Accidentally on Purpose Blog

The AP’s Rachel Konrad filed a story about eBay’s new social-networking project called “neighborhoods.”  But before you laugh, this isn’t a trivial, me-too exercise by a company that has been criticized for being too slow to warm to web 2.0.  Neighborhoods is part of a broader reorganization strategy for eBay.

“The move is one result of a broad reorganization strategy started in late 2006, when the San Jose-based e-commerce leader’s scorching growth rate began to slow.

“Individuals listed 480 million items on eBay in the second quarter, down 6 percent from the first quarter and down 2 percent from a year earlier. The number of listings by “power sellers” who operated eBay stores was 79.1 million — unchanged from the previous quarter but down 25 percent from a year earlier.

“Many users complain that the site’s size — it listed 559.1 million items worth $14.46 billion in the second quarter — can make it tough to find and purchase a specific product quickly. Users are turning to rivals such as Seattle-based Amazon.com, Salt Lake City-based Overstock.com Inc. and Chicago-based uBid Inc.

“‘We knew we had to change things internally because we couldn’t innovate with the effectiveness or speed we needed’, spokesman Hani Durzy said Tuesday.”

For me, the “neighborhoods,” metaphor works.  eBay is attempting to break down its once unstoppable but now imposing marketplace into smaller communities of interest — Beatles, coffee lovers, gadgets, etc.  That’s always been the promise of social media for businesses — making information available and helping people find it –  eBay seems to have finally figured that out, again. 

I wonder how Shel feels when reading about the eBay experiment.  I believe it was Shel — a consultant to my team at SAP — who coined the term “global neighborhoods” to describe a phenomenon that has implications far beyond the enterprise.  Shel, I think its time to write that next book! 

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