier this week that sales were up 13.7 percent at some online retailers that it received data from.
eBay is criticizing a French court's ruling that orders the company to pay a $2.55 million fine to European conglomerate LVMH.
The auction giant and its European unit were fined 1.7 million euros on Monday by the Commercial Court of Paris, which ruled that the company violated a 2008 court order by not preventing the sale of legitimate LVMH perfumes and cosmetics. LVMH's brands include Christian Dior, Guerlain, and Givenchy perfumes.
In June 2008, the Commercial Court fined eBay $61 million in a lawsuit filed by the conglomerate, which is officially known as LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. LVMH had asserted that eBay had not done enough to stamp out the sale of fake LVMH goods on its site. The court went a step further, ruling that eBay-traded LVMH products--even authentic ones--were not being sold by an authorized reseller. As a result, eBay was ordered to remove all listings of these products.
eBay criticized the ruling then, saying it was an attempt by LVMH to "protect uncompetitive commercial practices." eBay likewise condemned the new ruling.
"Today's outcome hurts consumers by preventing them from buying and selling authentic items online," Alex von Schirmeister, general manager of eBay in France, said in a statement. "The injunction is an abuse of 'selective distribution.' It effectively enforces restrictive distribution contracts, which is anti-competitive."
Despite its objections, eBay argued that it has complied with the 2008 court order. The company said it has used state-of-the-art filtering software to check millions of listings each day, making thousands of authentic LVMH products invisible or inaccessible to French eBay users.
eBay also discounted the proof brought against it, claiming that LVMH offered details on only 1,341 listings out of 200 million posted on the auction site each day. eBay believes those listings were deliberately posted by people to sneak past the filters. In 1,091 of the listings targeted by LVMH, the seller did not accurately describe the item, using misspelled brand names, no brand names at all, or only pictures to describe the product.
As a result, eBay asserts that both the fine and ruling are unjustified. The fine itself is disproportionate given that eBay complied with the injunction," said von Schirmeister. "It is out of step with our legal victories in France, U.K., Germany, Belgium and the U.S."
eBay plans to appeal the new ruling and two other cases tied to LVMH. "We believe that the higher courts will overturn this ruling and ensure that e-commerce companies such as eBay will continue to provide a platform for buyers and sellers to trade authentic goods," said von Schirmeister.
eBay has been in and out of U.S. and European courtrooms for years, sued by companies trying to clamp down on the sale of fake versions of their legitimate products. It's faced courtroom battles with several European powerhouses, winning cases against L'Oreal and Tiffany, but losing suits filed by LVMH.
eBay is playing virtual Santa this holiday season with a free "Deals" app for the iPhone that leads consumers to the better buys on the auction site.
Launched Tuesday, eBay Deals is designed to deliver a stream of the best deals on the site from across hundreds of millions of listings. Like eBay Mobile, the company's regular iPhone app, Deals lets you search, shop, and pay for your items from your iPhone or iPod Touch.
All featured deals spotlight items with no bids, no reserve price, free or fixed-rate shipping, and less than four hours remaining to bid.
You can browse deals across eight categories, including apparel, computers, electronics, and collectibles. If you spot a deal you like, just tap on it, and its listing pops up where you can watch it or bid on it. Not crazy about the current deals? Just shake your iPhone or iPod Touch, and a new set of deals appears.
If you spot a deal that may be better for someone else, you can e-mail it or share it via your Facebook or Twitter account.
Besides browsing eBay's virtual aisles, you can search for your own deals by entering a product name, category, and price range. You can save your customized search results to return to them later.
Starting Friday, eBay will also be unveiling a "12 Days of Deals" feature promoting a new promotion each day until December 8. Friday's deal will offer Samsung's N120 Netbook.
"As the world's leading online marketplace we have insights into how people really want to shop...and they clearly want to shop on their phones," eBay Marketplaces President Lorrie Norrington said in a statement.
