AllThingsD » John Donahoe http://allthingsd.com Sat, 26 May 2012 02:18:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 http://allthingsd.com/theme/images/logo-rss.jpg All Things Digital http://allthingsd.com/ 144 22 PayPal to Unveil Newest Retail Partners for In-Store Payments Next Week http://allthingsd.com/20120515/paypal-to-unveil-newest-retail-partners-for-in-store-payments-next-week/ http://allthingsd.com/20120515/paypal-to-unveil-newest-retail-partners-for-in-store-payments-next-week/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 21:56:57 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=208601 PayPal is hosting a media event next week where it will unveil the next batch of mega-retailers that are adopting the company’s online payment network at the register.

In an invitation sent to All Things D, the company says: “Meet PayPal’s new president, David Marcus; be the first to speak to PayPal’s new, brand-name retail partners; and get an exclusive sneak peek at how PayPal plans to make payments easier than ever for tens of thousands of mid-size merchants.”

The two-and-a-half-hour event will take place on Thursday at the company’s San Jose campus.

It’s unclear which retailers will be on hand, but so far, the company has been working with major retailers, like Home Depot, and there have been other unconfirmed reports of a relationship with Office Depot.

To date, eBay’s CEO John Donahoe has been careful to characterize this year as an experimental period, where the company will be laying the groundwork for its entrance into the physical payments space with several deployments. It is not banking on scaling the operation until the following year.

Right now, PayPal has presented two solutions to retailers, including a plastic credit card that allows purchases to be charged to a PayPal account and a mobile payments solution, which allows customers to enter their mobile phone number and a PIN into the payment terminal without the need for the phone to be present at the time of purchase.

The approach is much different than what Google Wallet is pitching, which ironically launched its product exactly a year ago next week. Google’s deployments, which relied on near field communication technology, have been hindered by low adoption by both retailers and the carriers.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120515/paypal-to-unveil-newest-retail-partners-for-in-store-payments-next-week/feed/ 0 Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him http://allthingsd.com/20120509/loeb-again-calls-for-thompson-firing-from-yahoo-as-former-ebay-boss-support-him/ http://allthingsd.com/20120509/loeb-again-calls-for-thompson-firing-from-yahoo-as-former-ebay-boss-support-him/#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 14:33:40 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=205930

As expected, activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point released a new letter on the bio controversy he set off at Yahoo, again calling for the firing of its CEO, Scott Thompson.

“It seems farcical to us that the Board will most likely spend more time deliberating over whether Mr. Thompson should be fired than it did properly vetting whether he should have been hired,” read the letter in part. “The necessary investigation into whether certain senior executives and Board Members knew of Mr. Thompson’s deceptions before hiring him should not delay decisive action over his ethical breaches.”

Loeb, who is waging a proxy fight with Yahoo over board seats he wants, also offered to work with the Yahoo board to find a new CEO if it accepted his slate of directors. In the interim, he suggested Yahoo put either CFO Tim Morse or media head Ross Levinsohn in the job. Morse had taken that position temporarily after Yahoo fired its last CEO Carol Bartz last fall.

Confused yet?

Loeb set off a management crisis there last week with the revelation that Thompson had added a fake computer science degree to his bio.

The first casualty came yesterday with the stepping down of Yahoo director Patti Hart, who was charged with vetting Thompson for the job.

The Yahoo board also announced yesterday that it would be conducting a probe of the circumstances around the hiring, as well as how the faux academic credentials got in Thompson’s bio and also the company’s regulatory filings.

The new letter was a reaction to Thompson’s apology on Monday for the borked bio becoming a “distraction” (but not, oddly, for the mistake itself). Loeb had previously called for Thompson’s firing over the bio fibbing.

Loeb will be appearing at an investor conference in Las Vegas later today, where he will surely be asked about the situation.

In related news, eBay CEO John Donahoe, Thompson’s former boss, lent words of support, but also underscored that the online commerce company’s legal filings of his bio were always correct, even if its Web site and other PR documents handed out were not. Thompson came to Yahoo from a stint as president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit.

As reported by Bloomberg, Donahoe said:

“When Scott was hired at EBay Inc., all of EBay’s filings had the accurate information. Some of EBay’s PR materials had that bio. Our legal filings were taken care of by our legal department. Some of the PR materials had that info,” he said while in Tokyo of the correct bio versus the incorrect one.

Donahoe added: “I think Scott Thompson did a great job at PayPal. I think he’s a very talented leader and I believe he can help Yahoo. I hope they get through this and he can continue to do the very challenging job he’s got of helping to turn Yahoo around. I’m Scott’s biggest fan.”

This has been the first public support of Thompson by a prominent Internet figure, which might help lagging morale at the company.

Here’s the full version of the latest Loeb letter:

Third Point May 9 Letter Release

RELATED POSTS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120509/loeb-again-calls-for-thompson-firing-from-yahoo-as-former-ebay-boss-support-him/feed/ 0 Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today? http://allthingsd.com/20120509/place-your-bets-will-loeb-drop-another-bomb-on-yahoo-at-vegas-confab-later-today/ http://allthingsd.com/20120509/place-your-bets-will-loeb-drop-another-bomb-on-yahoo-at-vegas-confab-later-today/#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 13:00:48 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=205749

Daniel Loeb of Third Point — the activist shareholder who set off a management crisis at Yahoo last week with the revelation that new CEO Scott Thompson had added a fake computer science degree to his bio — will be onstage at a high-profile investor confab in Las Vegas this afternoon.

It’s Loeb’s first public appearance since he scored a direct hit on Yahoo in his ongoing proxy fight against the company — a first casualty yesterday, with the stepping-down of Yahoo director Patti Hart, who was charged with vetting Thompson for the job.

With one win like that, can Loeb resist using the panel — titled “Titans of Wall Street: Insight & Strategies for Capitalizing on Today’s Markets” — to strafe Yahoo a bit?

Sources said Loeb is prepping some reaction to Thompson’s apology on Monday for the borked bio becoming a “distraction” (but not, oddly, for the mistake itself), as well as an offer to work with the Yahoo board on a new CEO choice. Loeb has called for Thompson’s firing over the bio fibbing.

But the pugnacious investor will likely also be asked to opine on the situation so far at the off-the-record SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, which describes itself as “committed to facilitating balanced discussions and debates on macro-economic trends, geo-political events and alternative investment opportunities within the context of a dynamic global economy.”

What will be more interesting to see in the days ahead — even as the Yahoo board investigates how the false information about Thompson’s academic credentials got on that bio, as well as in regulatory filings — is if Loeb can be more than just a bomb-thrower and put forth a more specific and substantive plan for the long-troubled company than he has so far.

It’s not a requirement, of course, since Loeb is only seeking board seats and is not lobbying to be CEO, whose job it is to formulate a cogent strategy. But other Yahoo shareholders he is seeking to convince to join him in his proxy battle probably want more than “Yahoo stinks” from him at some point.

Still, for today at about 1:35 pm PT, when Loeb is scheduled to speak, it’s probably a good bet to expect some less-than-pretty noise from Sin City.

Update: In related news, eBay CEO John Donahoe, Thompson’s former boss, lent words of support but also underscored that the commerce company’s legal filings of his bio were always correct, even if its Web site was not. Thompson came to Yahoo from a stint as president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit.

As reported by Bloomberg, Donahoe said:

“When Scott was hired at EBay Inc., all of EBay’s filings had the accurate information. Some of EBay’s PR materials had that bio. Our legal filings were taken care of by our legal department. Some of the PR materials had that info,” he said while in Tokyo, of the correct bio versus the incorrect one.

Donahoe added: “I think Scott Thompson did a great job at PayPal. I think he’s a very talented leader and I believe he can help Yahoo. I hope they get through this and he can continue to do the very challenging job he’s got of helping to turn Yahoo around. I’m Scott’s biggest fan.”

This has been the first public support of Thompson by a prominent Internet figure, which might help lagging morale at the company.

RELATED POSTS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120509/place-your-bets-will-loeb-drop-another-bomb-on-yahoo-at-vegas-confab-later-today/feed/ 0 eBay's CEO Says It's "Shifting From Defense to Offense" http://allthingsd.com/20120419/ebays-ceo-says-its-shifting-from-defense-to-offense/ http://allthingsd.com/20120419/ebays-ceo-says-its-shifting-from-defense-to-offense/#comments Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:30:48 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=198141
Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

Watch out Amazon, eBay is coming for you.

Or, at least, that was the undertone of eBay’s conference call yesterday.

The company reported strong first-quarter results, beating both top- and bottom-line projections. It also raised guidance for the year, and said its business is stronger than it has been in five years.

“Our marketplaces business has turned the corner, shifting from defense to offense, and is delivering accelerating results,” said eBay’s CEO John Donahoe in the call.

This morning, the San Jose company’s stock was up nearly 16 percent, soaring to $41.58 a share. The rally easily pushes the company’s stock past its previous 52-week high of $38.18.

A number of years ago, eBay had hit rock bottom, sort of like Yahoo or AOL today.

Since then, Donahoe has been working hard to reinvent the entire eBay.com experience. He says the first quarter results are the first indication that the work is starting to pay off.

“It’s a significantly improved experience, and it’s not just current users, but it’s new users, who are coming to eBay and saying they really like it — maybe they haven’t been here in 10 years, but they are saying ‘Wow, this is different,’” Donahoe said in an interview. ”The pace of innovation is accelerating.”

The revival was fueled by a new TV advertising campaign around the holidays that had the tagline “Get it new, get it now,” which highlighted the company’s fixed price business. During the quarter, the company’s fixed priced business grew 18 percent. The company said the number of new buyers on the site also was up 9.5 percent in the quarter.

The company’s first quarter revenues totaled $3.3 billion, an increase of 29 percent year over year. For the same period, net income totaled $570 million, increasing 20 percent.

The strong results were attributable to the turnaround in its marketplaces business, but also PayPal and the recently acquired GSI Commerce division.

During the quarter, PayPal revenue increased 32 percent year over year to $1.3 billion, and GSI generated $715 million in merchandise sales, up 26 percent over the same period a year earlier.

In addition to conducting a turnaround, eBay is also aggressively pushing into new markets.

With PayPal, it’s rolling out new payments services, like mobile payments and in-store payments at check-out. With the help of GSI and a new division called X.commerce, the company is also concentrating on building tools that third-party offline and online retailers can use to more effectively compete against Amazon.

