At the recent Linn Academy one of the most interesting talks focused on evolving the eBay marketplace. Presented by Kit Glover. eBay‘s Director of Professional Selling, it covered everything from Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality and tools coming or already available on eBay for buyers and sellers.
It’s worth stepping back a few year’s in eBay’s history to put these developments into perspective. Many years ago (a decade!) eBay made a bold investment in mobile and has been a leader in the space ever since with the most popular mobile app ever. Then the company under John Donahoe’s tenure got hooked on payments and growing PayPal. If you look at acquisitions over many years they were all payments focused and PayPal was what caught the attention of investors eventually leaving it to be spun off.
Enter Devin Wenig who announced a multi-year plan to turn around the marketplace and unfettered by payments all investment has been focused on selling. Now we’re on the cusp of a new generation of technology that eBay have been working on and it’s all about to go live. Augmented reality with Shop the Look and Image search, Chatbots and the ability for developers to build off eBay buying experiences for the products that you sell with eBay powering the transaction and the use of Artificial Intelligence to power it all are just around the corner. Not only that but new tools for sellers again using the technology that eBay have been investing in.
The video is only 20 minutes long and well worth watching in full:
