It took a little under two weeks, Griff has been found! Several members have finally figured out where he was hidden in our Hail Mary TV ad (granted, it was NOT easy!). After receiving hundreds and hundreds of guesses, including scores from people who thought he was the ref, or the one knocking the vase out of another buyer's hands, a disturbingly high number from people who thought he was a cheerleader, several folks who guessed he was wearing a red-haired wig, and one gentleman who claimed "I found Cliff," I'm pleased to announce that celtic713 has emerged victorious as the first one to correctly identify Griff! They'll be receiving the much-coveted Griff-signed Shop Victoriously piece of memorabilia.
But soon after we got celtic713's answer, the floodgates really opened - several more correct responses followed within the next 24 hours. That's either a remarkable coincidence, some great teamwork, or a sign we ran that commercial a lot over that time period.
Due to the toughness of the contest, I would be remiss if I didn't at least acknowledge the others who sent in correct answers right around the same time: katiedoo, bdubb2003, rob4673, beachbadge, cjwang2, snow69angel, golfingaddict, and xtremecobra. Nicely done! And for those who never quite pinpointed where he was hiding, check out the screen capture at the bottom of this post - as you can see, he was in a specific spot posing as a photographer.
Finally, an Honorable Mention award goes to guitdrive, who correctly identified where Griff was....in the wrong commercial! He's also hidden in our State Fair ad, which just recently hit the airwaves. He's a lot more obvious in this one, however, so we thought we'd better stick to the Hail Mary ad for this game. But check it out underneath the screenshot and see if you can find him (no prize this time though, unfortunately).
My colleague Brian'scockiness backfired on him last week, as not only did the Community Fantasy Football team run wild last weeked, but his team put up one of the worst performances of the season. The result? A 117-49 drubbing that gets the Chatter team into the Win column. Now we've got to build on that momentum by knocking off the Goon Squad, run by Mike, a devout Pittsburgh Steelers fan in our Human Resources department. His team will be missing a few players due to bye weeks, but he still could put up a sneaky lineup consisting of QB Joey Harrington, RB Thomas Jones, RB DeShaun Foster, WR Deion Branch, WR Santonio Holmes, WR Arnaz Battle, TE Antonio Gates, K Nate Kaeding, and the Chicago Bears D. As always, we need YOUR help to decide who should play against him.
Unfortunately, the Chatter team is a little banged up, having lost top RB Steven Jackson for at least a game. That means that WR TJ Houshmandzadeh and RB Julius Jones will be starting for sure, but we need your votes to pick who will start at QB, and fill out the other RB and WR spots. TE Jason Witten, K Jason Hanson, and the Dallas Cowboys D will fill out our lineup. Just check out the polls on the right-hand side of the Chatter Blog discussion board to vote (use the More Polls link to access all of them), and help us beat up the Goon Squad!
Seven habits may be great for highly effective people, but seven steps just to pay for your eBay purchase hardly seems effective—or efficient.
Vamsee and her team didn’t think so either. So rather than seven, paying for your eBay purchase will soon take just three steps:
-First, you review your purchase. Ah, feel those Windorphins flow! You won! You can quickly pay multiple sellers at once.
-Next, pick your payment method. Of course, we highly recommend using PayPal because you don’t have to reveal any of your financial information (credit card number or bank account number) to the seller. And now you can sign in to PayPal right here on the screen if you don't already have an account.
-Last, confirm your payment. If you paid with PayPal, your money is then transferred to the seller as quickly as possible, which helps get your stuff to you faster!
I've been in touch with our operations and security teams, and I have more information I can share with you about yesterday's incident on the Trust & Safety discussion forum. In brief, very early yesterday morning, a fraudster posted contact information and alleged credit card numbers for about 1,200 members on our Trust & Safety discussion forum on eBay.com.
While the issue was very unfortunate, it was clearly falsified to cause public concern. Early on eBay's teams verified that the credit card "data" did not match anything on file for these members on eBay or PayPal. After more investigation, including phone conversations with many of the members, it appears that these numbers were not valid at all.
Each of these accounts was the victim of an Account Take Over, most likely through a successful phishing campaign. eBay has been in contact by phone with many of these members, and there is a My Messages email going out to impacted accounts to further our reach.
This incident underscores the need for all of us to take proper safety precautions while we're on the internet. As a reminder, eBay and PayPal will never send an email to you that asks for a response that is not also in My Messages. Before responding to an email that appears to be from eBay or PayPal, check My Messages first. When in doubt about the authenticity of an email, send to spoof@ebay.com or spoof@paypal.com.
Some of our readers may have learned of an issue that occurred early this morning on one of our discussion forums. I've been talking with our Account Security and Legal teams, and I'd like to share some more details about this incident.
Very early this morning, a malicious fraudster posted on the Trust & Safety forum on eBay.com posing as approximately 1,200 eBay users. The fraudster made these posts in a way that was intended to appear as though he logged in with their accounts. The posts contained name and contact information, which appears to be valid, and could have been secured as part of an account take over.