It is both of those businesses that Donahoe is tremendously excited about.

Yesterday, I reported that Square, which is a start-up in the mobile payments space, was attempting to raise capital at a $4 billion valuation — providing some validation to a similar PayPal product called Here.

“What I’m enormously excited about is I think PayPal Here has real capabilities that are even better than Square’s,” he said. “I think there’s enormous growth in that sector.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120419/ebays-ceo-says-its-shifting-from-defense-to-offense/feed/ 0 EBay's Stock Jumps Thanks to Double-Digit Revenue Gains http://allthingsd.com/20120418/ebays-stock-jumps-thanks-to-double-digit-revenue-gains/ http://allthingsd.com/20120418/ebays-stock-jumps-thanks-to-double-digit-revenue-gains/#comments Wed, 18 Apr 2012 20:51:19 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=197857 EBay easily exceeded expectations in the first quarter, reporting double-digit gains for both revenue and income.

In after-hours trading, the stock was up 7.3 percent, or $2.63, to trade at $38.50 a share, exceeding its 52-week high.

The company said first quarter revenues totaled $3.3 billion, an increase of 29 percent year over year. For the same period, net income totaled $570 million, increasing 20 percent.

EBay attributed the strong results to momentum in its traditional marketplaces business, PayPal and the recently acquired GSI Commerce division. (See below for notes from the earnings call.)

In a statement, CEO John Donahoe said: “We believe that innovation in retail today is technology driven, and consumers are embracing smarter, easier, better ways to shop. We are enabling commerce in this new retail environment, supporting and partnering with sellers of all sizes and giving consumers worldwide the ability to shop anytime, anywhere, for whatever they want.”

The results trump both what analysts had been expecting and what the company was estimating internally.

Analysts, on average, had expected eBay to report earnings of 52 cents per share on revenue of $3.15 billion, according to a poll by FactSet. Those expectations were on the high side of eBay’s own forecast, which was estimating revenue in the range of $3.05 million to $3.15 million, with earnings per share of 50 cents to 51 cents.

When forecasting, companies and analysts use non-GAAP earnings per share, which exclude some extraordinary expenses. On a non-GAAP basis, eBay reported net income of $725 million, or 55 cents a share.

Here’s a breakdown of how the three units performed:

  • Marketplaces

The division, which includes both its auction and full-priced merchandise, saw gross merchandise volume increase 12 percent year over year to $16 billion. In particular, its fixed-priced business grew 18 percent.

  • PayPal

PayPal revenue increased 32 percent year over year to $1.3 billion, driven by increased penetration on eBay as well as more merchant adoption.

  • GSI Commerce

The GSI business, which was acquired last year and provides services to third-party retailers, generated $715 million in merchandise sales, up 26 percent over the same period a year earlier.

In Q2, the company expects revenues to continue to grow in the range of $3.25 billion to $3.35 billion. It said earnings per share for the same period would range between 49 cents and 51 cents a share. Non-GAAP earnings would range between 53 cents and 55 cents.

The company also raised full-year guidance, saying that it expects revenues in the range of $13.8 to $14.1 billion, with GAAP earnings per share of $1.91 to $1.96.

Notes from the Conference Call:

  • EBay’s CEO John Donahoe joins the call, and is very happy to report that all of eBay’s businesses are performing well.
  • PayPal has opportunities online, on the mobile phone and, increasingly, offline. Donahoe noted that half of the payments division’s revenue came from outside the U.S. PayPal is being used for 76 percent of purchases on eBay, which achieves the company’s 2013 goal.
  • Donahoe wants to talk about innovation: PayPal is now available in 2,000 stores around the country by swiping a PayPal card or entering a mobile phone number and PIN. “We have signed contracts with several additional retailers and will deploy over the next year,” he said.
  • Donahoe brags that PayPal Here, which competes directly with Square, just launched and is already available globally (unlike Square).
  • Donahoe addresses the executive shake-up at PayPal. It included the exit of former President Scott Thompson and head of product, Sam Shrauger, to Yahoo. David Marcus is the new president.
  • The company’s marketplaces business is also growing, jumping 22 percent year over year, which Donahoe notes is faster than the e-commerce category overall.  StubHub, the company’s ticket marketplace, also launched in the U.K.
  • And now, updates from GSI Commerce and X.commerce, the two divisions that are delivering services to retailers. They are also doing well! X.commerce, which is the newest, launched 2,000 new apps for retailers during the quarter.
  • In summary, Donahoe is pleased!
  • CFO Bob Swan is now giving a deadly boring recounting of the finances, despite the company’s stellar results.
  • EBay is increasing full-year guidance by $100 million on the top line and 5 cents on the bottom line.
  • In summary, Swan says he’s excited!
  • Now for the Q&A.
  • First question is about Home Depot and the rollout of payments to other retailers (of course, because it’s the sexy new thing …). Donahoe is very excited about it because it expands the opportunity for PayPal tremendously. He admits that consumers aren’t really using it because there’s been no advertising. In May, they’ll change that and try to get more engagement. In the interim, it is also working with other retailers, and in the second half of the year, they’ll be launching those as a way to test and learn. “I feel good about our progress,” he said. “We’ll be ready in 2013 and 2014 to roll out in new categories and internationally.”
  • Surprisingly good question from analyst: Will banks make eBay pay more for accounts tied to checking accounts in the future? The answer: They don’t worry about it and the Fed sets the rates. “We do not expect the Fed to make any changes to rates. If anything, we would expect the trend of going down to continue.” They also think they can use PayPal’s scale to get really competitive rates, and they have four more years left on the contract. In the worst-case scenario, even if its costs went up 5x, it’s less than a point of operating margin on PayPal, but they don’t expect that to happen.
  • Why is marketplaces doing better? Donahoe says customer retention is up, and over the past six months, they’ve been marketing. Active buyer growth is up 9.5 percent in core marketplaces business.
    • ]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120418/ebays-stock-jumps-thanks-to-double-digit-revenue-gains/feed/ 0 PayPal's New Leader to Bring Entrepreneurial Vibe to Payments http://allthingsd.com/20120330/paypals-new-leader-to-bring-entrepreneurial-vibe-to-payments/ http://allthingsd.com/20120330/paypals-new-leader-to-bring-entrepreneurial-vibe-to-payments/#comments Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:00:34 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=191264 David Marcus’s self-proclaimed interests include mobile, payments, technology and getting stuff done.

    True to his word, the entrepreneur has done a lot in the past eight months.

    He sold his start-up to eBay for $240 million; became PayPal’s VP of Mobile; and launched PayPal’s mobile payments service, called Here. Now, he’s been named president of PayPal. The position opened up in January, after Scott Thompson stepped down to become CEO of Yahoo.

    Now, with his appointment, Marcus’s list of things to do grows a lot longer.

    In an interview, eBay CEO John Donohoe emphasized that what PayPal needs more than ever is an entrepreneur at the helm, one who can take advantage of all the opportunities that lie ahead.

    “It’s the right time for PayPal to combine the global scale and reach with a product guy and entrepreneur like David, who is going to take PayPal to the next level,” he said.

    PayPal, which is eBay’s fastest-growing division, is pushing into two new hot areas: Mobile payment and point-of-sale.

    Mobile payments are taking off as people shop online from their phones and tablets, while offline is a massive opportunity dominated by the Visas and MasterCards of the world.

    It’s hard to put a dollar figure on the market opportunity, but PayPal tries putting it in perspective.

    In mobile alone, it expects payment volume to hit $7 billion this year, up from $150 million in 2009. For point-of-sale, it will double PayPal’s $70 billion business if it captures 2 percent of all sales. If it captures 4 percent, it will triple it.

    Before joining PayPal, Marcus was the founder and CEO of Zong, a mobile payments company that was building a platform that allowed users to charge purchases to their carrier bill. Today, PayPal uses Zong’s platform for mobile payments, and is also leveraging it for its offline payments business. For instance, when using PayPal to pay at the register, users don’t need to have their wallet or phone with them. They can simply enter a phone number and PIN to pay. That technology is live today at more than 2,000 Home Depots.

    Donahoe said he was impressed by Marcus when eBay was still in talks to acquire Zong.

    “He really felt deeply that if he could get Zong to PayPal’s scale that we could do extraordinary things,” Donohoe said. “From the moment he joined, it’s been fun to watch an innovator who’s been recognizing that he can innovate at scale.”

    Over the past seven months, Marcus has been charged with the launch of PayPal Here, which allows small-to-medium-size merchants to accept payments using a small dongle plugged into a smartphone. The service, which launched earlier this month, is nearly identical to a service offered by Square, a start-up founded by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey.

    Marcus said he was really impressed with how fast it was to launch such a complicated product that required encryption and compliance on a global scale. In the first 24 hours, the company signed up more than 1,000 businesses an hour for Here.

    “The organization came together, and we built it really quickly,” he said. “I’m excited in this new capacity. If we innovate at scale, we can change the world in a meaningful way.”

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20120330/paypals-new-leader-to-bring-entrepreneurial-vibe-to-payments/feed/ 0     eBay Promotes David Marcus to Fill Top Vacancy at PayPal http://allthingsd.com/20120329/ebay-promotes-david-marcus-to-fill-top-vacancy-at-paypal/ http://allthingsd.com/20120329/ebay-promotes-david-marcus-to-fill-top-vacancy-at-paypal/#comments Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:52:41 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=191144 PayPal has appointed David Marcus to the position of president, filling the vacancy that was suddenly created when Scott Thompson left to become CEO of Yahoo.

    Marcus joined PayPal in August 2011, after it acquired Zong, a leading mobile payments provider, where he was founder and CEO.

    The appointment will be effective April 2, and Marcus will report directly to eBay’s President and CEO John Donahoe.

    Since Marcus joined PayPal, he has served as the VP of mobile, responsible for leading the company’s mobile payments business. By appointing Marcus, the company is clearly emphasizing its mobile payments initiatives, which includes expanding into in-store payments at retail.

    For instance, Home Depot recently rolled out PayPal to all of its nearly 2,000 stores nationwide, and PayPal is implementing its point-of-sale innovations with other national retailers this year.

