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I've found eBay to have a much more trustworthy reputation system. I cannot overstate the irony I find in this reversal: In the early days of Amazon vs. eBay i

I've found eBay to have a much more trustworthy reputation system. I cannot overstate the irony I find in this reversal: In the early days of Amazon vs. eBay in online retail, a huge brand point for Amazon was its reliability and trustworthiness for consumers vs. the "free-for-all"(!) of early-days eBay. And I agree, the change has been rather dramatic, for both companies.

nolok 7y ago
Meanwhile both are competing for the worse searching/discovery system possible. Great feeling when you factually know the product you're looking for is there but you can't get to it easily because their suggestions keep pushing other stuff to you. As an aside, I feel like Ebay is one of those few "early behemoths" that actually figured out why they were working: you could know how reliable this john smith has been as a seller. And when internet payment was still terrible, they doubled down on it with Paypal (say what you want about paypal as a seller, but as a buyer it's still gold today, so ten years ago ...). Most selling communities that survived here in France either have also their own reputation system, or they're cash in hands. I find it kind of funny when compared to more "modern" tech giants like, say, Twitter; a company which has no idea why their product works.
imtringued 7y ago
How is that ironic? On Ebay you're buying products from a seller that isn't Ebay. The same product will be listed multiple times by different sellers. On amazon it's exactly the opposite. I go to Amazon to buy from Amazon. The same product is listed with multiple sellers and even products explicitly marked with "shipped by Amazon" are actually just random sellers using Amazon's fulfillment service. It is very hard to differentiate between legitimate sellers and Amazon. Therefore random sellers effectively get to sell under the same reputation as Amazon and can just sell fakes without any repercussion. On Ebay information about the trustworthiness of the seller is immediately shown to you on the product page and therefore sellers who sell fake products will lose their reputation and future sales.

nolok 7y ago

Meanwhile both are competing for the worse searching/discovery system possible. Great feeling when you factually know the product you're looking for is there but you can't get to it easily because their suggestions keep pushing other stuff to you. As an aside, I feel like Ebay is one of those few "early behemoths" that actually figured out why they were working: you could know how reliable this john smith has been as a seller. And when internet payment was still terrible, they doubled down on it with Paypal (say what you want about paypal as a seller, but as a buyer it's still gold today, so ten years ago ...). Most selling communities that survived here in France either have also their own reputation system, or they're cash in hands. I find it kind of funny when compared to more "modern" tech giants like, say, Twitter; a company which has no idea why their product works.

imtringued 7y ago

How is that ironic? On Ebay you're buying products from a seller that isn't Ebay. The same product will be listed multiple times by different sellers. On amazon it's exactly the opposite. I go to Amazon to buy from Amazon. The same product is listed with multiple sellers and even products explicitly marked with "shipped by Amazon" are actually just random sellers using Amazon's fulfillment service. It is very hard to differentiate between legitimate sellers and Amazon. Therefore random sellers effectively get to sell under the same reputation as Amazon and can just sell fakes without any repercussion. On Ebay information about the trustworthiness of the seller is immediately shown to you on the product page and therefore sellers who sell fake products will lose their reputation and future sales.