This week in the Bloggosphere and beyond … here in Asia we’re still suffering from the Mediterranean Internet-cable breaks that happened 19 Dec, and access speeds are excruciatingly slow – taking up to 5-minutes per page refresh.  Because of this, Sunday Papers are a bit thin this week.

If you have trading partners out this way, please also note that email has been badly hit, since Saturday 20 Dec, due to Domain Name Servers timing out while trying to establish routing.  Incoming (to us) email seems largely unaffected (if the spam stats are anything to go by), but sending mail from here is getting a 90%-plus “no can do” with SMTP 5.4.0 errors on almost every email.  (SMTP 5.4.0 is an error code for unable to find mail host server on XYZ domain name).

No new word from France Telecom about expected date of fix – their initial estimate of New Year’s Eve (stated on the 20th) seems to be the last word on it.  Presumably their cable-repair ship is on station already.  There’s been no update on the first of the three broken cables meeting the Christmas Day repair prediction either.

Bloggosphere

Dan Wilson has steamed to the defence of the now mostly defunct eBay UK team following the “European Streamlining” (a.k.a. layoffs and redundancies).  Dan’s post feels unfinished and incomplete when read – I hope he returns to extend it – and sort of ends as if he was interrupted and dragged off somewhere involuntarily, perhaps by an angry pod of dolphins who’d heard what he was drafting?

Part of the point that Dan misses in haranguing sellers with no or little sympathy for the sacked eBay UK employees, is that the majority of sellers badly hurt by this year’s changes, and by additional zealous purging from the Richmond team, are the “older set” – the baby-boomers.  Most of us remember all too well the mass destruction of British heavy industry in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as well as the cyclic destruction of the middle and entrepreneurial classes in the recessions and property crashes between then and now.

Dan, I think, may be too young to remember those times from the mindset of a worker or business owner.  Those of us who do, remember all too well the economic climate and the corporate mentalities that had 20% of the British workforce unemployed at one point.  To at least some of us, 2008 has been all too reminiscent of the build-ups to those traumatic periods, and many of us feel we are too old to rebuild everything again.

Chortle, chuckle.  Ina at AuctionBytes has blogged that John Donahoe made it onto GlassDoor’s top ten “naughty CEO” list.  GlassDoor states, “The naughty list is synonymous with our “Watch List” – a term we coined for the CEOs with the highest disapproval ratings (with at least 50 reviews) and are at risk of being ousted.”  You know, it’s strange, but I remember watching the webcasts for the Jan 2008 ecommerce conference in Washington and thinking, “This guy is trying too hard to come over as a nice guy, but is projecting that he’s a complete snake-in-the-grass and incompetent at that too”.  Reader comments on the story are more concerned with the validity and transparency of GlassDoor, than about the context of the post.

Randy Smythe positions the question about whether eBay will be tempted into scrapping auction format for audio media sales, revealing less than 10% of listings are in auction format, and gives his top-10 predictions for ecommerce in 2009.

One of the online selling activities that has intrigued me for a couple of years, is that of ripping up old magazines and selling the bits.  I came across an article on Rebel Seller blog this week covering just that topic, and it looks like Gary’s series will be worth following even if it’s only for self-edification.  Of course, to me as a press writer, ripping up century-old publications feels like a cardinal sin, but I see the commercial value in doing so.

The RedInk is flowing this week.  Henrietta yesterday began a series looking at the state of eBay and who is the real culprit for the corporate value collapse.  She also posted one of her exceptionally well researched investigations this week, looking at the reality behind PayPal Buyer and Seller Protection, and the deceptive on-eBay advertising that accompanies it.  I also had to giggle at the Lorrie Norrington centred post about eBay’s Christmas messaging to paying customers.  Mind you, I’d already picked up on what Henrietta concludes, but was trying to set a positive tone here on BuildaSkill for the holidays.

Blog quote of the week

Henrietta got it this week, but it’s not a one liner, it’s the conclusion to the opening part of her new series mentioned above.

We Sellers are also to blame.

We put all our eggs in one basket. We enabled the rot from above by accepting whatever fad of the week came down from above as if it was graven on tablets of stone. We chose to ignore the fact that the emperor was naked. When we were told to jump we said ‘How high?’ and tried our best. We allowed ourselves to be held hostage by our passive compliance instead of actively diversifying. Our response to each successive edict was the same, no other venue has eBay’s traffic. My friends, traffic without conversion is as meaningless as listing volume without sales.