    In a statement, Donahoe said, “David is the right leader for PayPal. … He will bring start-up energy to PayPal’s unmatched global reach and digital payments capabilities. And he will sharpen PayPal’s focus on accelerating product innovation, driving consumer engagement and making paying anytime, anywhere through your digital wallet a safe, easy and convenient experience.”

    Over the past year, Marcus worked on the development of PayPal Here, which is a card reader that can be plugged into mobile phones to accept credit card payments, much like Square, a competitor.

    “Shopping is fun, but paying is not,” Marcus said in a statement. We’re off to a great start in 2012 with breakthrough products that will truly change the way everyone shops and pays.”

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20120329/ebay-promotes-david-marcus-to-fill-top-vacancy-at-paypal/feed/ 0     Online Commerce Trend: More Spending, Smaller Purchases http://allthingsd.com/20120120/online-commerce-trend-more-spending-smaller-purchases/ http://allthingsd.com/20120120/online-commerce-trend-more-spending-smaller-purchases/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:22:03 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=165905 The average checkout size is shrinking, even though more people spent more money online this holiday season.

    In November and December, the number of online transactions increased by 37 percent, and overall sales jumped by 25 percent. But the average ticket size declined by 9 percent, according to Chase Paymentech, which analyzes information across the top 50 e-commerce retailers.

    As it turns out, more consumers are turning to e-commerce for more of their everyday spending, rather than reserving online purchases for big-ticket items.

    Here are Chase’s three reasons for the decline:

    • More consumers are purchasing digital media, which has a lower price point than most physical goods — MP3s cost less than CDs, e-books cost less than paperbacks, and apps cost less than game cartridges.
    • Prices for popular electronics, such as tablets, e-readers and TVs, are falling.
    • More retailers are offering free shipping, which eliminates the incentive to fill carts to reach a free-shipping threshold.

    EBay, which is the first major e-commerce provider to report Q4 results, confirmed it was also seeing the trend. The company’s payments division, PayPal, reported smaller transactions during the fourth quarter across the merchants it serves.

    John Donahoe, eBay’s CEO, explained in an interview that the biggest driver of that trend was eBay’s acquisition of Zong, a mobile payments provider that powers the sale of digital goods. In addition, Donahoe said retailers, including eBay, heavily discounted products in order to drive more purchases this holiday.

    Amazon, which is the leading e-commerce provider, also said that it is selling a lot of low-priced digital goods, ranging from e-books to MP3s.

    Historically, the company has said that Christmas is the largest day of digital sales on Amazon.com, followed by Dec. 26. In 2010, from Christmas Eve through Dec. 30, Amazon customers purchased three times more digital content — including Kindle books, magazines, movies, TV shows, music and digital games — compared to the weekly average for the year.

    Despite transactions declining overall, Chase identified two exceptions: Apparel and footwear rose 6 percent; toys rose 10 percent year over year.

    (Amazon photo courtesy of thisisbossi)

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20120120/online-commerce-trend-more-spending-smaller-purchases/feed/ 0     eBay's John Donahoe Literally Starts Hammering Out the Plan for Mobile Payments http://allthingsd.com/20120119/ebays-john-donahoe-literally-starts-hammering-out-the-plan-for-mobile-payments/ http://allthingsd.com/20120119/ebays-john-donahoe-literally-starts-hammering-out-the-plan-for-mobile-payments/#comments Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:00:33 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=165133 John Donahoe has a hammer, and he’s not afraid to use it.

    The yellow-handled hammer, which the eBay CEO purchased at Home Depot using PayPal, signals that the company’s plans for entering the mobile payments business has entered the construction phase.

    In an interview yesterday, Donahoe provided a few details about the company’s Home Depot trial and how it would expand from five to 51 stores across the country over the next week.

    He also talked about his own experience of buying the tool earlier that morning. (Seen at right: Donahoe wielding his hammer.)

    The company also announced fourth-quarter results yesterday, solidly beating both the company’s internal guidance and analyst expectations.

    One of eBay’s big initiatives over the past year has been to find ways to work more closely with physical retailers by providing them with the technology they need to operate more efficiently online and offline. Over the past year, that has included buying 13 companies, for a total investment of $3.4 billion.

    “We are right at the intersection of something that’s really cool,” Donahoe said. “This isn’t something that everyone sees, like social networking three years into it, when only the early people knew about it.”

    What everyone is not seeing, he explains, is how retail and payments are two massive industries that are “at an inflection point where they will go through dramatic change.”

    One major opportunity is payments being made at the cash register, and arguably many others see it, too, including Google, Visa, MasterCard and the wireless carriers, which are all working on their own solutions.

    Interestingly, Donahoe was willing to put a price on it — and it’s huge.

    If eBay is able to capture just 2 percent of the sales occurring at the point of sale, it will be able to double PayPal’s $70 billion business today. If they capture 4 percent, they’ll triple it.

    Of course, that will take some time.

    This year, eBay is focused on learning and testing out the technology in several trials; then, in 2013, it will begin to scale the business. In 2012, the company is not even factoring in a lift from point of sales in eBay’s revenue guidance.

    The company’s big test will start later this week, when it expands its trial with Home Depot from five stores in the Bay Area to 51 stores in the Bay Area, Atlanta and Omaha.

    Everything continues to be on track, despite the unexpected departure of PayPal President Scott Thompson. Thompson shocked Donahoe right after the New Year with the announcement that he was leaving to become CEO of Yahoo.

    Donahoe declined to give an update on his plans to replace Thompson, saying that he was fine with serving the interim role in the meantime, and relying on the rest of the team PayPal has in place.

    So far, Donahoe said, the mobile payments technology works flawlessly, based on his own experiences, but there’s still some additional scenarios they will have to consider.

    Yesterday morning, he drove to a store in San Jose, where he consciously left his wallet and phone in the car.

    He walked through the aisles to find a hammer and tape measure, and then went to check out, where the terminal gave him the option of checking out with PayPal. He entered his mobile phone number and PIN, and the transaction was completed, with the receipts sent to his phone and email.

    “It was faster than swiping the card,” Donahoe said. “This is an advantage that PayPal has. No one else can do it with a mobile number and PIN. There was no fancy whiz-bang technology.”

    Customers will also be given the option of paying with a PayPal credit card.

    But not all the pieces are in place yet.

    Coming soon: Users will be able to store their loyalty cards in their PayPal wallet, and will be able to receive personalized offers based on their shopping habits.

    Also, it’s worth noting that while Donahoe checked out easily, there will be a learning curve for others. In advance of going to the store, users will have to associate a phone number and PIN with their account, and enable their account for in-store checkout.

    Right now, there’s no contingency plans for if a person doesn’t have a PayPal account, or if it’s not set up. In fact, a very small percentage of the more than 100 million PayPal users have likely done that.

    “That’s exactly why I say this is the year for trialing and learning,” Donahoe said, appropriately adjourning the interview with a bang of the hammer.

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20120119/ebays-john-donahoe-literally-starts-hammering-out-the-plan-for-mobile-payments/feed/ 0     eBay Predicts Mobile Commerce Will Grow 60 Percent in 2012 http://allthingsd.com/20120112/ebay-predicts-mobile-commerce-will-grow-60-percent-in-2012/ http://allthingsd.com/20120112/ebay-predicts-mobile-commerce-will-grow-60-percent-in-2012/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:24:08 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=163281 EBay’s John Donahoe has drawn his 2012 mobile predictions line in the sand.

    He is forecasting that mobile commerce — purchases made from apps or the browser on a phone or tablet — will hit $8 billion in mobile gross merchandise volume this year, up 60 percent from $5 billion in 2011.

    Donahoe made the predictions last night in Las Vegas, where he gave the keynote at a technology dinner for leaders of the Consumer Electronics Association.

    Additionally, the company predicted that PayPal will reach $7 billion in mobile total payment volume this year, increasing from $4 billion in 2011.

    He made the bold predictions despite the recent unsettling departure of PayPal President Scott Thompson to join Yahoo as CEO, indicating that he is still confident about PayPal’s mobile future.

    During the keynote, Donahoe also announced that Best Buy was its newest partner to use the RedLaser barcode scanning app to offer local in-store pick-up services. Other companies that offer it today include Toys “R” Us.

    Other big data figures: 

    • EBay Mobile currently has more than 65 million downloads of its mobile applications across all platforms.
    • More than 890,000 new eBay shoppers made their first eBay purchase through the company’s mobile apps in 2011, a 113 percent increase year over year.
    • PayPal’s original prediction for 2011 was that it would achieve $1.5 billion in mobile total payment volume for 2011. Instead, it hit $4 billion. A year earlier, it totaled only $750 million.

    MORE CES NEWS:

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20120112/ebay-predicts-mobile-commerce-will-grow-60-percent-in-2012/feed/ 0     PayPal's First Mobile Payments Pilot Is With Big-Box Retailer Home Depot http://allthingsd.com/20120106/paypals-first-mobile-payments-pilot-is-with-big-box-retailer-home-depot/ http://allthingsd.com/20120106/paypals-first-mobile-payments-pilot-is-with-big-box-retailer-home-depot/#comments Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:50:00 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=161112 On the heels of the announcement that PayPal was losing its top executive to Yahoo, a convenient leak today revealed the name of the big-box retailer PayPal is working with on its first point-of-sale trial.

    In a note sent to investors today, Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, was the first to disclose the relationship between the eBay-owned company and Home Depot.

    “We speculate that Home Depot may be one of the first retailers to roll out PayPal at the point of sale,” Luria said.

    In a statement, a PayPal spokesperson confirmed the partnership: “We frequently run trials with our retail partners. In this case, PayPal and The Home Depot are engaged in a limited pilot program for new POS technologies. The pilot is currently being run in five stores and involves a small number of PayPal employees.”

    Home Depot is obviously a huge win for PayPal, which until now had only provided online payment solutions to customers.

    The pilot, which went live in December, allows employees to pay for items at the register using a PayPal-issued credit card or by entering their mobile phone number into the point-of-sale device at the register. Neither solution uses near field communication, which can be a limiting factor for adoption.

    More pilots are expected to take place early this year, but PayPal has been reluctant to name its partners, because it wants the retailers to be the ones to make the announcement when they are ready.

    On Wednesday, Yahoo officially announced that it had hired PayPal President Scott Thompson as its new CEO, shocking executives at eBay, including CEO John Donahoe.

