eBay Neighborhoods Introduces Social Networking Features
October 11, 2007 |
In an effort to increase the slowing growth rate of the leading online auction marketplace, eBay has launched a new section of its website, known as eBay Neighborhoods, which is intended to provide a social network, across which eBay users can better communicate and contribute to a worthwhile shopping experience.
eBay's second quarter results, posted in July, were impressive, but new item listings on eBay's core shopping site declined by 6% from a year earlier while power seller listings were down by 25%. Of course, this did little to quell spreading belief that the auction site needs attention… which it has now begun receiving.
With eBay Neigborhoods, users can post photos, product reviews, tips and responses related to a wide variety of products (600 currently), each of which has its own 'neighborhood' in the network. For instance coffee drinkers would join and contribute to the Coffee Lovers neighborhood (currently the most popular), while gaming fans might visit the Xbox 360 neighborhood to find reviews and discussions from like-minded gamers before shopping.
At first look, this is easily the best interface designed by eBay to date, with an emphasis on visuals, as a shopping site should be. I found the searchable visual product widget (located at the top of the page next to the photo slideshow) to be very useful, making it simple to find related items once you are in one of the product neighborhoods.
Looking deeper, however, revealed that neighborhoods appears to be nothing more than a mash-up of existing eBay features such as blog postings, guides, and reviews, with little else added. Sure the new interface may entice more visitors to begin using these features, but eBay needs to start thinking outside the box, or more specifically, outside its website.
As TechCrunch noticed, it would be nice to see some of the features of Neighborhoods available as widgets to be embedded onto any website. "What would really be smart would be if eBay allowed anyone to easily take any module on a neighborhood page—the reviews, the visual product search, the discussions, or the eBay blog posts—and embed them on other Web pages like Facebook, MySpace, or their blogs," stated Eric Schonfeld.
eBay should realize by now that the viral-effect does wonders (since Neighborhoods is late to the game), if only they would be more open towards new developments on the web.
Future features for eBay include "One Click Bid," which helps last-minute buyers, and "Snapshot View," which is intended to be "the e-commerce equivalent of window shopping," according to Rachel Conrad of Sign On San Diego.