Though designed for the mobile crowd, eBay's daily deals can also be found online at the auction site's Deals page.
eBay has been busy lately sprucing up its mobile auction site for the holidays. The vendor recently added social networking to its eBay Mobile app, letting you share a listing through e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter.
Since its launch in 2008, eBay's mobile app has been downloaded more than 5 million times, said the company. With a purchase made every two seconds, the company said, more than $500 million worth of items are likely to be traded through eBay mobile this year.
eBay on Sunday confirmed that a "technical issue" had caused search queries on the auction site to be messed up over the weekend, resulting in limited or no search results. The company says that it's being cautious, though, and is holding back on some advanced search features until the issue is fully solved.
"We are happy to report that critical search functionality was restored overnight on Saturday and we are seeing normal activity levels today," a post on the company's eBay Ink blog read Sunday. "As part of our effort to restore critical search functionality as quickly as possible for sellers and for buyers, we have kept some secondary search features temporarily offline. This includes refining search by certain item specifics, such as color or clothing size, and having Store Inventory Format results included in the main search results."
In a statement, eBay also said the technical issue was caused by "a surge in live listings as sellers ramp up for the holiday season. eBay currently has more than 200 million live listings, 33 percent more than at this time a year ago."
Some eBay members still weren't satisfied with the explanation. "I had a one day auction ending today, (and) no one was obviously able to bid on it because they couldn't search for it," one commenter said on the eBay Ink blog. "Will I get a credit for this?"
"eBay should credit all sellers with active listings during this time," another said. "These issues have cost sellers many bids and sales. Once again eBay is screwing sellers."
Much like Twitter's today, outages at eBay were rather prominent in the company's early days. They're not too frequent anymore. But this one came at a time when there are some sentiments of malaise among eBay sellers, some of whom use the auction site to make a living, and when it also faces increased competition in the e-commerce sector.
An analyst release from JP Morgan Chase said that it did not anticipate the outage would have an effect on eBay's fourth-quarter earnings. But, it contained a warning: "Although we recognize it is virtually impossible for a site of this complexity to not encounter occasional issues," the report from analyst Imran Khan read, "we continue to believe that eBay needs to make greater investments in the robustness and functionality of its site in order to remain competitive within the e-commerce space."
Sold!
Auction site eBay has, as long anticipated, sold off the Skype telephony service to a group of investors that includes Marc Andreessen's new Andreessen Horowitz group, Silver Lake, and the Skype co-founders' Joltid Ltd. The investor group now holds about 70 percent of the company; eBay retains the rest in a minority stake. Joltid was brought into the investor group as part of the settlement of a copyright suit that the Skype co-founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, filed against eBay over Skype's technology. At one point, that dispute was looking so ugly that eBay was reportedly considering rebuilding Skype's technology altogether.
The sale amounted to approximately $1.9 billion in cash and a note from the buyer in the principal amount of $125 million, for a total of $2.025 billion.
eBay's plans to get rid of Skype, a purchase that had never fit quite well into its auction business, had been well-publicized. Last spring, the company formally announced that it planned to spin off Skype as a publicly traded company in the first half of 2010.
The final $2.75 billion valuation is only slightly higher than the $2.6 billion that eBay originally acquired Skype for in 2005.
Tuesday's post on using Craigslist to buy secondhand concert tickets drew a response from a company called FanSnap, which uses live feeds to aggregate ticket listings from online marketplaces and broker sites (such as StubHub and TicketNetwork) and eBay auctions.
FanSnap would argue Craigslist is fine for price-sensitive fans who don't need to go to a particular show and who are willing to meet and negotiate with other individuals, pay cash where necessary, and run the risk of buying a fake ticket. (Although the only time I've ever seen a fake concert ticket was in 1989 on the streets of Manhattan, when I bought a very realistic counterfeit to a Jane's Addiction show at the Ritz.)
Fans who want a slightly more convenient buying experience might go with eBay, where they can use PayPal and rely on seller ratings, while fans who absolutely need a guaranteed ticket can go with a marketplace like StubHub, which offers a toll-free customer service line, money-back guarantee, and other benefits. FanSnap operates on an affiliate-oriented revenue model, so it gets a commission from sites on which sales are made.
