I wonder why EBay is in such trouble?
Then again, I wonder why we never hear anything interesting at all from them in terms of new technology ideas?
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4 comments:
Skype was a weird integration, because - I guess - the items you need to interact with people for (cars, etc) you generally want to use *all* your senses. Simplified interaction is good for some things, as is automated selling (especially for small, low-risk, "standardised" goods), but phoning someone up before buying a higher risk good still misses out too much information.
Photos on ebay pages are farrr more useful than ringing the person up.
Maybe marketplaces and auctions are too simple - no more innovation needs to be done? :)
...or maybe they're concentrating more on economic innovation.
I always figured it let them create a market for live services over-skype : eg. medical consultations or tarot readings etc.
Dunno if that materialized. What's interesting to me *now* about skype is that it *is* a platform for skype-enabled widgets. I don't know if people have been doing much with that.
And remember skype does video (although maybe something like a 1 minute video of the flat you're selling would be better on Seesmic )
Interesting their push towards being a Kiva-style microlender.
end of day ebay will probably be up and running like 50 years from now, no matter what they do. its just core internet infrastructure now.
that said, buying skype for so much was CLEARLY STUPID from the start. probably some bankers sold it to them and mgmt didn't even quite understand what the hell skype really was.
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