The DLD Conference is a global conference network covering innovation, digital media, science and culture, and The Next Web has been covering all the key events from this week in Munich so far.
Today, John Donahoe, CEO at eBay, took to the stage to answer questions covering a range of subjects, including mobile and social. When asked about innovation in the mobile sphere, he said:
“Innovation is not driven by retailers. Innovation is technology-enabled and consumers are driving it. Consumers are in charge here.”
A couple of weeks back, Donahoe predicted a whopping $8bn in sales via mobile this year, and while he anticipates a great deal of developments in m-commerce over the next few years, he also briefly discussed eBay’s plans for social.
You may remember back in October, eBay announced that its developer arm – X.commerce would be integrated with Facebook’s open graph, whilst simultaneously unveiling PayPal access, a way of ‘checking out’.
“Technology is changing the way consumers shop, and eBay’s integration with Facebook will make shopping social for consumers and retailers worldwide,” said Matthew Mengerink at the time, who is Vice President and General Manager at X.commerce. “Retailers and developers need a technology-driven global commerce partner to help them engage and connect with consumers anytime, anywhere. By making eBay’s technology and global commerce platforms available to developers and retailers through X.commerce, we are that partner, enabling commerce, changing the way people shop.”
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Today, Donahoe pointed to its current tie-up with Facebook, but went on to discuss what may be in store in the future. “Our platform connects into Facebook’s platform in a very compelling way, and I’d like it to plug in to Google+’s platform too.” So that may not come as a massive surprise, but it was interesting to hear Donahoe explicitly say that we’ll likely see Google+ integration in the future.
As for the issue of continued innovation, Donahoe reckons there is still a lot of innovation to come from the company. “There will be a lot of innovation on top – the way we’re approaching it is we’re looking for sources of innovation,” he said. “Innovation and social commerce won’t be a big winner-takes-all killer app. It’s going to be a lot of innovative experiments, some of which will really take off.”
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