Isn't eBay's recommendation feature sent out after the auction a bidder is bidding on closes? If not then that's a different can of worms and sellers ought to be STEAMED!
If it's a post-auction email then I see it as eBay tweaking their rules to advertise unsold listings and drum up final value fees. Not much different than eBay classified ads or Television commercials. Guess they're going to take an aggressive instead of formerly passive stance in helping some of these auctions close out successfully.
The fact that eBay collects information about its users should come as no shock to anyone. Anybody with a site could do the same very easily. Amazon has flaunted it's user data collection for a while. Whether they are free to disseminate that information I guess is up to the courts. Our buying habits have been collected and disseminated to marketers from non-Web venues for years, so to say eBay will lose that ability seems farfetched. Just be careful what you buy and where you surf.
posted on June 5, 2001 10:39:50 AM
I hadn't even noticed the opt-out at first because it shows up on the bid confirmed page and I rarely bother paying attention to it. I spotted purely by accident one time. I've never received anything when the auction ended though...even before I opted out.
posted on June 5, 2001 11:00:31 AM
I received another 8 recommendations this morning from an auction I bid on last night and they are so far off base that it is a totally useless program for bidders.
I will also say to anyone who does not wish to sell out of their own country that ebay is sending me recommendations to bid on your auctions. Okay, I know better, but what about the newbies? Are they going to tell you that ebay recommended that they do so? Some of them are already confused and this won't help that situation any.
Does anyone know for sure if the "opt out" feature is a one time thing or do you have to do it each time after you place a bid?
posted on June 5, 2001 11:12:14 AM
shaani: It's an Opt-OUT first... so if the bidder knows to Opt-OUT at the time of placing their bid, they should not be receiving any recommendation spam from eBay until or unless they bid on something again and choose to Opt-In. (I believe)
posted on June 5, 2001 11:19:30 AM
This just in from Reed
I understand they reference us on their website and we have talked to them
in the past but this product has nothing to do with Dynaptics. We earlier ran a test of a similar product and that test was powered by Dynaptics and I think that's what the quote is referring to on their website.
We do not capture or maintain any data other than the data you already know about (e.g. bid history, etc) to power this recommendation engine. The engine takes in an auction title and it spits out recommendations based on the text matching I described earlier.
posted on June 5, 2001 11:56:09 AM
You have to accept cookies from eBay for the opt-out to work and it only works for that auction.
Think of the possibilites.......for the rest of your life, or as long as eBay has this stupid feature,you will have to accept a cookie for every auction you bid on, or opt-out after each and every bid if you don't accept cookies.
Along with everything else this new "protocol" is a royal PIA, and, I have observed adds precious seconds to sniping.....
posted on June 5, 2001 01:17:52 PM
This just in from [email protected]
A couple of more points of clarification:
1. We wrote the software ourselves. No third parties. No data sharing. In fact no data storing other than what we did before (e.g. bid history).
2. I have an answer on storefront items. We have no plans to add storefront items to the reco engine. If we do add storefront items it will only be to storefront items from the same seller.
posted on June 5, 2001 05:53:33 PM
reddeer: I just had a chance to read that entire thread over on eBays boards and I wanted to say that I really enjoyed your posts to that forum. *smile*
posted on June 5, 2001 06:22:41 PM
smw: You have to accept cookies from eBay for the opt-out to work and it only works for that auction.
Hm... I bid on a couple things at work today (yeah, yeah, I know... it was during lunch, though), got the opt-out request the first time, then the opt-in request the next. However, I just bid on something else tonight from home and got the opt-IN request again. This can't be cookie-related, since I'm on a different machine (did I misunderstand what the cookie is for?). I guess it's tied to the user id?
At any rate, it seems to be keeping me at an opt-in status now, which is nice... er... less annoying anyway.
posted on June 5, 2001 06:37:02 PM
no no no ... you've got it backwards... it's keeping you at an OPT-OUT status now that you've Opted-OUT... and that is why you continue to see the offer to OPT-IN when you go to place a bid.
As long as you don't accidently click the OPT-IN button, you should remain OUT by option.... and you should not receive any eBay Recommendation SPAM.
If you ever decide that you want to recieve the eBay recommendation SPAM... then just click on that Opt-In button they keep offering you at the time of bidding and eBay will be happy to SPAM you with a variety of items from eBay and Half.com
posted on June 5, 2001 07:39:33 PM
Hi folks,
Well I just got my first recommendation e-mail. I find it very annoying I don't buy much anymore, just sell. But I bid on a HTF art book about flowers. The recommendations were a Freddy Krueger item (sp?), and some oil on canvas paintings of flowers. None of them were books.
