PayPal

Hurt by its sluggish auction business, eBay reported a 29 percent drop in second-quarter earnings.

Net income fell to $327 million, or 25 cents a share, compared with $460 million, or 35 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter. Sales also were lower, slipping 4.5 percent to $2.1 billion for the quarter ended June 30, the company said Wednesday.

Excluding one-time charges and stock-option costs, eBay said quarterly earnings would have reached 37 cents a share, or $478.6 million.

Despite the downturn, results beat the forecasts of analysts, who had expected sales of $1.99 billion and … Read more

Mozilla has introduced a new pilot program for Firefox developers to make a little money off add-ons they've created. Developers now have the option to place a "contribution" button on their add-on page, which lets users donate any amount they wish via PayPal.

Contributions are optional, meaning users can continue to download and use add-ons without having to pay anything. Mozilla is also letting developers pick their own suggested price, although users can choose to pay whatever they wish.

For the pilot program, add-on creators get the entire amount of the contribution, minus PayPal's transaction fee. … Read more

PayPal just rolled out a fun little mini-site called Do Stuff for Money. The basic premise is that you can send one of your friends an offer, either through Facebook (using Facebook Connect) or e-mail, to do something of your choosing for some sum of money. For example, a recent offer reads, "Laura offered Adam $10.00 to 'Write all the thank-you cards from our wedding.'" If your friend accepts and does what you have asked, you can instantly pay them via PayPal, without having to mess with cash.

Do Stuff for Money is more of a novelty … Read more

Yahoo has added new applications for its users in another step toward giving its users more and more to do from within Yahoo.

The company plans to announce the limited beta of three new Yahoo Mail applications from PayPal, Picnik, and Zumo Drive on Friday. Yahoo Mail users who have indicated an interest in signing up for Yahoo's beta programs will be the first to get a crack at the new services, with the applications coming to the wider user base over the next several months.

It's all part of Yahoo's Open Strategy, designed to let outside … Read more

It might be Facebook's worst-kept secret.

It's become increasingly clear in recent weeks that Facebook is finally inching toward the launch of a micropayment platform. The social site has been expanding the presence of its virtual currency, which Facebook debuted last November when it changed the monetary units for its "Gifts" product into "credits" rather than U.S. dollars.

Credits are now bundled with some promotional items in the Gifts app. And soon, select developers on the Facebook Platform will be able to start working "credits" into their own applications, in a … Read more

The murkiness surrounding Facebook's valuation got in the way of its attempt to acquire Twitter last year, according to a BusinessWeek article posted Sunday.

Early Facebook investor Peter Thiel's interview with BusinessWeek make it sound like while the talks were serious, they simply didn't go that far: "It became pretty clear it wasn't going to happen...The deal would have to be done with Facebook stock. And then you have to figure out how much the stock is worth." Twitter, according to an anonymous source, was told that the social network's valuation was … Read more

Marketing agency Rosetta released a study Thursday that found Bill Me Later and PayPal are the most popular alternative payment options on the Web, capturing 26 percent and 25 percent market share, respectively. Google Checkout increased its share by just 1 percent in 2008 commanding just 11 percent of the market.

Rosetta also found that 37 percent of the top 100 major retailers on the Web employ alternative payment options like those offered from PayPal and Bill Me Later, but just 7 percent of those retailers offer all three services.

iPhone developer Smule announced Thursday that it has secured $3.… Read more

The OpenID Foundation announced Wednesday that it has added PayPal as a corporate member of the board. Andrew Nash, PayPal's senior director of information risk management, joins the board, which is populated by representatives from Google, IBM, and Microsoft, among others. According to Nash, PayPal elected to become part of the OpenID board because "open standards-based user-centric identity is clearly becoming an increasingly important part of the evolving web infrastructure" and his company believes it can add to OpenID's desire to bring more security to the Web.

HealthCentral, a site that provides a collection of condition-specific … Read more