Knomee – Initial reactions

Well, the online New Zealand online auction site business just got a bit more crowded, with the addition of Knomee.

Initial reactions?   I’m not overly impressed.

What needs work?

1. Listing fees – too high.   Not much different than trademe.  (The lowest fee is 40 cents, compared to 50 cents for trademe.)  Their justification is that this stops people from listing junk.   I think it is just a profit earner.  I would prefer a zero cost listing fee, but then a success fee, instead of an upfront fee, followed by no success fee, because as an online seller, it is in my best interest to list multiple items, but that costs too much if they are not selling (and knomee does not have the volume/traffic to ensure much exposure and sales.)
2. Disorganised – trying to sell an iphone cover last night, the option was to list it under: Phones > iPhone.  On trademe, that would be:  Mobile phones > Accessories > Cases & covers > iPhone.
3. Navigation – notice in my previous point that the trademe “breadcrumb” (the list of where you are) has links that you can click on to move up categories.  Knomee does not have links in their breadcrumbs, hard to move from one category to another.
4. Layout – I do not find the web page layout very well designed.  Some parts take up way too much space (the badges, endorsements, contact details and offer boxes take up 1.3 of the page.  Make that stuff much smaller, and give more room to the product I am looking at).
5. Listing details – limited information for a product listing. I like trademe’s selling features such as shipping details, automated payment instructions, and product management (automatic reselling, inventory control, etc).  This may be something they can add over time.

But I think the biggest hurdle for Knomee will be getting sales volume.  Until they get customers, sellers will not want to risk paying for product listings.   But unless they have sellers (and products to sell) customers will not want to visit.  It is the classic chicken and egg problem.

The NZ selling market is a mess. What is going to happen?

We all know about Trademe.  They have recently raised their rates,  Trade Me said the fee for selling an item valued at $50 – about its average trade – would rise from $3.75 to $3.95, an increase of 5.3%.  The highest rise would be for items priced at $1500, for which success fees will increase by 8.1% to $79.50. There will be lower increases on higher-priced items and no change to the maximum $149 success fee.

Some users reported indignation as a couple months ago Trade Me reported an 8.4% jump in its annual profit to $75.6 million.    But it is hard for rivals to offer much competition as they lack a critical mass of buyers.

Who are the players in this market?

• Sella
• Wheedle
• Knomee
• and the one everyone thinks of:  Trademe
• What about Ebay?

Trademe

I will start with Trademe because they are the biggest player in the New Zealand market.

Looking today, they have:

• 61,481 cars
• 121,502 properties and houses
• 11,000 jobs
• 60,996 People online right now
• 3,069,281 active members
• 2,218,319 current listings

So, clearly they have good volume.  It is fair to say their volume is bigger than everyone else combined.

What are their fees like?

• Basic listing     Free
• Gallery     55c (25c for books and CDs)

Then if you sell, they charge a success fee:

• Up to $200     7.9% of sale price (50c minimum)
• $200 – $1500     $15.80 + 4.9% of sale price over $200
• Over $1500     $79.50 + 1.9% of sale price over $1500 (max fee = $149)

This is the major area of contention for users and competitors, as most competitors starting up new businesses are advertising lower fees or no fees.

Sella:

Sella.co.nz has a web page that lists the pros and cons, comparing them with trademe but obviously some of this may be marketing hype.  The primary difference is Sella is free of commissions or success fees.  Their description is:

Pure and simple, it’s free to buy or list. Our business model is to make money selling advertising on the site as well as offering featured listings, where for a small fee, users can buy priority ranking (ie: display their listings above others).

Having said that, while the listing may be free, the volume is a lot lower than trademe.  Here are their stats:

• 550,000 members
• 480,000 listings
• 415,000 users per month

Wheedle

Mainfreight co-founder and Rich-Lister Neil Graham is taking on Trade Me with a new online auction and classified site, Wheedle.co.nz.  Wheedle promises to be a lower cost alternative to trademe.

But after opening, and trading for a couple of days, Wheedle announced it woud close its online marketplace while it carries out a ”thorough update” of its systems and processes.   Managing director Carl Rees did not give an indication of how long that might take.

He said Wheedle would not reopen until its management team were ”completely confident its performance and processes meet the standards expected by New Zealand consumers”.   Wheedle’s website went offline after a blogger identified a fault that let people change the reserve price of other members’ auctions.

