Steve Woda's blog

Google acquires Jotspot and its Wiki service

One of my favorite online services, JotSpot, was just acquired by Google.  JotSpot provides a robust do-it-yourself publishing application enabling anyone to create, publish, and share collaborative and personalized wiki applications.  JotSpot powers the wikis for thousands of businesses, and many of them are major brands including eBay.

The "Beltway Money Man"

Forbes Magazine recently called Core Capital's Jonathan Silver the "Beltway Money Man".  Jonathan is an investor in buySAFE and on our Board of Directors, and so I thought the article was a pretty interesting read.  Here is the link to "Beltway Money Man: Jonathan Silver".

PayPal to the rescue

Q3 financial results were announced today, and eBay's profits were up 10%.  That is good news for this battered stock, and it appears that lower taxes and PayPal were the major contributors.

eBay My World enters the world

eBay is rolling a new feature on their site called eBay My World (or at least I think it is new since I haven't seen this in the past).  You can check out my eBay My World page to get a sense of all the functionality they are pulling into one single page including Feedback Ratings, eBay listings, eBay blog posts, and biographical information.

WOMMA's Word of Mouth Marketing Summit Will Include More Than 70 WOM Expert Speakers

WOMMA (The Word of Mouth Marketing Association) is holding its next Word of Mouth Marketing Summit in Washington, D.C. on December 12 and 13.  It should be a great event.  There will be more than 70 speakers, several big-name authors, and three incredible keynotes all talking about word of mouth marketing.

If you are interested in word of mouth, viral, buzz, or blog marketing, you should try to make it to this conference.  You can register online at www.womma.org/summit2.

buySAFE Announces New Partnership With Travelers

Today, buySAFE announced a new partnership with The St. Paul Travelers Companies, one of the largest financial institutions in the world with more than $113 billion in assets.

The new Travelers relationship adds another major U.S. financial institution to buySAFE's growing team of business partners.  The Hartford Financial Services Group and The Rutherfoord Companies are major investors in buySAFE, and in 2005, Liberty Mutual Insurance Company joined with buySAFE to provide significant surety bond capacity for buySAFE's rapidly growing business on eBay, Overstock.com, and TIAS.

eBay Feedback Farms Undermine Feedback Ratings System

Last week, Ina Steiner documented the basic story of 'Feedback Farms' on eBay.

I have to be honest, these scams continue to amaze me, and one has to conclude that these scams are damaging and undermining the entire feedback/merchant rating system.  If fraudsters can so easily create feedback/merchant ratings in the thousands, then buyers will have to increase their vigilance online.  From a buyer's point of view, it continues to be more and more difficult to truly discern good from bad.

Legendary VC and Entrepreneur, Vinod Khosla, on Entrepreneurship

I recently spoke at Wharton, and one of the students asked if I could periodically post on my experiences as an entrepreneur.  I thought it was a great idea, and so here is my first of many thoughts on entrepreneurship.

Add Your Phishing Emails to the Phishtank

Phishtank is an interesting new anti-phishing service that recently launched to the public.  Brian Krebs of the Washington Post reviewed Phishtank, and I agree with many of his assessments.

The service is a great idea, and I like many facets of it.  I have always been a big fan of leveraging the collective knowledge of the community to identify and fight the bad guys.

My one issue with the service is the fact that they publish the URLs of the malicious sites on their home page.  People are pretty naive, and there are lots of people that will find this interesting and decide to visit these sites in their browser.  The problem is that these sites often attempt to exploit browser flaws, and surfers can fall victim to them by simply viewing the websites.  Obviously, publishing the URLs of the suspected malicious sites is not a great idea.

Still, I encourage you to check out the Phishtank (don't visit the malicious sites though), and if you find a suspicious website, make sure you add it to the Phishtank.

Greg Isaacs is Leaving eBay

Greg Isaacs, Director of eBay's Developers' Program, is leaving eBay after more than five years at the firm.  No announcement yet on what Greg will be doing, but one thing is for sure, he will be missed at eBay.

Good luck Greg.

Avoiding eBay eMail Scams

The following blog post provides basic, wise advice on how to avoid eBay / PayPal email scams.

"eBay and eMail Scams" at keep my engine running...

If you are interested in eBay, this blog is worth keeping tabs on.

Related blog posts:
"Top 10 Tips to Avoid Phishing Scams and Identity Theft"
"Richard Clarke's Views on Identity Theft" at Fraud, Phishing and Financial Misdeeds

"Opportunities and Threats of Online Auctions" - An Interesting Case Study

I ran across a case study this morning that discusses the opportunities and threats of online auctions, and it specifically focuses on the online auction site, eBid.   

The author is Khurram Memon of DeMontfort University.  I believe that as you continue to wrap your head around what is currently happening with the eBay marketplace and what you can expect with other eCommerce channels in the future, this will be an interesting case study for you to read.

Related blog posts, case studies, and presentations:

• "What is a 'Market for Lemons'?" blog post
• "What's Wrong With eBay? It's Simple Economics" blog post
• "buySAFE. Creating and Profiting from the Bonded Seller Advantage " case study by Dr. Eric Clemons, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
• "Building Buyer Confidence: The Economics of Information Asymmetry & Signaling" presentation at 2006 MIVA Small Business Conference
• "Everyone's a Critic. Not So Fast" blog post by Jeff Grass, buySAFE