The posts ALSO appeared to contain credit card information -- however, these credit cards are not associated with financial information on file for these users at eBay or PayPal. We're in the process of reaching out by phone to these members to, so that if the information is valid somehow -- regardless how this fraudster acquired the information -- these members can take the steps they need to take to protect themselves.
eBay and our forums vendor, LiveWorld, began taking steps to remedy the situation within an hour after it started. As things evolved behind the scenes, a decision was made to make the the Trust & Safety forum unavailable to our Community. It's still temporarily inaccessible, as the teams work on this issue.
I'll update this story later as we have more to share.
Don't miss today's Town Hall with Bill Cobb, President of eBay North America, from 2:00 pm to 3:30 PM (Pacific Time). Bill and the Town Hall panel will be taking questions live from the eBay Community during this time. If you have any questions, you can call them in via our toll-free number (877-474-3302) or by email (TownHall@ebay.com).
I'll posting pictures of the Town Hall here as it unfolds this afternoon. Just keep refreshing this blog post with your browser to see the latest pictures. Hope to "see" you there!
Here's the Town Hall panel prepping, a few minutes before we're on the air: In the foreground, talking to Griff (our emcee) and Bill Cobb are Rachel Makool, Sr. Director, Community Development, and Steve Hartman, who you may remember from this morning's announcement.
It turns out that a lot of people want to find Griff! We've received hundreds of responses to the "Where's Griff?" game so far, and most have figured out he's somewhere in the Hail Mary spot, but no one has correctly identified where exactly he is. There have been a few that have been close, but no cigar just yet.
One tip: when you guess, tell us where he is, what he's wearing, and what he's doing in full detail. A few answers have been pretty vague, and we can't name a winner unless we're sure you've found him. But once you have, send us a note to chatterblog@ebay.com to win a Shop Victoriously item signed by Griff himself.
Oh - one more thing. I want to acknowledge some of the responses that have made us laugh out loud in the office:
"Griff is the broad-shouldered lady in the black wig (which covers his beard)."
"Griff is the red-headed lady behind the man in the cream suit." [Jeff note: is there a theme here?]
"He's joined the Cincinnati Reds, and he's terrible! Get him out of there so the real [Ken] Griffey, Jr. can get back in there."
I also thought it was great that one member sent us the link to Griff's profile from his book. Very creative.
One last note: all the commercials we've released so far are now available right here - check them out!
Ok, the Community Fantasy team, much like it's embattled quarterback, isn't quite performing up to expectations so far. After the Rachel9ers (Head of Community Development Rachel Makool's team) waxed the floor with us last week, we're 0-2. And this week's opponent is already getting cocky. You're up against our very own Brian, who said to me yesterday, "This week's Spotlight will be on how badly my squad crushes the blog team."
The eBay employees at our Vancouver Customer Support centre work 24/7 to support eBay members around the world in a number of areas. In order to give them a break and the chance to have a little fun now and then, we like to get a little creative. One annual event that is a crowd pleaser year after year for the Vancouver employees is our very own EBAYZING RACE!
No doubt you've heard of the popular reality TV show, The Amazing Race. Well, the eBayzing Race is basically a quirkier and more environmentally-friendly version of the hit show. This year was our third annual eBayzing Race and it has been touted as the biggest and best ever. Over 100 eBay employees clad in their brightest and best eBay colours raced against the clock to complete challenges throughout the city of Vancouver. Employees used environmentlaly-friendly modes of transportation to get around - they walked, ran, cycled and took public transportation all over the city in order to complete their tasks.
Along the way they were faced with 5 "roadblocks" at which they had to do everything from eat a lemon meringue pie with no utensils, play an impossible game of downhill bocce ball, make their way down a gigantic yellow waterslide, and much more. As you can imagine, things got pretty wild!
We've gotten a lot of great responses to our "Where's Griff?" question. People have figured out he's hidden in the Hail Mary commercial somewhere, but we haven't had anyone give the right answer yet. I will say it's not super-obvious, so it's not that big a surprise that no one's found him yet. Remember, the first person who sends us an email at chatterblog@ebay.com with his exact location (please be as specific as possible in your description - being overly vague is not a path to victory) will win eternal glory on this blog, and a Shop Victoriously item signed by Griff himself - once we get him safely back in the office, that is.
However, I did have to print my favorite response so far: "Just wanted to know who this Griff is? And why would anyone want his autograph?" That's the first one I'll be showing Griff upon his return.
In the meantime, another of our commercials, titled Fox Hunt, has been released. Check out the Evel-ness of it below. Enjoy!
It took a little under two weeks, Griff has been found! Several members have finally figured out 
where he was hidden in our Hail Mary TV ad (granted, it was NOT easy!). After receiving hundreds and hundreds of guesses, including scores from people who thought he was the ref, or the one knocking the vase out of another buyer's hands, a disturbingly high number from people who thought he was a cheerleader, several folks who guessed he was wearing a red-haired wig, and one gentleman who claimed "I found Cliff," I'm pleased to announce that celtic713 has emerged victorious as the first one to correctly identify Griff! They'll be receiving the much-coveted Griff-signed Shop Victoriously piece of memorabilia. 
