Steve Woda's blog

Daily Roundup for 2008-04-14

• Is Yahoo Right to Resist Microsoft?
  Yahoo's resistance to a takeover by Microsoft looks foolhardy to some investors and Wall Street analysts. But the push-back may prove effective in the end—at least by forcing the suitor to cough up a few more bucks a share.  Executives from Yahoo (YHOO) on Apr. 7 reiterated the reasons for their opposition. The $31-a-share offer, made public Feb. 1, "substantially undervalues" Yahoo, and its stock component is even less attractive in light of Microsoft's (MSFT) slumping share price. "We have continued to launch new products and to take actions which leverage our scale, technology, people, and platforms as we execute on the strategy we publicly articulated," Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock wrote.


• Yahoo Gets a Deadline
  Microsoft (MSFT) just dropped the bomb on Yahoo (YHOO). Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Apr. 5 sent a letter giving Yahoo's board three weeks before it initiates a proxy fight, including nomination of a new slate of directors likely to approve the deal.

Daily Roundup for 2008-04-08

• Just What We Needed, Google on Speed - Google Everflux
  Is it just me or has Google gone into overdrive? As a professional full-time online marketer I have to keep my mind firmly placed on what Google is doing. As much as I try not to because Google has probably driven more people around the bend than Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz put together. Like any professional marketer, I monitor my numerous keywords on a daily basis - especially my major targeted keyword phrases that bring in the most sales and subscribers. For years now, I have had top rankings in Google for my chosen phrases; they move up and down, but mostly they don't leave the first page.


• Beam it up: Tiny projectors to magnify cell-phone cinema - Technology Review
  Recognizing that it is not much fun to watch movies on a tiny cell phone, a number of companies are racing to develop gadgets that project what's playing on the small screen onto walls, table cloths and other handy surfaces. ''Pico projectors'' that are small enough to carry around in a shirt pocket are expected on the market later this year. Eventually, the technology will be tiny enough to be built into phones and portable media players, the companies say.

Daily Roundup for 2008-04-07

• Busting a Rogue Blogger
  Of the many blogs born last May, Patent Troll Tracker seemed as innocuous as any. Its focus: the obscure but controversial subject of "patent trolls," a derogatory term used to describe businesses that make money by purchasing patents and then suing big companies for infringement. The author was clearly no fan of the practice, but his or her identity was a mystery. The "about me" section of the blog noted that the writer was simply "a patent lawyer trying to gather and organize information about patent litigation."  Through regular, copious posts, Troll Tracker quickly drew a devoted following in patent law circles, even among those who disagreed with its point of view. What readers didn't know, however, was that the blogger was Rick Frenkel, in-house patent counsel at Cisco Systems (CSCO), the Internet infrastructure giant.


• Ad Spending Grows on News Sites, But... - eMarketer
  Ad spending on newspaper Web sites increased to $3.2 billion in 2007, up 18.8% over 2006, according to preliminary estimates released by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) in late March.  The trade group said that online ad spending accounted for 7.5% of all newspaper ad spending in 2007, up from 5.7% in 2006.

Daily Roundup for 2008-04-04

• Google's Gamble
  Can fewer clicks on its search ads lead to more revenue for Google? That is the question investors, analysts, and the company itself are trying to answer. The debate was launched after a Mar. 26 report from researcher comScore (SCOR) showed a decline in the number of clicks from the prior month on Google's search-related ads. According to the research firm, clicks on ads declined 3% in February from the prior month and were up just 3% compared to last year. Some analysts cautioned investors against buying additional Google (GOOG) shares; Google's stock declined 3% on Mar. 27, to $444.


• Mashup Security - Technology Review
  Mashups--online applications that combine data and tools from different websites--are becoming increasingly useful. Although they started out as simple consumer programs, such as a tool that placed housing listings from Craigslist onto Google Maps, mashups have grown in complexity and are becoming popular with corporations, too. As a growing number of tools are released to help people easily build mashups, experts are also taking a look at how to head off the security risks.

Google TiSP - A FREE in-home wireless broadband service!

