eBay shareholders, board members and executives gathered at the Back Bay Events Center in Boston for the company's annual shareholders meeting. Over 125 people, including executives, board members employees and members of the media were on hand to vote on business matters and listen to eBay's CEO present the company's plans for future growth for its three major businesses.
Business conducted included the election of directors; an amendment to its 1999 Global Equity Incentive Plan; an amendment to its 1998 Employee Stock Purchase Plan; and the selection of its independent auditors. All matters before the board were approved or ratified.
eBay CEO Meg Whitman gave a presentation after the meeting outlining steps the company was taking to grow GMV and grow beyond GMV through new formats and new monetization models.
Whitman outlined plans for the eBay Marketplaces:
- Improve the shopping experience (Bid Assistant; Feedback 2.0 with its Detailed Seller Ratings; improving eBay Checkout; and Motors 2.0)
- Improve Trust & Safety (SMI; Selling limits on items favored by counterfeiters; and enhanced buyer protection)
- Extend eBay's Offerings (eBay Express)
Whitman also talked about eBay's plans to grow its marketplace businesses beyond Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV). She mentioned Shopping.com and classifieds, stating that there is strong growth in unique visitors in classifieds. Other non-GMV growth plans involve new monetization models, Whitman said, and talked about eBay's agreements with Yahoo and Google in which advertisements from those companies' ad networks appear on the eBay websites. Whitman said eBay is testing and going carefully with the advertising that is appearing on eBay, and called an "incremental opportunity."
Whitman discussed its PayPal payment service and Skype communication service as well.
During a question & answer period, there were no questions specifically dealing with user issues. Questions asked ranged from why eBay didn't do a better job of telling its story to Wall Street, whether Skype was doing testing in the area of voice biometrics, a question about what happened in China to eBay's Eachnet service, and what eBay was doing to make the stock price high. PETA and the Parents Television Council had representatives who made statements and asked questions about eBay's policy of allowing live animal sales in China, and eBay's ads on "edgy" programs like CSI, respectively.
