Friday, April 28, 2006

Five Things eBay Can Do

Five Things eBay Can Do

This week’s PodSession is about eBay shopping for partners. This is inspired by recent buzz about eBay looking to take on Google with new allies such as Microsoft and/or Yahoo.

EBay is voicing its concern with its checkbook and looking for new preferred advertising partners and cross-promotional opportunities. Should eBay be afraid of Google? How many management consultants did it take for eBay to wake up and realize its business direction? Is anyone safe from the growing power of Google over search and commerce?

Here are five things we suggest they do instead of mucking around with half-baked alliances.

1. Come up with eBay 2.0 and figure out a role for the company in the digital future.
2. Focus on core strengths. Buy Intuit (Quicken) to give eBay buyers and sellers accounting features.
3. Focus of the company should be Paypal and turning it into Citibank of online world. (Very Very Important.)
4. Figure out a way to get into shareware sales business. Perhaps acquire eSellerate. This is where Ebay can put its heft to good use.
5. Get into digital media sales. The recent Skype-EMI deal could be a good start.

This is just for starters. In the very near future, I am going to write a five-day series on eBay’s strategy and what they can do to grow even bigger. Funnily enough, Skype might be part of that strategy, though not as eBay might have thought. And the best part - all the advise is going to be free. McKinsey not required. I am sure one of you can even cook-up a nice PowerPoint presentation as well.

Anyway more here in week’s PodSession which is 20 minutes in length, a 9 MB download.