BuildaSkill.com

eBay Alienation Syndrome spreads to Media & Services

Garry HJ — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:44:40 +0000

Heavily journalled all over the internet, once ardent and dedicated eBay sellers have been leaving the auction site in droves since John Donahoe took over from Meg Whitman, in early 2008. Some would say it started before that, and some charting has been done to show annual seasonal migrations as far back as 2002. However [...]

PayPal closes Online Merchant Network

Garry HJ — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 07:57:25 +0000

In a brief email message with no prior warning, PayPal have announced the closure of their Online Merchant Network site, which required specific registration, and have moved the content into a new open-to-all section of the main site, called the Business Resource Centre. The new Business Resource Centre is stated as needing no registration and anyone [...]

2009 a Bumper Year for smaller online venues

Garry HJ — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:28:16 +0000

Anyway you look at it, the two years of disruptive innovation at eBay have created a new form of virtual communism. Both buyers and sellers, disenfranchised by the sweeping changes to the culture, ethos, and operations of the auction giant, have migrated out across the web, clustering in new homes in a commune-like fashion. Whether it [...]

Kindle market open globally to authors, publishers, Royalties Up

Garry HJ — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 06:01:26 +0000

Amazon’s Kindle and Kindle DX are portable readers, which use wireless technology to download books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution electronic ink display with the look of real paper. As a channel to replace eBay’s closing of the digital downloads category, the Kindle bookstore has until now only been available to [...]

eBid rolls new look site for 2010, misses some marks

Garry HJ — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 07:13:53 +0000

After a minor delay past the originally announced launch date, UK auction site eBid rolled out their new look this month. Visually more modern than the old site appearance, with little discernible effect on load time, the bright, fresh, new look is sure to appeal to buyers who’ve never visited one of the company’s 18 country [...]

Amazon Q4-2009 Financials Live Webcast 28 Jan 2010

Garry HJ — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:40:50 +0000

Amazon’s Conference call for their Q4-2009 results will be held on 28th January, and webcast live, with archives of the broadcast held for public viewing for three months. Amazon has announced today that it will hold a conference call to discuss its fourth quarter 2009 financial results on 28th January 2010, at 2:00 p.m. PT / [...]

eBay’s Q4-2009 Results – Operations Income DOWN 30%

Garry HJ — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:13:30 +0000

eBay posted their financial report for the last quarter of 2009, this week, and opened the statement by blaming Skype for causing a 3% drag on gross revenue growth. The leader paragraph states that comparing Q4 2008 to 2009, revenues rose 16% inclusive of the Skype ownership period, but that factoring Skype out of the numbers [...]

Amazon and eBay Race for Haiti and P.R. Kudos

Garry HJ — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:30:22 +0000

A major earthquake struck the Caribbean island of Haiti on Tuesday 12 Jan, and measured 7.0 on the Richter scale. This was significantly less than the 7.9 ‘quake that triggered the Boxing Day 2004 Asian Tsunami, yet TV pictures show significant on-shore damage and a country desperately needing help. In a race to launch assistance gathering [...]

A First for BuildaSkill

Garry HJ — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:15:01 +0000

No, sorry if you were thinking we’d won some sort of award. I think we all hope that will happen, but know it never will. This is a short post, because for the very first time ever, we’re featuring a video in a blog post. Yup, we’re seriously behind the times on this, and should have [...]

MoneyBookers to introduce Sender Fees in March 2010

Garry HJ — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:48:52 +0000

In a notification by email, wishing all merchants a Happy New Year, UK-based P2P online money transfer service MoneyBookers have announced they will soon be collecting fees from both the sender and the receiver. In the short two paragraph footer to the Merchant Notification email, which revealed that over 60,000 merchants have integrated the MoneyBookers eWallet [...]