Monday, 23 April 2007

Can 24.com Search compete against Google?

Lets cut to the chase. My answer to the question posed by the title of this post is an emphatic NO. My reasoning is very simple. Search for "online auctions" on Google and then apply the same search to 24.com. On Google surprise, surprise bidorbuy came up first and on 24.com I had to scroll to page 7 for the first entry for bidorbuy (which we know almost no one ever does).

Call me biased if you want but surely the (by quite some distance) largest and most popular online auction site in South Africa should appear at the top of the list? Maybe this will change over time but this seems highly unlikely to me. The relevancy of 24.com's results is simply not there. After this simple experience how can I now trust 24.com for any other searches I want to do. Sorry 24.com, I am not going to think twice and go to Google as my first point of call.

At least on Ananzi bidorbuy appears first but lets not let Ananzi hijack this post and talk about them another time.

I am sure 24.com have good reasons of there own to go the route they have but if I were them I wouldn't think twice about rather doing a revenue sharing deal with Google. I don't know the exact numbers but I reckon they could get at least an 80% revenue share. If that were the case surely it is a no brainer. Whatever the case, the costs involved of running your own search engine surely have to merit rather partnering with the search behemoth even if you thought you could provide as relevant results as they do.

I have this view that certain Internet businesses can be successful in a territory without having a physical presence in that territory. These are businesses where there is only an exchange of information (such as search). Whereas other Internet businesses require that the company has a physical presence in that territory (such as online marketplaces where there is normally an exchange of goods and money - even though the company is not physically selling goods themselves think about localised shipping and payment options).

Having said that it is interesting that the following South African Google job positions have been up on Google's web site for some time now. As far as I am aware they have not hired any one locally yet. I wonder if they simply have not had any quality applications yet? Whatever the reason they seem to be doing pretty well without even having a single employee in the country. I know we are paying them a lot of money every month through Google Adwords.

Wednesday, 18 April 2007

I hate SPAM but ...

I hate spam as much as anyone else (in fact probably more than most). Since we switched over to using the new Gmail Apps service for all our email it has been such a treat with only the isolated case of spam email slipping past the Gmail spam filter.

On the flip side of the coin, spammers cause serious problems for us who legitimately send bulk email to opt in users. bidorbuy only sends emails to those who have opted in and in every newsletter we include a clear unsubscribe link (which when clicked on automatically populates the field with the email address the email was sent to). See an example. One problem we had in the past was some times users have a number of aliases and so if you leave it up to them to enter the email address they may not know which alias they originally subscribed with - the system above, whereby we automatically populate the field, besides making it easier for the user fixes that problem. Nevertheless last night I received the following email from spamcop:

From: Donn Edwards [mailto:xxxxxxx (at) spamcop.net] Sent: 17 April 2007 09:57 PMTo: hello (at) bidorbuy.co.zaCc: andy.higgins (at) bidorbuy.co.zaSubject: FW: BIDorBUY keeps sending me SPAM

Dear Mr Higgins

I strongly suggest you comply with the request by Andrew Edwards to have his name removed from your mailing database. Failure to do so will result in you being prosecuted in terms of the ECT Act, which carries a 1 year jail term.

Also, your site does not comply with the Access to Information act, so further legal sanctions could be forthcoming.

Best wishes
Donn Edwards

-----Original Message-----From: Andrew Edwards [mailto: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: 17 April 2007 18:43 pmTo: xxxxxxx (at) opa.org.zaCc: 'bidorbuy.co.za'; Donn EdwardsSubject: BIDorBUY keeps sending me SPAM

The user also complained that he had tried to make contact with us 3 times. We operate a helpdesk system so that each time some one emails us they get sent an auto response with a ticket number for easy future reference. I checked in our helpdesk system and there was only one email from this user and that was sent last night (he could have sent an email using a different email address but I asked him to send us ticket numbers so we could follow up on why his query was not dealt with and so far I have not had a response).

I appreciate that people like spamcop are trying to help the situation but it would be great if there was some kind of system whereby reputable companies such as ourselves could be put on some kind of a white list and if there are problems then these problems are escalated to us in some organised manner rather than me being annoyed at receiving emails such as the one above.

