eBay are about to close the eBay.com Chat Rooms and Neighborhoods sections of the eBay community.
The eBay Cafe was one of the very first eBay Chat Rooms established and goes way back to the late 90’s when eBay was in it’s infancy and as you can imagine there’s a fair amount of regret that eBay are shutting them down.
Neighbourhoods are a pretty recent addition to the eBay community pages and my original assessment of Neighborhoods was that it was simply intended as a place to pump products to buyers. That’s not how the members see it though and there are thousands of active Neighborhoods about to be shut down.
eBay have simply posted an “Upcoming Changes to this Community” sign, saying that “On or around October 14th, 2011, eBay will be closing access to this chatboard technology”.
eBay have been rationalising the community forums for some time now, with long standing discussion boards such as Q&A and The Nags Head disappearing from eBay UK’s site a year ago.
When boards are closed in this manner it’s not a real problem in eBay’s eyes for their users. There are still discussion boards and available and Groups are very similar to Neighborhoods.
However for those affected they lose contact with the community members that they’ve built up online relationships over the years and may not even know each other except via their eBay User ID. For these people finding their friends again may be impossible and for the entire group who dip in and out of Chat or on a casual basis they’ll probably lose their community forever.
It’s rather sad to see The eBay Cafe still with the subheading “This is where it all began…” on the eBay Chat Rooms index. It may be where the community began, but for the members of Chat this is the end.
Currently the and are still live, so if you want to visit a last time to say goodbye it’s probably best you log in sooner rather than later.
9 Responses
That should bring more traffic to Tamebay and make Tamebay more of an authority website on eBay and ecommerce in general which can only be a good thing.
Facebook and the like has overtaken this. If user numbers are down to a trickle why waste money keeping the service going?
I personally approve of anything eBay can do to cut out waste, the excesses and the bloat.
Sorry but I am not nostalgic if it costs money. What I am nostalgic for is a return to the old days of eBay when fees were half what they are now for sellers of my ilk (we all know that outlet sellers pay lower fees than eBay were charging 8 years ago!).
Any measures that ebay take to enable this mission has to meet with the approval of a large number of sellers.
The real fear for eBay must be if Facebook ever open an auction site (or even Amazon or Google!). It could well be that in years hence eBay close down more of their site.
ebay is a professional business platform, and the old forums just reflect the morons that still exist on the site. The soon they are gone the better.
I agree to an extent.
‘ebay is a professional business platform’
Yes and no!
Private sellers are not ‘professional’ (well some of them at least!).
Buyers are not ‘professional’ and they are always needed to make the deal. So eBay has recognised that they cannot promote (enough) sales to buyers through at least some of their ‘communities’.
What concerns me more as a (small) professional seller is the way the site now performs for the slower moving one of a kind items.
Now that might just be down to me BUT I am pretty much sure that the way the site now displays these items on GTC is not offering best available value to sellers.
Check it out.
‘ebay is a professional business platform’
Which eBay do you use, as it certainly is not any that we sell on?
eBay is a complete balls up from start to finish and a very expensive one at that, traffic is terrible , the site is still plagued with scam buyers and god forbid there is a postage strike as you will be kicked off due to DSR’s not being up to eBays oh so high standards of excellent///something that they do not strive to achieve in any way shape or form
We just lost (indefinitely suspended!!!) 2 selling accounts that were TRS due to 3 neutral feedbacks in a week from International buyers who blamed us on customs delays in South Africa..not bad after 6 years and not 1 claim or negative feedback…Thanks eBay you are so professional
Neighbourhoods please were british
Yes in part it is sad to see these boards and chat rooms go. In the early days and I am talking back around 1999, I found these type of places a wonderful place to go, hang out and ask questions.
But sadly over time, I visited them less and less – the main reason being they were filled with very negative comments and very little help. And when someone did offer help people often questioned it and were not nice to each other.
As others have posted here, forums and sites such as Tamebay have taken over and offer great help and always give a positive view.