    In an interview, Donahoe downplayed Thompson’s role in the company’s emerging mobile payments business by saying that the whole team participated heavily in the 2012 plan.

    Wedbush’s Luria concurred: “We do not believe Scott Thompson was instrumental to the Mobile Payments vision. It is our impression that although ‘Paypal at the POS (point of sale)’ was led by PayPal management, the holistic mobile payments vision was driven at the eBay Inc. level.”

    On Wednesday, eBay’s stock sank nearly 4 percent to close at $30.16. Today, it closed at $30.63.

    Luria has an “outperform” rating on the eBay stock, and a 12-month price target of $48 a share.

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20120106/paypals-first-mobile-payments-pilot-is-with-big-box-retailer-home-depot/feed/ 0     CEO John Donahoe Talks About What's Next for eBay's PayPal, After Scott Thompson's Surprise Exit to Yahoo http://allthingsd.com/20120104/ceo-john-donahoe-talks-about-on-whats-next-for-ebays-paypal-after-scott-thompsons-surprise-exit-to-yahoo/ http://allthingsd.com/20120104/ceo-john-donahoe-talks-about-on-whats-next-for-ebays-paypal-after-scott-thompsons-surprise-exit-to-yahoo/#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:08:27 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=160170

    In an interview this afternoon, eBay CEO John Donahoe confirmed that it was indeed a “shock” — as he wrote to staff in a memo — after returning from a long New Year’s weekend, to learn that the head of one of the online commerce giant’s key divisions, PayPal President Scott Thompson, was leaving to be CEO of Yahoo.

    With only 15 hours’ notice before the planned announcement this morning by Yahoo — and even earlier, given that AllThingsD.com scooped the news last night — Donahoe had no time to inform the company, especially those working at PayPal.

    Still, he was as cordial as he could be, given the circumstances.

    “Scott is a great guy, and he did a great job at PayPal, and I am one of his biggest supporters,” said Donahoe — known at the company for his even-handed demeanor — despite being blindsided by the longtime eBay exec and also Yahoo. “I told him, ‘I hope you are very successful at Yahoo.’”

    But the eBay leader, who noted that he prefers to avoid corporate drama, shrugged off the suggestion that there would be any animosity going forward with Yahoo.

    “It’s not the timing that I would have liked. It would have been nice for him to be able to tell the team, but that’s neither here nor there,” Donahoe said. “It’s no big deal.”

    He also said he’s not holding a grudge against Thompson.

    “Scott wanted to be a CEO, and that’s great. He felt the opportunity wasn’t going to come along again. He had the best non-CEO job in the world, but he wanted to be a CEO, and wanted to go for it,” said Donahoe. “I get that, and there’s not that many CEO jobs coming up.”

    Still, after the news broke, one senior Yahoo leader joked to AllThingsD that he was afraid to call Donahoe.

    Indeed, now that Yahoo has nabbed Thompson from its crosstown Internet peer, Donahoe will have to move fast to fill the exec shoes now abruptly left empty.

    That’s especially true since Thompson’s departure is occurring at a most inopportune time.

    First the good news: The digital payments division, which has been the bright spot at eBay, is on target to have a record 2011 performance, and is set to roll out several significant initiatives this year.

    But the big item on PayPal’s agenda is daunting, too: To challenge both incumbent payment providers, along with new entrants, such as Google, by creating a digital wallet that can be used for physical payments at retail.

    Nonetheless, the most pressing order of business, obviously, is that Thompson will have to be replaced.

    And that’s no small task. The seven-year PayPal veteran has a deep knowledge of the digital payments market, and has a track record of success. PayPal has continued on a breakneck pace over the last couple of years, with the division’s revenue now on track to surpass that of eBay.

    In addition, Thompson — often described as likable with an easy-going personality — was the company’s most visible cheerleader on payments, eagerly talking to major retailers and convincing them to get on board with its next generation of services.

    Now, while PayPal has a plan and a budget for 2012, there is currently no sole person to implement the vision.

    Donahoe, who will head up PayPal in the interim, said he addressed the PayPal executive team in a meeting this morning, in an effort to keep the momentum going.

    “I got together with the team this morning and we spent a couple of hours together. Rest assured that they are driving ahead collectively to implement the plan that they helped put together over the last year,” Donahoe said. “They have a clear set of 2012 priorities, and they are excited.”

    He added: “There was a shock in the morning, but by noontime, it was full speed ahead.”

    As an example, Donahoe said eBay had already reassigned five of the company’s top 15 strategic accounts that Thompson was responsible for. Donahoe will take a couple of those, as will eBay CFO Bob Swan, and Devin Wenig, president of eBay’s Marketplaces unit.

    But make no mistake, there needs to be a Thompson replacement, and quickly.

    PayPal does have a deep bench of executive talent, and any number of senior executives could step up to take the role, although it’s also likely that eBay will conduct an external search before coming to that conclusion.

    “I won’t worry about what’s next until we’ve made it a couple weeks into the year and are hitting our milestones,” said Donahoe, who noted that the company’s vision was shared by the management team, and even though Thompson was the one communicating externally, “It was not a one-person plan whatsoever.”

    Donahoe declined to elaborate any further on how eBay would conduct a search.

    Thompson’s direct reports and key leaders include:

    Ed Eger, SVP and GM of North America, core payments and emerging markets; John McCabe, SVP of worldwide operations and customer service; Patrick Dupuis, CFO; Gary Marino, SVP of credit products and risk, who joined through the acquisition of Bill Me Later; Mark Lavelle, VP of strategy and business development, also from Bill Me Later; Rupert Keeley, SVP of Asia Pacific; Sam Shrauger, VP of global product and experience; James Barrese, VP of product development; David Marcus, VP of mobile, who joined through the acquisition of Zong; and Ranjana Clark, SVP and chief customer and marketing officer.

    And there is a fairly long list of companies for eBay to attempt to cherry-pick from.

    One obvious company is Amazon, which has a competing payments division. If PayPal could legally pull it off, Matt Swann, VP and general manager of payments of Amazon, would be a prime candidate to run the company.

    There are also other companies with payment talent — many of which are also situated near eBay in Silicon Valley — including Apple, Google, Facebook, VeriFone, Intuit and the traditional payments providers, such as Visa, MasterCard or American Express.

    While analysts viewed Thompson’s departure as a negative, they were still largely optimistic about PayPal’s future.

    Colin Sebastian of Baird Equity wrote in a note to investors that “the core PayPal consumer value proposition remains strong, in our view, and remains well positioned for long-term growth.”

    Citi Analyst Mark Mahaney pointed out that Thompson’s departure comes on the heels of a number of PayPal executive departures, including Stephanie Tilenius and Osama Bedier, both of whom left for Google; and Lorrie Norrington, who left eBay for personal reasons.

    Still, eBay’s stock dropped $1.18 a share, or nearly 4 percent, on the Thompson news, to close at $30.16.

    It is interesting to note that eBay’s market cap hovers close to $40 billion, which is still twice Yahoo’s market valuation.

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20120104/ceo-john-donahoe-talks-about-on-whats-next-for-ebays-paypal-after-scott-thompsons-surprise-exit-to-yahoo/feed/ 0     CEO John Donahoe Expresses "Shock" Over eBay Executive's Departure to Yahoo (Internal Memo) http://allthingsd.com/20120104/ebays-john-donahoe-shocked-by-executives-departure-to-yahoo-internal-memo/ http://allthingsd.com/20120104/ebays-john-donahoe-shocked-by-executives-departure-to-yahoo-internal-memo/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:33:11 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=159766 As Kara Swisher reported late last night and confirmed this morning, Yahoo has named PayPal President Scott Thompson as its new CEO.

    Thompson, who is currently in charge of one of eBay’s fastest-growing divisions, PayPal, will start at Yahoo next week.

    This morning, we got our hands on the internal memo that eBay’s CEO John Donahoe sent out to the troops.

    In the letter, which is posted below, he called the move a “shock” to him and the company. But Donahoe has known about Thompson’s talks with Yahoo for a while, but was apparently surprised that he had been hired and only found out yesterday, as he noted in the letter below.

    Thus, Donahoe will fill Thompson’s position temporarily, until a transition plan is in place.

    Thompson’s departure is notable because he was arguably leading one of the more important initiatives inside San Jose-based PayPal.

    In a recent interview with me, Thompson said: “We are doing something so big that it will change the face of payments.”

    Well, apparently, he’s found something larger to bite off.

    Thompson’s departure will likely be seen as a significant blow to eBay.

    At the time of our conversation, Thompson had just addressed 150 merchants at a PayPal event in Los Angeles that included big names like Home Depot and Sports Authority. He spent the week convincing them that PayPal was their next big partner for online and in-store payments.

    Over the past year, eBay has been restructuring its core shopping experience online, while nurturing its rapidly growing digital payments business. The timing couldn’t be worse. Right as mobile payments is destined to take off, PayPal has a magical combination of assets, consisting of contacts with the retailers, the technology, and an impressive base of customers already using its services.

    At the same time, a host of other challenges are going after the space, like Google, the wireless carriers and the traditional payment companies.

    PayPal has also struggled with retaining top talent, losing two executives to Google, so Thompson’s departure won’t help its reputation in that department.

    Donahoe pledges that the impact of Thompson leaving will be limited: “We will not miss a beat. And we will continue driving the incredible momentum that each of you has helped to create.”

    This morning, eBay’s stock is trading 3.4 percent lower at $30.23 a share.

    Here’s Donahoe’s full letter:

     

    To all PayPalians,

    As you may already have seen, Yahoo! announced this morning that Scott Thompson is joining the company as CEO, effective immediately. Scott informed me Tuesday afternoon, saying that despite his passion for PayPal, this was an opportunity he felt he had to take. I know I speak for everyone in wishing Scott the best.

    I will serve in the interim role as President and will be meeting with the PayPal leadership team this morning to plan a seamless transition. And while I’m sure Scott’s decision is a shock to many of you, as it was to me, there is one thing I am certain of: PayPal has an enormous opportunity in front of it and we will not slow down. We will not miss a beat. And we will continue driving the incredible momentum that each of you has helped to create.

    PayPal had an outstanding 2011 and a strong close to the fourth quarter. PayPal’s vision is clear. Our strategies are set and we have a strong, focused leadership team in place. And across PayPal, we have you — an incredibly talented team, committed to creating the future of money and changing how the world shops and pays.