If this is what our buyers are getting I can see people getting reluctant to bid just to avoid a bunch of unnecessary e-mail.
Jay
posted on June 5, 2001 07:54:18 PM
Hi Neil. I don't know what to say about Reed's remark except that I find it difficult to believe. Is it possibly a coincidence that eBay was beta testing Dynaptic's PERSONALIZED TECHNOLOGY software just last August and is now using personalized software that they say they wrote themselves? Is it a coincidence that both eBay and Dynaptics are located in San Jose, California?
First of all, I doubt they have anyone working for eBay that's capable of doing that, with the possible exception of Maynard Webb and it isn't in his area of expertise. Secondly, the company's history is interesting. The actual technology for analyzing the text in auction descriptions which is the core of Dynaptic's PIE program was developed by the Ultimode Company which Dynaptics purchased in 1999. I believe the date of purchase in the following article is incorrect.
QUOTE
"CUPERTINO, CA - August 28, 2000 - Dynaptics Corporation today announced the acquisition of Ultimode, a software company that specializes in developing intelligent adaptive technologies for the Internet. Ultimode’s unique content analysis technology is the core of Dynaptics’ Personal Information E.ssistant (PIE) product, whose beneficiaries include on-line auction, classified and merchant sites."
END QUOTE
http://www.dynaptics.com/newsevents/pressreleases/pr_000828.html
One of the five founders of Ultimode is Dr. Steve Waterhouse and I found two of his resumes on the net. The first one gives a history of his work experience and he mentions being one of the founders of Ultimode AND he lists eBay as being one of their clients during the 1999 period which I think is most interesting.
QUOTE
"1997 - 1999, Ultimode Inc., Berkeley, CA
Co- founder and Chief Executive Officer
- Co-founder and CEO of 5 person Internet personalization and data mining solutions provider. Ultimode was acquired by
Dynaptics Corporation (http://www.dynaptics.com) in 1999.
- Clients included NASA, NSF, BHP International, Cygnus, Silicon Graphics, Yahoo, Digital Impact, eBay, craigslist, and fat-brain.com.
- Negotiated partnership with SGI for data mining tool distribution;"
END QUOTE
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:akEbJ4yMnbk:www.oigeeza.com/steve/resume.pdf+eBay+%2BDynaptics&hl=en
BTW, this is in pdf format
The other reference appears to be more recent and looks like a home page.
QUOTE
"Dr. Steve Waterhouse
I am a Brit ex-pat living in San Francisco, California. I work for Sun Microsystems as Director of Engineering for the JXTAgroup, also based in San Francisco. Until recently I was VP Engineering for Infrasearch which was acquired by Sun in March 2001. Before that I worked for a number of different companies mostly in the Internet technology space including Ultimode which I started and ran with some friends and which was subsequently sold to Dynaptics in 1999"
END QUOTE
http://www.oigeeza.com/steve/
It seems much more likely that eBay bought the software from Ultimode or Dynaptics OR someone who worked for one of those companies also worked for eBay at some point in time. But, hey, coincidences do happen.
I would like to view the source code of the page that shows the OPT IN - OPT OUT box so I can see just what's going on.
posted on June 5, 2001 08:21:44 PM
HI Blanche ....... I also saw the Steve Waterhouse resume & the eBay connection. Hard to believe that it's all just a coinkydink?
posted on June 6, 2001 09:57:20 AMDottie: Thanks... that's what I meant, just not what I said. However, I still don't think cookies can be responsible since I'm on a different machine. It doesn't flip-flop back and forth between opt out and opt in with different machines/browsers. Ebay must be setting up a preference tied to my userid.
Speaking as a buyer, it's a pain in the neck to have to opt out, but I personally find it tolerable since you only have to do so once (and since it doesn't interfere with the bid itself). YMMV, of course...
And, yeah, I still managed to get one of those recommendation e-mails since my finger automatically hit the button a second time after I assumed I knew what it said (lesson learned: read everything)... I ended up deleting it unread. Bleah.
posted on June 6, 2001 10:45:07 AM
monkeyhouse: Yeh... you must be SIGNED IN at the time you opt-OUT so that a cookie can be set to save that information.
That's how it works... as long as you're signed in... and you OPT-OUT, you shouldn't be receiving any more of the recommendation SPAM unless you decide to or accidently hit the Opt-In button.
