It is not just Yahoo that is going through some rough times. After a decade at the helm, eBay CEO Meg Whitman is preparing to retire, reports the WSJ (subscr. req.). John Donahue, the president of eBay Marketplace, who was trotted out on a press tour about a month ago, is said to be the front-runner to be the next CEO.
During most of Whitman’s tenure, eBay seemed unstoppable. But the network effects that made it so powerful in the Web 1.0 era began to dissipate as destination sites began to lose some of their appeal. Now that people want to bring the Web to them—to their blog or MySpace or Facebook page—eBay needs to adapt to the new realities
It is not for lack of trying (see the bungled Skype acquisition). The old network effects still have a mighty pull, and generate a lot of money for eBay. Whitman maintained eBay’s dominant position in online auctions. But it just seems less and less relevant today.
Here is a ten-year stock chart. During the last two years, eBay has lost about half its value. Not a great note to leave on.
Some big changes (for good or bad??) this new year. Wonder what lies ahead!!!
Just think how powerful and Ebay – Amazon merger could be.
One destination for both the new and the old.
Btw..there has been an article last month on weblogsinc which seemed as a rumor back then. But now it all seems to make sense.
“Rumors claim that Meg Whitman has been penciled into her friend Mitt Romney’s potential presidential cabinet. Speculation also claims that Meg will be requesting a paid leave of absence from eBay to help Mitt pursue his presidential goal. ”
http://bstocksd...g-horror-of-it/
I just saw an entire hour long show on CNBC about ebay and how Meg Whitman was staying… way to go CNBC
It’ll be fascinating to see what changes ebay will make over the upcoming year with a new CEO.
Roman, may be you are referring to “The ebay effect” on CNBC. It first aired way back in June of 2005.
You might have watched a rerun.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with ebay business model, but their acquisition policy has been disastrous since Paypal.
If the value of the company is diluted via acquisitions, it is no wonder the price of Ebay stock has been trending downwards.
Ahaha Mashable beat you again! http://mashable...whitman-retire/ Too bad no one cares about what anyone else thinks. All hail the mighty Tech Crunch
its probably boredom, sure the money is nice, but think about it ebay is an established player, and after 10 years you probably get tired of doing the same things Especially now when ebay’s only option for growth is going into more countries and buying crappy companies to keep investors happy that you are doing something with all the money
Damm! I Didn’t realize that eBay had 4 splits. That’s $448 per share! Nice run Meg.
At least now I have some time to work on my much needed tan.
I wonder what Whitman will do when she retires. Hopefully she’ll start an Internet VC firm with the copious amounts of money she earned as a CEO during her tenure with eBay.
Ten years is a loooong time for a CEO. This could be the best or worst thing to happen to eBay depending on how you look at it. It depends on whether she has a hand in appointing her own replacement (and what type f person she is – she looks like a nice lady). From my own personal experience, outgoing CEO’S who have a hand in choosing their own successor generally pick someone ‘less than themselves’ – ’some one that will generally screw it up to a certain degree’ – nobody likes their successor to do better after they leave (unless of course they still have a shit-load of shares).
Just food or thought.
Major fee restructuring is all that is needed. People would be happy with no listing fees and only a small final value fee or vice versa. Totally free would be a stretch for ebay. Yes, there are other issues, but it seems like they just keep taking and taking. You would think seeing the massive growth of their own free classified sites (craigslist and kijiji) over the past few years would open their eyes to some kind of change. Oh well the more they don’t listen, the better it is for other’s such as ebid.com, gorage.com, blujay.com and etsy.com
they don’t know what to do with Skype. let it in the hands of somebody who does
Chris W
This is a publicly traded company we’re talking about here. A CEO is just a facilitator. The board will be choosing the new CEO and and the agenda for the incoming officer.
let’s not get too excited here
This past month or two ebay has had several discounted listing days (used to be FREE listing days years ago) in a row. They usually do it once, but 3 or 4 in a row has never happened in my memory. The first one was 20 cents, then 10 cents, then 20 cents again. Doesn’t take a crystal ball to guess that they’re going to reduce listing fees to either 10 or 20 cents very soon. That will mark the first time in memory that sellers have been given a break on fees.
It should give ebay a nice boost. Prices will go up, because sellers won’t feel pressured to price low enough to always sell the first time around. Also, many sellers will return that got pushed out by the fees. It isn’t uncommon for sellers to make less in profits than they end up paying in fees, which is pretty hard to stomach for long.