    Let’s do it, and take this special business to the next level in 2012 and beyond.

    John

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20120104/ebays-john-donahoe-shocked-by-executives-departure-to-yahoo-internal-memo/feed/ 0     Confirmed: Yahoo Names PayPal Head Scott Thompson as New CEO http://allthingsd.com/20120104/confirmed-yahoo-names-paypal-head-scott-thompson-as-new-head/ http://allthingsd.com/20120104/confirmed-yahoo-names-paypal-head-scott-thompson-as-new-head/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:08:53 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=159711

    As I reported late last night, Yahoo said it had named PayPal President Scott Thompson as its new CEO. The exec is currently in charge of the large eBay online payments unit.

    He’ll start next week, but there are staff conference calls today and also an all-hands meeting on Yahoo’s main Silicon Valley campus (meet at URLs, troops!) tomorrow.

    Yahoo shares are down almost three percent on the news so far, as Wall Street has been hoping for a big sale of some sort and not another turnaround.

    Yahoo will be holding a 7 am PT press conference about the move and presumably to swan around Thompson.

    (Welcome, Scott! I hope you were informed — please do not listen to what co-founder Jerry Yang says on this important issue — that you are supposed to send all internal memos to me! Also, as one of my Twitter followers, Mike Dudas of Google just tweeted: “If Thompson leads companies as well as he grows a moustache, Yahoo made a great CEO choice!!” I concur.)

    A Yahoo PR person confirmed the hire very cordially in a phone call early this morning and the Internet giant also put out a press release.

    So did I, of a sort, last night. Given I am too tired to rewrite myself, here is what I had reported:

    The company fired its last CEO, Carol Bartz, in September, and Yahoo has been run by the board and also by interim CEO Tim Morse, who had previously been its CFO.

    After Bartz’s ouster, Yahoo said it was looking at a range of strategic options, including the possible sale of all or part of the company.

    That was the focus at first, although Yahoo had simultaneously hired Heidrick & Struggles to look for a new CEO.

    The company attracted two partial investment bids from private equity firms, Silver Lake and TPG Capital, but shareholders were unhappy with the low prices of these so-called PIPE — Private Investment in Public Equity — arrangements.

    Yahoo then moved to try to strike a tax-advantaged deal with its long disgruntled Asian partners, China’s Alibaba Group and Japan’s SoftBank, to sell back parts of the large stakes it has long owned in Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan.

    Those complex negotiations are still ongoing and look promising, which could yield Yahoo billions of dollars in capital to be given to investors, for stock buybacks or to invest in new initiatives.

    Since then, the board — long considered one of the more cloddish in tech — has turned its attention to hiring a new CEO, in the hopes of trying once again to revive its flagging fortunes.

    Thus, it began looking to hire someone with deep tech experience at a large public consumer Internet company in Silicon Valley.

    That narrowed the field, with Yahoo looking at a range of choices with expertise in advertising, technology platforms and more.

    There is a lot of that on the deep bench that eBay CEO John Donahoe has assembled at the online commerce giant, including Thompson.

    Plus, he is a genuine Internet geek.

    According to his eBay bio, Thompson became president of PayPal in early 2008, after serving as its CTO in charge of information technology, product development and architecture.

    Before eBay, he worked at Inovant, a subsidiary of Visa formed to oversee global technology for the organization. He was also CIO of Barclays Global Investors and has worked at Coopers and Lybrand on information technology.

    And here’s a tasty new wrinkle: Thompson recently “liked” Yahoo on his Facebook page, along with the decidedly more interesting Kickstarter and Splunk.

    Again, Scott, thanks for the Facebook tip — I knew the social networking site could come in handy!

    (Also, here is an interview I did with him post-announcement.)

    And here is Yahoo’s official press release where Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock says nice stuff about Thompson:

    YHOO_News_2012_1_4_General

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20120104/confirmed-yahoo-names-paypal-head-scott-thompson-as-new-head/feed/ 0     Exclusive: Yahoo Poised to Name CEO -- With eBay's PayPal Prez as Top Choice http://allthingsd.com/20120103/exclusive-yahoo-poised-to-name-ceo-with-ebays-paypal-head-as-top-choice/ http://allthingsd.com/20120103/exclusive-yahoo-poised-to-name-ceo-with-ebays-paypal-head-as-top-choice/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 07:29:18 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=159560

    According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo is poised to name a CEO, an announcement that could come as early as tomorrow.

    Sources said the leading candidate likely to get the nod is a dark horse and someone who has not been named in previous reports (and not on my suggested lists!): PayPal President Scott Thompson, who runs eBay’s massive online payments unit.

    While the situation could certainly change, the Yahoo board has definitely been moving aggressively of late to try to find a new leader for the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

    The company fired its last CEO, Carol Bartz, in September; Yahoo has been run by the board and also by interim CEO Tim Morse, who had previously been its CFO.

    After Bartz’s ouster, Yahoo said it was looking at a range of strategic options, including the possible sale of all or part of the company.

    That was the focus at first, although Yahoo had simultaneously hired Heidrick & Struggles to look for a new CEO.

    The company attracted two partial investment bids from private equity firms, Silver Lake and TPG Capital, but shareholders were unhappy with the low prices of these so-called PIPE — Private Investment in Public Equity — arrangements.

    Yahoo then moved to try to strike a tax-advantaged deal with its long-disgruntled Asian partners, China’s Alibaba Group and Japan’s SoftBank, to sell back parts of the large stakes it has long owned in Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan.

    Those complex negotiations are still ongoing and look promising, which could yield Yahoo billions of dollars in capital to be given to investors, for stock buybacks or to invest in new initiatives.

    Since then, the board — long considered one of the more cloddish in tech — has turned its attention to hiring a new CEO, in the hopes of trying once again to revive its flagging fortunes.

    Thus, it began looking to hire someone with deep tech experience at a large public consumer Internet company in Silicon Valley.

    That narrowed the field, with Yahoo looking at a range of choices with expertise in advertising, technology platforms and more.

    There is a lot of that on the deep bench that eBay CEO John Donahoe has assembled at the online commerce giant, including Thompson.

    Plus, he is a genuine Internet geek.

    According to his eBay bio, Thompson became president of PayPal in early 2008, after serving as its CTO in charge of information technology, product development and architecture.

    Before eBay, he worked at Inovant, a subsidiary of Visa formed to oversee global technology for the organization. He was also CIO of Barclays Global Investors and has worked at Coopers and Lybrand on information technology.

    And here’s a tasty new wrinkle: Thompson recently “liked” Yahoo on his Facebook page, along with the decidedly more interesting Kickstarter and Splunk.

    (Dear Scott, Nice to meet you. And thanks for the tip! FYI, it’s a juicy giveaway like that which feeds my insatiable quest to find out All Things Yahoo!)

    More to come soon, I expect.

    Yahoo, as usual, never got back to me on my query, although the much more cordial people at eBay politely declined to comment.

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20120103/exclusive-yahoo-poised-to-name-ceo-with-ebays-paypal-head-as-top-choice/feed/ 0     Viral Video: An Interview With Andreessen Horowitz's Jeff Jordan http://allthingsd.com/20111103/viral-video-an-interview-with-andreessen-horowitzs-jeff-jordan/ http://allthingsd.com/20111103/viral-video-an-interview-with-andreessen-horowitzs-jeff-jordan/#comments Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:35:30 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=139906

    Last weekend, I interviewed former OpenTable and eBay exec Jeff Jordan — who is now a newly minted VC with Andreessen Horowitz — at the student-run Play digital media conference at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.

    It turned out to be a lively session with the sassy Jordan, who talked about a wide range of topics, from entrepreneurship to running a scaled org to his first venture investments, such as Pinterest.

    Luckily, I get to interview Jordan again tomorrow, at Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco, along with eBay’s CEO John Donahoe. The topic will be mobile commerce.

    Here’s the video of the event, with thanks to ReelSurfer for the embed:

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20111103/viral-video-an-interview-with-andreessen-horowitzs-jeff-jordan/feed/ 0     eBay Says Holiday Outlook for Mobile Commerce Very Jolly http://allthingsd.com/20111019/ebay-says-holiday-outlook-for-mobile-commerce-very-jolly/ http://allthingsd.com/20111019/ebay-says-holiday-outlook-for-mobile-commerce-very-jolly/#comments Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:11:29 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=134305 This holiday season could be one of the biggest mobile commerce events yet, with more people turning to their smartphones or tablets to buy gifts this year than ever before.

    EBay has already seen a ton of traffic from mobile phone usage, and is expecting even more this holiday season.

    During the company’s third-quarter conference call today, eBay said its mobile applications have been downloaded more than 50 million times and that three purchases are being made every second.

    “I think you’ll see a mobile commerce Christmas, which is on the way to a completely blended commerce world,” said eBay’s CEO John Donahoe in an interview following the call. “You’ll see more change in the next three years than you’ve seen in the past 15.”

    [More details on the company's Q3 results here.]

    The mobile shopping trend is being driven in part by adoption.

    Smartphones continue to pour into the mainstream, and last Christmas, the dominant tablet, the iPad, was only eight months old. This year, millions more consumers will be using them to shop while sitting on the couch in front of the TV.

    Last quarter, eBay started airing TV commercials — its first in the past couple of years — to promote its mobile applications.

    Donahoe said the amount of tablet usage that’s happening in front of the TV is not trivial. “It gets to your multi-screen world. The laptop, the smartphone, the tablet or your TV, or even the store. Consumers are accessing all of those as they shop.”

    Almost every quarter this year, eBay has upped its estimates for how well its mobile businesses will do.

    Last year, eBay reported $2 million in commerce and expected to double that this year. PayPal’s mobile revenues totaled $700 million in 2010 and were intially expected to triple. Now, eBay is on pace to hit $5 billion in mobile commerce merchandise volume this year, and PayPal mobile is expected to exceed $3.5 billion.

    Additionally, PayPal will conduct its first mobile payments pilot with a retailer by the end of the year, and any revenue from that is not being taken into account in terms of the company’s long-term projections.

