eBay in the News
In eBay site news, near the end of June Rachel Makool, senior director of Community Development announced some changes planned for eBay Groups. Some of those changes included a facelift of the Groups page, more personalization and design options, communication through e-mail and Skype, enhanced search, and more. This week Makool said that due to some issues with some of the new tools, the new eBay Groups platform is still unavailable. She also said that the company will need to take eBay Groups offline to put in the new upgrades and will later announce a time and date when  this will take place.

In other new releases, eBay's Buyer Experience team has announced new "eBay Toolbar Featuring Yahoo!," which is designed to offer an improved search for eBay, Half.com and Yahoo. The new toolbar also provides account guard, eBay alerts for bidding and selling activity, and additional bug fixes and updates that address issues from previous releases.

In company news this week, eBay has officially launched the U.S. version of its online classifieds network, Kijiji, which is available in more than 200 U.S. cities. What makes the launch of the U.S. version of Kijiji interesting is that it's a direct competitor with Craigslist, of which eBay owns a 25 percent share.

In a law that took effect on July 1, 2007, eBay sellers residing in Texas, who sell used items on eBay can take advantage of a new tax exemption. The state law already allowed people to sell used goods a few times a year without collecting state sales tax (e.g. through yard or garage sales). The revision to the law now allows people to sell up to $3,000 worth of personal items in Texas without collecting the sales tax. The revision also includes sales through an online auction, but those who have a sales-tax permit are not included in the exemption. More information is available here.

eBay Services & E-commerce Tools
ECOMpal, an online shopping cart vendor announced that it has been certified by Google to offer Google Checkout as an integrated feature of the eCOMpal shopping cart. By accepting Google Checkout payments through the eCOMpal shopping cart it enables merchants to take advantage of all of Google's features including free advertising and promotion, increased payment security, and comprehensive online sales reporting.

Eye on the Little Guy: Add Visual Bling to Your Listings With Slide
Slide, which touts itself as "the largest personal media network in the world" offers the tools to create slideshow widgets online using photos and other digital content. Once you have created a Slide you can publish it in a variety of places such as FaceBook, Blogger, BeBo, your own desktop and even on eBay. To use Slide you first have to register for a free account. Once you have created an account you then start your Slide by uploading your images to the site. From there it is a few simple clicks and you can create a slideshow with your images, edit the image captions (the default is the file name as text), and also select pre-defined animations and other effects to show between the loading of image you include. This is enough for you to create a basic slideshow to display, but sellers can also work with more advanced features such as adding in background music, a Slide theme or skin. Other useful editing features include being able to change the size of the Slide or make it private or public. Once your Slide is completed, you then can obtain the HTML code needed to insert it onto a Web page.

Slide lets you create slideshow widgets online using photos and other digital content. (Click for larger image)

Slide makes it easy to promote a visual display of your item and you can create appealing slideshows in just a couple minutes using this Web service. For eBay sellers who want to create a slide to include in eBay listings, you simply copy and paste the generated HTML code into the description area when creating your listing. If you currently subscribe to an eBay Store you can also choose to add the Slide in individual listings or display the Slide as a custom Store page. To do this sellers will need to fist copy the code for their newly created Slide, then log into their 'My eBay.' From My eBay you go through 'Marketing Tools' then 'Manage My Store' and select 'Display Settings.' Here you will want to 'Create new page'. After choosing the template options for your new page you can paste the Slide Code into the 'Text Section' box, preview the results and save once you are happy with the new Store page. The Slide Web site offers a step-by-step guide to adding the slideshow to eBay listings or eBay Store pages.

On an interesting note, while completely unrelated to using Slide on your eBay listings, Slide was launched in 2005 and also founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin.

Research Says...
This week eBay Pulse shows that the most searched for items this week is the Wii, followed by the Xbox 360, Webkinz, and the Apple iPod. Here is a snapshot of several eBay categories along with the corresponding top three searches in each for July 05, 2007. Sellers can take advantage of popular eBay searches by including the keywords in their own listing titles, where appropriate.

• Cell Phones & PDAs: cingular, verizon, and nokia
• Consumer Electronics: mcintosh, ipod, and marantz
• Cameras & Photo: canon, nikon, and digital camera
• Computers & Networking: dell, laptops, and apple

According to a consumer research study by J.C. Williams Group (sponsored by Visa and Yahoo! Canada), Canadian e-commerce buyers are early adopters of online social networking. The study, which compared the shopping habits of consumers who purchase online to those of consumers who use the Web but buy only offline, indicated that more online buyers use networking tools and platforms to share opinions, insights, experiences and perspectives than their offline-buying counterparts. According to the study, 60 percent of Canadian online shoppers said that consumer reviews were their most trusted source of information, compared to 31 percent who use magazines and newspapers.

An eBay "iPhone" search yesterday generated over 8,600 results (Click for larger image)

Only on eBay ...
Only on eBay can you buy an iPhone for a lot more than it's actually worth. This week our favorite IT is the Apple iPhone. Early on, eBay placed several restrictions on sellers auctioning iPhones, similar to selling restrictions that we have previously seen with other highly anticipated consumer electronics such as the PS3 and Nintendo Wii. Pre-sales of the iPhone were banned completely from the auction Web site, and after the official Apple launch sellers are still required to display a unique photograph of the item (with a sellers User ID displayed in the image) and for buyer security, PayPal must be the only accepted form of payment.

On July 5th, an eBay "iPhone" search generated over 8,600 results, with prices on actual phones fetching anywhere from $400 to $700 and above, depending on the style of iPhone. eBay seller "iphone4you" was offering a NIB (new in box) 8GB Apple iPhone which sold for $725 in 37 bids. The 4GB iPhone retails for $499 while the 8GB version has a retail price of $599. Definitely a hot resale item - if you can find one to sell, that is.

Have an interesting tip, auction or news item to submit for eBay Watch? Tell us about it!