I'm hopping a plane from Boston to San Jose tomorrow to cover eBay's Developer Conference on Tuesday and Wednesday and the fourth annual eBay Live conference right after. As we do each year, we'll be providing the latest news and happenings from eBay Live. We'll also be posting hundreds (I mean hundreds!) of pictures from the conference on our site. Bookmark our eBay Live main page, and check back frequently for updates: http://auctionbytes.com/cab/ebaylive2005.
For the first time, we'll be providing audio blogs as part of our eBay Live coverage. I'll be doing audio interviews with vendors and eBay buyers and sellers throughout the conference. The interviews will be available just minutes after they've been conducted, so you'll be hearing news "hot off the wire" (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/ebaylive2005/ebaylivelog). I've put a small sample up on the page, so you can see if you're able to hear the streaming audio. Many thanks to Eric Rice at AudioBlog.com (http://www.audioblog.com) for providing us with this amazing technology.
What will be the "buzz" at this year's eBay Live? Will it be eBay-hosted websites? Will it be an open-source API so that developers will be encouraged to write applications for eBay? Or will the possibility of Google getting into the online payments arena cause a stir at this year's event?
In Tuesday's Newsflash newsletter, I predicted that eBay would soon begin offering services to help users build their own ecommerce websites (http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y05/m06/i14/s05).
I'd like to know what readers would think of such a service. Do you already have your own website? If it became available, would you use eBay software to enter your inventory that could then be launched either to eBay or to your own website? What are the pros and cons of an "independent" site hosted by eBay? How much would you be willing to pay? I've set up a thread in the discussion forums to discuss the issue (http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=15376).
I've put together a guide to this week's eBay Live conference in today's issue. If you're attending, print it out so you'll know what's going on inside (and outside) eBay Live. And whether you are attending or not, check out the eBay Live coupon page; 20% of the advertising proceeds from this page go to the Disabled Online Users Association (http://auctionbytes.com/cab/ebaylive2005/coupons). The coupons are only valid through July 3, so make sure you hurry to take advantage of the savings.
This issue also has some tremendously useful articles from Greg Holden, Julia Wilkinson and Barbara Weltman. And be sure and check out today's This & That column to learn how you can try for one of five free MP3 players from Alibaba.com.
Thanks to all our advertisers and to our eBay Live 2005 coverage sponsors, including our primary sponsors MarketBlast from 4D, Alibaba.com, and uBid. Be sure to tell them you saw them in AuctionBytes.
Thanks for reading!
About the author:
Ina Steiner is Editor of AuctionBytes.com and author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). She has a background in marketing and research in the high-tech and publishing fields. If you have story ideas, comments or questions, send them to ina@auctionbytes.com.