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20111019/ebay-says-holiday-outlook-for-mobile-commerce-very-jolly/feed/ 0     eBay's Not Just a Retailer Anymore, It's a Tech Company http://allthingsd.com/20111012/live-at-ebays-developer-conference/ http://allthingsd.com/20111012/live-at-ebays-developer-conference/#comments Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:07:36 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=131514 At the opening session at eBay’s developer conference this morning, the company known for its auctions business rolled out a completely new business not focused on consumers.

    Leaning on a year of acquisitions, worth millions of dollars, it unveiled X.commerce, a platform aimed at developers, which can use it to help retailers bridge the gap from offline commerce to mobile, social and local commerce.

    As part of it, it hosted a number of partners on stage, including Adobe and Facebook. Adobe will contribute Omniture’s analytics tools, and Facebook will be integrating the social network’s “open graph,” enabling consumers to interact with brands in new ways.

    Here’s the liveblog from earlier:

    eBay kicks off its developer conference today in San Francisco’s Moscone center, where more than 4,000 developers and merchants will be present to hear about X.commerce, the online retailer’s big foray into providing back-end tools for developers.

    Yesterday, we got a glimpse of its plans, but will hear even more from eBay’s President and CEO John Donahoe, who will be joined on stage by Bill Ingram of Adobe and Katie Mitic of Facebook, who are both expected to announce partnerships with the major online retailer.

    9:08 am: Time to get started. People are still leisurely taking their seats. We are in the same room that Apple’s WWDC conference was, but I can assure you there’s far less urgency here in finding a good seat.

    9:11 am: Naveed Anwar, the head of community for X.commerce, has just taken the stage.

    We learned a little bit yesterday about X.commerce, but essentially eBay is hoping to turn into a tech company and provide the necessary tools to merchants and retailers to expand from physical to mobile and social channels.

    There’s going to be a lot of talk about how retailers need help in getting ahead.

    Anwar says there’s already 850,000 developers in the ecosystem today.

    We are here today because Donahoe has been a champion of developers since he became CEO three years ago. He’s up next after a short video.

    9:17 am: Donahoe is dressed down today in a button-up shirt and jeans to deliver this message:

    I see an enormous acceleration in the pace of change and innovation. The more I reflect on it, I think it’s more than just that. I believe we are at an inflection point. … In particular, I’ll make a prediction: I believe we’ll see more change in the way consumers shop and pay in the next three years than we’ve seen in 15.

    He continues, offline retail hasn’t changed that much, and then online commerce came around 15 years ago, but it’s a fairly distinct experience from offline retail.

    That’s now changing because of the smartphone.

    The lines between online and offline are blurring, and they are blurring faster than anyone could have imagined 12 months ago. What that is doing is expanding the opportunity for innovation.

    We think e-commerce, which is 4 percent of offline retail, will double or triple. … By 2013, e-commerce will be a $10 trillion opportunity.

    9:23 am: This year alone we’ll do $5 billion in retail on the eBay mobile app, and PayPal will do $3 billion in mobile payments this year.

    He says, people now have a mall in their pocket, and expect shopping to come to them.

    Donahoe says the pain points are being felt by retailers: I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with retail CEOs over the past 12 months that go something like this: We need to be multi-channel. We just figured out Google AdWords, and now we have to figure out things like Groupon and LivingSocial.

    9:27 am: Here’s the eBay pitch for X.commerce: Donahoe says retailers are saying, “we need to figure out how to delight our customers, but we aren’t technology companies.”

    EBay, the whole entire company’s mission, is to enable commerce. We want to enable merchants of all sizes to compete in this new environment and we will not compete with them.

    Over the past year, we’ve been hard at work, and today, I’m excited to announce X.commerce. It is the world’s first open commerce ecosystem.

    It’s intended to put together the full suite of services, so developers can drive innovation for merchants.

    I feel this more than ever before, you will play an important role. I know that no one single company can provide all the solutions. Retail is a complex market, and they need different services by vertical and geography, and we need you to help with that.

    Donahoe said this is the intention for X.commerce:

    – We will build a full commerce stack, many of which will be acquired.

    – We want it to be open. We’ll open up GSI, but Magento has been open since the beginning. The companies, including Milo, Red Laser and Where, they are open today. We are buying them and opening them up.

    – We want you to be able to come to one place to get the platform and services that you need.

    9:35 am: That was the high-level overview from Donahoe. Next up is Matthew Mengerink, the VP and General Manager of X.commerce.

    If you haven’t picked up on it already, this is not a consumer-focused story. This is about eBay creating the unsexy stuff that runs in the background that will help consumers buy things on the Web or at the cash register.

    9:37 am: Mengerink has a story to tell. He’s a father a five, and his daughter needs a fleece jacket. He’s in the store, and sending pictures to his daughter at home. Once he gets home, his daughter hates it. Classic, right?

    Well, as a coder, he says he starts to envision how there could be better technologies to prevent that.

    Now, he’s starting to talk about ecosystems and distribution. He says that what they are building is for both mom and pop, large retailers and small.

    To prove it, here’s some demos, where they took real-life businesses over and conducted “extreme makeovers!”

    9:43 am: In a video, we are introduced to Soccer Pro, a small family-owned retailer. They handed over the business to eBay to see if they can save their business.

    This should be interesting.

    The out-of-the-box X.commerce looks like this:

    Carlos, the owner of Soccer Pro, comes out on stage with a thumbdrive, which stores all of his inventory.

    The inventory is uploaded to Magento to create an online storefront, and now Soccer Pro has payments, tracking inventory and analytics.

    Presto-chango, Soccer Pro has a live storefront!

    That was fast.

    9:47 am: The next step is to send inventory to eBay, so Soccer Pro has access to 100 million customers worldwide. The inventory is also automatically added to Milo, which will drive foot traffic to his physical store.

    9:49 am: Next on stage is eBay’s first partner, Adobe. Bill Ingram, VP of product management, is on stage to explain that merchants need the power of analytics. It will be integrating Omniture into the Magento platform to inform merchants who are its customers and where are they coming from.

    In a demonstration, Adobe shows how its tools will allow a retailer to see that email is outperforming affiliate channels, and that more of the marketing budget should be headed to email.

    Once set up, these tools look easy enough for a regular person to understand, but they will need developers to set it up, and then tweak it as their businesses change in the future.

    These are not tools for merchants, but for developers who are the ones working for the merchants and retailers.

    9:56 am: That’s it for Adobe.

    Now Sivan Metzger from Kenshoo is on stage to give us a peek into how more partners will be part of the platform. Retailers use Kenshoo to manage online advertising campaigns across Google, Facebook and other sites.

    More partner demonstrations. eBay is partnering with Mazentop to help with international sales.

    10:05 am: Central to the X.commerce platform is Magento, which eBay purchased four months ago. Magento’s co-founder Roy Rubin is now on stage to give a rundown.

    EBay is now officially announcing PayPal Access, which we covered yesterday. PayPal provides an identity across all retailers on the Web, so that consumers don’t have to create a discrete log-in for each and every retailer they visit on the Web.

    A big problem for online retailers, unless you are someone like Amazon, is that customers don’t have an account. Shopping cart abandonment is a big problem.

    10:16 am: The first retailer makes it on the stage. Betsy Poirer, director of Digital Channels and Partnerships at Toys R Us, which is uploading its inventory onto eBay’s site in order to drive traffic to its stores.

    Poirer said it has 800 plus stores in the U.S. and only one Web site, and that they are constantly looking for ways to reduce friction, so that it is easier for customers to come back.

    In this case, she said it was really easy to use eBay, Milo, Red Laser, GSI because it is under one retailer.

    10:23 am: Katie Mitic of Facebook finally makes it on stage to show what social commerce looks like. Mitic has just joined eBay’s board of directors.

    Mitic is talking about the trials and tribulations of finding the perfect gift for her husband, but that her best gifts have been ones that have been recommended to her by a friend.

    She said in the first wave of Internet adoption, people knew what they were looking for, like movie times, but that it was largely an unsatisfying experience.

    “It’s not a surprise that the second phase of the Internet is different. Over 800 million people on Facebook are their real selves … You come to Facebook to learn about your friends.”

    10:28 am: She said think about the last time you bought a car. You’ve researched it, and you’ve made the decision, but as soon as you post it on Facebook, someone said, accusingly, “You aren’t going to buy that loser car, are you?”

    Your friends are driving real results.

    Once American Eagle Outfitters added a like button to all of its items, customers who were referred to the store by a friend bought 57 percent more on average than someone who was not referred.

    Mitic is now explaining Facebook’s new open graph, which means people don’t just have to like something, they can “read” a book, “listen” to music, “review” a product and recommend.

    10:33 am: Mitic said that Magento developers will be able to use the Open Graph into their applications. They will also be coming to GSI developers, as well.

    That means, even the small mom-and-pop store will be able to have their products show up on Facebook.

    That’s it for Mitic.

    The partnership between Facebook and eBay is pretty simple, and there doesn’t seem to be anything deeper with PayPal.

    That’s it for eBay. It’s over. The short story is: eBay is also a tech company, not just a retailer.

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20111012/live-at-ebays-developer-conference/feed/ 0     eBay Adds Facebook Exec Katie Mitic to Board http://allthingsd.com/20110929/ebay-adds-facebook-exec-katie-mitic-to-board/ http://allthingsd.com/20110929/ebay-adds-facebook-exec-katie-mitic-to-board/#comments Thu, 29 Sep 2011 19:16:15 +0000 John Murrell http://allthingsd.com/?p=126583 The board of eBay is now a dozen strong with the addition of tech veteran Katie Mitic, once of Yahoo and Palm and currently heading platform and mobile marketing for Facebook. “Katie has great experience in building innovative global platforms, products and services. Her expertise will be a tremendous asset for eBay,” said CEO John Donahoe.

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20110929/ebay-adds-facebook-exec-katie-mitic-to-board/feed/ 0     eBay Appoints Devin Wenig as New President of Marketplaces http://allthingsd.com/20110906/ebay-appoints-devin-wenig-as-new-president-of-marketplaces/ http://allthingsd.com/20110906/ebay-appoints-devin-wenig-as-new-president-of-marketplaces/#comments Tue, 06 Sep 2011 23:40:15 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=117411 eBay has named Devin Wenig, former CEO of Thomson Reuters Markets, as new president of its Marketplaces business unit. The appointment follows the departure of Lorrie Norrington, who left the position a year ago. Wenig, 44, will report to President and CEO John Donahoe. Over the past year, the Marketplaces unit has been undergoing a transformation, and while it represents eBay’s largest division, it faces being eclipsed by eBay’s faster growing PayPal division.

