Actually most of the Analyst Day Presentation is fluff that purposely hides some of the nuggets on eBay’s strategy for addressing its myriad of problems challenges. As always, Rob Hoff (who, btw, is the only blogger that actually writes about eBay
) has a good summary of the key issue cutting through all the marketing speak.
* Most interesting of all, eBay CEO Meg Whitman suggested that eBay’s reputation system, PayPal’s wallet, and Skype’s ability to let people have a constant online presence each could be decoupled from their respective services and offered as components of entirely new kinds of services. Meg didn’t specifically mentions offering them up to software developers, but said they could become the building blocks for a more customized Web.
So yes, eBay is now trying to stay ahead of the innovation curve by attempting to “micro-chunk” web services and not just content. Not so revolutionary from some perspective but defintely important for all the startups in the space.
In the end, its comforting to know that all the issues/ideas/projects do end up being bubbled up to senior executives . . . hopefully through the right business owners and not just another strategy thought piece ( ala the infamous McKinsey dossier)





Thanks for the comment, rob, that is probably one reason … eBay is way too mainstream to capture the imagination of the web 2.0 crowd . . . another I think is that eBay targets its messaging/PR very much towards its own community rather than externally . . its not focused so much on acquiring new users as serving its already huge user base in the US . . . unlike Google who need new users when they create “silos” of beta programs constantly. . .
Comment by will — May 12, 2006 @ 12:31 am