Google launches new services with astonishing speed, and today's announcement is no exception.  The latest Google invention is designed to help budget in these challenging economic times.

Starting today (4/1/08), you can sign up for Google TiSP. With Google TiSP, you'll get a speedy broadband connection for free! You can also pay extra for a faster connection.

Of course, there are a few fine print details to Google's TiSP service. For example, you'll need to install TiSP yourself. So read the details carefully. Obviously, you will want to understand what rights you're giving away when you use the TiSP service.

Google's TiSP only works with Windows. But Google promises that support for the Mac is coming soon.

Learn more about the Google TiSP (BETA), a FREE in-home wireless broadband service>>

Daily Roundup for 2008-03-08

• Jeremy Siegel on Politicians, Prices and a Potential 'Buying Opportunity of the Decade' - Knowledge@Wharton
  The U.S. Presidential race has reached a critical juncture. The Republicans have a confirmed nominee in John McCain; as for the Democrats, Hillary Clinton has bounced back, while Barack Obama retains a marginal lead in terms of delegates. How the presidential race evolves will be shaped in part by the increasingly worrisome state of the U.S. economy. Consumer prices are rising, oil has crossed $103 a barrel and gold is nudging $1,000 an ounce -- suggesting that the economy could be entering a phase of 1970s-style stagflation. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, however, told Congress last week that he doesn't anticipate stagflation, and he continues to indicate his willingness to keep cutting interest rates. What lies ahead for the U.S. and world economies? Knowledge@Wharton discussed these questions and more with finance professor Jeremy Siegel, author of The Future for Investors.


• Ecommerce Blogging: Who, What And When: Well-written blogs create credibility, interest
  Last month I talked about blogging platforms and the value blogging can bring to ecommerce sites. When a website makes the decision to begin a blog and decides upon a blogging platform, it will then have to decide who will blog and how often. Time allotted to blogging is also a relative issue, as is subject matter. So why bother at all?  Relative to static ecommerce sites, search engines consider blogs more real and trusted because blogs tend to have fresh content and there is a less financial, more informational link between a blog and its readers. An ecommerce site should take advantage of this tendency by adding a blog to augment the overall site.

Daily Roundup for 2008-03-01

• Google Muscles Further Into Business Software - Forbes.com
  Google is launching Web-based collaboration software that aims to make it easy for groups to share and edit materials such as documents, photos, video and spreadsheets on a single site. Easy enough, Google hopes, to make selling software applications to enterprises a bit harder for the likes of IBM and Microsoft.


• Use of Google for Data Triggers Fears
  It's called "Google hacking" - a slick data-mining technique used by the Internet's cops and crooks alike to unearth sensitive material mistakenly posted to public Web sites.  And it's just gotten easier, thanks to a program that automates what has typically been painstaking manual labor. The program's authors say they hope it will "screw a large Internet search engine and make the Web a safer place."

Google is an advertising cheapskate!

What is the most valuable brand in the world?  Google is the number one brand in the world with an estimated value of $66 billion according consulting firm Millward Brown Optimor. 
This got me thinking... How did Google become the most valuable brand in the world in just a short nine years?  As the Founder of a consumer-focused internet company, I find this question very interesting.  Conventional wisdom would suggest that Google must spend billions of dollars in advertising every year to accomplish such an impressive feat.

Well after a bit of research, one thing becomes clear... Google is an advertising cheapskate!

buySAFE on The Today Show!

The past few days have been quite exciting here at buySAFE.  Last week, buySAFE was featured on The Today Show.  The "Designer Duds: Fake or Real?" segment, reported by Today's consumer affairs reporter Janice Lieberman, discussed the growing e-commerce problem of counterfeit luxury goods.  As expected, buySAFE was showcased as a terrific solution to the counterfeit goods problem.

Counterfeit/fake/stolen goods are obviously becoming a major issue for e-commerce, but in my opinion, this problem is actually a symptom of a much larger, more important, fundamental problem... Online, buyers have a very difficult time discriminating good sellers/product from bad sellers/product.  The REAL problem is that the Web suffers from major information asymmetry issues.  That is why bad guys are successful at defrauding consumers. 

