Amazon took top honors,  though second-place Ruby Lane was the seller favorite in the areas of customer service and communication. Merchants chose Bonanza as the easiest to use, though that was Craigslist’s best feature too, they reported. Overall, Craigslist didn’t fare all that well, coming in number 11 of 16.

Sellers shared their complaints. Concerns about Craigslist included spam and bad checks, and the need to repost every three days to make ads rank well. EBay, which garnered the greatest number of respondents, was criticized for the number of winning buyers who didn’t pay, and the elimination of the seller’s ability to post bad reviews about bad buyers. Amazon seller complaints included the marketplace’s willingness to accept any seller — even those with shoddy displays,  and the cut it takes on commission. Sellers had plenty of good things to say about each marketplace as well, of course.

The graph below summarizes the results. Here’s the link to what sellers said good and bad about each.

  IAC, which operates more than 50 Internet businesses across 30 countries, just reported impressive quarterly growth in areas that include search, Match.com and ServiceMagic. 

NEW YORK— February 1, 2012—IAC (Nasdaq: IACI) released fourth quarter 2011 results today.

• Q4 revenue and Operating Income Before Amortization reached record levels, with strong double-digit growth for the 8th consecutive quarter. Operating Income Before Amortization grew 88% to $90.9 million, which included the write-off of $23.0 million in deferred revenue related to the Meetic acquisition.

• Free Cash Flow for the twelve months ended December 31, 2011 was $332.4 million, up 32% over the prior year, while cash flow from operating activities attributable to continuing operations was $372.4 million, up 9% over the prior year.

• IAC repurchased 4.6 million shares of common stock between October 29, 2011 and January 27, 2012 at an average price of $41.70 per share, or $191.2 million in aggregate.

• IAC declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.12 per share to be paid on March 1, 2012 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on February 15, 2012.

• Q4 Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted EPS more than doubled from the year ago period.

• Q4 net income and GAAP EPS comparisons were impacted by certain discrete items as further described herein. Collectively, the net impact of these items benefited Q4 2010 net income and GAAP EPS by $77.4 million and $0.80 per share, respectively, but had no impact on Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted EPS.

Here is the complete release.

Naspers said the two competing platforms were consolidated into one, to “grow Naspers’ online classifieds footprint and market penetration in South Africa”. Ebay’s Gumtree and the local platform Junkmail offer stiff competition in the relatively underdeveloped online market.

One-year old KalahariAds operated in the South African market only, while OLX operates in 96 countries in 40 languages. It is the market leader in a number of countries, including Portugal. Naspers owns 84 percent of OLX.

The KalahariAds team, based in Cape Town, now works for OLX. It is headed by Paul Casarin, previously general manager of KalahariAds.

“OLX is one of the world’s leading classified platforms. The consolidation gives us the expertise of a global classifieds business, which is OLX, and the hands-on local knowledge of the KalahariAds team. The team will ensure prompt customer support and high moderation standards, to make OLX a safe place for buyers and sellers,” said Casarin.

“As one of the largest classified companies in emerging markets, OLX brings a wealth of expertise, gained from operations in many countries, and adapted to local environments,” he said.

OLX.co.za will be able to focus even more on growing its mobile audience, with its full-house of mobile options, including a mobile site and apps for all operating systems (iOS, Android, Nokia, Blackberry).

The big (unanswered) question is, how long before Naspers eliminates inter-group competition between its free classified platforms in other countries (eg. in Greece its platforms OLX, Tradus and Slando all compete with each other in a very crowded market, which includes Schibsted’s Aggeliopolis.)

What kind of deals are moms interested in? Says YesMom: family memories, fashion, health and wellness, home decor and prenatal products. And one more: security tags from a company called “RescueMoi” that you can put on your phone, keys, wallet to help them find their way home if they get lost. Is YesMom saying something about moms being scatterbrained? We sure hope the same product finds its way onto YesDad, if the company chooses to launch a sister (or is that brother) site.

Dealfind is one of Canada’s biggest deal sites. The company says it helped its customers save “close to $400 million through nearly 1.7 million purchased vouchers since launching in 2010.” The site is active in 29 markets across Canada, as well as a number of U.S. cities. A mobile app launched in November, 2011.

Groupon Scheduler is an online appointment service that provides merchants with an easy way to manage their schedules and accept bookings from consumers.

OpenCal launched at the end of 2010, so the acquisition was quick, although probably not overly lucrative. OpenCal was co-founded by Shiva and Simon Vallee, who also helped to found Sitemasher, another Canadian web service, which was acquired by Salesforce.

Everyday Deals has a few bells and whistles that leapfrog GrouponNow (although we suspect not for very long). Most notable is a nifty filter feature that can drill down by category, day and even time (early morning, mid-day, late night, etc.). There is also a Google Map with pushpins where a deal is located. If you’re in the mood for saving money while on-the-go, Everyday Deals looks promising.

Despite its Toronto-origins and headquarters, and its strong presence in every major Canadian cities, DealFind also runs local sites in most U.S. states (the company added 18 new cities in November 2011 alone). DealFind has been around since 2009 and has sold nearly 2 million vouchers valued at over $400,000 total – not the biggest player on the block but one that looks to be around for a while.

Housed on Merchants.Groupon.com (The Groupon Merchant Center) the analytics provide buyer demographics by age, gender, and zip code. Included as well is the feedback of the more than one million Groupon deals buyers who told the Deals provider whether they’d recommend the purchase and merchant to others, and what they thought of the Deal.  Merchants can access a compilation of their own deals, whether Groupon or the more time-sensitive Groupon Now, as well as returning-customer earnings in the Groupon Rewards loyalty program. 

