The room was packed - standing room only. We share the highlights of Roy Rubin's keynote talk (Magento founder) at Magento Live.

Magento now has 125,000 customers and is at the very top of the platform market. There are 800,000 community members and over 6,000 extensions on Magento Connect.

Roy is very pleased with the number of partners and their quality: "Partners are getting better because they are getting officially certified - the exam is rigorous. Merchants seek out certified developers because they will be successful."

Interesting fact: both US presidential websites used Magento for their fundraising websites.

Magento is successful, he said, because people who run stores want to run them their own way (in terms of their products, content, merchandising, brand, marketing, etc), so Magento is a platform that helps merchants be merchants.

"Flexibility is the secret sauce of Magento," he said.

Social, local, mobile, global = new e-commerce landscape. On a show of hands, only 2 out of nearly 500 in the packed room did not have smartphones. Mobile is now 8% of all retail and set increase 53% in the next year. Magento as good mobile support with fast time to market, making it extremely well positioned.

In a customer case study from Smythson, we heard how - nowadays - website design should start with mobile first & then deliver optimal experience for each platform. The vision, subject to time & money, would be "responsive design" from a single set of Magento templates.

Roy concluded by reiterating that Magento would be leveraging Ebay's assets and focussing on scaleability and performance.