Forum Moderators: phranque
I'd say that's a bit misleading given that the page doesn't show MY activity but just the "most watched items". Also confusing is the fact that I am already logged into Yahoo! but this new ebay page prompts me to log into yahoo to see "my" ebay activity despite my already being logged in.
What really bothers me is that the links are all rover affiliate links and it bothers me because websites that promote ebay auctions to gain those commissions will potentially lose a lot of them when people check their email between bids. If people bidding monitor their bids via this new Yahoo! feature it won't matter which site send the user to eBay either because the Yahoo! affiliate cookie will over-write the affiliates cookies.
This seems like a horrible business decision for eBay as well as it undermines their affiliate base and hands what I can only imaging will be a hefty portion of their earnings to Yahoo!
I'm not impressed. It's likely time to promote buy it now items only.
edit: isn't there something in eBay's own TOS about this? I mean, if someone gets outbid eBay emails them a notice but Yahoo! users then need to log into Yahoo! to receive those notices and are likely to use the new feature. I didn't think you could have apps that gamed the system in this way. Just wait until Gmail and others get in on this, it may mean the death of regular ebay affiliate sites if the owners refuse to feed Yahoo! and the other email giants their commissions by getting sniped with each outbid notice.
[edited by: JS_Harris at 11:17 am (utc) on Jan. 16, 2009]
Yahoo! need the money (who doesn't!), and eBay need to raise their profile to replace the millions of buyers and sellers who have shown themselves less than impressed of late. The drift away by sellers is accelerating, and buyers are not, er, buying. At least, not so much.
I used to buy and sell all the time; now, it's 'last resort only'.
I wouldn't trust them an inch.
