Today's Netbytes column looks at eBay, because it has been in the news with the launch of Neighborhoods (social networking) and offline software (San Dimas).
Now I'm going to give away the ending ;-)
It seems to me that eBay spends quite a lot of time doing trendy things such as Neighborhoods, Blogs, Groups, Reviews, Answers, chat rooms, a Wiki, MyWorld and MatchUps. But as an eBay user, I'd much rather it spent the time and money improving its core service. To quote myself, things it could do
include better search, more detailed categorisation and tagging, more space for feedback (160 instead of 80 characters), quicker action against scammers, lower PayPal fees and a real help service. In comparison, adding Neighborhoods is trivial.
What do you think? What needs fixing first? What did I miss?
