EBay looks to be headed in the right direction under CEO John Donahoe, BusinessWeek's Douglas MacMillan reports, as the ecommerce giant delivered slightly better than expected second quarter earnings Wednesday. While second quarter sales declined 4%, earnings of 37 cents per share, excluding special items, beat Wall Street analysts' consensus estimate by a penny. Total revenues for the quarter were $2.1 billion, compared with $2.2 billion a year ago. Net income was $327.3 million, vs. $460.3 million in 2008. EBay shares gained nearly 5% in after hours trading on Wednesday. "I knew the eBay turnaround was going to …

Walt Disney Co. Chief Bob Iger on Wednesday revealed that the media giant is developing a subscription-based product for the Web, Bloomberg reports. Speaking at a Fortune magazine conference, Iger said, "We have ample evidence both in traditional and new media that people are willing to pay for quality, to pay for choice and to pay for convenience. And they are willing to pay for what they perceive as value." He noted that while online advertising could also be improved, the company thinks subscription products look particularly promising. "It's wrong to assume that because there is a lot …

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks with Newsweek's Dan Lyons about the origins of what would come to be the world's largest social networking site. Over late night pizza, Zuckerberg says that he and his Harvard friends would talk about "how during our lifetimes the way people negotiated their identity and their privacy would be changed. There would be a lot more information, and a lot more transparency," he said. "That was really interesting to us." However, in no way did he think "we would build a business that would shape that in any way. I was just building something that …

Various news outlets are reporting that Amazon.com has purchased fellow ecommerce site Zappos for 10 million Amazon shares, or $880 million, plus another $40 million in cash and restricted stock for Zappos employees. As TechCrunch's Sarah Lacy points out, "This is a great exit for Zappos' investors", which include Sequoia Capital and Venture Frogs, at a particularly dark time for venture capital firms. She notes that approximately $60 million was sunk into the company in seven rounds. However, according to PeHub, the decision to sell Zappos to Amazon was pushed very heavily by Sequoia, in particular, and …

It's something everyone in this industry wants to know: When will the online ad market finally bounce back? As Peter Kafka notes, we have yet to see evidence in the earnings reports of industry bellwethers like Google and Yahoo. But according to data from Pubmatic, an ad optimization firm, prices for ad network inventory have increased a whopping 35% since the beginning of the year, signaling perhaps that online advertising's comeback is already underway. Of course, "these numbers could be less meaningful than they look," Kafka says, as it's important to keep in mind that Pubmatic is only …

Microsoft is shutting down Soapbox, its YouTube rival, the company said on Tuesday. "We have decided to shut down the Soapbox feature," Microsoft Vice President and MSN leader Erik Jorgensen said in an email. "Beginning today, July 21, we will be notifying both our customers and our internal and external partners that on July 29th, people will no longer be able to upload videos to Soapbox and on August 31st, the service will no longer be available." Jorgensen said that Microsoft would continue to support MSN Video, which has 88 million unique users each month and delivers …

In a blog post titled "YouTube Myth Busting," Google hit back at critics of the popular video-sharing site. Spokesmen Chris Dale and Aaron Zamost deflected questions raised in the press about the site's finances, as well as the quality of videos the service offers. "Too often, stories dredge up issues about YouTube products, metrics, or the state of our business that we thought were settled a long time ago," they said. The blog post follows statements made by Google CFO Patrick Pichette during the search giant's second quarter earnings call last week in which Pichette …

Sources tell Kara Swisher that Yahoo on Thursday will announce the purchase of social email startup Xoopit for around $20 million, one of its first acquisitions in a long time. Xoopit finds photos, video, links and other files in emails, so that users can share them on many sites. It also has other products that are meant to "enliven" email, Swisher says, such as plug-ins that work with Gmail and Yahoo Mail. Xoopit's investors include Accel Partners and Foundation Capital, which, along with several angel investors, have pumped about $6.5 million into the company since 2006. According …

Ning, a startup that helps people easily set up their own social networks, has raised $15 million in a financing round that values the company at a whopping $750 million, Kara Swisher reports. The startup's last funding round of $60 million a little more than a year ago valued it at $500 million. The money for this fifth Series E round comes from Silicon Valley venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners. Chairman Marc Andreessen and CEO Gina Bianchini founded Ning. Other investors in the company include LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman, Legg Mason and Allen & Co. The …