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20110906/ebay-appoints-devin-wenig-as-new-president-of-marketplaces/feed/ 0     eBay Commercials Coming to Let You Know "It's Not Your Mother’s eBay Anymore" http://allthingsd.com/20110720/ebay-commercials-coming-to-let-you-know-its-not-your-mother%e2%80%99s-ebay-anymore/ http://allthingsd.com/20110720/ebay-commercials-coming-to-let-you-know-its-not-your-mother%e2%80%99s-ebay-anymore/#comments Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:19:52 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=100849 EBay is kicking off a TV campaign in the next couple of months that is expected to help bring back consumers who may not have purchased anything on the site since the retailer was focused exclusively on auctioning off used goods.

    The commercials, which will start running in the third and fourth quarters in the U.S. and Europe, will be designed to raise awareness around the brand, which has been a little overshadowed recently by PayPal, which has been considered to have larger growth prospects.

    In an interview, eBay’s CEO John Donahoe told me that for the past few years, the company has been focused on improving the user experience, and when they saw a pick-up in spending from its current user base, it would begin to increase marketing.

    It’s hit that inflection point, he said. ”It’s not your mother’s eBay anymore.”

    While Donahoe promised that won’t be the company’s new tagline, he said the campaign will help people’s understanding of eBay. ”Seventy percent of our products are fixed price and 70 percent of our products are new items. A lot of people haven’t used it in five years, and still think that its an auction site focused on used items. We’ll use this to tell them what eBay is like,” he added.

    The commercials also will be used to promote its mobile business, which is expected to hit $4 billion in revenues by the end of the year.

    The San Jose-based company made the announcement in conjunction with its second-quarter financial results released today.

    During the quarter, it surpassed its own expectations for the period and revised its revenue projections for the year, which now surpass most Wall Street expectations. In the first quarter, revenues totaled $2.76 billion, growing 25 percent over the same period a year earlier when revenues totaled $2.2 billion.

    However, any potential lift in profits was offset by acquisition costs.

    The company reported a second-quarter profit of $283 million, decreasing 31 percent over the year-ago period when it made $412 million.

    The company has been on a shopping spree of its own, buying six companies in six months.

    Most recently, it purchased Zong, a carrier-billing provider, for $240 million in cash. Its largest acquisition in that period was of GSI Commerce, which provides services to merchants and brands, and cost more than $3 billion. GSI Commerce will make up its third business unit after eBay and PayPal.

    eBays stock price traded down 59 cents to close at $33.17 a share, before the release was sent out after normal trading hours.

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20110720/ebay-commercials-coming-to-let-you-know-its-not-your-mother%e2%80%99s-ebay-anymore/feed/ 0     France Brings in Tout Le Web Before the G8 Summit http://allthingsd.com/20110523/france-brings-in-tout-le-web-before-g8-summit/ http://allthingsd.com/20110523/france-brings-in-tout-le-web-before-g8-summit/#comments Mon, 23 May 2011 22:03:17 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=77024

    In an event ahead of the G8 summit this week, France’s power brokers are hosting a new event–called e-G8 and with the motto, “Internet: Accelerating Growth”–that starts tomorrow in Paris.

    Set to be held at the Tuileries Garden in the capital, the conference has been pushed and will be opened by French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who is also president of the G8.

    Recently, Sarkozy has advocated the idea of a “civilized Internet”–a decidedly tin-eared concept, since the e-G8 event is chock full of often noisy and always disruption-loving U.S. Web stars.

    That includes Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, the social networking site’s COO Sheryl Sandberg, eBay CEO John Donahoe, Groupon CEO and co-founder Andrew Mason, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Sean Parker.

    In fact, Mason and Zuckerberg have the two big keynote spots for the two-day event, putting the American point of view on the Internet’s future on front and center.

    In other words: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20110523/france-brings-in-tout-le-web-before-g8-summit/feed/ 0     New Company Will Emerge in Wake of eBay's Acquisition of GSI Commerce http://allthingsd.com/20110328/new-company-will-emerge-in-wake-of-ebays-acquisition-of-gsi-commerce/ http://allthingsd.com/20110328/new-company-will-emerge-in-wake-of-ebays-acquisition-of-gsi-commerce/#comments Mon, 28 Mar 2011 18:29:53 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=3910 EBay is acquiring GSI Commerce today for $2.4 billion, but not exactly all of it.

    As part of the acquisition, it will spin off a few of the company’s properties to create a well-funded new entity that will be led by GSI’s founder and CEO Michael Rubin.

    EBay said it will acquire GSI to help retailers and big brands move into both online and mobile commerce. GSI helps more than 180 leading retailers and brands, including Timberland, RadioShack, Calvin Klein, Levi’s and Ralph Lauren.

    But eBay and GSI have identified a few parts of the business that will remain independent.

    EBay said it will divest GSI’s licensed sports merchandise business and 70 percent of ShopRunner and Rue La La. EBay will loan the holding company $467 million and retain a 30 percent stake in Rue La La and ShopRunner. In addition, Rubin will invest $31 million in cash.

    Rue La La operates in the emerging flash-sales business, competing against companies like Gilt Groupe. GSI purchased Rue La La in 2009 for $350 million in cash and stock. Meanwhile, ShopRunner is similar to Amazon’s Prime membership. It charges members $79 a year for unlimited free two-day shipping with no minimum order from a variety of retailers across the Web.

    The spin-off will also include Fanatics, a Jacksonville, Florida-based company that operates more than 250 e-commerce Web sites, including 60 e-commerce stores for collegiate and professional sports. GSI’s acquisition of the company closed only two weeks ago.

    While all these companies sound complementary to eBay, the company said they are not core to its long-term growth strategy.

    In a conference call this morning, eBay President and CEO John Donahoe, explained that it was important to spin off Fanatics and GSI’s sports licensing business because “we don’t want to be in competition with sellers, and that business would be in competition with them.”

    As for Rue La La and Shoprunner, the reasons were a little different. “I would characterize it as a near-term operating loss and a huge opportunity that if we tried to realize, we’d probably screw it up. In Michael, we see a guy who can take those concepts to a level we couldn’t imagine, and our 30 percent investment is our indication of what we think Michael could do over time,” he said.

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20110328/new-company-will-emerge-in-wake-of-ebays-acquisition-of-gsi-commerce/feed/ 0     Stock Trades Near 52-week High on Message That It's an All "New eBay" http://allthingsd.com/20110210/stock-trades-near-52-week-high-on-message-that-its-an-all-new-ebay/ http://allthingsd.com/20110210/stock-trades-near-52-week-high-on-message-that-its-an-all-new-ebay/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 21:28:40 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=2633 Two years ago, eBay’s CEO John Donahoe promised Wall Street analysts massive changes to improve the company’s e-commerce experience.

    Today, he says it’s all “new eBay.”

    At the company’s analyst meeting at its headquarters, the company demonstrated the major changes made over the past couple of years and laid out plans for how local, mobile and social will lead the next wave of commerce.

    In the afternoon, Bob Swan, eBay’s CFO, took the stage to give the financial rundown that everyone had been waiting for since the morning.

    Swan highlighted PayPal’s growth trajectory by saying that it expects to double revenues over the next three years to between $6 billion and $7 billion, compared with $3.4 billion in 2010.

    He also talked up how mobile was gaining speed by saying that PayPal mobile transactions were estimated to double to $2 billion in total payment volume, and that mobile on marketplaces will double to $4 billion in gross merchandise volume.

    Meanwhile, when looking at the company’s gross merchandise volume, he sees the business increasing from $60 billion in 2010 to $75 billion in 2013. And, to support the strength of the business, the company anticipates generating $7.5 to $8 billion in free cash flow by 2013.

    Swan wants to stress that these growth rates are being driven from the company’s core businesses, and not from the more innovative stuff eBay is working on in local, mobile and social. “We are in a  different state than we were in March 2009, where the crystal ball was murky and full of potholes. Now the crystal ball is full of opportunities. We have unmatched advantages that position us to win.”

    That’s possible because of the improvements the company has been making over the past two years.

    “We’ve made significant and necessary changes necessary for growth. Two years ago, search was optimized for auctions and suffered. Two years from now, search will be a competitive advantage for eBay,” said Mark Carges,” eBay’s CTO of marketplaces. “We’ve rolled out many tailored experiences and selling on eBay will be vastly simplified.”

    To illustrate the change, Carges showed how there’s no more irreverent banner ads on the search results page, and instead of returning up to 19 paid results, it gives shoppers the “best matches” and cuts the time in half that it takes to return results.

    The company also launched the buyer protection program, which will return the price of the item and the cost of shipping to customers unhappy with purchases.

    Christopher Payne, VP of eBay marketplaces North America, said the company will start to increase marketing spend on these improvements to drive awareness: “We’ve been intentionally quiet as we fixed fundamentals, but starting in the second half, we’ll start marketing this new experience.”

    At lunch, analysts were so eager to talk to Donahoe he wasn’t even able to get to his seat. They crowded around him in the lobby to grill him on what impact Facebook, Apple and Google were going to have on the company’s payments aspirations.

    Donahoe wasn’t phased, saying that PayPal is technology agnostic. He will support BlackBerry, Google’s Android, Apple’s iPhone — and all of the iterations they produce from phones to tablets. What’s more, he says, the company is building the tools and technology for merchants to keep up in what can be a daunting world.

    Analysts appear impressed with the improvements. Today, the company’s shares traded up nearly 8 percent, or $2.57, to $34.53, coming close to marking a 52-week high.

    ]]>     http://allthingsd.com/20110210/stock-trades-near-52-week-high-on-message-that-its-an-all-new-ebay/feed/ 0     Live at eBay's Analyst Day–Is the Company Future-Proofed? http://allthingsd.com/20110210/live-at-ebays-analyst-day-is-the-company-future-proofed/ http://allthingsd.com/20110210/live-at-ebays-analyst-day-is-the-company-future-proofed/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 16:07:41 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=2651 It’s bright and early in San Jose, and we’re here visiting eBay’s world headquarters to hear CEO John Donahoe talk about how he’s future-proofed the business.

