Currently, eBay has approximately 700 customer support employees in the Canadian city of Vancouver. On Tuesday, eBay announced that they will be closing that Vancouver facility. Those 700 employees are expected to be out of work by September 30th.

eBay Sign (Image: Flickr)

At the same time that eBay announced the Vancouver closing, they said that a similar facility that operates out of Salt Lake City, Utah will be expanded. At this point, around 1,000 customer support employees work for eBay in Salt Lake City.

Despite the customer support firing, the company says that the customer service aspect of their businesses won’t be negatively affected. Not only does eBay own the auction website eBay.com, the company also owns other popular services such as Skype and PayPal.

In recent months, eBay has been making moves to alter their business model. They’ve decided to limit their focus as a company to try to increase profits. There have also been a number of laid off eBay workers in the last year.

This week, eBay made an aggressive move in South Korea by purchasing Gmarket for $1.2 billion. Gmarket is a marketplace with a large presence in South Korea and eBay plans to align it with Internet Auction Company, a property eBay already owns that also operates in South Korea.

eBay Building (Image: Flickr)

The plan outlined by eBay has the California based company purchasing the Gmarket shares for $24 each and the company says they will acquire at least two-thirds of Gmarket’s shares. Many experts believe eBay is targeting South Korea due to its emerging market and the fact that internet commerce is the company’s specialty.

In recent weeks, eBay has made a lot of news regarding sales of their properties. They reportedly sold StumbleUpon back to its founders and they are supposedly considering a similar move with Skype. In recent years, eBay has been viewed as a company in trouble but eBay insists that their recent moves are simply an attempt to restructure and consolidate their business model.

A couple years ago, StumbleUpon was sold to EBay for $75 million. Today, the original founders of StumbleUpon have purchased the website back from EBay for an undisclosed amount of money.

StumbleUpon purchased by EBay (Image: Flickr)

Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith are the two original founders of StumbleUpon. Those two founders got help buying back the website from other investors including Accel Partners, August Capital and Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures.

When EBay purchased StumbleUpon, there were less than three million users. Currently, the most recent estimate has StumbleUpon with approximately 7.5 million users.

The StumbleUpon service is a recommendation service in which users recommend websites to other users. Depending on the number of “stumbles”, a website’s rank will be raised or lowered. Additionally, users can surf from website to website using StumbleUpon’s built-in recommendation tool.

In addition to selling StumbleUpon, EBay is reportedly considering selling Skype — a company it purchased for $2.6 billion in 2005.

Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis became billionaires when the sold the Internet phone company to eBay in 2005 for over $3 billion. Since selling their baby, the duo hasn’t slowed down - they’ve founded a venture capital firm and supported video service Joost.

Now, however, it seems that the two have another business move in mind - buying back Skype. When eBay bought the service, it had around 53 million users, but today, there are more than 405 million people using Skype to make free calls between one another and very cheap international calls to non-Skype users. In the fourth quarter of 2008 alone, Skype posted $145 million in revenue. According to research, Skype is the company of choice for about 8% of all international calling minutes.

eBay’s CEO, John J. Donahoe, has said multiple times that he’d be willing to sell Skype for the right price, and sources close to Zennstrom and Friis say that the two have already raised about $1 billion from private investors to put towards purchasing Skype. Experts say that eBay is probably looking for a sale price of at least $1.7 billion.

In the past, the founders and eBay have had their differences, and they’re still disputing whether or not they had breached their contract with Joltid, another service Zennstrom and Friis created. Selling Skype to anyone else is unlikely until this dispute is settled, which could take months or even years. If Zennstrom and Friis purchase the service, it could be a much-needed boost for eBay’s United States division.

Image via skype.com.

Lisa Jackson, Image: Newscom

The Business Coalition for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP) announced today that three new members would be joining this organization, which was started four months ago by Ceres. Joining founding companies Timberland, Nike, Sun Microsystems, Starbucks, and Levi Strauss are Gap, eBay, and Symantec.

The new members were introduced at a business breakfast and policy forum, hosted by Ceres at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. The group hopes that by joining forces, they’ll have a louder voice in calling for strong U.S. climate and energy policies over the next year. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson opened the forum today, saying,

“Leadership from the business community is essential to our success in protecting human health and the environment. BICEP is pioneering change, and proving every day that the environmentally sound thing to do is also the economically sound thing to do. We are here to partner with you so that we can lay the foundations for that change together, and bring our shared vision to life.”

Some of the goals of the coalition are to help pass legislation consistent with key principals, which include:

• Setting aggressive GHG reduction levels
• Establishing a economic cap-and-trade system that auctions off all carbon allowances
• Doubling the historic rate of energy efficiency improvement
• Creating green-collar jobs
• Adopting renewable energy standards

Founder Ceres is a coalition of investors, environmental groups, and organizes that works to address global climate change.

Yes, consumers aren’t buying collectibles as eagerly as they did in the late 1990s, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t make extra money selling–or reselling–items on eBay, the world’s largest online auction site. You just have to use a little marketing savvy to make sure that your items stand out from amidst the millions of products listed. Here are a few tips:

1. Offer free shipping. eBay attaches a special “free shipping” icon to auction pages that offer this feature. If you’re selling your unwanted attic items, you’ll not be losing anything by paying the shipping costs. If you’re reselling items, consider upping the minimum price to cover shipping.

2. Practice good customer service. Good customer service is good business in any economic environment, but in today’s challenging marketplace, it is essential. Answer questions promptly and ship items in a timely basis. Your eBay feedback rating will soon reflect your commitment to service.

3. List every day. Making money on eBay is largely a numbers game. By listing items every day, you insure a steady stream of income. You’ll also have auctions ending at convenient times for a variety of buyers.

Photo credit: Newscom

Microfinance, making small loans, gained tremendous recognition when microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus earned a 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his initiatives at Grameen Bank. Now, thanks to an initiative at eBay, individual investors can also help fight global poverty.

A former Grameen Bank employee named Tracey Pettengill Turner has teamed up with eBay to create MicroPlace, a website dedicated to connecting investors with borrowers around the world.

How it works:

You purchase investments on MicroPlace from security issuers, who are responsible for making interest and principal payments to you. Security issuers use your funds to support loans to lending organizations, who then use those funds to provide loans to borrowers. As loans are repaid, security issuers are able to provide you with a financial return. Borrowers use their loans to start or expand small businesses. Profits from these businesses help them repay their loans, send their children to school, and improve their families’ living conditions.

According to SocialFunds.com, “Microfinance is the offering of very small loans, typically ranging from $25 to $500, to people in developing markets to grow their businesses. MFIs usually operate in areas that don’t have access to traditional banking services. The repayment rate for microfinance loans is extremely high.”

More at MicroPlace: Microfinance for the Masses

Via SRI