As Meg had famously stated during her initial years at eBay (when the company was kicking serious butt), no CEO should be at the helm for more than 10 years. I guess she is right that CEOs tend to be not so effective by the time they hit the 10-yr mark. Her own track record seems to be prove her statement. Whether her initial statement was made with any sort of real data or experience, it seems to be proven right.
I read a wired article about a month or two back which was sniping about ebay and how it seemed that the old guard were losing grip, with one insider referring to ebay as looking like a flea market.
I think the biggest challenge for the next CEO is really to figure out what the hell the company’s strategy is, and how their acquistions fit into that picture (Skype, Stumbleupon). I mean, I can’t believe the fact that having acquired Skype a while back, they don’t seem to have integrated it in any way into Ebay at all. This seems utterly crazy given that they spent somewhere around $4bn for Skype.
I wish whoever’s the next CEO good luck!
the next CEO will have some tough times ahead ..
I’m so glad to see what changes that the upcoming CEO does for the welfare of ebay.As a women she(Meg) had a good deal with the company hope the next one will espouse the thing she did or even better.
You are right E-Bay needs o integrate with other blockbuster social networks.
http://tekno-wo...ld.blogspot.com
btw, it’s John Donahoe, not John Donahue.
~alex (from the blog UsableMarkets.com)
Isn’t an auction marketplace the ideal business during a recession when people will unload their stuff to make money?
As others mentioned, the pricing mainly needs to be more seller friendly.
Why do people respect her leadership? She took a company with huge momentum and the benefits of network effects, got someone to fix some catastrophic infrastructure problems (remember the repeated eBay crashes of the late ’90’s?) and then basically screwed around for the rest of her tenure.
Sure, eBay had to wrestle with growth and user fraud, and they added things like merchant accounts, but these are middle-management initiatives. In the CEO’s domain (acquisitions and integration, setting standards for quality and constant innovation, building a respected management corps, setting inspiring strategic objectives) the company has been a failure.
eBay was THE auction site when Whitman go there. It could have gotten from there to here with a reasonably skilled director-level manager. Yet Whitman was paid in the hundreds of millions. The company’s board should go next.
The user interface for eBay hasn’t changed in 10 years* — I’m surprised that some web 2.0 startup hasn’t stolen the market from them already. Google should dump some muscle into the auction space and give eBay the b*tch slap it needs to get off of its lazy @ss.
* I noticed that there is a ‘new’ eBay but it’s optional and none of my saved searches from the ‘legacy eBay’ work with it. Nice!
Erick, it’s a mistake to suggest that eBay’s outlook as has anything to do with people’s increasing interest in FaceBook or MySpace. Web 2.0 and 1.0 exist together and there’s no evidence that 1.0 based businesses have any reason to fear. As long as people have something to sell eBay will do fine. They just can’t continue to grow at the same pace as before. This is true of almost every business.
Retire my ass. Try she got fired. Thank the guys at Skype for that. Like people in America were going to use Skype to big on auctions on ebay.
Best,
Carl
I agree that eBay seems less relevant today.
Their auction user experience is virtually unchanged from 10 years ago. If I want to buy something, I am confronted with numerous listings, some from auctions, some from eBay store sellers. All have their own (poorly) designed listing pages and descriptions, and many have different checkout mechanisms. Shipping costs can vary all over the place and outrageous shipping prices are often not obvious. Completing a purchase is a mystery: You select buy, then you’re routed to PayPal where you have yet another login and password (why is this still the case??), you click thru several more screens that eventually takes you back to eBay and you just hope it all works out in the end.
Contrast that to buying used products on Amazon, such as a used book or CD: same listing screen layout for everyone, fixed shipping prices for a given category of products, one-click purchase whether buying from Amazon of one of their resellers, and Amazon takes care of everything else. Couldn’t be easier.
Selling on eBay is still confusing and difficult. You still create each listing entirely from scratch, even if thousands of that particular item had been listed and sold before on eBay. You have to create your own shipping costs and rules, your own method-of-payment rules, you have to follow up with each buyer to get payment. That’s a lot of work just to unload your excess junk.
And then there’s the web 2.0 social network aspect. There’s really no way to integrate your eBay profile: items for sale, eBay wish list (oh yeah, eBay doesn’t have wish lists) on your Blog or any of your social network sites.
And as far as their acquisitions, why can’t I have a unified login for all of their properties: eBay, PayPal, Skype, etc., like I can with Google or Yahoo sites?
Lastly, I’m disappointed that the pace of Skype feature additions and innovations slowed down dramatically after the acquisition.