    The e-commerce and payments giant has got a host of challengers close on its heals, from new entrants such as Groupon to dozens of challengers on the PayPal side of the business.

    Follow us here for live updates from Donahoe’s opening remarks, as well as updates from members of the PayPal team.

    8:07 am: eMoney is here live in San Jose. We hear we are the only blogger, so be sure to read here for all of the latest updates from eBay’s analyst day. (Even though, we were relegated to the rear of the room).

    8:09 am: First up, there’s a video illustrating “the future of money.” We already anticipated that this would be a PayPal “lovefest.”

    8:11 am: Good morning, John. He’s kicking off his keynote with a flashback to the last analyst day two years ago. Today, we are a different eBay.

    8:12 am: John: We are making significant investments to drive our growth, and building a strong management team to strengthen our future.

    8:13 am: John: All of us are on the cusp of a very exciting time, creating new opportunities for eBay–more than we would have imagined two years ago. We have the assets to compete, win and lead.

    8:14 am: What does the future look like? Technologies are dramatically affecting how we connect, shop and pay. The new rules of retail are being written today. Four trends: Mobile, local, social and digital.

    8:15 am: Last year, in 2010, consumers moved more than $2 billion on mobile phones, and we expect that to double this year.

    8:15 am: Mobile is also influencing local. This is where eBay is trying to make a play with its recent acquisition of Milo.com, which has a database of local inventory.

    8:16 am: John: Social is the third trend. With Facebook and other networks, innovation is emerging. We are still in the early days. Social today is where mobile was a couple years ago. (Does that mean, like very little revenues? Yup!)

    8:17 am: John: These four trends are creating an inflection point. We’ll see more change in the next three years than we did over the last five to 10 years.

    8:18 am: John is talking about how complex retail is getting now that consumers can price-comparison shop on their mobile phones while in the store.

    John: Our company is expanding our opportunity enormously.

    8:20 am: John: We are no longer thinking about e-commerce–it’s just commerce. We are firmly in the center of this environment.

    8:21 am: What’s the future? It has to do with platforms and technology. John says we aren’t a retailer and we don’t compete with sellers or merchants. This gives us a unique position that’s increasingly powerful in this new environment.

    8:22 am: John: Today, eBay is with consumers all day, seven days a week on any connected device, which is different than in the past when consumers had to go home in order to use their services.

    8:23 am: Today, our target market is all merchants, sole proprietors, large merchants–both online and offline.

    8:24 am: John says today’s meeting serves to provide a three-year snapshot of the company from eBay to PayPal.

    Here’s the money quote that shows its payment division is the company’s darling. “PayPal has new opportunities in credit, digital and mobile. It has strong momentum and potential. I said a few years ago that PayPal had the potential to become bigger than eBay. That has the potential over the next three to five years.”

    8:27 am: John also had a nice, but less enthusiastic, message about its marketplaces business: “We expect the eBay marketplaces unit to return sustainable growth over the long term.”

    8:29 am: John: We are combining the power of commerce and payments capabilities to create an open commerce platform. This will address the changing dynamics of the market to help merchants scale, innovate and compete, and once again, we don’t compete with them.

    Today’s takeaway: We are starting to play offense in the company. The commerce landscape is changing dramatically, and we are entering a new retail environment, and we are well positioned.

    8:32 am: Next up, PayPal’s President Scott Thompson takes the stage, delighting us with his thick Boston accent!

    8:33 am: Thompson: We expect to double the size of our business over the next three years from $3.4 billion in 2010 to between $6 and $7 billion. And, we expect to meet our goals in 2011 of $4.2 billion.

    8:35 am: Thompson: We are going into 2011 with lots of momentum. As the world goes more and more online, PayPal is well positioned because we bridge the internet and global financial networks.

    8:36 am: A slide shows four aspects that makes PayPal stronger than the competition: Technology, fraud expertise, closed-loop data and global connections. In particular, Thompson said its fraud protection is unmatched.

    8:38 am: Thompson: There’s been more change in payments in the last 10 years than in the last century. We were the first to introduce mobile payments in 2006, the first to do micropayments, and the first truly open payments platform. In the past 18 months, that platform has managed $1 billion in transactions, and today, there are more than 15,000 new apps on X.com.

    PayPal wants to be the “wallet in the cloud,” online or offline.

    8:40 am: Thompson addresses all the growing competition, coming from multiple sides, including companies like Boku and Zong, or point of sales providers like Square. But “no one has the depth in experience that we have, and a lot of them partner with us.”

    8:43 am: Thompson: No one could have imagined the world would move online as quickly as it has. About half of the internet users are coming from developing access, markets that PayPal is just starting to explore.”

    8:44 am: Thompson reiterates the message of “the wallet in the cloud.”

    It’s complex stuff, the margin for error is zero. You have to have security, fraud management and global connections — everything we’ve been building for the past 12 years.

    8:45 am: Thompson: By end of this year, you’ll see PayPal at point of sale. If PayPal gets just 1 percent of retail sales, it will double the size of its business.

    8:47 am: Thompson is talking up his management team, but doesn’t mention the recent departure of Osama Bedier to Google.

    8:48 am: Next up is Ed Eger, PayPal’s SVP and general manager, taking the stage.

    8:49 am: It’s Eger first analyst day, illustrating the stronger emphasis on PayPal two years later.

    8:50 am: Eger describes the virtuous cycle, which connects the synergies between eBay and payments. It’s an old story, reaching back to the company’s acquisition of PayPal. PayPal grows as eBay adds merchants and buyers, who need to transfer funds. PayPal drives shopping as buyers and sellers can more easily connect.

    8:52 am: Eger is showing lots of charts with arrows pointing up and to the right. Yay for phenomenal growth!

    8:55 am: Eger says it helps small to medium sized businesses online by providing an easy check-out solution. When PayPal is added, sales go up by 18 percent.

    The story is a little different for large businesses. It has big brands like Walmart, Starbucks, Facebook and JetBlue and Delta.

    9:01 am: Eger is continuing the sales pitch. Fashion is the next great success story in payments.

    9:02 am: Next up, Eger details PayPal’s international presence as it localizes the service around the globe.

    Oooh, another chart with an arrow pointing up and to the right. This one is for international revenues.

    9:06 am: Eger says that it is adding about one million active users a month, and is trying to make those people more active.

    The most highly engaged users are using PayPal more than 100 times a year.

    9:08 am: We got an 8 percent lift in sales from consumers who participated in its loyalty program called PayPal Advantage compared to consumers who weren’t participating.

    9:09 am: We purchased BillmeLater in 2008. It gives people the flexibility to pay on their terms. It’s only been integrated for awhile, and eBay is now helping to drive 40 percent of its accounts.

    9:11 am: Eger is wrapping up his pitch, and says that looking ahead they are going to go after lots of new segments like fashion, government and global adoption.

    We expect to out pace the growth of the market, and our core business is getting stronger, and only scratching the surface for what it can do.

    9:13 am: Up next is Sam Shrauger, VP of global product and experience. In other words, he’s the innovation guy. “I want to change money. It could be so much better than it is now. Maybe in the future it can be cool. Right now, it’s a pain.”

    Digital goods alone is a $20 billion market, and everyone is talking about mobile. It’s a $180 billion market. But as more get access to mobile around the world, it’s poised to explode. Credit is a $5 trillion market, and there’s point of sales.

    That’s a lot of dough.

    9:15 am: Shrauger also has slides that have big green arrows pointing up and to the right. His pitch right now is all about how BillMeLater and PayPal has lots of overlap, and will create a better credit model for consumers.

    9:18 am: Here’s PayPal’s story about digital goods — we are talking music, movies, news, books or games.

    Shrauger says traditional payments doesn’t work for digital goods. It’s too clunky and too expensive.

    Payments also have to cross borders effortlessly.

    9:20 am: Last year, we introduced our solution for digital goods. You don’t have to leave the news article or game in order to pay. Today, PayPal leads the market with $3.4 billion in 2010 by powering payments for leading companies, like Facebook and Zynga.

    9:21 am: Now, we’re getting a demo of how you’d pay for one article in the online magazine AutoSport.com.

    Just click and you are done. 70-80 percent of PayPal users on AutoSport were new readers.

    9:22 am: Now for mobile. What does it take to win in mobile?

    We’ve been the digital wallet on the internet for 12 years. The only difference today is that the internet is on the phone. We have some of the leading merchants, like Nike and Overstock that are already using mobile solution. We expect to double our mobile Total Payment Volume this year to $2 billion.

    9:24 am: The key to success in mobile is to be technology and platform agnostic. You must support Bluetooth, RFID, NFC, QR Codes. Having one technology is not the answer. Having one digital wallet in the cloud is the answer.

    We can do for mobile payments, exactly what we did for online payments.

    9:26 am: Other companies are talking about having an open platform, but we’ve been doing it for two years. Open platforms gives us great opportunities.

    If you have a smartphone, you are always online. This is changing the way people shop, pay and buy forever.

    9:27 am: Sam’s about to show a demo of how its RedLaser app and Milo acquisitions can work together. He’s scanning an Xbox barcode to find out where he can buy one at the cheapest place. You can even buy the Xbox from the app, and then walk into the store and show a barcode to pick it up.

    9:31 am: The new reality is that the wallet is obsolete from credit cards to all of the loyalty cards that the average consumer carries around today.

    9:31 am: OK, here’s something that will come out this year.

    You should be able to decide how you pay for things. Right now, you don’t have that option. If PayPal is tied to your bank account or credit card, the payment is done — it’s too late.

    But PayPal will allow you to change the way you paid, deciding afterward to make installments on that Xbox, or to use a credit card instead.

    9:35 am: While that’s the consumer-facing side of the business, Shrauger is also demonstrating how it will change for a merchant.

    Merchants will be able to send a coupon to their customers, using a short digital form. A consumer will be able to redeem online or from a phone.

    9:37 am: Thompson is back on stage: All in all, I hope we’ve painted a dynamic picture of what we’ve accomplished, and what we have coming from PayPal. I believe the need for PayPal services will just continue to grow.

    We are expanding our core business, and setting ourselves up for the future. No financials, however, until this afternoon.

    That’s it. No major breaking news, but stay tuned for some financial news and forecasts later in the day.

    Thanks for reading.

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