Tuesday, 17 April 2007

PayPal in South Africa

I am often asked why PayPal do not allow South Africans to receive money as it can be argued this largely prevents South Africans from fully participating in the global Internet economy. I imagine for the most part South Africans would use PayPal for International transactions i.e. receiving money from people outside South Africa for various online (and possibly offline) services. For transactions with fellow South Africans, first of all PayPal don't offer the local currency and secondly why would people want to transact using PayPal when they can use the local banking system at no (or a significantly reduced) cost compared to using PayPal? Maybe South Africans trading with each other would still use PayPal for convenience factor and the instant nature of the system (not having to wait for payments to clear - this would certainly be a plus for merchants)?

Considering PayPal has only allowed South Africans to make payments using PayPal since June 2005, some people might say PayPal is simply not interested in the South African market as it is too small. As far as I am aware the main reason PayPal does not allow South Africans to receive money with PayPal is because of South African exchange control regulations imposed by the South African Reserve Bank. There are ways around this of course. If you know some with a US, UK or Australian bank account for example you could ask them to set up a PayPal account for you through which you can receive money and you would then have to get them to transfer you this money using an International TT periodically (quite a mission). Alternatively you could set out to open a foreign bank account for yourself (even more of a mission).

Until the Reserve bank totally relaxes exchange control regulations (my tax advisor told me 2 years ago that she believed this was imminent at the time but last time I met with her she seemed to have back tracked on that opinion somewhat), I don't think we will see PayPal opening up any further to South Africans.

Wednesday, 11 April 2007

MyAdsl

Its amazing what a strong community the MyAdsl web site has become. I am all for such open communities and applaud the site and Rudolph for the fantastic work they are doing in being activists towards bringing down the costs / improving service levels in the broadband space in South Africa. Its exactly what we need.

I believe strongly that by making broadband access (not so much the speed but the always on-ness) affordable to main stream South Africans, will be the single biggest stimulant to growing online commerce in South Africa (while adding many South Africans to the Internet economy thereby uplifting the country overall socially and economically).

Having said this, from my personal experience I have found some of the members on MyAdsl to be quite scathing having posted very negative things about bidorbuy for example (without having substantiated their information). Some times it seems we as South Africans have become very negative and cynical towards things (and companies in particular). I almost want to say to these guys making these negatives posts, "While we are a business so we need to make money, I'm on your side! We want the same things - fairness and justice in this world." I want bidorbuy to be a strong close knit community like the MyAdsl community where the majority viewpoint of our community rules. Perhaps that is a bit idealistic?

I suppose it is par for the course that as we grow we will get more and more of this type of thing happening on open forums. Also, I suppose it only takes a few disgruntled customers to initiate these negative posts. What can do?

Adding an article to Wikipedia

I have been wanting to add bidorbuy to the list of companies that use online auctions to the online auctions Wikipedia article. However to do that I had to first add bidorbuy as an article on its own to Wikipedia. This proved to be a bit of a mission. As soon as I added it I had at least two other Wikipedia contributors swoop on me marking the article for speed deletion.

I suppose they have to be very proactive otherwise Wikipedia would become riddled with spam. In the end I think I got it right. See bidorbuy on Wikipedia. I hope it sticks.

Tuesday, 10 April 2007

Credit Card Fraud

The week before last I noticed an unexpected amount of about R6,000 reserved on my Nedbank Visa debit card (the kind when an auth has been placed on the card). The next day (a Friday) a saw the amount come through with the reference "The Playaz". I immediately called my bank manager to report it as a fraudulent transaction. He reported it to the Nedbank fraud division and apparently that was all I could do about it.

On the following Monday morning I called the fraud division and spoke to some one asking them for more information. They told me that it was not a "card not present" (Internet) transaction as I had expected. They also told me that it was impossible for some one to forge my card (implying it was impossible for some one to do that transaction without being in possession of my card).

About an hour later I got a call from Nedbank credit card fraud asking me if I had authorised a transaction of over R8k to Builders Warehouse as well as some other larger transactions. My answer was "no". They asked me what about one to "Playaz" and again the answer was no. I told them I had in fact already reported that as fraudulent (it seems they had been unaware of my fraud report and some how these transactions had been independantly flagged as suspicious by their system). They immediately canceled my card.

