Saturday, October 1, 2011

eBay and PayPal Expanding Mobile Technology Opening Up Platform to Allow 3rd Party Developers–Could it Handle Insurance Exchanges & Save a Ton of Money?

Magento is their open source e-commerce platform that can allow a small retail store for one example to be able to have a website and e-commerce business.  imageMagento has thousands of 3rd parties developing on their platform.  EBay is opening up the door to being able to make money, unlike Facebook where there is no ability to create a storefront, no money except they get to sell data, so Facebook makes money by collecting and selling data, so no benefits to the users as you hear discussed in the video.  John Donahoe, the CEO gives his view points on where and how the company is moving. 

For mobile, the idea of PayPal is great and you can hear why in the video too.  I have been a great fan for years as I like that extra layer of an encrypted gateway between myself and my bank so my information is not floating around out there on the web and thus, when presented the opportunity to pay via PayPal versus a debit or credit care, PayPal wins for me every time. 

eBay and Consumerization

One big point made here is that everyone shops different.  eBay does plan on integrating with Facebook but again you don’t have to.  With a smart phone and visual search you can find shoes, shirts or whatever you want via matching a picture you take on EBay and other places.  In short, if you like your friend’s shoes take a picture and the software will try and match it for you and tell you where to buy it. 

EBay mobile apps allow retail stores to get business this way.  EBay’s business is 45% in the US and the rest is outside the US.  20% of EBay crosses borders and John Donahoe, the CEO of EBay was at the Obama dinner this week too.  EBay opens the doors to more exports as a small seller too.  “Social Science” is up and moving and they are working to bring Facebook and EBay closer together and he stated the truth is “nobody knows”.  Consumers are changing the way they buy every day  EBay wants to be the “commerce” platform.  image

EBay and PayPal is enabling small businesses in China to connect to the rest of the world.  EBay is not a retailer and doe not compete in that arena.  Things are moving so much faster than many have anticipated. 

EBay makes apps that work across all operating systems.  EBay says they will work with social networks but it’s all based on the desire of the consumers.  Now I saw this page on EBay and it’s pretty interesting.  Would you want to bid on a Health Insurance Business Model?  I’m not making a comment one way or another here other than it’s interesting and has a huge message on the page if you want to check it out.  In just a quick review the site is doing a couple things like we have already seen on the web with kind of bidding for care in some instances. 

image

Ok now for some real “outside the box thinking here”….let’s for a moment think about insurance exchanges…could EBay do it?  Would it be a lot cheaper?  Consumers could rank all their purchases and if you have ever bought or sole anything on EBay, everyone is very honest about their experience.  Insurers might not like it but the experience would be known and you pay with PayPal, right?  Now why I  did a bring this up, look back on this story to where consumers got cancelled because they paid with a credit card in Los Angeles?  Could EBay build better trusted platforms than Blue Cross did with payments?  We would have a better audit trail via PayPal, that is for sure.  Would insurance companies with all their data breaches too think an extra layer of security for consumers would be a good idea? 

Anthem Blue Cross No Longer Takes Automated Credit Card Payments-–Notification Algorithm Parameters Apparently Not Working As One Woman Was Cancelled

Also, insurers are buying exchanges too, so something to think about. 

WellPoint & Partners Buy Bloom Private Health Insurance Exchange From Their Own Venture Capital Company (Sandbox) –Subsidiary Watch

If we could every get a public plan in place, EBay looks to have a great platform for that too.  Again, the commenting and rating processes have long been around and are included in already, would not have to be built at all.image

I think maybe another question to ask in all fairness, would EBay want health insurance on the ecommerce platform, got to look at both sides here is it could be a nightmare too. 

There’s enough on the web already with some of the questionable algorithms they use at times.  One thing it would do though is create a full story line of comments from consumers to talk about what they were quotes and the ability to rate those who were to sell it and make it a bit more transparent for all.  BD 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwUryg3naiY&feature=player_embedded

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