Please think about my diagnosis for a moment... If consumers could tell the difference from the good guys and the bad guys, would shoppers ever unknowingly buy a counterfeit item?  Of course not!  Fraud happens because of information asymmetry.

I think you will find the "Designer Duds: Fake or Real?" news segment very interesting.  However, as you watch this clip, please understand that the counterfeit/fake/stolen goods fraud problem is due to a more fundamental e-commerce problem... Buyers can't reliably tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys!  In economic terms, this is called information asymmetry, and it is causing legitimate, professional merchants millions of dollars each and every day.

Kudos to Jeff Grass, buySAFE's CEO, for a job well done!

Related blog posts and e-commerce articles:
"Designer Duds: Fake or Real?" by Janice Lieberman on The Today Show and iVillage.com
"buySAFE Invited By the French Government to Help Stop Online Sales of Counterfeit Luxury Goods" by Travis Brown on the buySAFE blog
"eBay Bonding Service buySAFE Featured on Today Show" by Ina Steiner on AuctionBytes.com
"buySAFE Appearance on 3/20/2007 Today Show" on AuctionBytes.tv

International Visitors Drive eBay Traffic

This AuctionBytes article by Lissa McGrath is a couple of months old, but I find it to be quite fascinating. 

During this past holiday shopping season, about 70% of eBay's website traffic came from beyond the United States' borders.  Wow!  Obviously, the international Internet is the real deal in 2007.  I haven't spent any time independently analyzing this traffic data, but if true, it provides a fascinating view of how the eCommerce marketplace is evolving.

Google's Universal Gadgets

Last month, Google expanded their Gadget product so that you can now add Google Gadgets to any web page on the Internet.  The Google Universal Gadget is a big step beyond the previous incarnation that simply allowed you to add the Google Gadgets to your Google Homepage and Desktop.  I didn't notice this improvement when it was first expanded, so I am bit late to the game.  However, I wanted to point it out to you because I love the product.

Interested developers can build Universal Gadgets by using Google's API, and then users can take the Google Gadget and put it on any web page.

Here is an example using buySAFE's Google Gadget.  All I had to do was go the buySAFE Shopping Google Gadget page, tailor the look and feel of the Gadget, and then cut and paste the following HTML code into my post.

<script src="http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.
buysafeshopping.com/bss_module.xml&up_showSearch=1&
up_showCategories=1&up_showWatchList=1&up_searchTerm
=diamond&up_category=-1&up_lowprice=&up_highprice=&
up_sellerName=&up_sort=1&synd=open&w=320&h=450&
title=buySAFE+Shopping&border=%23ffffff%7C0px%2C1px
+solid+%23595959%7C0px%2C1px+solid+%23797979%7C0px
%2C2px+solid+%23898989&output=js"></script>

Voila! The buySAFE Shopping Gadget is up and running on my blog page.  Go ahead and do a quick buySAFE Shopping search via the Gadget below.  In my opinion, this is very cool.

It was very easy to create the buySAFE Shopping Google Gadget, and some developers are reporting that it can take less than 5 minutes to create simple Gadgets.  Check it out and have fun!

Related links:
"Google Universal Gadgets for your website released" by Jason S
"Add and Embed Google Universal Gadgets Modules to Websites and Blogs" by My Digital Life

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.

Google Planning Product Search for Holidays

The Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (PESA) held its semi-annual gather in San Francisco this past week.  The PESA Summit 2006 was a huge success with many of eBay's largest sellers in attendance in addition to many of the most important companies in ecommerce.  buySAFE has sponsored every PESA Summit since the group's inception in 2004. 

Although the group includes eBay in its name, most of these merchants are actually multi-channel retailers seeking to sell product whereever they can make reasonable profits.  These days, that actually means eBay sellers want to sell off eBay.  AuctionBytes has recently produced some very interesting research on the trend to move beyond eBay.  ChannelAdvisor's Scot Wingo covered eBay's challenges on his blog last week as well  I will be writing more about this trend over the coming days because it is obviously important for all of us in ecommerce.

