posted on October 1, 2000 10:16:36 AM new
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THE EBAY LEGEND (AS I REMEMBER IT)
EBAY would do what it now forbids we users to do...
They would tell us (in the sell your item area) to go to AOL boards where
many of us were buying and selling to eachother and advertise Ebay and our items.
(Post messages with links)
We would list something on Ebay and then run over to AOL and post a link to as many boards in the collecting areas that we could find. Within minutes we had bids.
Ebay used AOL heavily for leads on buyers.
As luck would have it..word got out that AOL was shutting down the boards (as we knew them)
THUS EBAY capitalized on that and snatched AOL members as ongoing and repeat customers.
Without AOL... it might have been a slow building process. WITH AOL already established in the trading field...Ebay took off.
I have always said AOL management was off the mark. The boards had literally thousands of postings...they should have seized that opportunity..but did not. Instead they shut them down...tisk tisk.
Soon afterwards Pierre asked us what catagories should be listed, how ..why etc etc.
Oh yeah baby..we helped that little french guy so much in the early days.
And when he went public...we were not initially allowed to purchase stock. Such a crime ....since we built the city.
AND THATS THE WAY IT WAS
posted on October 2, 2000 09:51:39 AM new
If the boards on eBay were clearly dedicated to "classifieds" or "ads" (i.e. "classified" or "ad" was part of the group name, or the charter gave explicit and clear permission to post ads) that was fine, and one has to question why AOL pulled down the board. If people were advertising on other boards meant for discussion and not advertising, then it is unsolicited commercial email, a.k.a. spam.
Usenet discussion groups and emailing lists sometimes get clogged with eBay-related spam, and added to all the other spam out there, it isn't a pretty sight.
I don't know how the AOL boards in particular are/were set up, but a "collecting" group does NOT imply ads or classifieds are welcome. The group may be dedicated to discussion about the collectible items themselves. To post that some site (like eBay) is an excellent place to find a variety of such items (and even to post a link to a well-crafted search to find any such item from any seller) is one thing, having dozens of people advertising hundreds of auctions is another.
For a somewhat more concrete example...
I am a fan of one particular series that has a mailing list dedicated to it. The mailing list gets 10-20 posts (discussion only) a day. Related items go up on eBay at about twice that rate. If even half of the eBay sellers posted ads to the auctions onto the mailing list, half the mailing list activity would be eBay ads. Soon some members of the mailing list would start unsubscribing in disgust, then there would be less discussion activity as a result of losing contributors, the signal-to-noise ratio would decline, more people would leave, a vicious circle would get set up, and the mailing list would be damaged or destroyed.
Fortunately, mailing list administrators or moderators often actively disallow advertising (through the FAQ, kicking anyone that spams, etc. ).
OTOH, Usenet is generally not administered, so the damage I mentioned has already happened to numerous Usenet groups, probably contributing to the decline of that outlet (there are other factors, but spam is one). eBay-related spam is a small but significant portion of all spam, thus adding to the problem.
If eBay was suggesting, at one point, that sellers send unsolicited commercial email to a group that does not specifically allow ads, then they were wrong, in my opinion.
Didn't eBay, at one point, have an "inform your friend" feature or some such? I seem to remember the aforementioned mailing list getting spammed by some "look what I found" ads that looked dishonest, because the same person that posted the "look what I found" ad was the actual seller! That did not go over with list members.
Usually, a company tries cutting into its competitors' market share, but spam can have the effect of damaging not companies, but channels of communication.
Sounds like the city was partially built by filling in clear lakes with dirt, then being surprised when the tourists are gone and the buildings are sinking.
However, if the AOL boards were dedicated to advertising, then it is rather unfair to have them yanked. Unfortunately, boards sometimes disappear for other reasons too, fair or not. Was there ever a statement of why?
AOL has such a very mixed attitude regarding advertising, fighter spammers tooth and nail on one hand, letting users get flooded with internal spam on the other, that I honestly don't know what's up with them.
----
What's being done in the name of direct marketing nowadays is crazy.
The above are all just my opinions, except where I cite facts as such.
Oh, I am not dc9a320 anywhere except AW. Any others are not me.
Is eBay is changing from a world bazaar into a bizarre world?
[ edited by dc9a320 on Oct 2, 2000 09:55 AM ]
[ edited by dc9a320 on Oct 2, 2000 10:34 AM ]
posted on October 2, 2000 10:03:53 AM new
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 2, 2000
EBay Partners With AOL to Sell
Online Advertisements on Its Site
(axcerpts follow)
EBay has partnered with online giant America Online Inc., which will use part of its huge advertising sales force to sell promotions on eBay. Beginning Monday, the first advertising banners sold by AOL, of Dulles, Va., will begin to appear scattered throughout the eBay site....
"The management team is recognizing that there is a significant opportunity to monetize the site to a greater degree than we have in the past," says Kevin Pursglove, an eBay spokesman"....
EBay has experimented with advertisements in the past, but compared with other brand-name sites such as Yahoo! Inc., its efforts have been modest. Mr. Pursglove says less then one-half of 1% of the Web pages viewed on eBay carried advertisements....
Mr. Pursglove, while declining to state the exact number of people handling advertising sales for eBay at AOL, says the relationship would significantly expand the company's previous advertising-sales team....
The company must act cautiously, though, so it doesn't alienate its finicky breed of users. Earlier this year, eBay raised the hackles of some users when it mingled advertisements for online merchants within the listings for goods available on eBay. Sellers howled over the practice, later abolished, because they feared the advertisements would draw people away to outside Web stores, says Mr. Pursglove....
EBay says the banner advertisements sold by AOL might also contain hyperlinks to outside Web sites. But the company will set them off from its listings and the pages that describe individual items to avoid irritating users....
I'm not a seller, but I found this howlingly amusing, because it misses the point so badly.
eBay is acting as if it were just selling its own products and had some "empty" space to put ads up in, and the WSJ buys it?
They (take your pick) seem to miss the point that eBay's customers are other sellers, and that this is what the model is based on.
Either that, or *I* am missing something.
I don't get something else in the article, though. Are the ads being discussed just ads for AOL itself, or for AOL advertising partners as well?
If the ads are just going to be for AOL's online service, though, they at least won't be competing with eBay sellers (unless someone's selling ISP service ), even if AOL's continued alt.pave.the.earth.with.ads philosophy of self-advertising is long since annoying.
Thanks for posting the article, magazine_guy.
So, is this the if-we-have-to-suffer-ads-don't-let-them-be-competing situation others mentioned months back, or the next new explosion of one-more-insufferable-annoyance-driving-us-away disgust?
posted on October 2, 2000 06:02:19 PM new
mag guy~ give me a jingle, if you've got some nice wine, I might drop by/ LOL..... we built this city......................
), even if AOL's continued alt.pave.the.earth.with.ads philosophy of self-advertising is long since annoying.