FanSnap shows you where tickets are located in a seating chart of the venue.
I ran a search on FanSnap for Pixies tickets, and it found more than 70 listings for the sold-out show this Friday, compared with about 30 listings on Craigslist. (The Craigslist screenshot in Tuesday's post showed only listings that had been added on that day.) Prices were similar to Craigslist--lower in a few cases--and the site has some great design touches, like a seating chart of the venue that maps tickets to particular locations. Craigslist, of course, is purposely and resolutely lo-fi. I still think there's something refreshing about dealing with a real fan, face to face, but I can see reasons why others wouldn't want to.
Correction at 8:00 a.m. PDT, Nov. 12: This post mischaracterized how FanSnap aggregates ticket listings. The site uses live feeds from its sources, which allows ticket listings to be updated immediately as prices change.
Online auction giant eBay announced Friday that its sale of a controlling interest in its Skype unit will proceed, following the settlement of litigation over the proposed transaction.
The settlement restructures the deal with an investor group led by Silver Lake and puts an end to a dispute with software maker Joltid over the licensing of software that underlies Skype's Internet telephony service.
In addition, the settlement brings Skype and Joltid founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, into the investor group. The duo will take a 14 percent stake in Skype in exchange for contributing Joltid software and a "significant capital investment."
Silver Lake and other investors will now hold 56 percent of Skype, and eBay will retain 30 percent. Those other investors include the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz--started by Marc Andreessen, the man behind the early Web browser Netscape--and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
Venture capital firm Index Ventures, which had been embroiled in the legal action, has withdrawn from participation in the investor group.
As in the initial agreement, eBay will receive approximately $1.9 billion in cash when the sale is completed, along with a note from the buyer in the principal amount of $125 million.
The deal, which eBay says puts Skype's value at $2.75 billion, is expected to close during the current quarter.
Under the settlement agreement, which involves the Silver Lake investor group, Joltid, and online video company Joost, Skype will have ownership over all software previously licensed from Joltid. All related litigation now pending against the investor group and eBay will cease at the closing of the acquisition.
Zennström and Friis had sold Skype to eBay for $2.6 billion in 2006, but they had also retained the rights to Skype's peer-to-peer technology via Joltid, a separate company that they had also founded. In its lawsuit filed in September of this year, Joltid raised charges of copyright infringement, alleging that Skype had acquired unauthorized versions of the source code, made unauthorized modifications, and disclosed the software to third persons.
Also in September, Joost--yet another company started by Zennström and Friis--filed a lawsuit against former Joost CEO Mike Volpi, who two months earlier had become partner at Index Ventures, which also was named in the lawsuit. Joost claimed that Volpi, who had done a stint on Skype's board of directors, had used confidential information as part of Index Ventures' participation in the Silver Lake-led effort to buy a majority share in Skype.
In the third quarter, Skype contributed $185 million in revenue to eBay, up nearly 30 percent from the year-earlier period. It has more than 520 million registered users.
Update at 8:10 a.m. PST: More details of the settlement have been added.
BoomTown--fresh from slapping around sixth-graders caught in a Bing-stupor and restaurant-seeking vampires from Microsoft--is not quite sure what to think of another new advertising campaign from an Internet giant.
This time, it is coming from eBay.
With the tagline, "Come to think of it, eBay," the ads start Monday, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, to "boost its standing as a holiday shopping destination."
Interestingly, the new marketing campaign in print, television, and online--the first for the Web commerce giant in 18 months--has been crafted by San Francisco-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, which has also just nabbed the lead role in the $100 million advertising campaign by Yahoo.
A previous eBay ad campaign.
(Credit: Screenshot by The Wall Street Journal)Goodby, owned by the Omnicom Group, is known for its innovative ideas and has done such memorable campaigns as the Slowsky turtles for Comcast, the weird folk of Emerald Nuts, owned by Diamond Foods, as well as campaigns for tech companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Adobe Systems, and Netflix.
