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eBay uses your interests to curate a personalized store
It's not very fun to shop through online marketplaces like eBay these days -- finding something that tickles your fancy may involve wading through whole categories, or hoping that your search term will find exactly what you're looking for. eBay's solution? Have the marketplace do most of the work for you. It's launching an Interests feature that creates a customized store based on tastes you pick through a simple questionnaire. If you're a hypebeast who likes yoga and the beach, you may find the latest shoes sitting alongside mats and swimwear.
eBay app uses barcode scanning to list your items in seconds
It's usually a pain to list your goods on an auction or marketplace site, especially if it's your first time. You have to describe them, choose photos and (worst of all) choose a price that will reel in potential bidders. eBay, however, thinks it can cut the process down to a few taps. It's updating its Android and iOS apps with a simplified selling process that it claims can list a product in a matter of seconds. If you have the box for an item, you just have to scan its barcode (or, if that fails, search by name) and choose the item's condition. After that, the app can fill in a basic description, photos and even the starting price -- as elsewhere, eBay can use a mix of structured data and predictive analytics to choose a price based on what's likely to get a response.
eBay uses augmented reality to help you pick packaging
It can be a pain to sell your gear on eBay for many reasons, not the least of which is packaging. How do you know a box will be large enough without having it on hand? eBay can help: it just launched a previously teased, ARCore-based augmented reality feature for Android that helps you choose a shipping box for US deliveries. Point your phone at your item and you can overlay USPS box sizes to determine which one will fit your outgoing goods. This could save you time testing boxes, and might save you some cash if you can get away with buying a smaller box (or better yet, using one you already have).
Tech giants like Google and Alibaba are working to save endangered species
Google, eBay and other technology leaders are aiming to protect the world's animals. Why? In a widely unregulated social-media world, many tech platforms have become a haven for the wildlife black market, a $20 billion industry. The sale of illegal animal goods -- from ivory to exotic pets -- is the fourth-largest criminal global trade industry behind narcotics, counterfeiting and human trafficking, according to TRAFFIC, a wildlife-trade-monitoring network. In the past decade, the sale of these goods and species has moved from illicit backroom dealings in stores to apps and online shopping ads.
Why sneakerheads are leaving eBay for Detroit startup StockX
Buying a pair of new rare sneakers is harder than reselling them on StockX. To buy new, the Yeezy or Jordan gods have to smile upon you, giving you that winning raffle ticket at a local store or letting you beat the bots online. To resell, all you have to do is go to the StockX website and set a price. You don't take photos or haggle with potential buyers. Instead, you look at what price the shoes are selling for and list your pair at whatever amount you think someone will pay for them. Like a stock exchange, buyer and seller identities are kept from one another. StockX acts as a middleman, only releasing payment once it verifies that goods are authentic. It's this simplicity that has helped the company earn so many loyal users. StockX was founded in 2015 after Quicken Loans founder and CEO Dan Gilbert bought Campless -- an online repository for sneaker sales data -- from Josh Luber. As part of the purchase, Luber moved from his native Philadelphia to the Detroit metro area, taking up the mantle of StockX CEO and working from Gilbert's One Campus Martius building downtown. In a little under three years, the company has become the go-to source for buying rare high-end shoes and streetwear.
eBay will soon replace PayPal as its main payment option
eBay and PayPal remained tight even after the two headed to splitsville in 2015. That's bound to change in the near future now that the auction site has decided to offer an integrated payment system built by Amsterdam-based company Adyen. The move will give way to a more seamless payment experience -- no need to log into another website to pay -- since Adyen's product (already used by Netflix and Uber) is purely a back-end payment service.
UK asks Amazon and eBay to ban tiny ‘prison’ phones
Justice secretary David Lidington has called on Amazon, eBay and Gumtree to block all sales of miniature mobile phones. These tiny handsets, often less than eight centimetres long, can be bought for £25 online and easily smuggled into prisons. Many are advertised with the slogan "Beat the BOSS," a reference to the Body Orifice Security Scanners (BOSS) used by prison officers to detect knives, firearm components and other small metallic objects. During a speech for the British think tank Reform, Lidington said he had written to all three asking them to take down products clearly intended to "evade detection measures in prison."
The UK Autumn Budget gets tough on tech companies and tax
During yesterday's Autumn statement, Chancellor Philip Hammond outlined positive measures to push the adoption of autonomous and electric cars, develop new 5G networks, treble the number of computer science teachers and further research into AI and robotics. But tucked away in the 88-page document were small changes that show the UK government plans to get a lot tougher on technology companies that aren't willing to give back as much as they should.
StubHub and Viagogo raided in UK ticket touting probe
Scalpers aren't unique to the UK, but the government has made stamping out ticket touts one of its top priorities. Ministers have already set out legislation as part of the Digital Economy Act that will make the use of ticket-buying bots illegal, but regulators are also putting the squeeze on secondary ticket sellers. The Guardian reports that the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) raided the offices of secondary ticket marketplaces StubHub and Viagogo as part of a probe into "suspected breaches of consumer law."
