PayPal Talk 24/7: PayPal launches Online Merchant Center networking site

[mandy]

Mission Statement

PayPal has established the Online Merchant Network (OMN) to create a place where merchants can network with each other and share useful information and advice. The goal of the OMN is to build an objective, open, and welcoming environment for the exchange of ideas about business. Although the OMN is hosted by PayPal, we encourage and welcome any healthy discussion about all payment providers, both pros and cons. And from time to time PayPal, as well as third-party contributors, will provide content about topics concerning online businesses. In essence, we're building the OMN to help businesses grow - and thrive.

the site: http://www.onlinemerchantnetwork.com/

[xppman]

Hosted by LIEWORLD no doubt.  :blinkie:

Just more    fucking bull shit.

[xppman]

Wait a minute here hosted by Lithium

http://www.lithium.com/

Same BS maybe different company?

Wonder if old LieWorld is getting the boot.  ;D

[BellisimaJ.]

Wonder if old LieWorld is getting the boot.

One can dream. :

[mandy]

Update: registration and login for PayPal's Online Merchant Network are unsecure.  :

From Channel Advisor CEO Scott Wingo's blog:

Over the last couple of weeks, Paypal has had a number of technical glitches, mini outages, etc.  Sellers in generally continue to have intermittent issues accessing their accounts, downloading bills, and generally experience flakiness you never like to see from your payments vendor.

PayPal's reaction:

1. They've launched this "online merchant network" seller community thing that is really weird to me.  It looks like a marketing thing where they want sellers talking about paypal.  The first thing I noticed is that the login is not ENCRYPTED.  This creates a dangerous scenario.  What are most users going to use as their user id and passwords when the got to a paypal oriented site?  You guessed it, their paypal information.  This will be transmitted free and clear over the internet.  A half intelligent phisher will be on top of this.

My recommendation to eBay strategies readers: stay as far away from this site as you can, wait for there to be some SSL encryption deployed before you ever login.  This is Web site development 101 here folks. It says powered by "Lithium", um ok, I guess that explains it?!

2. Then today techcrunch's Michael Arrington has news on a new Paypal feature they've discovered that appears to be in beta called PayPal Drop Box.  This looks to be a merchant feature where you can upload files securely (I guess lithium is not involved) to Paypal and store them there...

What these moves have sellers asking, much in the same way as parent eBay's wanderings into Wikis/blogs/myworld - "Hey guys, lets work on the core business here!  I'm spending $X/m with you, invest some of that in the stuff I use every day instead of this fringe stuff."

full article: http://ebaystrategies.blogs.com/ebay_str...t_are.html

TechCrunch on the PayPal "DropBox":

PayPal is preparing a new feature on a select range of users that allows them to securely store files with the payments provider. The new service, called DropBox, creates a secure storage area that is associated with the account. What we are not sure about is if this is a service just for merchants, or if it is a service that will be open to every user - from what we have seen so far it seems this is more of a service for merchants.

In terms of technology, it is very simple. If you enable secure storage for your account you are then able to create access accounts. Using these accounts, you can then SFTP (Secure FTP) files to the PayPal server...

This seems like an odd distraction for PayPal...

full article: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/22/exc...e-storage/

[stardust]

I was into paypal last night.  Kept getting warnings that their certificate name was not kosher.  Very unnerving, to say the lease.  maroons.

[bargainbloodhound]

It looks like a marketing thing where they want sellers talking about paypal.

Probably because it is a marketing thing. 

What these moves have sellers asking, much in the same way as parent eBay's wanderings into Wikis/blogs/myworld - "Hey guys, lets work on the core business here!  I'm spending $X/m with you, invest some of that in the stuff I use every day instead of this fringe stuff."

...but wikis and blogs are the latest fad!  You just have to have them if you're an Internet company!

The demise of many bubble era Internet companies was hastened by their hiring of idiots who were blinded by the latest fad technology (in those days it was Flash and a few other bandwidth hogging technologies...not a good idea since the overwhelming majority of users were still on dial-up.  Can anyone say Boo.com?) and didn't pay enough attention to what really matters...kind of like what eBay is doing now with its asinine embrace of anything Web 2.0 (eBayMatchups  )

[Anita]

Hosted by Lithium?!

A step up from Kool-Aid.

edited to add:  Am I the only deranged person that finds this funny?

 

[stardust]

Are you confusing Lithium with Librium? 

[regic]

Lithium is another LiveWorld type enterprise class community software maker/host:

http://www.lithium.com/