According to eBay, there are only three valid reasons a bidder can retract a bid:

• You accidentally entered the wrong bid amount due to a typographical error.

• The item’s description changed significantly after you entered your last bid.

• You can’t reach the seller by telephone or email.

Incredibly, eBay validated the bidder’s claim that I was unreachable, and processed/approved the bid retraction.   Considering that all contact between eBay users must (initially) be processed through eBay’s system, I find it hard to believe that eBay couldn’t/wouldn’t cross-check this claim through their records.  If they had, they would have easily concluded that the bidder never attempted contact me.

Instead of expending so many hours of their programmers time and efforts making it more complicated to sell on eBay successfully, how about getting someone to write a simple script that will validate “could not contact seller” bid retraction request.  It just might make selling a little easier on eBay.

Both Payne and Glasgow were executives involved with the production and fielding of Microsoft’s Live search engine prior to leaving a couple of years ago to found Positronic.  According to Wikipedia:

A positronic brain is a fictional technological device, originally conceived by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov.  Its role is to serve as a central computer for a robot, and, in some unspecified way, provide it with a form of consciousness recognizable to humans.

This although it is not entirely clear what Positronic was specifically working to create, the firm’s name indicates their purpose was the development of artificial intelligence and “working in the areas of data mining, machine learning, and predictive models, all applied to search.”

Indeed, previously the Positronic web site had the following statement displayed on their home page (It now has a statement indicating the firm has be acquired by eBay):

Are you inspired by Isaac Asimov’s vision of thinking machines?  Ever pondered how and when the break-through will come to make it possible?

Wow!  That’s heady stuff!  eBay’s management has obviously been “inspired by Isaac Asimov’s vision of thinking machines.”  According to the corporate blog, “eBay has acquired Positronic to help with efforts at leveraging machine learning to provide a more predictive and compelling customer experience.”

Here’s some personal predictions on the future of eBay search & sort…

Prediction #1

eBay will monitor, track and store users browsing and shopping activity on the site in order to provide search results sorted in a manner relevant to the individual based on that person’s past actions.

Here’s a hypothetical example.  Accessories compatible for a Dell XPS M1130 laptop computer will be listed at the top of the search results when I conduct a search using the query “laptop battery.”  This is because the site will remember that I purchased that particular model on eBay a few months ago.

Or perhaps the smart search and sort algorithm will note that I have a penchant for the original Star Wars comics series published by Marvel vice those published more recently by Dark Horse comics.  The algorithm will know this because I click on listings for Marvel Star Wars comics and ignore those from Dark Horse.  So, in future searches, the algorithm will determine that Marvel comics are relevant to me (or anybody using my User ID) and sort them at the top of the search results accordingly.

Something like this is already happening on eBay.  On the main page, the site displays a collage of listings it considers similar to one’s you’ve viewed recently.

This, of course, will raise all kinds of privacy concerns and will be difficult for eBay to implement without causing a ruckus.

Prediction # 2

Completing the Item Specifics form will become required when listing an item for sale.  This is currently optional.

Item Specifics are the details sellers have the opportunity to provide when they list their product for sale on eBay.    For example, a listing in the Book category might provide the seller the ability to enter details such as hard cover or paperback; new or used; fiction or non-fiction; year published; etc.  The Item Specifics function varies by category and may duplicate information the seller has included in the listing’s description.  This data allows eBay’s software to know specific information about the item in a format the site can use to help potential bidders find a listing.

Currently all eBay has to determine the relevance of a product associated with a listing are the 55 characters in the title and the details included in the item’s description.  Since there is no standard format for details included in the description, eBay can’t effectively use that information to ascertain the details associated with a product. 

But, then again – Positronic was working on data mining, so I could be dead wrong here.  Therefore my revised prediction is Item Specifics will be required, then abused by sellers (much like meta keyword tags were in the early days of search engine optimization).  Item Specifics will then fall out of favor, to be replaced by the data mining techniques introduced by the Positronic folks.

What are your predictions for the future of Best Match and eBay’s Smart Search?

eBay needs to sit down an think deeply about the company’s core competency. According to Wikipedia:

Core competency is something that a firm can do well and that meets the following three conditions: 

• It provides consumer benefits 
• It is not easy for competitors to imitate 
• It can be leveraged widely to many products and markets. 

A core competency can take various forms, including technical/subject matter know how, a reliable process, and/or close relationships with customers and suppliers.

The core competency that led to eBay’s success was the online auction marketplace model. Acquisition of PayPal fundamentally supported that model.  Branching out into and an eventual focus on the fixed-priced marketplace in the name of continued growth has caused eBay to stray from their core competency – with dire consequences.  (Who knows where Skype fits in?)

It’s time for eBay to get back to its roots.  Re-focus on the auction format. Make selling fun again. Sellers are actively looking for an alternative to you eBay – something that reminds them of how you used to be.  Don’t be afraid of transforming yourself into that alternative for us.  Remember Coke Classic?

Here’s another theory.  Perhaps Google is putting the smackdown on eBay for keyword stuffing some of their pages? 

Pass the tinfoil please…