eBay considers Russian acquisition

EBay is considering acquisitions in the $5 billion Russian online retail market to help maintain a foothold in the country, says chief executive John Donahoe, writes Reuters.

"If the right opportunity presents itself, we will be open to acquisitions (in Russia)," explains Donahoe. He added that joint ventures were also under consideration.

The company, an e-commerce giant that connects buyers and sellers, says it will start an online platform in five European countries and Russia by the end of March to facilitate cross-border transactions.

First unveiled in late 2008, the initial concept of TwitPay was a service that let Twitter users keep track of IOUs between each other over the social networking site, states MyBankTracker.

Founder Michael Ivey quickly realised that at the rate users were picking up the service, nickel and diming P2P transactions wasn't going to work as a business model. However, social media networks are emerging as a huge potential source of income for non-profit fundraising.

The new TwitPay will tweak their service to provide a means of quick and easy donations for Twitter users using 'retweets'. Charities looking for donations can simply tweet a request, and donors can respond by retweeting the message, which opens up an authorised payment transfer from the user's account. TwitPay will collect up to 5% on these transactions.

Online retailing giant Amazon.com is looking to India, as it revamps its Web Services architecture to meet surging traffic volumes, reports Business Standard.

Seattle-based Amazon is ramping up its key e-Commerce Platform Group at the company's Hyderabad development centre, as part of plans to build next-generation platform services.

Sources say the group is looking at variegating its Web Services architecture in keeping with increasing traffic on its book retailing and e-book payment platforms. “Amazon is looking at building new features and systems that will need to scale in tandem with the huge volumes that its critical systems will go through in the coming years," add sources.