eBay will be introducing eBay Blogs, another way to give sellers an opportunity to market themselves, as well as an eBay Community Wiki. eBay is holding sessions on the new tools at the upcoming eBay Live conference in Las Vegas June 13 - 15.

The session called "It's not About Me, it's eBay Blogs!" shows conference attendees how they can use eBay Blogs to write about the things they sell and build their networks. Another session, called "Wiki 101 - An Overview of the eBay Community Wiki," defines Wikis in general, looks at Wiki implementation on other sites, and discusses Wiki features eBay provides to the Community. eBay has already created a discussion board devoted to eBay Blogs, though it's not yet available on its main list of discussion boards.

eBay is also using blogs and wikis internally. eBay just changed its newsletter "The Chatter" to a blog format available at http://ebaychatter.typepad.com/the_chatter, and the eBay Developers Program has had a blog for some time (http://ebaydeveloper.typepad.com/dev/). Both blogs use SixApart's Typepad blogging platform.

The eBay Developers Conference has a wiki set up at http://ebaydevcon.com/wiki/index.php/Wiki_Home. A wiki is "a type of website that allows users to add, or remove, or otherwise edit all content, very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing," according to one of the best known wikis, wikipedia.com (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki).

An AuctionBytes reader reacted somewhat skeptically to the news of an eBay blog. "I am a bit concerned about the blogging capability of eBay because I feel it's another way to draw the crowd into eBay as a brand, and not about the individual seller." When asked if she could be quoted by name, she said, "Quote me - errr - maybe I'm not sure because if I put my name up there I don't want to deal with the retaliation," a common reaction by eBay sellers.

Related Blog entry:
http://digbig.com/4hxkk