eBay have just announced the acquisition of ViA-Online GmbH and auction management company that trades as Afterbuy in Germany.
Afterbuy is a third party application which can streamline pre and post sales activities, cross selling to buyers and inventory management across multiple platforms such as eBay, eBay Express, Amazon, Kelkoo, auxion and Google Base.
It’s definately the season for auction management companies to be acquired, it’s less than a month since ChannelAdvisor acquired Marketworks. Mind you, eBay already own a slice of ChannelAdvisor and now by default Marketworks, so their own portfolio of third party management solutions is growing!