ReadWriteEnterprise

"Communications is at the heart of ecommerce and community. By combining the two leading ecommerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with the leader in Internet voice communications," announced eBay's CEO in September 2005, Meg Whitman, "we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net."

By 2005, what Meg Whitman had learned about "ecosystems," such as they are, would have had to have come from her tenure as president of Stride Rite Shoes, the maker of Keds; and later as chief of Hasbro's Playskool division, where she directly oversaw the marketing of Mr. Potato Head. Inspired by the reintroduction of the toy brand into popular culture with Pixar's Toy Story, Whitman's innovations included the licensing of the brand to television, leading to the 1998 premiere of Fox Kids' "The Mr. Potato Head Show."

With today's announcement that Meg Whitman will become the next CEO of HP, it is time to a look at where she has come from and what challenges are ahead for the computer company. Certainly, in its 72-year history, the fortunes of HP have never been more at risk than they are now.

eBay history

Meg Whitman served as President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from 1998 to 2008. Those were the go-go years for the online auction house. When she started they had just 30 employees. She grew it to 15,000 employees and $8B in revenue. eBay also bought Skype, selling it for about half of what they paid. Other notable eBay purchases during the Whitman era included Half.com, Paypal, Shopping.com and StubHub.

By now the use of phones as the second factor in a security solution is well known and there are any number of vendors operating in this space. Even Google and Facebook have added this to their services, as we wrote about earlier this summer.

The recent security breach at Citibank, coupled with even RSA hiring what may be its first Chief Security Officer Edward Schwartz, point out that you can never be too paranoid about your personal and corporate data security. RSA was in the news earlier this year for an attach on its SecurID two-factor tokens, something that had been considered the ultimate in enterprise security.

It might be time to take another look at two-factor authentication, and see if it makes sense to implement this in your organization. Here are three basic steps to get started:

Skype's litigation woes with eBay had businesses a bit worried. Funding Skype in the enterprise looked risky with the potential that a judge could at some point pull the code base out from under Skype and leave businesses stranded.

But that's not an issue anymore. According to Network World, Skype now has rights to the code that is essential for the service to run. That means Skype for business is a green light for the companies seeking to use the VOIP service.

In June of 2008, Seattle programmer Bill Harding launched an online marketplace called Bonanzle. The site, a completely grassroots effort with zero VC or angel funding, is in many ways the anti-eBay. Instead of focusing solely on the goods being sold, Bonanzle is attempting to build a marketplace where the people are relevant, too. On Bonanzle, buyers can chat with sellers in real-time or over instant messaging, an experience that delivers a more social experience to the online shopping process. These interactions have allowed Bonanzle to build a strong community, but will that be enough to take on eBay?