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Tag: AuctionBytes

Daily Roundup for 2008-01-08

  • Why do people shop online? How do they find items, and what factors are important to them in making purchasing decisions? These are some of the questions we set out to explore in our December online-buying survey. Over 900 people took the survey. By aggre
  • Robert Scoble, he of many thousand friends on Facebook, was suspended from the social network after he used a new Plaxo feature to automatically export the contact info of his Facebook friends. Facebook has now let him back in, but only after the uber-blogger’s brief hiatus created quite the stir in–where else?–the blogosphere. This brings up an interesting question: Do you own your social network? Or does Facebook?

Daily Roundup for 2007-12-25

AuctionBytes Conducts Online Shopping Survey

AuctionBytes.com, one of my favorite ecommerce news sources, is conducting another survey to study online shopping behavior.  The survey explores a number of areas that are important for small business ecommerce merchants to fully understand about their customers.  If you have a few extra minutes, I encourage you to complete this survey.  Ina Steiner, the editor, will publish the survey results in a few weeks, and I will make sure to share with you as well.

You can complete the survey here >> http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=vX4t6OvcNW0_2fO8NFL8pFuA_3d_3d

Antitrust Lawsuit Filed against eBay over PayPal, Payments Policies

AuctionBytes’ Ina Steiner reported this week that an anti-trust lawsuit was recently filed against eBay.

‘Michael Malone filed an antitrust class-action lawsuit against eBay this week under the Sherman Act, alleging eBay "utilizes its nationwide monopoly of the on-line auction market to monopolize the available forms of payment that sellers can use on eBay." eBay controls which payment methods sellers may advertise in their listings, and this year, it eliminated buyer-protection for non-PayPal transactions. eBay owns the PayPal payment service.’

The article also references the old conflict between PayPal and eBay.  Before eBay purchased PayPal, PayPal’s management team prepared an anti-trust lawsuit against eBay and threatened to pursue the action.  Ultimately, PayPal did not file the anti-trust lawsuit, but it is ironic given the current lawsuit’s claims.

Very interesting stuff.  We will have to keep an eye on how this develops.

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