An eBay Category Manager said in an online posting that the auction site is hoping to launch a "Live Pets" and "Pet Services" classified format early next year. The listings would not be transactional and there would be a listing fee but no commission fee.

The post, made on Friday afternoon, has generated an outcry from members who are against the idea of selling live animals on eBay. By Sunday evening, there were over 1500 responses to the post citing concerns such as puppy-mill sellers and buyers who use animals as bait in dogfighting.

eBay currently has an ad format for real estate, but otherwise listings are generally binding auction or fixed-price transactions. The live-pets listings put it squarely in the classified ad space, an area eBay has been expanding into off of the eBay platform through acquisitions of sites such as Rent.com and Mobile.de, a 25-percent investment in Craigslist and the launch of Kijiji, eBay's international classifieds service.

eBay's newly acquired Skype service can be used to connect buyers and sellers by phone, both for high-value items like cars and for services, like car-maintenance, tax preparation - and pet services. Consultant Peter Krasilovsky blogged in September that Skype could make eBay a competitive threat in classifieds, potentially transforming eBay "from a well-endowed "me too" act in classifieds to a genuine innovator" (http://localonliner.com/?p=10).

eBay would find itself competing with Microsoft and Google, who are developing classifieds services, although AOL said last week it is leaving classifieds, instead becoming an aggregator of classifieds from industry partners.

LiveDeal.com, a classifieds website started by a former eBay executive, issued a press release on Thursday reporting that "Pets" is its fastest-growing category, growing in excess of 50-70 percent month-over-month. Dogs and puppies are the two most searched terms on LiveDeal, and half of the top 24 searched terms on LiveDeal are for pets, according to the release. LiveDeal markets itself as an online local classifieds site "ideal for trading hard-to-ship items such as automobiles, furniture, pets, appliances, real estate and other "try before you buy" items, eliminating shipping costs and reducing fraud."

It's unknown how many classifieds categories eBay plans on launching next year, though perhaps none will prove as controversial as Live Pets.

http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=1000164235