Ads are listed for free and potential buyers can form groups and chat with others online to canvas opinion on the goods on offer. The key point of the site, however, is the fact that the main format for ads and user-to-user communication is video.  On launch it appeared to be dominated by ads selling or swapping belongings, but the site is proposing itself equally as a recruitment site with the idea of live interviews by webcam.

It also purports to be a dating venue. Before anyone gets juicy ideas about what they might propose on video services: all adult services on the platform are specifically prohibited.

courtesy of SFGate.com

EBay’s PayPal will introduce its own Daily Deals product in the first quarter of 2012, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.  The digital payment service will use the purchase patterns of its 103 million members, to determine what offers to deliver to each. Location-based technology will deliver deals to text-enabled consumers as they walk or drive near participating stores. Additionally, PayPal’s new Mobile Wallet will provide wireless payment processing. A PayPal subscriber will be able to sign in with name and personal ID and the Mobile Wallet will retrieve various credit and debit cards provided by the subscriber. The differentiator here is that the user can decide from which account the funds should be drawn as much as 30 days after making a purchase. No word yet on whether Mobile Wallet will be available to EBay Classifieds consumers.

Here’s more from SFGate.com.

Until Aug. 22 EBay.de and EBay.at were simply platforms where buyers and sellers met and transacted between themselves, with EBay playing no active role in transactions. Since that day, EBay has been accepting money from (some) buyers and dishing it out again to (some) sellers, once sellers have assured EBay the goods had been dispatched. In other words, since Aug.  22 EBay has been standing in the center of (some) transactions as paymaster.

Which transactions? All sellers who register on the platform after Aug. 22 participate in the test and must accept EBay as paymaster – until further notice. For all other sellers it is business as usual – for now at least.

No other country site of EBay intervenes in transactions in this way. So, Ebay.de and Ebay.at are breaking new ground with their test.

Naspers-owned Ricardo, EBay’s major competitor in Switzerland and Austria, does not involve itself in transactions in this way – and also does not intend to. “We know EBay is testing a new payment procedure, but we do not have similar plans,” says Barbara Zimmermann, media spokeswoman of Ricardo in Switzerland.

What exactly is being tested?

In German-speaking countries EBay Buyer Protection only insures buyers against loss when they pay with PayPal. (In the U.S. buyers are covered when they pay with PayPal, ProPay, Skrill [previously Moneybookers], Paymate, with credit or debit cards, or select the bill-me-later option.) So, the protection is relatively limited in German-speaking countries.

As a first step, EBay Germany and Austria extended the cover. Apart from PayPal, buyers are now also covered when they pay per bank transfer, credit card, debit order and Skrill. In addition, they may select to pay cash upon fetching products from the seller, or pay cash to the delivery man.

Next, EBay made it compulsory for new sellers (taking part in the pilot test) to offer PayPal as a payment alternative. Finally, EBay changed the rules for buyers transacting with these “new sellers” on the platform, forcing them to pay EBay – and not the sellers. And prohibiting the seller from offering any other payment method and procedure than the ones mentioned above.

Now it works like this: the buyer pays EBay; when the money shows up in EBay’s bank account, it instructs the seller to dispatch; the seller dispatches and notifies EBay. Only then EBay pays the seller – not in a single amount, but in tranches (which may differ depending on several factors, including whether you are a professional of private seller, and whether the seller selected the money to be paid into his PayPal account.)

Why did EBay think it necessary to consider a new role in transactions? “It all started when research commissioned by EBay from Germany’s Forsa Institute brought to light that German-speaking users are reluctant to buy from sellers without track records,” said Maike Fuest, head of corporate PR at EBay Germany.

“This is our answer to the trust problem. It grabs new sellers under the arms and helps them on their feet,” said Fuest. She denied the new payment procedure was an attempt to funnel a bigger part of all transactions through PayPal, an EBay subsidiary, for which interest earned on cash balances is a major source of income. ***

EBay is taking its time with the pilot run: it’s been running for three months now and still Fuest thinks it is “too early to draw conclusions”. She also couldn’t say for how long the test would still run.

Is this the future of EBay in the German-speaking world? We’ll have to wait and see what results the pilot run delivers. Probably until early in 2012.

*** PayPal revenue now constitute almost 40 percent of EBay Inc. companywide revenue (source: PayPal, 1Q 2011 results).

“It’s no secret that mobile devices have completely changed the way consumers shop, making it crucial that retailers – automotive or otherwise – understand who mobile shoppers are and how they’re using their devices differently than their laptops or desktops,” said Sharon Knitter, Cars.com senior director, Mobile, in the announcement. “This study informs our ability to deliver a great car shopping experience to our users no matter what screen they’re visiting us on, as well as making us a better partner to our dealer customers and advertisers as they implement their own mobile marketing strategies.” 

Report details:

• Individuals 34 years of age or younger made up 40 percent of the respondents
• Seventy-three percent were in the market for a new car
• Nearly 80 percent had household income over $50,000
• Most paid $20,000-$40,000 for their recently-purchased car; the average price was over $28,000
• Of the 83 percent of respondents shopping by smartphone, most used apps. The 28 percent searching via tablets headed to websites to do so.
• Fewer than 10 percent had a specific vehicle or dealership in mind when they started their digital shopping.

Contrary to what we might expect, 99 percent use their mobile devices to shop from home. The most popular activity is looking at photos. Nearly as many look for dealerships, while 51 percent read dealer reviews. Two thirds search listings.

“What hasn’t changed with the growth of mobile usage is the importance of mastering the basics of selling a car,” said Knitter. “Smart phone users are viewing photos, searching inventory, researching prices, looking up dealer contact information and reading reviews. That means that many issues, such as poor merchandising, incorrect contact information and customer complaints, can be amplified for the mobile shopper, sending them elsewhere.”