It's Kind Of Quiet Around Here!

Not much of interest is going on this week. The earnings reports for Yahoo, eBay and Google are being released but nobody expects any surprises. Yahoo has 100 days to turn their ship around -- well, Jerry Yang has 100 days. eBay is in the midst of what is traditionally the slowest quarter of the year and Bill Cobb is still on Sabbatical. Google seems to be still hitting on all cylinders.

Hopefully something interesting will come out of today's eBay earnings report but I feel it will be more of the same. Some things to look for in Meg's Conference call are:

• How Skype is doing (see how many times, if any, she says "The Power of Three".
  
  
• Is there any indication how Express is doing?
  
  
• Are their any hints as to what they are going to do about their Craig's List Stake?
  
  
• How much of their Quarterly Marketplace revenue came from non-GMV related business (Shopping.com and Sponsored Links etc.)
  

Here's a preview of the conference call from The Streets Vishesh Kumar
TheStreet.com Senior Writer

"eBay's tougher posture comes amid concerns that the company's core auction market has martured. More-abstract efforts to reignite growth, meanwhile, don't seem to have panned out. Buying the popular Internet telephony service Skype in 2005, for example, was supposed to help the auction marketplace by making it easier for buyers and sellers to communicate.

Skype continues to show impressive growth, but it's questionable whether the $2.6 billion that eBay shelled out in 2005 has really helped the company's bottom line enough to make the deal worth it.

Going after the local commerce market, on the other hand, offers the company a much more direct way of finding new growth. And many of the skills that eBay has honed over the years -- and not to mention the observational perch it has enjoyed thanks to its stake in Craigslist -- will give it a leg up over other big Internet companies in capturing the market."

Online Sellers Take Stock
This would be a good time of year for online sellers to take stock of their situation and make the necessary moves to lessen their dependence on any one marketplace. If you are currently only selling on eBay, now would be a good time to look at other marketplaces like Amazon and certainly your own webstore.