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Can you explain that one a bit more.  Are you talking about Ebay deep-auto placing text-ads in volume for auction items?

Paypal access is interesting.  Pretty similar to checkout by amazon in many ways, which is something we've looked in to a few times.

As a greedy retailer my main concern with both systems is that you end up not owning the customer.  The idea that using pre-stored info might reduce checkout friction is appealling, but the cost is that you don't get their details.  With paypal access I understand that the only data the retailer receives is the shipping address.  That's pretty sucky.

I'm interested to hear how the practical side works in terms of payment security as well.  Let's say Mr Fraudster uses someone else's details to buy things.  As a merchant I don't have much data to assess the risk properly. Will paypal then be guaranteeing that payment with no chargebacks.

It's interesting alright, Some of the profiling stuff sounds rather useful to personalise the buying experience (reminder: pzyche ecom edition available yet??).  Have to wait and see I guess.

Hmm I am intrigued by x.commerce but also very wairy about working with a platform created by these guys, Ebay has a habit of making it more difficult for their customers to sell rather than easier and has a pattern of screwing the business to build profits. The ethos of the company makes me want to run away and not develop on a platform that they have control of. However I am also struggling to find an ecommerce solution that fits all needs and is also performing in terms of conversion. Hence why I have battled with the shopp plugin for so long as it was the nearest to what I wanted but needs a lot of work, too many issues and alterations needed to get something that works and the more I do the more problems pop up.

It is interesting you bring up the fraud issue with paypal, that is one of the major problems I am seeing with a lot of existing ecommerce platforms, where they insist on sending the delivery and billing address to paypal from the cart which means;

a) the customer has to do more than is necessary to checkout, their details are already stored and can be sent to the shop for your records so why make them enter them again
b) the vendor is not getting a validated address so buyer protecting is immediately out of the window and they are wide open to chargebacks.

If the new social integration system works and vendors are covered by buyer protection then it could be a huge leap in kicking developers out of this habit of making the customer do more to pay and enhancing conversion on impulse purchases. However, it may also be a way of them avoiding buyer protection duties by distracting them with a shiny new system. My problem is I just don't trust the motivations of the company behind the innovation.

'- eBay is now going local. New tab on product page. All sorts of mobile/local stuff.'

They can add all the bells and whistles they want but the bottom line is to attract more buyers they need to attract more deals and variation of product. Until they fix their best match setting to provide a fairer platform for new sellers, easily available variety of options for buyers, lower insertion fees and a better attitude towards sellers they will still continue to decline. Product views are at an all time low for the vast majority of sellers and new sellers are not getting a look in as they have to first get found, below existing sellers, to get the sales, to get the feedback, to help them get found alongside other sellers so it is a chicken and egg scenario and leaves new sellers at huge disadvantage. Their system is ultimately flawed and they continue to make changes that make it harder for sellers to perform on a monthly basis, so I doubt this little whistle will make a blind bit of difference to their overall performance.

I am still watching though lol, thanks for the reporting back

ok, back home and exhausted. lots been said here...

Rupert, I think you will need to see it implemented, because I think there are some misconceptions.  Access is just like any other OpenID or OAuth method of identification/authentification.... it's your customer and you will end up with whatever information the customer will give you... Access just fills out some of needed fields for shipping, but more importantly offers frictionless purchase option... no cumbersome registration process only to have to fill out billing info, etc.... login with existing U/P and 'click buy', done. difference is about 5 minutes on a desktop and most likely no sale on a mobile.

Leona, I hear you but I think this is the next 'best of breed' solution for merchants with lots of products. It also is pretty easy to use for how powerful it is. Imagine a platform for developers to build modules you can plugin to customize the store to your needs. That all of your products can be imported and categorized in seconds, then from there exported into ebay, and all your ads generated in Google, Facebook, etc., automatically (assuming you already opened up accounts, etc.).  Once you start doing any business, you have epic stats that are fully integrated with your adwords campaigns, emails, etc. so you can see when you are hitting diminishing returns and focus your spend where it could be better used.  Combine that with lower friction registration and checkout and you start to get the drift of what I'm talking about... if you have 40,000 products and you want to switch to a new enterprise solution, you'd couldn't find a better, more integrated solution on the market, and you'd never be able to afford to replicate the system by your self... once you see it you'll understand.

In short, it allows business owners to just focus on business and not technology and I think it's a game changer in that space.

oh, they also had some really good remixes of old songs, the best being the one they played before most of the speeches, 'Gimme Shelter', the ooooooh-oohhhhhhhh-oooohhhhh-oooohhhhhhh-ohhhhhh of which is now forever etched in my brain.... but the closest thing I can find is this version with these lame a## video game sounds injected into it: http://vimeo.com/groups/vjs/videos/19046501 ...so maybe they remixed a remix in order to remove them, but their version sounded pretty badass, on their mega sound system, along with their visuals.

Too bad I cant find their exact version, but if you weren't there... well... this isn't the next best thing, but it's all I got for you:)