This Week in eBay Site & Company News

Who Are The People In Your (eBay) Neighborhood?
Taking us back to the days when Mr. Rogers was popular, eBay introduced Neighborhoods, a community-based space organized by popular items and searches. Neighborhoods are designed for members with a very specific interest in mind, and lets shoppers join a specific neighborhood to find like-minded eBay members and contribute to that specific topic discussion board.

Neighborhoods is currently made up of a wide range of groups, including one for Stephen King, Coffee Lovers, Custom Motorcycles, Computers and Shoe Heads — a place where shoe fanatics can channel their inner Imelda Marcos.

To participate, all you need to do is join a Neighborhood, and then you can track the discussions through a new My Neighborhoods section in your My eBay page. EBay said it plans to launch several hundred Neighborhoods this week, and will add more soon.

It's A Wonderful Day in the Neighborhood: eBay moves into the social networking arena. (Click for larger image.)

The most interesting aspect of eBay Neighborhoods is that it moves eBay one step closer toward the social networking model. Once a person subscribes to a Neighborhood, he or she can do product searches within that category, but also access images, discussions, guides, reviews, and blogs — all through related widgets on the main neighborhood page. The Neighborhoods layout is taking on the newer widget-enabled, clean and fun design we've been seeing eBay roll out recently. It also reminds both buyers and sellers that it hasn't completely lost its sense of community spirit.

PayPal To Review High-Risk Payments
This week PayPal plans to roll out a new security feature called Payment Review that assists sellers in fighting fraudulent buyers. Payment Review is an automatic system that sends sellers alerts when the system spots a 'high-risk' payment. When tagged by the system, the payment will be moved to a pending status while PayPal investigates. If PayPal determines that the payment is most likely fraudulent, the payment will be automatically canceled.

Payment Review is being used for a small number of transactions to test the system, however PayPal says it expects the program to include an increasing number of transactions in the U.S. and Canada over the next few months.

Detailed Seller Ratings Loses Controversial Item Titles
Brian Burke, of the Trust & Safety Feedback team, says that detailed seller ratings have been performing as well as the team expected. According to the stats, around 72 percent of buyers are using the detailed ratings system (DRS) to evaluate the performance of sellers they work with. Last spring when the DSR was first launched, there was a whole lot of fuss about the inclusion of the item title being shown on the detailed feedback page. Buyers said it was an invasion of privacy, despite the fact that on the old feedback page, you could simply click the auction item number and see the auction anyway. Still, eBay said that buyers are still concerned with the visibility of this information and eBay will be removing the item title from the DSR pages.

eBay Encourages Fair Shipping Practices
This week in eBay announcements, Kristina Klausen, of the eBay Shipping Team, reminded eBay sellers about fair shipping prices and also announced that eBay will be launching a number of programs and changes over the next few weeks to encourage fair shipping practices on the auction Web site.

In what is sure to rankle some sellers but be applauded by buyers, eBay says it plans to replace the popular "sort by price" option with "sort by item price and shipping fees" in most categories. This means sellers who currently list very cheap item starting prices, but who tack on a higher shipping price, will not be shown at the top of the page with the lowest price.

Taking a cue from the e-commerce industry at large, eBay also says it will work on driving more traffic to those sellers who choose to offer free, fast or thrifty shipping in their item listings. One way eBay plans to accomplish this is by using a landing page that will help buyers find good shipping deals. To assist sellers with shipping for the holidays, the Shipping Team will host a best practices Online Workshop on Oct. 26th from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Details can be read here.

Jajah Buttons A No-No
Last week we told you about the new buttons from Jajah, used so buyers and sellers can communicate. While I indicated that the buttons were appearing on eBay auctions pages, apparently it wasn't with eBay's blessings, as eBay started pulling auction listings containing the Jajah buttons almost overnight. Ebay's messages to sellers indicated that links to live chat systems are not permitted on the eBay site, and violated eBay's Links Policy. The Jajah Buttons Web site, however, still promotes using the buttons on your auctions.

eBay Tools & Trends

Garage Buy Gets Updated
GarageBuy, a Certified eBay API Client for searching and buying on eBay, was updated to Version 1.1 yesterday. New in this version are some performance improvements, a single image mode in search results, better handling of images with landscape orientation, and now users can also hide auctions from the search results list. GarageBuy requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher to run.

The Easy eBay Shortcut Link
AuctionTNT just released a free tool that it says will help eBay sellers to maximize the full earning potential of their stores. The Easy eBay Shortcut Link lets eBay sellers share a link that potential buyers can use to view all their eBay auction items currently for sale. It can be used when printing eBay shipment packages or invoices and can be used in a seller's e-mail signature as well.

eBay Search Data
This week eBay Pulse data shows that the top keywords searched for on eBay.com are for the Wii, followed by the Xbox 360, Webkinz and Apple iPod. Here is a snapshot of several eBay categories from the U.S., Canadian and U.K. sites, along with the corresponding top three searches in each for Oct. 11, 2007.

• eBay.com > Collectibles: Star Wars, Precious Moments and Harley Davidson.
• eBay.ca > Collectibles: Swarovski, hockey cards and Harley Davidson.
• eBay.co.uk > Collectibles: Hornby, Police.and Royal Doulton.
   
• eBay.com > Travel: airline tickets, cruise and Las Vegas.
• eBay.ca > Travel: airline tickets, Canada and Toronto.
• eBay.co.uk > Tickets & Travel: tickets, package holidays and take that .
   
• eBay.com > Jewelry & Watches: Rolex, Chanel and Cartier.
• eBay.ca > Jewelry & Watches: vintage, Rolex.and Chanel.
• eBay.co.uk > Jewelry & Watches: gold, Gucci and Rolex.

Only on eBay...

This week our favorite IT is all about Halloween. Taking in to account ground service shipping times, those who plan to use eBay to dress or decorate this year should start buying soon to make sure the items actually arrive in time for Halloween.

Starting with costumes, our most recent eBay search returned some 70,000 results. My personal favorite (270173525816) is an individual custom creation from Costume Arts. Most of these are made from torn down wedding dresses, and this beauty is based on Emily from Tim Burton's "The Corpse Bride."

It currently is fetching $311 with 24 bids. As with many things on eBay, even the costumes range from the beautiful to the ugly, like this hairy mole John latex mask (150169609811), that would definitely send out the 'willies' vibe. With a $19.99 starting bid, it's well worth the asking price.

Star Wars Chewbacca costumes are still popular and this is a full-featured furry one (120169814239) for just under $350. If frugal is the name of the game for you, you can dress the baby up as a pumpkin for mere pennies, plus shipping of course, (280160207869), or go out as a Funky Disco Diva for only a couple dollars more (170156961399).

For those who grow weary of the doorbell ringing, I definitely recommend the partially buried Zombie prop (320167012982), which I'm sure will send more than a couple of children scurrying away from your door as fast as possible. You could also plant the zombie beside this decaying coffin (290168160303) to double the screams.

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