Asked in October when the site would reopen, general manager Carl Rees told NBR,

“At this point in time I have no idea. Hopefully before Christmas but it could be the New Year.”  “The fixes are minimal compared to the size of our entire source code and development. We identified the areas where we had problems and we have engaged an independent company to do the fixes … for peace of mind.”

It is not clear what fee if any will apply for under $20. Sellers won’t like a fee if it does not sell at all. But the fees are a lot cheaper than Trade Me. However the major factor is price. Say your item sells for $50. Then it is $1 on Wheedle and $3.95 on Trade Me making it a net $49 vs $46.25.

Knomee

Knomee.co.nz promises to be another alternative, with free listings.

http://www.facebook.com/Knomee is the only information at the moment until their site goes live.  Today is the day it is supposed to happen but no sign of life yet.  Sounds like it is supposed to happen at noon.

Knomee charges no commission on sales and no success fee.

EBay

The elephant in the room that nobody is talking about is Ebay.  Your guess is as good as mine why they do not have a presence here.

My assumption is that the market is just too small for them to care.  If they do try and gain a foothold here, I believe they will have an easier time (at stealing market share from trademe) than the other new players, because they have a proven website, and there will be no growing pains.  But until then, we need to pick from trademe or one of the newer alternatives.
Which do you prefer?

The best-selling smartphone in the world is no longer an iPhone.

The best-selling smartphone in the world is no longer an iPhone.

New data released on Thursday by market research firm Strategy Analytics finds that Samsung’s Galaxy S III was the world’s top-selling smartphone model in the third quarter this year, displacing Apple’s iPhone for the first time in years.

Samsung announced earlier this week that cumulative Galaxy S III channel sales reached the 30 million unit milestone and according to Strategy Analytics, 18 million of those were shipped in Q3 2012. During the same period, Apple shipped an estimated 16.2 million iPhone 4S handsets, slipping into the No.2 spot for the quarter.

 

“Samsung’s Galaxy S3 smartphone model shipped 18.0 million units worldwide during the third quarter of 2012,” said Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Shah. “The Galaxy S3 captured an impressive 11 percent share of all smartphones shipped globally and it has become the world’s best-selling smartphone model for the first time ever. A large touchscreen design, extensive distribution across dozens of countries, and generous operator subsidies have been among the main causes of the Galaxy S3’s success. Apple shipped an estimated 16.2 million iPhone 4S units worldwide for second place, as consumers temporarily held off purchases in anticipation of a widely expected iPhone 5 upgrade at the end of the quarter.”

Samsung’s time at the top will be short-lived however, as Apple’s iPhone 5 is expected to regain the title to top-selling smartphone in the December quarter. ”Samsung’s Galaxy S3 has proven wildly popular with consumers and operators across North America, Europe and Asia,” Shah’s colleague Neil Mawtson stated. “However, the Galaxy S3’s position as the world’s best-selling smartphone model is likely to be short-lived. The Apple iPhone 5 has gotten off to a solid start already with an estimated 6.0 million units shipped globally during Q3 2012. We expect the new iPhone 5 to out-ship Samsung’s Galaxy S3 in the coming fourth quarter of 2012 and Apple should soon reclaim the title of the world’s most popular smartphone model.”

Triumph of the Nerds, Math and Modern Political Polling: Nate Silver Wins in 99 out of the last 100 States

Barack Obama may have comfortably won re-election in the electoral college, and squeaked a victory in the popular vote. But here is the absolute, undoubted winner of this election: Nate Silver and big data.

The Fivethirtyeight.com analyst, despite being pilloried by the pundits, outdid even his 2008 prediction. In that year, his mathematical model correctly called 49 out of 50 states, missing only Indiana (which went to Obama by 0.1%.)

This year, according to all projections, Silver’s model has correctly predicted 50 out of 50 states. A last-minute flip for Florida, which finally went blue in Silver’s prediction on Monday night, helped him to a perfect game.

What does this victory mean? That mathematical models can no longer be derided by “gut-feeling” pundits. That Silver’s contention — TV pundits are generally no more accurate than a coin toss — must now be given wider credence.

The great thing about a model like Silver’s (and that of similarly winning math nerds, such as Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium) is that it takes all that myopic human bias out of the equation. The ever-present temptation to cherry-pick polls is subverted.

You set your parameters at the start, deciding how much weight and accuracy you’re going to give to each poll based purely on their historical accuracy. You feed in whatever other conditions you think will matter to the result. Then, you sit back and let the algorithm do the work.

