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eBay CEO Talks about Core Values: Auctions Are Not a Religion
 

I videotaped a few parts of eBay CEO John Donahoe's keynote address at the Shop.org Summit, which wrapped up on Wednesday afternoon and was chock-full of news and information relating to ecommerce. John's keynote address covered a lot of ground - auctions, PayPal, Skype, China, eBay's core values, along with his message to attendees that they should not fear that eBay is a retailer.

Of special interest to AuctionBytes readers is this clip in which John discusses eBay's core values and thoughts about auctions. eBay exists to create an opportunity for others, so they and eBay can have an impact on the world, and he said that he cares that users depend on eBay.



I thought it was interesting when he said, "We thought auctions was a religion. Auctions are nothing more than a format." This is a rather amazing statement for the head of eBay to say, given that auctions are such an important differentiator from other ecommerce players in a hyper-competitive arena.

There's another video clip in one of today's AuctionBytes Newsflash articles in which John did not explain why if Skype is such a great communications tool, it was unsuccessful on eBay as a communications tool. But of course, he failed to say that eBay did not allow sellers to fully use Skype on eBay. It was only open to a few categories, likely because eBay feared sellers would take transactions off-site to avoid fees.

There's one more video clip, you can view it on YouTube - it shows John taking his own video of himself during his presentation at Shop.org.