ClickZ Networks "Already a valuable resource for small businesses eBay has also proven to be the most trusted company according to a study conducted by the Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe." The Ponemon Institutes didn't post the study on their website, but the ClickZ Networks article talks a little about their methodology.

eBay also did very well in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).

From Forsee results "eBay is the one non-retail e-commerce company that is among the elite of the ACSI. Their score of 84 is among the strongest of any company measured in the Index." 

The ACSI group publishes their results online, although some of the links are broken. Here are the results for Q4 2003. 

• Amazon's number are a little higher (88) than eBay's but we're growing faster.
  
• I looked for Microsoft's Q4 numbers but the link on was broken. 
  •  A little help from the google index turns up MSN's Q3 2003 customer satifaction score was 74.
  •  Scoble, you should tell the MSN fokes to get it in gear. 
    
    
•  Googles score in Q2 was 82. I wonder what they received in Q4.

10:28:36 AM    

from InternetNews.com:

Senior manager of developer relations at eBay, Jeffrey McManus, announced the RSS rollout on his weblog and said the feeds would be used to push special offers, promotions and system status messages via RSS. "[There are] highly recommended if you use a Weblog reader and are the least bit serious about using eBay," McManus said.
...
The RSS feeds, which appear to be targeting the hardcore eBay buyer and shopper, are available here:
General Announcements and System Announcements.

We'll we haven't gone as far as Phil Wolf is thinking but eBay is finally embracing RSS. Yeh!

Other 3rd party developers are out in front leveraging eBay and RSS in other innovative ways.

10:40:27 PM    

Scoble writes:

Rummaging (a blog that follows eBay and auction trends) says I missed what makes eBay special. "eBay allows people their fifteen minutes in an explicitly transactional manner. In that, it epitomises the age. This seems far more important than statistics about year-on-year revenue growth."

10:36:50 AM    

Knarf.ca is a weblog for eBay sellers.  Thier tagline is "Helping you auction more effectivelly."

They have advice on photos, shipping, image hosting, Paypal, a nice review of Selling Manager Pro:

"So How do I like Selling Manager? One of the tools available from eBay. I thought that it was a good tool to simplify the selling process. Was it the best tool for the job? That is yet to be determined. Here is what selling Manager does:

When you start an auction Selling Manager makes it easy to follow the auction from start to finish. You cannot create an auction with it but once you have created the auction Selling Manager Takes over the rest of the job. In all stages of the auction selling manager moves the auction thru the process. Once you sign up for Selling Manager(SM) you will notice that it replaces you Selling tab in My eBay. Your auctions are now sorted into Five categories, Pending Listings, Active Listings Sold Listings. Unsold Listings and Archived Listings the sold listings is the most valuable tab there. It is where you get the most use out of SM."  Read more.

7:53:50 AM    

Goatsilk, an art studio in Montana, is presenting and selling a show on eBay:

"You are bidding on a conceptual artwork called The ebay Show. The ebay Show has been on physical display at Goatsilk Gallery in Missoula, Montana, since Sept. 5, 2003, and has been viewed by countless others on the internet at http://www.goatsilk.com. The exhibit consists of nine works purchased off ebay - in the last year - for $25 dollars or less. "

"The e-bay show uses artwork purchased on the internet to reveal the internet itself as a work of art. No other technology has comparable power to change the way we live or is so widely used as the internet, which is very young. The e-bay show introduces new possibilities for the dissemination of art and thus captures the infinite number of developments and effects that the internet might bring. For technology always signals a portent of the future. It [eBay] effects our psyche like an effective art. What interests and troubles us is the tendency for people, artists in particular, to judge technology as depersonalizing or destructive while at the same time remaining committed to art."

"Goatsilk is an artist run exhibition space existing in a 1000 square foot garage which was once a used for storing semi-trucks in the winter months. Our name, Goatsilk, comes from an experimental material currently being produced in Canada, where scientists have fused spider genes with the goat genome to raise female goats that produce spider silk in the milk from their udders. We feel that this practical yet bizarre implementation--and its sense of possibility-parallels the dynamisms in the art we strive for. As the only art space of its kind in Montana, Goatsilk is devoted to providing a unique forum for ideas, art, and action."

7:39:59 AM    

I just discovered another eBay blogger, Jeffrey McManus.

Here's his bio from the O'Reilly Open Source Conference:

Jeffrey McManus is eBay's Senior Manager of Developer Relations. He has evangelism responsibilities pertaining to the eBay API and eBay Developers Program (http://developer.ebay.com). He is also a developer and has written several books on software development, most recently co-authoring the Addison-Wesley titles "The C# Developer's Guide to ASP.NET, XML and ADO.NET" and "Database Access with VB.NET." He has given technical seminars at developer conferences in North America and Europe, most recently at the eBay Live! conference in Orlando last week. His most recent publication was for the O'Reilly OnDotNet.com site, to which he contributed an article on the .NET open source tool NAnt in January of this year.

Jeff was also at the recent O'Reilly Foo Camp.

7:37:55 AM    

"Right now, there is a huge glut of dolls for sale on eBay. With eBay in operation for well over five years, more and more sellers have joined eBay to run auctions. This means that even wonderful dolls can be overlooked by buyers, and that sellers have to work extra-hard to get their product noticed and have it sell for top-dollar." [Denise Van Patten of About.com]

7:36:58 AM    

There's an interesting discussion about why "Tivo hasn't tipped" at customerevangelists.com. 

TiVo is a cause, not a product. Every single thing the company does should be about the cause: rallying people to change their lives. How many times have you heard people say that TiVo has changed their life? President Colleen Barrett and CEO Jim Parker say that Southwest isn't an airline, it's a cause. That's TiVo, too.

 Has anyone read their book?  It looks interesting.  I like the fact that they sell a signed unabridged version on CD read by the authors.

Scoble → John Porcaro → Jackie Huba → Creating Customer Evangelists

1:19:53 AM    

CNET News.com: "A writer who's typing a bibliography in a Word document, for example, could click on the name of a book to get catalog information or cover art from Amazon.

Microsoft is making a major effort to encourage partners to build online services that exploit the new Office's XML capabilities, as service providers see Office as a familiar interface that will encourage greater consumption of Web services. Early backers include Factiva, a Dow Jones-owned online research service, and online payment services from eBay's PayPal. "

12:53:38 AM