Fall 2006 PESA (Professional eBay Sellers Alliance) Summit in San Francisco, CA

The Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (PESA) has announced that its Fall 2006 Summit will take place in San Francisco, California on 9/20/06 - 9/22/06.  I have attended three or four PESA Summits, and they are always fabulous events.  The attendees list includes many of eBay's largest merchants, and since most of them run fairly large multi-channel operations, these sellers also represent some of the most successful small and medium e-commerce retailers in the world.  Many of the largest e-commerce service providers will also be in attendance including eBay, Google, Overstock.com Auctions, Amazon.com, PayPal, buySAFE, ChannelAdvisor, and Infopia.  Therefore, the Summit is a great business development event as well.

If you haven't registered for the event, you should do so quickly.  The event is limited to the first 300 registrants.  You can register at PESA's website.

Rapleaf, Portable Reputation & Portable Trust

I had a very interesting conversation last week with a smart entrepreneur named Auren Hoffman in San Francisco. His company, RapLeaf, aims to enable portable reputation signals for people and merchants. I like almost everything I heard about what RapLeaf is trying to do, and I plan to keep close tabs on and cheer for their success.  I just signed up for Rapleaf, and you can see my Rapleaf reputation here...

I love the idea of portable trust and reputation signals.  These two things are obviously related, but it is important to note that they are different.

We consider buySAFE a portable trust signal for online merchants. Our objective is to become the world's leading eCommerce Trust & Safety company by making every online transaction trusted, reliable and risk-free.  So far, so good.  Today, you can find the buySAFE Seal on millions of Internet and eBay listings each and every day. At buySAFE, we enable merchants to leverage our powerful trust signal and bond guarantees across all of their eCommerce sales channels including eBay, Overstock.com Auctions, TIAS, and most recently, their web storefronts.

buySAFE's trust signal is very black and white. You are either bonded or not. As a buyer, you are either going to enter into a risk-free transaction with a Bonded Seller, or you are going to enter into an uncertain transaction with a non-bonded seller.  Regardless of your feedback rating, the equation is still the same...risk-free or uncertainty! It is really that simple. Please check out these two stories on some of eBay's former top feedback rating sellers to understand my point...GlacierBayDVD & Sell2All.

buySAFE believes that "no risk" is the only viable, future option for eCommerce. Buyers don't want "a little bit less risk" or "substantially less risk"..... As the eCommerce markets mature, "no risk" is the only real option that merchants will be able to offer consumers if they want to attract and convert sales. buySAFE obviously believes that certainty is a powerful concept in signaling and that it is the missing piece in ecommerce transactions with unknown entities (I will be posting a lot in the future on the economic concepts that folks must understand in order to optimize their sales online).

Having said all of that, it is not an easy feat to become a Bonded Seller. You have to be a professional seller with a good reputation, previous sales experience, minimum sales volumes, and adequate financial stability in order to be a Bonded Seller.

What I like about RapLeaf is that it signals to buyers that the individual/merchant has a history of transacting fairly.  It is essentially a portable reputation signal that individuals/merchants can leverage on all of their online sales channels.  Rapleaf doesn't ensure that you won't have a bad experience, but it is a nice reputation signal for those individuals/merchants that cannot qualify to be Bonded Sellers.  That really is a huge benefit for online shoppers.  Frankly, I believe there will be lots of Bonded Sellers that will enjoy the extra benefit of a portable reputation whether that comes from RapLeaf or eBay or whoever.

Obviously, buySAFE doesn't enable individuals to rate each other, and buySAFE has chosen to not to do this for a number of reasons. First, we started buySAFE on eBay, and eBay is very protective of its turf including its feedback rating system.  Obviously, the feedback system is critical to eBay's success thus far, but that doesn't mean it is the optimal system.  I don't believe it is, and I will be talking more about this in future posts.

