eBay to Launch Blogs, Wikis and Search Tags
Auction giant eBay is preparing to integrate blog and wiki publishing tools into its selling platform, according to a report on Auctionbytes. eBay Blogs will enable sellers to more efficiently market their products. eBay Wikis meanwhile collect fact-based articles written and maintained by eBay Community members. Both tools will be launched at the eBay Live conference in Las Vegas June 13 - 15.
Working off the Auctionbytes story, I dug a little deeper and found more details including a tag/search platform. The eBay Blog help pages here and the wiki information pages here. In addition, as you can see from the screenshot below and the links on the help pages, Skype integration is coming soon too.
eBay Blogs can be used for a variety of purposes including to enhance a store, to share personal experiences or simply to talk about collectibles. The blogs are free and all blogs will reside at the blogs.ebay.com URL. Each individual blog will live at http://blogs.ebay.com/userID
Each eBay Blog will have something called Search Tags. These are keywords that the publisher can use to identify the topics and concepts that are unique to them. These search tags will give each blog a high placement on related searches. So if an eBay seller uses tags like "Pez", "dispensers" and "collectibles" they can increase their visibility in search results. All blogs will also support RSS.
By launching blogs and wikis, eBay is taking a big step to push into the social commerce arena. Conversation drives commerce so integrating blogs, wikis and tags into the eBay toolkit is a natural extension to their core platform, which has long included discussion boards. I would not be surprised to see the company take this a step further and build eBay into a giant social network that lets like-minded buyers and sellers find each other.
eBay's love for blogging doesn't stop there. It has also converted its newsletter into a TypePad-powered blog. Given this I bet TypePad/6A will be the back-end provider for eBay's blogs. A developer's wiki is already live.
Technorati Tags: eBay, eBay Blogs, eBay Wikis, Skype, Social Commerce
Nice to see eBay get into blogging. Will they have feeds? Support for the Metaweblog API?
Posted by: Dave Winer | Friday, June 02, 2006 at 11:10 AM
Not sure about the Metaweblog or OPML. Feeds are in the mix already.
Posted by: Steve Rubel | Friday, June 02, 2006 at 11:15 AM
Interesting that they are allowing sellers to tag only their blogs but not the products they sell, which seems to be working for Etsy. Maybe they the idea is to place the emphasis on sellers' overall stores instead of individual products. Or maybe global tagging of products is just too huge to implement and this initiative will test the waters. It'll be intestesting to see where they go next.
Posted by: John Ounpuu | Friday, June 02, 2006 at 12:56 PM
The biggest gripe from Ebay sellers has nothing to do with their items not turning up in a search or the ability (or lack thereof) to blog -- it's the rising price of their fees.
Additionally, a lot of sellers are already spending time taking photos, creating listings, doing their homework on price points, etc. -- What makes Ebay think they'll want to cut more time out of their day to blog?
Posted by: David Binkowski | Friday, June 02, 2006 at 02:11 PM
Great Find Steve. In many ways I see this being an extension of what ebay has pioneered from the start, and that is brokering and documenting trust/reputation. Blogs will become mechanisms for sellers to build more trust by engaging potetial customers at a non-sales level, greasing the rails for future transations. Add on to that the fact that blogs, rss, trackback etc is great google fodder it can't help but increase their footprint on google. Hmm, I wonder if they are going to have trackback.
Cheers,
Karl
Posted by: karl long | Friday, June 02, 2006 at 06:07 PM
FINALLY!
(glad to see it, just sorry that it took 2-3 years to get done :)
- dave 'ebay/paypal alumni' mcclure
Posted by: Dave | Friday, June 02, 2006 at 09:04 PM
Conversation absolutely drives [e]commerce. Buyers seek out product reviews all the time, and blogs make the perfect forum for objective reviews and product hype. What I can't imagine is an eBay storekeeper blogging objectively about their wares.
Can't fault eBay for trying though - this adds value (more, perhaps, to sellers).
Posted by: Aaron | Saturday, June 03, 2006 at 12:16 AM
No sign of this on the UK site yet. What a surprise.
Posted by: David Faulkner | Saturday, June 03, 2006 at 08:56 AM
Interesting to see eBay coming up with new stuffs.
Posted by: Keith | Saturday, June 03, 2006 at 04:06 PM
Too bad they have the crappiest customer service, even for power sellers.
Posted by: Vincent | Saturday, June 03, 2006 at 10:11 PM
it's a big deal that eBay is recognizing and endorsing blogs as a favored social communications tool. Even now, the message board drives most eBay communication- the only forum I can think of that still relies on boards...I'm expecting a lot more eBay/Auction pundit bloggers to emerge now. The space has thus far been pretty limited.
Posted by: Morra Aarons | Tuesday, June 06, 2006 at 12:40 PM
I saw the announcment of blogs and wikis on the Powersellers Unite forum (http://www.powersellersunite.com/portal.php ). I would recommend the PSU forum to anyone who wants to get a view of ebay that differs from the 'official' one.
Given the massive quantity of fraud on ebay, I'm wondering just what shape the blogs and wikis will take. Judging from the types of restrictions (some successful, some not) that ebay places on listings, the concept of "blog" or "wiki" in the ebay offering is likely to be unrecognizable to anyone who has actually used either. I may even participate, if it looks like it will increase sales, but I will probably also have my own blog, where I can say what I want without worrying about ebay censoring me.
Posted by: Howard Lee Harkness | Tuesday, June 06, 2006 at 12:50 PM
Auction Bytes (http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m06/i06/s02 ) is running a story on ebay's plans to censor their blogs and wikis -- and it is even worse than I thought.
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Posted by: randy | Thursday, June 08, 2006 at 01:11 PM
They will definately censor this stuff. Any angry buyer/seller is most likely to trash others and/or eBay/Paypal and they wont let that happen, mostly the latter they are concerned with.
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Posted by: ebay | Sunday, June 25, 2006 at 10:39 AM
eBay keeps it going...this time with a product wiki - check out an example at
http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewProductWiki&entityid=48125273&version=10&action=5&type=1&vcsid=2809
***Member-Created Product Descriptions on Product Detail Pages***
Date: June 27, 2006 Time: 09:23AM PST/PT
To give members more opportunities to share their product expertise, we're launching supplemental Member-Created Product Descriptions on a certain number of Product Detail Pages. Product Detail Pages are available for products that can be listed using Pre-Filled Item information, and they provide basic information about specific products.
Posted by: Steve Olrusk | Tuesday, June 27, 2006 at 12:41 PM