Monday, February 23, 2009

Chatter about eBay

EBay's message boards have far fewer posts than before eBay "disruptively innovated" them weeks ago. There is a tangible difference. Either eBay is completely clueless, or they want to destroy the message boards, which have mainly been used in recent months to bash eBay. Since eBay has disruptively innovated My eBay and will soon finish disruptively innovating search, I suspect that eBay is just clueless more than anything. Each successive change makes the site harder to use. Why do this?

Even though the boards have far fewer posts and far fewer complaints, one does not have to look far to find the complaints. In this message thread, the question is asked whether anyone likes any of the changes one year after the first round.

One person gave an example of one change that they thought was positive and then wrote, "Other than that, almost every change that eBay has made has reduced the value of the product that they are trying to sell to me." Several people chimed in to agree with that statement.

A few people stated that they liked the changes because the changes forced them to learn HTML and create websites, meaning that the changes were bad but forced them into proactive measures to improve their businesses.

Someone observed, "
In the past three weeks, I've been to two collectibles shows plus a health-care industry convention of 10,000+ here in Las Vegas. It surprised even me to hear so many say how ebay is 'useless' now and 'has gone completely down the tubes.' "

Another person commented, "I've talked with people who've never been on Ebay, yet know the company is in trouble. The news has spread to the mainstream public."

Last, someone wrote, "
I heard they moved the shareholder's meeting up to April from June. I predict heads will roll. And rightfully so.... And yes, they have a PR disaster on their hands. Everyone you talk to is mad at them."

I am now searching eBay even less that I was a month ago. I predict that my efforts in searching eBay for purchases will decrease even more dramatically when the new search is forced upon me. EBay is slowly driving me off the site. I have spent many thousands of dollars on eBay over the years, and I have sold many thousands of dollars worth of books over the years. In the big picture, eBay will not miss me, but I am only one of many who is choosing to go elsewhere.

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