MyWorld is getting a face lift which brings it closer to a fully Web 2.0 enabled interface. Out goes the single theme and in comes a choice of six themes. It’s a real shame they haven’t gone one step further and enabled eBayers to link their shop colours giving a fully customisable and coherent brand image. Sellers spend hours ensuring auctions, shop pages, me pages, email marketing etc have a consistent look and feel, extending it to MyWorld would make perfect sense.
A guestbook feature is coming where people viewing your MyWorld can leave comments – fortunately you can choose which to display so if someone slates you it’s no big deal! 😉
On the MyWorld home page a selection of 49 images from customised MyWorld pages will be shown. Given that there millions of eBay users having your own displayed is almost negligible. This feature is reminiscent of mybloglog which TameBay uses – if you want your picture to appear each time you browse TameBay, sign up!)
Finally there’ll be tags that can be used to describe your hobbies and interests, people with similar interests can use these to find like minded eBayers. This is very “Web 2.0” but whether it helps you sell more is open to question. Of course if your interests happen (or you choose to make them) coincide with what you sell you could just cash in!
It’s good to see eBay enhancing MyWorld, but whether it helps sellers to sell more or convinces buyers to buy more is up for debate. What it will do is capture some users into spending more time on eBay, and the more time they spend on the site the more likely they are to trade on eBay in the future. That’s got to be good for everyone.
The new options for customising MyWorld should be live on the site within the next few days.
5 Responses
closer to a fully Web 2.0 enabled interface
Are you kidding? They’ve added in some new colour schemes – that’s all. The fact that they’ve given each scheme both a roughty toughty boy name and a fluffy girl name just shows it up for the half-hearted flannel is it: trying to please all the people with only half the work. Avatars have been around a lot longer than MyBlogLog, and MBL (for all its faults) is a lot more subtle an application than 49 random avatars on an eBay page that no one is actually going to look at.
Guest book… well, 1995 phoned and they want their website back 🙁 As for cashing in via tags, until the “slap-on” social networking is better integrated into the eBay site, buyers won’t have a clue that the tags are there, so you will not be cashing in on anything.
No one thinks of eBay as a social networking site. If they want it to work like that, they need to make it a LOT more overt than a nasty javascript-driven drop down menu from your feedback page… they need to hammer buyers over the head with it, or probably more realistically, they need to formalise the rumoured tie-in with MySpace (or Facebook or Bebo or bloody Blogger – anything will do!!), and use an application that actually KNOWS about social networking.
ouch. you sound angry. i think it’s an improvement. you probably shouldn’t visit the myworld pages.
i think they were probably having some fun with their product and making it fun for users who want to have some.
i went around some of the pages and i noticed a lot of guestbook entries, so i’m not sure if they are trying to be social network pioneers (or use tags the way some sites do), but probably they are just trying to enable people to chat more and stay on the site longer. they tags let you browse more.. thus seeing more items, reviews, etc.
it’s the first time i have really seen people’s faces on ebay and how it relates to what they sell and do.
well, they got me on the site a lot more. i didn’t buy anything, but i will probably check myworld out tomorrow or at least more than i did before.
too bad it made you mad.
oh well. 🙂
I know I often sound anti-eBay but I try to be objective. MyWorld, Guides, Blogs, etc on eBay are additional real estate for eBay to eventually sell sponsored ads etc. It’s happening on search results, it can’t be long before ads are added to MyWorld.
The content helps eBay save money on paid search by improving natural search. The content for these Web 2.0 features and the product sold on eBay is provided by hard working sellers just trying to make a living. The benefit to the specific seller who created the content is minimal but to eBay it is very valuable.
No matter what improvements eBay makes in these Web 2.0 apps. the greatest benefit will fall to the corporation not the seller.
I AM angry. It’s another half-assed implementation of a feature that could have been good.
Fair enough, Sue.
So you would do a myspace and bebo deal, promote tagging more with more understanding for the users, and then put it on more of the site?
I would like to think what you mention is in the “plans”… but I think I’m probably more optimistic about this than you are. 🙂 We shall see.