John Donahoe’s Early Thoughts

We are all trying to second guess what John Donahoe wants to do with eBay. NY Times’ Saul Hansell says that he plans to focus on better Search. Not a bad starting point. I hope this won’t be one of Jerry Yang’s “we want MyYahoo to be the starting point of your lives” vision without

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What is John Donahoe’s Gameplan with eBay?

The big news this week is eBay’s CEO change. Meg Whitman retires, John Donahoe will be taking her place. There is wide-spread skepticism about John Donahoe’s choice as the successor to Meg Whitman. We just completed a comprehensive analysis of eBay’s business and a comparative analysis of eBay vs. Amazon.

Trend Radar 2008: Turnarounds

2008 seems like a year in which several major companies are positioned for turnarounds. Whether or not they would be successful is another matter, but there is enough discontinuity in each of their markets, that turnarounds could happen. Here are some to watch:

Forbes Column 08: eBay’s Bounce-Back Opportunity

Meg Whitman is finally leaving eBay. My Forbes column, eBay’s Bounce-Back Opportunity, discusses what the successor needs to pay attention to, whether it is John Donahoe or otherwise. We have also discussed eBay’s strategy at length in Web 3.0 and eBay and eBay vs Amazon. Today, the determining factor in the eBay vs Amazon debate

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Deal Radar 2008: Bill Me Later – Blessed by Amazon

Bill Me Later is a safe and convenient payment system that allows people to purchase on the phone or over the web. The service is in direct competition with eBay’s PayPal. It was recently judged as the sixth-fastest-growing U.S. firm by Inc. magazine. It has around 200 employees and is based in Baltimore. Bill Me

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Trend Radar 2008: Emerging Markets

This morning, as I was doing the HP piece, it struck me how big an impact Emerging Markets are having on companies right now! “HP has done well globally, a strong reason for it to be unfazed by the slowing US economy. In 2007, 67% of its total revenue was from outside the US. In

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Deal Radar 2008: Retrevo

For the moment, this will be my last Vertical Search Engine on the deal radar, while we turn the spotlight onto other segments. We have discussed TheFind and Wize. Today we will take a look at Retrevo, another shopping search engine. We had profiled Vipin Jain, CEO Retrevo last year. Retrevo is a product review

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Deal Radar 2008: Wize Ranks Products

We profiled Tom Patterson, CEO of Wize.com last year. The site compiles both expert and user reviews and inserts them into a scoring algorithm to rank products. The site’s proprietary WizeRank gives each product a 1 – 100 score, utilizing collective wisdom ferreted from all over the web.