Steve Rubel discovers coverage and then goes in depth on eBay plans to incorporate blogs and wikis in their service offerings.  It looks like an impressive implementation, but I have a few questions about it.

• First, if people wanted more in depth discussion - wouldn't the product descriptions and the buyer/seller feedback be less mass produced than they are now?  "Great customer!  Would sell to again for sure!" over and over again.  What percentage of the auction pages are mass produced by huge eBay store owners?
• Given that this will be a pure commercial space it seems like the promised land for comment spammers.  Will eBay be able to fight spam in a way that doesn't shut down discussion but works for users?
• Not sure that these mediums are the best suited for this context.  It seems like kind of an awkward application of two very hip, exciting tools.
• Tag support makes sense if implemented in conjunction with pre-selected categories and full text search.  Given the nature of this particular market, though, I wonder if this will be the space where we really see tag spam emerge in a big way for the first time.
• Internationalization of discourse will be an interesting mess to watch, I'm guessing.  Most businesses large enough to do a lot of international business mitigate language and cultural differences by hiring specialists to help with these issues.  Micro-businesses will not have these resources and I'll be curious to see how many miscommunications, previously silent prejudices and other communication issues emerge.
• Business blogging often helps build relationships between companies and their customers.  How much loyalty do you feel to any particular eBay store?  I'm guessing not very much.  Thumbs up, thumbs down on reputation may be enough reputation/communication system for the vast majority of eBay users.
  

I'm not sure how much adoption these tools are going to see.  Blogging takes time and energy.  I'm not sure that people will find that investment worthwhile when sprucing up product pages and optimizing for search is already doable.  Does conversation drive commerce, as Rubel says?  Or in this case are we dealing with an intention economy - where people come to eBay intending to purchase something and only need help finding the best option at the best price?   I've never been too clear on how great an option it was to be able to call a seller on Skype, so I'm not sure how great an idea this is.  I've only been ripped of on eBay once, though, so perhaps I don't understand other peoples' need for communication. 

Here's something logical, Leasetrader.com is a site where credit-approved folks looking for short term leases on cars can take over for people wanting to get out of their leases.  Sign me up for something like that for houses (I guess that's called Craigslist). 

People always make fun of some social activities that Bubble 1.0 companies tried to turn into web services (grocery shopping, buying rubber balls, etc.) but there are some transactions that clearly make sense.  I found Leasetrader over at Lifehacker, but it's been around for years (see it in the Wayback Machine).  Chalk this one up as a point for the Old School.  (left: Leasetrader.com branding circa 2001)

It's also an example of a niche that a general purpose listing site can't fill.  It needs lots of info on leases, getting out of them and credit.  Plus there's probably a large group of people looking to lease a Mercedes who don't want to smell the patchouli  over at Craigslist. (right: Leasetrader.com branding circa 2006, check the rounded corners.)

The Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law has filed suit against Craigslist, citing the appearance on the site of discriminatory housing ads that violate the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Such ads are illegal in newspapers and other print publications, and the housing group maintains that online publications like Craigslist should be held to the same standards. Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster counters with two arguments: one, that the site is a "user-controlled commons" and as such should not be treated exactly as if it were a newspaper; two, that mandating a manual screening process for all two million free housing ads (of unlimited length) submitted per month would be unreasonably burdensome for his company of 19 employees to implement.

His second argument is pretty weak. What about the first one? We're still taking baby steps in the process of applying legal structures from the offline to the online world, and a case like this could set legal precedent with far-reaching ramifications for online publications. What happens when the wisdom of crowds isn't so wise, after all? Who is then responsible? IMHO Craiglist is benefiting from the "wisdom of crowds" and should in turn bear the responsibility that comes with it. It seems to me they can't have it both ways -- reap the benefits of the crowd's wisdom, yet turn around and scapegoat the crowd's ignorance. I think the housing group has a good case, and should they win, we may see the cost of social advertising rise dramatically.

Keith Teare and Michael Arrington were kind enough to give me a tour of their new online listings service Edgeio last week and now that it's begun to open to invited users seems as good a time as any to write that conversation up.  I thought the concept, look and functionality of Edgeio all looked great.  I'll discuss those, but I'm also interested in some of the questions the service will face at it forges into a radically new space for information services.

The basic idea behind Edgeio is that off-site content producers (bloggers and others) will add meta-data to their own content that will designate certain information as intended to appear on Edgeio.  That content will include, but not necessarily be limited to, items for sale and events being promoted online.  There are a variety of ways this will be done, ranging from simple code like many people add for tags destined for Technorati to an even more usable text signifier that can be added for users uncomfortable with HTML.  Arrington says bloggers will be the primary contributors of content to Edgeio, but that any site that publishes an RSS feed will be able to participate.  All of this is good news for usability and diversity of content.