About 18 months ago I was involved in a similar incident where my card was used fraudulently to buy an air ticket from British Airways (this time it was over the Internet). I reported it to my bank and to British Airways as soon as it appeared on my statement (thanks to Internet banking). Surprisingly British Airways wanted nothing to do with it and said I had to deal with my bank only. If I were them I would have wanted to find out what ticket was bought using my card and to cancel the ticket if at all possible. I found that really odd I must say.

As it turns out this time round it was a bit different, what appears to have happened is my card was probably skimmed when I used it at a local restaurant and then turned into a fake card and used by the fraudster until the card was blocked. With "card not present" transactions the merchant takes the knock (hence my surprise in BA not wanting to do anything about it) but I wonder what happens in my latest case. Surely the merchant can't be held responsible?

In both cases I have fairly strong suspicions where my card was compromised (one online and one offline) but no concrete proof. In any case, both times I must say I was impressed with the service I received from Nedbank with all the fraudulent transactions being reversed within a matter of days.

So from my personal experience, using credit cards is somewhat risky both online and offline but this problem of this type of fraud is really more an issue for the merchants / banks / Visa / Mastercard etc. and not the consumer, who is fairly well protected.

With online transactions, it really is in the favour of merchants (the receiver of the money) to accept EFT over credit cards and not so much for the consumer. In fact as a consumer I would rather pay by credit card as I then have some recourse (I can get the transaction reversed if I don't receive the goods or the goods are materially different to what was described) whereas if were to pay by EFT I can't reverse that transaction. As an added bonus accepting EFT as a merchant is not only safer (no charge backs) but it is also significantly cheaper. The only down side is it is a hassle to reconcile (and when transferring between different banks there is a delay) but that may change soon - watch this space :-)

Disaster in the office

Earlier this month our PDC (Primary Domain Controller) for our internal office network gave up the ghost. I guess this was not that surprising considering it was running on an Windows NT server set up in 2000. What I was unaware of however was the disruption it would cause within our office. It did the authentication of all staff computer logins and Microsoft Exchange 5.5, which was managing all our bidorbuy.co.za domain email. Without the PDC no one could login to their PCs, get access to their mail or access the file server. While we had backups of all our data we did not have a backup of the PDC so what a disaster it turned out to be.

Fortunately we had been planning to switch over to the new Google Apps service offering an outsourced managed solution for your domain's emails. After realising we were in over our heads restoring Exchange 5.5 (for which we no longer even had the original installation disks) we decided to do an emergency switch over to Google Apps Premium Edition. Within a few hours we had all staff set up with a web based gmail account using their bidorbuy.co.za email address. We had also already switched over to a help desk solution called Cerberus for our company support emails, which simply pops emails from the respective gmail account. Each gmail account has 10GB of storage, which of course is plenty.

So far all this has worked out great. I am using a single Gmail account for all my email requirements (at work I still use Outlook to receive and send emails through my gmail account). The best part is the spam filter on gmail is brilliant (I seem to get about 2 spam emails for every legit email). It is also a treat not having to use clunky IMAP to check my emails when out of the office. The main down side is emailing large attachments (using normal client side pop and smtp) and the delay of internal email between staff. However overall the pros seem to far outweigh the cons.

I am also using Google docs and Google calendar (which is now also synced with my Outlook client at work although I am still trying to figure out what is the best syncing tool to use). I am quite impressed with Google spreadsheets. Although it does not come close to Excel in functionality, it serves our purposes for managing our development task list. With one of our developers based in New Zealand it is proving a great way to manage our projects (sure beats emailing a spreadsheet back and forth, which easily gets out of sync).

Now we are in the process of switching over our internal office servers to Linux only. We will only have a PDC (backed up) and a file server running internally. Everything else will be managed outside the office.

The only problem is we still do not have access to all our past emails in Exchange so if any one has a copy of the install disks for Microsoft Exchange 5.5 please let me know (apparently this is what we need to restore it without the original PDC).