One last thought... Scot Wingo did a very nice job touching on portable reputation signals back in March.  He is a very smart guy, and his post is very insightful on this subject.  I do not agree with all of his thoughts, but his insights are very important nevertheless.  Most specifically, I disagree with Scot's thesis that Google might be in the ideal position to provide a portable trust or reputation signal.  I believe buySAFE is in a far better position to provide the ideal portable trust signal for shoppers and merchants, and I hope to prove that to you over the coming weeks and months.

Google is an unbelievable company (I own its stock), but it is not an objective third party.  Payment providers and marketplaces, by definition, have to be buyer biased in order to create adequate buyer demand.  It is impossible for these firms to be effective "trust brokers" if they have any bias towards either party.  Google is now both a payments company (Google Checkout) and a marketplace (Google Base, AdSense, etc..).  By law, buySAFE has to be a discerning, objective mediator because we are regulated by the state insurance regulators in all 50 states.  We are required to protect buyers, but we are also required to protect the interests of sellers from bad buyers.  Google cannot and will not do that for merchants, and so, it can't provide the optimal portable trust or reputation signal.  eBay and PayPal are obviously hampered by the same challenges.

Of course, they could always use a simple merchant rating system, but again, merchant rating systems are extremely imperfect signals, and the merchant ratings are not backed up by foolproof guarantees of seller performance.  Coincindentally, Ina Steiner of AuctionBytes wrote on the subject of Google's Rating System this morning.

We will be talking a lot about eBay, Google, the economic concepts of signaling, and online trust & safety over the coming months, and I hope this is helpful for you.  Again, I am excited about Rapleaf, and I am cheering for their success.  I am not sure what they will be able to do with their business model, but I definitely see the value they can provide online shoppers.  Good luck Auren!

Google launches Google Calendar

Well we talked about this back in December, and it has finally happened. Google launched Google Calendar last week. I like it, and I suspect it will gain nice traction. I have used Yahoo's calendar for a couple of years now, but I have always struggled with the "sharing" functionality. Google's sharing functionality seems to work flawlessly...so far. This is my favorite part of the product.

Check it out when you get a chance.

Google announces launch of Google Romance

Google has done it again. I always enjoy their annual April Fool's jokes, and this one is pretty creative.

This year, Google announced the launch of Google Romance. The Solumate Search and Contextual Dating options sound impressive. :)

Anyone remember Google Gulp in 2005?

In 2004, Google began hiring for lunar engineers for the Google Copernicus Center.

In 2002, Google announced the real secret behind their fabulous search technology, Google PigeonRank.

In 2000, launched the Google MentalPlex.

They sure do have fun over there. A belated April Fool's Day to all.

Microsoft offers challenge to eBay and Google Base

Microsoft has finally launched its Windows Live Expo. eBay now has to consider not just the competitive threat of Google and its Google Base, but now Microsoft as well. Although 2005 was a very interesting year for eCommerce, I believe 2006 is going to be even more exciting. Obviously, the Live Expo site is brand new, and so the functionality and inventory of listings is still pretty light. However, like almost everything that Microsoft decides to tackle, I expect Live Expo will ultimately be a decent eCommerce channel at some point soon. For every eCommerce entrepreneur that makes a living selling online and for every company that supports these online merchants, the additional online competition is likely to bring new opportunity and decreased dependencies/risk. For most of us, Microsoft's entry is a positive event.

Google Calendar?

Is Google planning to launch a Google Calendar? Well there are lots of folks that seem to think so. The rumor mill is working overtime with speculation that Google will make a big announcement at the Web 2.0 Conference in Palo Alto, CA on Tuesday, and all signs point to a new Google Calendar.

This would be a terrific piece of functionality in my mind...if done well. There are a lot of calendar tools out there, and most fail miserably. I recently signed up for Trumba after participating in a BzzAgent campaign, and I really like the service. I can share my calendar with friends, family and co-workers on a scheduled basis, and it syncs seamlessly with my Outlook. Overall, it is better than anything else I have found.

Still, there is a lot left to be desired, and Google might be able to provide that answer. My biggest concern about Google Calendar is whether or not it will sync with my Outlook. If it doesn't, I probably won't use it. Let's hope it does.