Chinavasion On The World Wide Web, Online Auctions Going Once, Going Twice….

Author xlxmarketing 6.6.2008. | 11:29

Nobody said life on the internet was static. And with the recent changes at eBay you’d have to say even the life of online auctions, once the internet’s darling, look to be numbered as the web 2.0 world just marches on.

online-auctions-running-out-of-time-copy.jpg

Online Auctions may soon be a thing of the past on sites like eBay

A wiser person than myself once said the only thing constant in our lives is change. In the high-paced world wide web this is especially true, as can be seen by recent developments in e-commerce, web 2.0 applications and open source software.

A number of news sites and blogs on the Internet have been reporting that online auctions, the method of sales that first spawned the online retail industry when online auction sites were started in the 1990’s, which eventually resulted of the formation of eBay in 1995 (ididnotknowthatyesterday.blogspot.com/2007/01/what-was-first-thing-ever-sold-on-ebay.html).

According to Business Week (businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2008/tc2008062_112762.htm), buy it now sales on eBay make up 42% of the sites revenue; a massive jump since this time last year and Amazon’s revenues have soared ahead by 38% in the last quarter compared to eBay’s 15% rise.

One person was quoted in the story as saying “If I really want something I’m not going to goof around (in auctions) for a small savings”.

However, the decline in online auctions might not be the largest of eBay’s problems according to Readwriteweb (readwriteweb.com/archives/trouble_at_ebay.php) with the writer saying moves management have taken to implement and promote the “buy it now” system to buyers and the public, which include hiking fees for traditional auctions, offering powersellers special discounts and removing sellers’ rights to leave negative remarks on buyer’s profiles, may drive sellers straight into the arms of the company’s competitors.

However, as a page view graph from Amazon’s own traffic measurement company, Alexa shows it may be some time before even Amazon (eBay’s closest competitor) catches up to eBay on page views or sales.

While it may seem that people have tired from competing for items in online auction pages perhaps they’re just too busy updating their Facebook, MySpace and Twitter pages to spend much time shopping.

Even Chinese premier Wenjiabao has put up a page on Facebook (facebook.com/pages/-Wen-Jia-bao/13823116911?ref=s), joining the Chinese events, organisations and cities (facebook.com/pages/Shenzhen-China/ShenZhen/16836432596) that have a presence on Facebook.

Wenjiabao on Facebook

Twitter has been in the news a lot lately for good and bad reasons. It scooped major news organizations on the Sichuan earthquake (web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?newsid=43162&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10&view=news) but has also suffered from massive overload (techcrunch.com/2008/05/31/hey-twitter-i-have-a-few-questions-too/), going down for almost weeks at a time. It’s back up again though and those interested in being kept up to date with some great news and tips from Chinavasion can follow us on the Chinavasion Twitter page.

Social Network marketing guru Robert Scoble scooped the CNN, BBC and other major news sources on the Sichuan earthquake by following Twitter.

Google’s Friendfeed service looks to have also benefited from Twitter’s difficulties.

The new Google service, had been set up to aggregate people’s web 2.0 accounts, allowing them to move easily from their Facebook profile to their MySpace page, Twitter, Flickr or YouTube accounts. but it’s webmaster equivalent (blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-05-13-n12.html) Friend Connect also has some nice widgets that would be of benefit to a webmaster trying to keep their e commerce site web 2.0-friendly.

Google’s launch of the Friend connect and Friendfeed applications couldn’t have been more timely. As Twitter staff struggled to cope with user overload bloggers and netizens flocked to the new Friendfeed rooms at a great rate, potentially persuaded by Google’s tendency to rank the Friendfeed’s room quite quickly (anzman.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-hyper-indexing-new-friendfeed.html).

Chinavasion has also joined the party and anybody interested in finding out what’s happening at Chinavasion or chatting with friendly staff on a one-to-one basis can take a look in the Chinavasion Friendfeed room.

friendfeed-room.jpg

While no major public feed exists yet (Friendfeed creators have said publicly they don’t want to create another Twitter) you can post entire stories photos and videos in rooms making life easier for those of us who struggle to say all we need to say in 180 characters.

With all of these web 2.0 features being released it is sometimes hard to keep up… so it’s good when you see a web 2.0 directory popping up.

Makeuseofus.com is one such service which has a whole raft of services and functions which have been listed in a directory.

While you can’t really list your site with them unless you have some kind of free application(the directory is of reviews which lead to applications) it would still be a useful guide for anyone trying to figure out what is what in this increasingly expanding world wide web.

Check out their blog on alternate search engines (makeuseof.com/tag/cool-search-engines-to-remember/) for an example of the stuff they cover.

Anybody looking for new websites to list and market their wares would be better to look towards Like.com. Like is a visual based search engine that categories items based on pattern, color and shape as well as traditional search methods.

One thing many in the Internet community will be interested in though is the release of major program updates for Open Source darlings Ubuntu.com and Firefox.

Chinavasion on the worldwide web

Bluetooth mouse with multipurpose dongle
high power projector bulb
  • Gadget Geek (gadgetgeek.ferdielicious.com/2008/06/02/touchscreen-mp4-player-with-28-inch-lcd-from-chinavasion/) thought our touchscreen MP4 sounded pretty cool.
amazing touchscreen mp4 with 28 inch lcd and super sound 4gb

Author xlxmarketing 6.6.2008. | 11:29
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3 Comments

  1. Shane September 1, 15:59

    Your gadgets are really cool, I particularly like the scanner.

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