Going, going, gone
August 2, 2011 1 Comment
A lengthy article about ebay, and the decline of the auction component of transactions.
The majority of goods are now sold through the buy-it-now button, with just 31% of all sales on the site occuring through its traditional auction system. The experience of auctions changed over time, generally in ways that made them less appealing to both buyers and sellers:
- Sniping removed the fun of participating in an auction over several days as bidders saw themselves losing in the last second to automated programmes.
- As the number of users grew, the chances that someone would vastly overpay, or find a great bargain, diminished because the market became more efficient, i.e., the final auction bid tended towards the “correct” fixed price.
Marc Gawley 
I started to hate the auction part of eBay once the sniper bots pretty much made the auctions pointless. Really haven’t went back since.