AuctionBytes Editor Ina Steiner interviewed eBay CEO Meg Whitman at the company's annual conference to talk about seller issues such as VeRO, customer support, and eBay's recent Trust & Safety initiatives. Whitman discussed the "Store versus Core" issue that inflamed users last summer, and said she would like to see more auction business on eBay. "Auction is our heritage," Whitman said.

When asked whether eBay would decrease auction fees in that case, Whitman mentioned the summer promotion announced during her keynote address at eBay Live in which commission fees are reduced from June 19 through August 5. "We, at the lowest tranche, reduced our Final Value fees (for core listings), and look for more incentives over time to list in the auction format. It's a summer promotion, but if we can, we'd like to extend it obviously." The video is available on the AuctionBytes.com website.

The AuctionBytes news team was in Boston last week covering the annual eBay Live Convention and the eBay Developers Conference. Ina Steiner, Julia Wilkinson, Phil Davies, Jim Whittaker, and Tom Shaughnessy have been interviewing attendees and eBay and PayPal executives to learn about the state of the industry and find out what is new at the show. AuctionBytes has also been doing video interviews of vendors and sellers to learn about useful products and services available to online sellers and find out what sellers are thinking.

Steiner moderated a panel on Friday on the topic of multi-channel selling sponsored by buySAFE. Bjorn Espenes, President and CEO of Infopia; Jonathan Garriss, CEO of Gotham City Online, Executive Director of PeSA, and Managing Director of ECMTA; Steve Woda, Founder, Chairman and Senior VP of Product & Strategy of buySAFE; and Brian Smith, author of ComparisonEngines.com and founder of SingleFeed, talked about how to get started with multi-channel selling, how to measure channel performance, and how to drive qualified traffic and improve conversion rates.

News, video, and photos are available on the AuctionBytes eBay Live coverage section, including an interview with eBay President North American Marketplaces Bill Cobb with AuctionBytes.TV. AuctionBytes will publish a special issue of the AuctionBytes-Update newsletter on June 24, 2007.

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/ebaylive2007

View the video interview here:
http://auctionbytes.tv/cgi-bin/video-manager/frame.pl?features&06152007g