This week in the Bloggosphere and beyond … it’s been a busy week for ancillary service announcements, and for a new wave of apparently hidden or subliminal messages in eBay announcements.

Financial matters continue to dominate news output, but the good news is that the buyers appear to be slightly more active than they have been for the last two months.  Perhaps the many swathes of interest rate cuts are finally persuading them to spend before inflation erodes the value of their savings?

Bloggosphere

It’s slightly old now, nearly two weeks, but if you didn’t catch the Amazon Strategies post entitled, “Leveraging Amazon Product Reviews to Drive Sales” then you need to catch up quick with it.  Apparently there’s been some naughties and unfairness going on with the function.

It had to happen eventually.  Bonanzle’s roaring success has led to demand from sellers to be able to block individual buyers (a-la-eBay-BBL).  A recent blog post by Bill Harding reveals that’s it’s the surprise favourite request on the rolling poll of members for what the site needs to implement in the ongoing list of new features and upgrades.  Bill has listened and it will be done.

Over the last fortnight I posted a lot of articles about payment services, including mobile payments, and kept referring to Obopay as the leading innovator of the mobile payments field.  one of their blog posts this week is yet another example of how they are tearing down traditional fences.

Imagine you’ve just got home from the supermarket, take the wrapping off the chicken for Sunday lunch to defrost it, and there’s a mobile number for you to text, and doing so automatically gets you a $4.00 rebate from your purchase.  Well, it’s reality, and it’s happening until 22nd February courtesy of the US’s Springer Mountain Farms via the Obopay mobile payments service.  It may be the first of its type, but I’m sure it won’t be the last. – just another reason to sign up for Obopay.

Henrietta over at RedInkDiary has been scribbling sage words again.  This week she’s covered the topic of keywords and listing titles, followed by a guest post by Aussie Kevin describing his experience of the differences in eBay’s search system between sites – go have a nosy, both posts are well worth reading.

Randy Smythe reckons the eBay.com media categories are now essentially Half.com with DSRs and reckons insertion fees should be scrapped because of the new reduced visibility for sellers.  He also predicts a lot of sellers will see STR collapse even further (if that’s possible for some).  He’s also gathering data about the many anecdotal reports that being opted into the new eBay stores format causes loss of sales, probably visibility related, give him a shout if you believe you’re affected.

Blog quote of the week

From GenuineSeller -

There is an interesting thing happening in the eBay community. It seems like the hatred and anger caused by last year’s changes are fading a bit …

Not that people are okay with the major changes eBay instituted. Sellers (many of which once loved eBay) passionately spoke out against the changes. They hated them. The reason things have quieted down is because sellers are becoming indifferent.

It’s much like relationships between people. You love a person. Then when things go sour, you may hate that person. Eventually, you just become indifferent.

Love, then Hate, then Indifference.

This is the worst thing that can happen to eBay. The site was built on passion. Even Jay Leno stopped talking about eBay and now talks about “Amazon’s Worst Sellers.”

Discussions & Forums

Etsy took a step closer to eBayification with the announcement of launching a new Forum section for announcements from Etsy admin.  It is intended to improve communication with their community, but they also promise to,

“continue to engage with the community in the other sections of the Forums, and not all posts from admin will appear in the Announcements area. Instead, we plan to reserve it for those pieces of information we deem important enough to be exalted to this special section.

As this is new for us too, there may be some “figuring out” about the best way to utilize this section and what types of information should be there. Nevertheless, we are excited that we have yet another tool to help get the word out to the community.”

Only Etsy admin can post in this section of the forums … Yup! eBayification if ever I saw any.

Some of the new topics in the BuildaSkill forums this week -

• Enhancing Web Effectiveness With Audio Sound Design
• EBID AID – for the people in Australia (Australian Bushfire Fund)
• Oz – Trading Advice – Victorian bushfires and Queensland floods
• USA – New Version of ProStores – Improvements to Importing eBay Listings into ProStores
• UK+IE – Change to policy regarding sale of knives on eBay.co.uk and eBay.ie

International

Citibank N.A. has announced the launch of Citi Online Remit, a new online money transfer service for payments from the USA to India. Citi Online Remit provides Non Resident Indians (NRIs) the facility to transfer funds to India from any US checking/savings account, or using a US credit or debit card as a direct transfer into the beneficiary’s bank account, or as a draft couriered to the beneficiary’s mailing address in India.  Opportunities open here for micro and macro imports by NRIs, of products made in India, as well as sending money home for family support.

Money Matters

A recent poll of FSB members revealed one in four saying they believe small firms will pull the UK out of recession. However, the FSB is concerned that they will be unable to do so, or to retain or employ extra staff if they are burdened by new legislation. A recession is no time to be making changes to existing laws, which will have such an enormous financial impact on small firms.

The Center for American Progress has released a new report titled “Putting Credit Card Debt on Notice – Using electronic reminders to give consumers the right information at the right time” (pdf document) by Tim Westrich, Research Associate for Economic Policy at American Progress.

One simple technological solution could help level the playing field between cardholders and credit card companies and put money back into families’ budgets. Text messages – or a similarly rapid electronic method – could allow a financial institution to transfer information to cardholders at the “teachable moment” when they need it the most.

Center for American Progress?   You’ve got to love the name

According to the latest G.19 Consumer Credit report issued by the US Federal Reserve for December 2008,

“consumer credit decreased at an annual rate of 3 percent in the fourth quarter. Revolving credit decreased at an annual rate of 5-1/2 percent, and non-revolving credit decreased at an annual rate of 1-3/4 percent. In December, consumer credit decreased at an annual rate of 3 percent.”

Reduced credit take-up usually signified an even greater reduction is spending – not only is the reduced credit not spent as borrowed money, but also the repayments that were used to reduce the outstanding credit are taken out of retailing circulation.

Online Channels & Venues

eBay.com rolled changes this week to the categories in eBay Motors and to the Coins and Paper Money categories in core.  They also rolled out a “New Look for eBay’s Books, Music, Movies, and Video Games Product Pages”.

eBays in Italy, Spain, and Switzerland have announced the retirement of the “New & Now” listing format, and that all such listings will automatically be rolled over into Buy Now format on 2nd March.  I’ll be posting a reminder nearer the time, but sellers should begin checking their existing listings now, and ascertaining if the BIN format will remain profitable for them – particularly as there will be increased competitor numbers in the format, all vying for the same buyers.  Keep checking the above link to see if additional sites have made similar announcements (forum login required).

Five European eBays have also announced that any listings uploaded with a TurboLister version prior to v6.5 will have those listings blocked without fee refund or rebate.  This also takes effect from 2nd March 2009.  What version are you using?

Suppliers & Services

vzaar have been internally debating (heavily) changing the default player to offer one that is borderless. Some staff apparently think the current player (with a border that helps it stand out) needs to go border-less allowing customers to blend it into their own site more easily.  vzaar want you, the users, to look at two player options and vote. Drop them a line or leave some comments.  A subsequent blog post, at vzaar, reveals that coming very soon will be the ability for sellers to choose a display size for their videos … currently “codenamed” – large, medium, or small.

eBay’s ProStores rolled improvements this week aimed at assisting eBay sellers to better import their listings into ProStores websites, and improve the shopping cart and checkout functions.

The “Etsy Shop” application for facebook has been updated.  This mini-application allows sellers to display six of their Etsy listings on their facebook pages.

Looking Ahead

I see the hammock ahead of me.  An ethereal whisper carries on the wind … come to me, come to meeee.

(It must have been the hammock who sent me that Valentine’s card yesterday).

Ed