The upside: eBay still has the critical mass of users necessary for successful buying and selling. I hope they can get this ship back on course and be a leader again.
I told my would-be-manager at eBay, after rejecting their full-time job offer, that the company needed a major shakeup and a CEO replacement ASAP.
I was right again.
John D. will make Terry Semel look good. He will be the most incompetent CEO of a publicly traded Internet company ever.
It is Meg’s fault that Google dominates ecommerce.
#29: Not likely. Tired old executive blood served by forty-somethings with families and mortgages (and need for stability) is typically not the kind of company that “leads”.
eBay is a prime candidate for disruption. Aim your guns
Job well done, Meg.
That said, Meg Whitman has done wonders for the company. I’d give her the last year for trying to make things better. But she couldn’t so she’s leaving gracefully.
Meg Whitman is leaving because she has failed to deal with the company’s epidemic of listing policy abuses. “POWERSELLERS” have run amuck; it is quite common to see one powerseller selling up to two dozen of the same product (which is against the rules), while simultaneously including keywords in his auction titles which are unrelated (which is against the rules) or intentionally misleading (which is fraud, and against the rules).
If Meg Whitman had enforced her company’s own policies, the ‘eBay Community’ would not be the spam-riddled “powerseller” wasteland of fraud it is today. What a swamp.
Paul^^^ I agree Meg W rode on the coat tails of an emerging market thats it! If she was a good CEO she and ebay would be performing in today’s market.
What a receding hairline.
My suggestion to the next eBay CEO–make it easier to sort through the crap with better multi-variable searches (price, distance, etc included). I spend too much time sorting through eBay to justify the savings.
A cleaned up homepage wouldn’t hurt either. eBay in general just seems overwhelming considering how Amazon, SmartBargains, etc have cleaned up their sites and don’t have tons of information below the fold.
All companies have some kinds of problems. Name me one that’s trouble-free?
Meg has definitely done an excellent job throughout her 10-year tenure as
CEO of eBay.
I hope the company tanks, and tanks hard. High listing fees, high post-auction fees — coupled with high PayPal fees. I was almost losing money on every item I sold. Their customer service was poor, as well. That’s why I closed my accounts and quit. Won’t miss ‘em.
Here is the letter I just mailed to Meg. The names have been removed to protect the guilty (and to protect my identity from cyberstalkers):
January 22, 2008
Ms. Meg Whitman, CEO
Ebay
2145 Hamilton Avenue
San Jose, California 95125
Dear Ms. Whitman:
Since you are on your way out, perhaps you will be kind enough to pass this on to someone who is staying at Ebay.
I just closed my Ebay account (xxxx_xxxx) and PayPal account as well. I want to make sure someone at Ebay knows why.
I was a good seller and also an excellent customer. Up until Dec. 30, 2007, I had earned a 100% positive Ebay feedback rating. When I closed my account, I had earned 617 positives over 445 transactions.
Here are the two main reasons why I refuse to do any more business on Ebay:
I bid on, and won, two auctions from a seller named “xxxxxxxxxxx” (old Time Magazines from 1969). He cashed my check (he did not have a PayPal account), kept my money and never sent the magazines. I e-mailed him many times and never received a reply. I filed a claim and left negative feedback for him. Lo and behold, on the same day I left the negatives for him (Dec. 30, 2007), he decided to leave retaliatory negative feedbacks for me. They were libelous and he even called me a “scum,” which I believe is in violation of your guidelines. I called the Ebay toll-free number and was assured by the person I spoke with it “definitely was wrong of alfredsiler to do so” and they “would certainly look into it.” I later received a lame, “sorry-there’s-nothing- we-can-do-about-it” reply from Ebay. I was robbed, libeled – but Ebay absolved itself. A number of other buyers also had the same problem with this seller during the same time period and he began racking up negatives from the customers he’d scammed. Immediately after this happened, “alfredsiler” took his feedback private so that no one could see how he robbed other buyers – then he closed his account.
Over the Christmas holiday, I sold a soundtrack CD to a bidder named “XXXXXXXXXX” (XXXXX XXXXXXXX). He paid promptly and left positive feedback for me (including the words, “CD’s perfect!”). A couple of weeks later, after he had ample time to copy the CD, he decided he wanted a refund. Claimed it was not right, long after he left positive feedback and said it was “perfect.” I knew nothing was wrong with the CD – I copied it myself before I sold it to him. If there was a defect, it would have transferred to the copy. My auction stated, “as-is, no refunds.” He chose to file a claim with PayPal. I fought it because I am an honest merchant and this person was trying to gain free use of the CD. PayPal sided with him and awarded him a refund.
