eBay UK is eliminating "Home Page Featured," an option that allowed sellers to showcase items on the site's home page for an added fee. eBay said it was making the change "as part of our ongoing efforts to keep the home page as relevant and useful as possible for all our members," though a UK blogger believes it's a move by eBay to earn more revenue on the valuable home-page property.

The removal of Home Page Featured will take place in two stages. First, eBay will remove the option from the Sell Your Item form and from Turbo Lister, and third-party applications attempting to submit Home Page Featured items will receive error messages informing them that the option is no longer available. eBay will then remove the section from the home page after an "appropriate period of time" has lapsed for current listings on the Home Page Featured option to end.

Sue Bailey, who is based in France and co-writes the UK blog Tamebay, wrote, "it's difficult not to see this as part of eBay's ongoing efforts to take more control of the site away from sellers." She estimated the feature netted eBay one thousand pounds a day and said, "Think how much more than that a big company would pay for a slot on eBay's home page" (http://www.tamebay.com/2007/06/hpf-discontinued.html).

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/uk/200706010835492.html