Still, Goodby might be getting a little too cute here, because "come to think of it" could remind consumers exactly how much they have forgotten about eBay.
At best, "come to think of it" is a double-edged sword.
In a good scenario: "Come to think of it, I really haven't listened to my 'Frampton Comes Alive' album in forever and I really want to hear it again."
In a bad scenario: "An old girlfriend of mine is trying to friend me on Facebook--but, come to think of it, she was pretty freaky and I am very scared she found me again."
You get the idea! Come to think of it: play at home!
Actually, according to the Journal story, Lorrie Norrington, president of eBay's marketplace operations, is pushing a different meaning of the phrase, "to shift the buyer perception of what eBay is today."
It has to since San Jose, Calif.-based eBay has seen its core marketplace business suffer, even as it has advertised less.
Here's a video of one of the new ads.
For more videos, see the original story.
Story Copyright (c) 2009 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.
Additional stories from AllThingsD
General Motors' pilot program to sell cars on eBay has reached the end of its road. The automaker said it's concluding the program as scheduled, effective Wednesday.
Launched on August 11, the eBay Motors pilot program offered California auto buyers new GM cars, which they could either negotiate for or "Buy it now" at the discounted selling price.
(Credit:
eBay Motors)
Initially set to expire September 8, the program was extended by GM until the end of the month.
The financial success of this pilot may be difficult to gauge. Earlier reports suggested that few sales were being generated. But GM discovered that tracking actual sales was more challenging than expected.
"Nobody's ever done this before, to sell new cars on eBay," said GM spokesman John McDonald. "So the whole point of the pilot was to learn some lessons. And one of the lessons we learned is that it's very difficult to track sales if they're not made directly through eBay. Unless you can tie a sale to an eBay interaction, it's difficult to come up with sales numbers. So we learned that we have to find a better way to (track sales.)."
The company has been encouraged by the figures it was able to track. Around 16,000 vehicles were listed online for the pilot, with more than 225 dealers participating. GM's eBay Motors site attracted 1.5 million visitors during the six-week period, said McDonald, with a total of 1.9 million searches conducted for vehicles. More than 15,000 leads were generated for dealers from potential new car buyers.
"The real intent of the program at the time and the reason we did it in California was that we wanted to raise awareness and consideration of GM products among people who wouldn't typically shop GM," said McDonald. The company wanted to target people who wouldn't normally go to Chevy.com or Buick.com, but would go to eBay to shop.
"Being the first manufacturer out there to put new vehicles online, I think in just that six-week period, it shows you that there were a lot of people looking at these vehicles who weren't looking at those vehicles before," said McDonald.
Unlike the typical eBay seller, GM wasn't auctioning off vehicles at bargain-basement prices, which may have dissuaded some buyers. "We're not fire-selling vehicles on eBay," explained McDonald. "There's a certain amount of user education in that, and a certain amount of dealer education."
A story in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reported that some dealers found they wasted time pouring through unrealistically low-ball bids that would never result in an actual sale.
McDonald said he understands where the dealers are coming from, and that's something GM can learn from if the company decides to roll out the program nationally next year.
"But the interesting thing about the comment is that they're interacting with customers who didn't even talk to them before," said McDonald. "Is it an offer that you may not be able to take? Probably. But are you talking to someone who wasn't even looking at GM products before? Yeah, you are. So now you've established a contact, and that's a big part of what we were trying to do with the program."
McDonald said a number of dealers liked the chance to extend their showrooms online. But reactions varied. Dealers who already used the Internet as part of their business knew how to work with the program. Dealers who weren't already online ran into more difficulty.
For its next step, GM will review the customer and dealer feedback and the lessons it learned to see if this program can fit in with the company's marketing plans moving forward. McDonald is optimistic. "We'd love to work with eBay next year to do something on a national level," he said. "But what that looks like and what the timing would be will depend on the results of this test."