Silver may be a registered Democrat, but he learned back when he was doing baseball analysis that he’d never get anywhere if his models weren’t absolutely neutral, straight down the line between feuding teams.

By 2016, if the networks are paying attention, don’t be surprised to see that the talking heads are all Nate Silver clones. Every media organization will now want its own state poll-based algorithm, especially given how much traffic Silver has driven to the New York Times‘ website. We’ll see more about that kind of model, and less stories about individual polls, which are almost always misleading unless you aggregate them.

Statistics, big data, neutral mathematical models — this, it turns out, is what people want. Who knew?

Well, we geeks knew, but we’re starting to get used to having the rest of the world follow our lead. We had the smartphones first, we read the fantasy books before they became blockbuster movies and TV shows, and now we can boast that we stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Nate Silver’s data before it was popular.

— repost of http://mashable.com/2012/11/07/nate-silver-wins/?utm_source=twitterfeed

Exclusive: Microsoft Office for iPhone, iPad, and Android revealed

Microsoft’s Office for iPad, iPhone, and Android is a reality. Although Office Mobile has been rumored and reportedly spotted in the wild, Microsoft has remained persistently quiet about its plans for the product.
Now it sounds like the company will release Office versions for Android and iOS in early 2013.

Office Mobile will debut in the form of free apps that allow Android and iOS users to view Microsoft Office documents on the move. Like the existing SkyDrive and OneNote apps, Office Mobile will require a Microsoft account. On first launch, a Microsoft account will provide access to the basic viewing functionality in the apps. Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents will all be supported, and edit functionality can be enabled with an Office 365 subscription.

Microsoft will allow iOS users to purchase an Office 365 subscription within the app, or let organizations distribute codes to enable Office Mobile editing for users. The apps will allow for basic editing, but we’re told this won’t go very far in attempting to replace regular full use of a desktop Office version.

It’s real and it’s coming to iOS first

A recent Microsoft press release from the company’s Czech Republic subsidiary revealed that Office Mobile apps for Android and iOS would be made available from March 2013. We understand that Office Mobile for iOS will arrive first in late February or early March, with an Android version due in May.

We reached out to Microsoft for comment on this story and a company spokesperson says “Office will work across Windows Phone, iOS and Android.”

— reposted from http://mobile.theverge.com/2012/11/7/3612422/microsoft-office-mobile-ipad-iphone-android-screenshots

Microsoft ditches Windows Messenger for Skype

Microsoft has announced it intends to “retire” its instant message chat tool and replace it with Skype’s messaging tool.

The news comes 18 months after the software giant announced it was paying $8.5bn (£5.3bn) for the communications software developer.

Microsoft said Windows Live Messenger (WLM) would be turned off by March 2013 worldwide, with the exception of China.

It reflects the firm’s determination to focus its efforts on Skype.

WLM launched in 1999 when it was known as MSN Messenger. Over time, photo delivery, video calls and games were added to the package’s text-based messages.

In 2009, the firm said it had 330 million active users.

Chat ‘cannibalisation’

According to internet analysis firm Comscore, WLM still had more than double the number of Skype’s instant messenger facility at the start of this year and was second only in popularity to Yahoo Messenger.

But the report suggested WLM’s US audience had fallen to 8.3 million unique users, representing a 48% drop year-on-year. By contrast, the number of people using Skype to instant message each other grew over the period.

“When a company has competing products that can result in cannibalisation it’s often better to focus on a single one,” said Brian Blau from the consultancy Gartner.

“Skype’s top-up services offer the chance to monetise its users and Microsoft is also looking towards opportunities in the living room.

Skype is offering a tool to migrate users WLM contacts to its service

“Messenger doesn’t seem like an appropriate communications platform for TVs or the firm’s Xbox console – but Skype does.”

He also noted that the firm had opted to integrate Skype into its new Windows Phone 8 smartphone software, eclipsing the effort to integrate WLM into the message threads of the operating system’ previous version.

To ease the changeover, Microsoft is offering a tool to migrate WLM messenger contacts over.

The risk is that the move encourages users to switch instead to rival platforms such as WhatsApp Messenger, AIM or Google Talk.

But Microsoft is at least partially protected by its tie-up with Facebook last year. Skype video calls are now offered as an extra to the social network’s own instant messaging tool.