The EBay 'community'

For the sake of definition, EBay is hard to classify as a community, although it undoubtably has many of the characteristics as one.



I have been an EBay user since 1999, and had never before this week considered myself to be part of a community as such when I was buying or selling online.

Although interaction in the literal ‘talking’ sense is kept to a minimum, the fact is that all people are brought together with a common goal – to buy or sell items. The search function helps to bring such people together, and users are able to add sellers to their ‘favourite sellers’ list, essentially giving them the power to show preference towards certain other users – much in the same way a message board contributer learns to trust and talk to another message board user.

Recently, EBay invested in buying another successful dot-com company, Skype – a popular provider of chat and Voice of IP (VOIP). Currently, what they plan to do with this company is all speculation, but one can only assume that by branching into a sector that allows real time voice communication is an attempt to bring the EBay community closer together, by allowing them to speak to discuss potential sales.

As a regular EBay user, I for one will be keeping an eye on what direction they will be taking with it...