Live from the Live keynote

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• Live tweets from the eBay Live! keynote. Reporter Dan Wilson is at the scene.
• Trying to count empty seats… there is a whole unoccupied block. Possibly thousands of bumless seats. But there are donuts and coffee.
• John Donohoe takes the stage. Bit starchy. eBay Live attendees sold $1.3bn last year. Collective feedback – 20 638 040. His feedback? 172..
• How touching that JD’s Parents are in the audience. And he’s showing us childhood snaps… more like a wedding than a keynote.
• JD has a strange selection of messianic hand gestures. Lots of out-stretched arms and hands clasped as in prayer.
• JD: eBay’s values haven’t changed. But buyers are more sophisticated and have so many choices. Change is difficult but essential.
• Anyone watch the West Wing? JD is very reminiscent of Arnie Vinnick in season 6 & 7. He’s offering ‘sensible solutions’.
• JD: eBay works for the ‘collective good’ and will ‘do right by people who do the right thing’. 20 minutes in. No substantive announcements.
• JD is saying Thank You. He thinks we should all say Thank You more. (no John, thank you!) Run VT. Lorrie Norrington is on next.
• Whooooossssshhhh…. Lorrie Norrington bounds on to the stage. Lively. Girls do keynotes better.
• Saints preserve us. Norrington has just shown us a picture of her dog. Half an hour in. No substantive announcements.
• In the film of ebay Live, Alan Alda is playing JD and Jodie Foster is Lorrie Norrington. Hugh Grant is the non-paying bidder.
• Fast Facts: 2007 GMV was $60bn. 84m active buyers. Lorrie Norrington’s dog is called Lucy.
• Seller Protection to be available on all items paid by PayPal for US sellers. No cost. No limits. Available when buyer overseas.
• DSR visibility and discounts are working. Average rates are up. 33% have 4.8 or better, up from 15%.
• Powersellers with 4.9 on DSRs will get extra 20% FVF discount from July.
• Postal services discounts for PowerSellers. Coupons for buyers. Top buyer phone support. Fee changes coming up?
• Lorrie Norrington booed over the removal of the right of sellers to leave negative feedback for buyers.
• Mutual Feedback Withdrawl back on the table. Encouraging buyers to remove the negs and neuts they leave.
• Full buyer protection when you pay with PayPal…. on eBay.com. Lots of people leaving the hall… Norrington hasn’t finished.
• So many people have left the hall because they thought it was all over… it isn’t.
• Community Hall of Fame award winners. All very nice but Meg really did do this better. Lorrie, John: smile like you mean it.
• Keynote ends. Not a classic. Exit Music? Saturday Night’s Alright for Fightin…from Elton John. Prophetic?

11 Responses

  1. Interesting account but mainly for disclosing the lack of anything interesting said.

    An earlier post contained the following teaser from LN:

    Without giving too much away Lorrie Norrington said “In the keynote address at eBay Live! this year, myself and John Donahoe, our CEO, will be speaking very directly about the future of eBay.”

    It doesn’t strike me that that they did speak very directly or, for that matter, that they did give too much away even at eBay Live!, unless – of course – you count the doughnuts.

  2. eBay doesn’t have a clue. The very thing that made them what they are; the small seller is what they are trying to throw away. There are plenty of ‘mall’ sites on the net, why do we need another??? I can’t wait to see them fall….

  3. the buyers are not here because ebay has sold out the little seller! I hear this all the time. ebay use to be fun. Now it is all big sellers of swat meet junk .you have to surf hard to find a little seller! we need a new place ..ebay is not what it started out as. It is now a big new junk swap meet. I can get this junk any week-end.Or take a quick trip to Mexico.. which is more interesting!

  4. What do I think of JD & LN’s ‘eBay speak’??? Puh-leeze!! 🙄

  5. With a company supposedly as busy and as productive and as forward thinking as Ebay – one would expect the keynote by the CEO to be full of facts, figures AND plans for the future. Surely such a keynote speech would have no room in it for one’s childhood pictures?….unless they were inserted simply to waste time? So….still, Ebay’s future plans remain heavily veiled. And Norrington’s professed love for small sellers….I don’t really know anyone who beats up their loved ones for no good reason… End result, who do they think they’re fooling? The power of three seems to be Ebay plus buyers beating up mostly small sellers!

    http://www.ACEOart.net

  6. Meg was always very fluffy and friendly; people liked the woman. JD’s trying to achieve the same thing. IMHO it’s a mistake; he’s quite obviously uncomfortable dealing with eBayers and ought to stick to dealing with Wall Street and leave Lorrie and Stephanie to deal with buyers and sellers.

  7. He was probably subjected to the normal board-meeting bleating about not changing things… even if change is really inconsequential and doesn’t matter. .

    “oh, but Meg always did it like that….”

    Of course, if someone in the boardroom gets a sudden dream of a change that is crucial to the way things work and that they think a wonderful idea, if they can persuade others that this dream is not a nightmare the bleating changes… now where can this have happened recently??

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