eBay’s new CEO

Meg Whit­man, eBay’s CEO, is step­ping down after a bru­tal year for the com­pany. The New York Times reports that John Don­a­hoe will be pro­moted from pres­i­dent of the Mar­ket­place divi­sion, and will assume his new role on 31 March. The Times ran a story about Don­a­hoe on 21 Feb­ru­ary 2007.

It has been a bru­tal year for eBay. The company’s stock price has dropped by a third in the last 90 days. The e-commerce sec­tor con­tin­ues to grow, but eBay’s mar­ket share is shrink­ing. This inter­view pub­lished today by Reuters, Don­a­hoe claims that eBay will rebound in a reces­sion as casual sell­ers return to eBay to earn addi­tional income.

eBay’s acqui­si­tion of Skype has been a dis­ap­point­ment, even with an addi­tional 30 mil­lion sub­scribers in the last quar­ter of 2007 – see IP Democ­racy for more details. Last August’s out­age dam­aged the VoIP’s service’s rep­u­ta­tion and cus­tomer stand­ing. In this 2 Octo­ber 2007 arti­cle, I dis­cussed how com­pet­i­tive rivalry was increas­ing in the VoIP indus­try. eBay may never recover its invest­ment in Skype.

Another eBay acqui­si­tion has attracted atten­tion in Hawaii. Stub­Hub, which was men­tioned in this 12 Decem­ber 2007 arti­cle in the Star-Bulletin, became an impor­tant sec­ondary mar­ket for 2008 Sugar Bowl tickets.

24 Jan­u­ary 2008: Here’s an arti­cle about Don­a­hoe from yesterday’s Busi­ness­Week. He’s com­mit­ted to an eBay turn­around, even if it hurts the stock price. First task: reduce the seller fees. Next: make eBay an eas­ier and safer web site for buy­ers and sell­ers. As the New York Times points out, bet­ter search tools may be an impor­tant part of the sec­ond task.

Tagged as: ceo, e-commerce, eBay, Google, Hawaii, reputation, revenue, revised, search, Skype, USA, VoIP