As a merchant on Ebay, I paid thousands of dollars in fees – listing fees, post-sale fees and PayPal transaction fees – to you and your company. I had an excellent reputation until you and your company chose to allow two thieves to steal from me.
Ebay is a big company and it will get along just fine without me. But I never will give Ebay another cent and I never will forget this injustice. I hope your replacement implements better customer service policies and new rules to protect good, honest people.
Sincerely,
XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXX
BS lip service from Ebay:
Dear XXX XXXXXX (XXX_XXXX):
As one of our most loyal and active members, your membership status entitles you to a toll-free telephone number to contact eBay’s customer service directly.
We’re here to help if you need us, so the next time you need assistance from eBay, you can give us a call:
800-717-EBAY (800-717-3229)
This phone number is only for members like you who have been invited to participate, so please be ready to provide your member ID when you call.
We appreciate your choice to use eBay and look forward to helping you make the most of your shopping experience. Please call us if you ever need a hand.
Sincerely,
eBay Customer Support
P.S. From time to time, if we notice you are having an issue with a transaction or a problem with your account, we may proactively try to reach you. Please help us provide the best possible service–make sure we have your correct contact phone number:
Maybe if they didn’t keep raising their fees for sellers every year, and prices on Ebay stayed low, they would have more sales. Just a thought on why Ebay could be declining.
It’s about time she goes, her iedas were old, she wanted to run ebay her way, not the way the people that built it (the sellers paying them the big bucks to list) wanted, sellers stoped listing like they once did, I guess she got the message
does anybody know of any other marketplaces besides the following?
ubid.com
gorage.com
blujay.com
etsy.com
alibaba.com
Would love to get a full list.
This is what I see on the web:
eBay-most illegal company
eBay-buster – USA (Tuesday, January 15, 2008)
I have studied eBay closely with friends and have found out that ebay should be the largest illegal company in the world, based on its size and volume of transactions. Just one of the simple questions here: eBay suspends 1000s of sellers everyday, accusing them of selling ‘illegal merchandise’, even without doing any verification. OK, say they are illegal merchandise, then, why, eBay/Paypal still keeps the share of money from selling these merchandise on eBay???? HAHA, this is the worst secret that eBay hides from the public! Now everyone can understand how much, I mean, how huge this amount of money it is!!! If these merchandise ARE illegal, then eBay is the biggest profit maker from these merchandise. God will punish the evil, eBay, stop covering yourself with the glorious nightgown of red, blue, orange and green colors! And shame to those Americans who regard eBay as their saint. We are an illeterate country!! That is why we even cannot find a president for it!
above is from:
http://www.ebay...dNews=453054651
http://www.paypalsucks.com/
I am overwhlemed to see this site!!!!!
She really broke down ebay, the numbers say everything.
Ebay is the most unsafety business.
When you think that you have your onw Business, ebay just suspend you account with out any explanation.like ” you work for than “.
After 8 year on ebay with over to 20000 positive feedback, 99% positive. they just removed my account , why ??? NO EXPLANATION.
Time for a new website come and replace ebay.
Ebay has gone down hill big time. I never seen so much fraud in my life on one site and Ebay will just ignore it. I was ripped off $40.00 a small amount of money I did get it back , but with no help form Ebay at all ! I did some investigating and found this seller has was ripping off many of buyers on Ebay and sending no merchandise at all. Well after I found this scum in another State. I notified the local police department there. they did nab this guy and found out he had ripped off $22,000 from fake auctions from Ebay. The FBI Seized his bank account where the $22,000 was from various buyers on Ebay. The District Attorney sent me a form along with my $40.00 check. the form was to prosecute this person for mail fraud. and various other crimes. I also received a copy of the full investigation, well should I say the high lights, from the FBI., and the local District Attorney in this state. I have head that Ebay does not investigate anything under $5000.00 , but for $22,000 they still did nothing. The entire amount of the $22,000 was all refunded to the buyers. Only because this scam artist kept copies of checks and money orders. The FBI did not even go through Ebay at all from what I was told. Ebay did nothing to help at all. I spoke to a customer service person at Ebay and she said it was a small amount and I should read about buyer beware . What kind of Answer is that.?
I want to thank the Great State of Florida.. Way to go Guys.. Great Job.
NO thanks to Ebay..