eBay is making changes to the Bid History page on listings in order to "increase the transparency of the marketplace and to provide members with more information," the announcement read.

Key changes include displaying the bid amounts on the Bid History page; including information about retractions unnderneath the current bids; highlighting the current high bidder's bid information in yellow; and renaming the page for non-auction listings to Buyer History.

In addition, when users are signed in to eBay and looking at the Bid History for an item they have bid on, they will see their maximum bid amount (proxy bid) near the top of the page, and their IDs will be listed in bold for any other previous bids. Bidders will also be able to add items to their Watch lists directly from the Bid History page.

eBay started a thread on the Bidding discussion board to get user feedback (http://digbig.com/4bphm). Users seemed unhappy that eBay took away the clock indicating how much time was left before the listing ended. Apparently many used the bid history page to help them time their last minute bidding (known as sniping), since the page refreshes faster than the actual item page.

eBay also announced it is expanding its pilot program involving the bidding and Buy It Now process (http://digbig.com/4bpjg).

http://www2.ebay.com:80/aw/marketing.shtml#2004-08-23144342