Tech companies file briefs supporting challenges to DACA withdrawal
Major tech companies are still voicing their support for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a program that protects undocumented immigrants that came to the US when they were children. President Trump decided to end DACA protections in September and while tech companies spoke out in support of DACA prior to and following that decision, many have now filed a document backing those that are challenging the president's move in court.
'Find It On eBay' searches with pictures instead of words
Finding stuff you actually want to buy on eBay is getting a whole lot easier thanks to the online shopping site's new Image Search function. Instead of trying every possible search term combination to come up with the exact thing you want, you can now simply upload a photo (Image Search) or click "Find It On eBay" when browsing another website, and the eBay app will surface relevant listings. Find It On eBay is now live on Android, while Image Search is live on both Android and iOS.
Amazon and eBay accused of turning blind eye to VAT fraud
It's not uncommon to see a headline vilifying a well-known tech company for their incredibly low tax contributions despite turnovers in the billions. The EU is famously taking Apple to task, but more often than not, these clockwork bouts of outrage are frustrating to endure. If these "loopholes" are built into the system, it would seem energy could be better spent lobbying for tax reform instead of telling the same story ad infinitum. But this isn't one of those stories. In a new report, the UK government's Public Accounts Committee has made some pretty strong allegations against Amazon, eBay and other unnamed online marketplaces, accusing them of facilitating VAT fraud.
eBay will now verify luxury handbags sold on the site
eBay is now offering a new service for sellers of high-end handbags. Today the company launched eBay Authenticate, a program that photographs, lists, sells, ships and verifies the authenticity of luxury handbags from 12 major brands. eBay says the goal is to provide would-be buyers with more confidence in the items they're about to throw down a lot of money for.
Martin Shkreli is selling his $2 million Wu-Tang album on eBay
Martin Shkreli, for lack of a better/more accurate word, is a gigantic tool. The priapic "pharma bro" gained notoriety after he jacked up the price of an anti-toxoplamosis drug by 5,000 percent in 2015. Later that year, it was revealed that he was the guy who spent $2 million on Wu-Tang Clan's one-off Once Upon a Time in Shaolin as a kind of middle finger to music fans everywhere. Now Shkreli has listed the ultra-rare album on eBay. Here's the item description, verbatim. Emphasis ours:
Tech CEOs sign letter urging Trump to keep immigrant protections
Hundreds of CEOs have signed an open letter urging President Trump not to dissolve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Started in 2012 under the Obama administration, DACA allows undocumented immigrants who arrived to the US before they were 16 years old to obtain work permits and protection from deportation. Those with DACA permits have to renew them every two years and nearly 800,000 immigrants have benefited from the program.
Facebook opens up its Craigslist-like section to retailers
Facebook is trying to figure out what people want from Marketplace, so it's going to add a bunch of new products from real vendors in order to suss that out. "We'll kind of look and see what's popular, what people want to engage with," Deb Liu, Facebook's head of Marketplace, told Recode, "So if people are searching or looking for something, we want to make that available to them."
US citizen allegedly used fake eBay sales to hide ISIS funding
According to FBI records, US citizen Mohamed Elshinawy used fake eBay sales to bring in ISIS funding for terror attacks, reports the Wall Street Journal. As part of a financial network with operatives in Britain and Bangladesh, Elshinawy pretended to sell printers on the site in order to get PayPal payments from Islamic State groups abroad.
eBay is adding visual search to its mobile app
Next time you see a cute pair of shoes or a cool shirt you'd like to buy, snap a picture or take a screenshot. eBay has just announced two new features that adds image search capabilities, similar to Pinterest's visual search tool, to its mobile app. "Find It On eBay" gives you the power to share images straight from any social network or website to the online shopping platform's application. Just choose the website's logo with the "Find it now" tag line, click "search using this image" when it pops up and highlight the part of the photo you want to look up.
eBay will match prices from Amazon and Walmart on certain items
eBay announced a new Price Match Guarantee today, ensuring many of its items will cost the same or less than those offered by other major retail competitors. It's the company's latest move in the ongoing business battle with giants like Amazon and Walmart.
Apple Watch apps for Amazon, eBay and Google Maps disappear (updated)
Have you noticed a few apps disappearing from your Apple Watch? It's not just your imagination. AppleInsider has learned that the Amazon, eBay and Google Maps iOS apps no longer include versions for Apple's smartwatch. The first two appear to have lost Apple Watch support in just the past few days, while Google's software scrubbed Watch support in the past few weeks. However, the disappearances raise more questions than they answer. Why didn't most people notice? And is this a sign the Apple Watch is in trouble, or is this more a reflection of a maturing smartwatch landscape?