Discussions & Forums

With eBid once again visible to “non-eBid” countries, I was hoping to find they’d caught up with the world and added a corporate blog.  They haven’t.  News is still being passed to members via the monthly email and their forums announcements board.  Seems they’re still tweaking and twiddling away.  The announcements board gave a series of tweaks and bug fixes in the week leading up to Christmas, but there’s still nothing regarding the 2-month lockout, except for this thread started and posted in by users only.

Gaz and I had our weekly “gossip” call last night, and he raised an interesting comment.  His reckoning is that the eBay UK PowerSeller forum has become rather boring.  Quoting him, he reckons he “used to virtually live on that board” and could always find something new each day to motivate, cheer, or excite him, thus keeping him focussed on eBay as a primary channel.  Now, he reckons, when he can’t sleep he shoots over there for 30 minutes and is quickly sent to the land of nod.  He says it’s because all the “characters” are gone (banned or left of their own accord) and those that are left are still shell-shocked by all the changes this year.  It’s sucked the life out of what was a particularly vibrant section of eBay’s community.

This link should really be in the bloggosphere section, but the post is so short and garbled, and the reader comments so long and comprehensive, that I’ve tagged it as a discussion.  Motley Fool had a post about the Fall and Fall of eBay, which reads as though every eBay seller has pitched in with their 12% worth.

A little off-topic, but I wanted to plug the blog of newbie BuildaSkill member Mark Lewis.  Mark’s written a lengthy review of mind-mapping software – file it under intriguing, and thank Gaz for the link.  Mark runs a video to DVD transfer service.

In the BuildaSkill Forums -

• Our “Will you be giving up eBay after Christmas” survey is still running until New Year’s Eve
• And our directory of eBay alternatives continues to grow with sterling survey work by a couple of members – drop into the forums and thank them for all the hard graft they’ve done on it.
• In need of a laugh?  Have you tried our “Office Joker” board yet?
• Mr Squiggly is getting bigger (LOL – stop that – it’s not what you think).

Online Channels & Venues

Ever thought of becoming a Wigix Category Expert?  BrewsNews opened the week with a post from an insider on what it takes and involves.

Someone at Amazon.com’s Press and Media department is hyped and needs to lay off the caffeine and kool-aid a bit.  The latest press release (Boxing Day) detailing Amazon’s channel success in the pre-Christmas season is full of praise for the volume shifted through it.  Rather than dry stat’s though, they’ve gone a bit overboard with the descriptive comparisons, such as – “Amazon.com sold enough “Breaking Dawn” books that stacked end to end they would reach the summit of Mt. Everest eight times” and “Amazon Grocery sold enough coffee to give each resident of the highly caffeinated city of Seattle a cup per day for two month” (a reference to the number of IT companies in the city?).

It’s fantastic that someone has knocked eBay off the top of the ladder, it might make them take stock of how they’re destroying their own marketplace.  The Amazon press release has a very long list of top selling products by category, which makes it useful for 3rd party vendors hoping to cash in on the long tail in the new year.  Read Randy Smythe’s take on it.

Majestictech have a “how to” article on using Craigslist.  I found this using a Technorati blog search having noticed the rise of mentions of the site in recent weeks, despite eBayInkBlog trying to trash the site as unsafe for buyers to use.  It seems Google loves Craigslist (might be something to do with the simple text interface), and all online sellers should consider the site for at least part of their inventory – increased exposure, another channel, and no fees – gotta be good?.

Webifying

Dan the Wilsonian has a thought-provoking post this week regarding the attitude of technology companies to small businesses.  It doesn’t recommend much for the small businesses themselves (another of Dan’s incomplete posts?), but does serve as a knotted handkerchief in terms of remembering to watch for big-tech catering more for home businesses and one-man/woman operations.

Looking Ahead

I’m “on holiday” this week, which basically means I’m working harder than normal.  Christmas sort of drifted past in our household, but New Year calls for some serious partying – especially as the 1st & 2nd are official public holidays here every year, and this year are immediately followed by a weekend – yeehaa, extended party period!  (Next week’s Sunday Papers might be very short – depends on the severity of the hangover).

Ed