Wise Startup Blog

With all of these rumors going around that eBay may be selling Skype to Google, I thought I would suggest a multi-team trade to spice things up.

eBay’s Picture Service is Horrible

For anyone whose ever used eBay, you know that their picture uploading service is a pain in the ass. First, you have to pay ridiculous fees to list the picture, and secondly, it’s still on the same horrible architecture from the last 90s.

I am a powerseller on eBay and sell about 25 things a month. Luckily, I sell the same item, and can just relist my auction whenever the auction expires. When I do have to create a new listing, however, it’s an extremely arduous process; you have to create the descriptions, upload each picture individually, get charged for each of these uploads, and be left with no option to reuse these images later for future options.

Often times, to reduce these stupid fees, I’ll host the images on photobucket or somewhere else, but eBay’s policies often end up with my pictures being deleted.
Flickr Provides the Perfect Picture Collection for eBay Sales

Whenever I’m looking to buy an item, I’m always looking on Flickr and Google Image search to see if my item is actually owned by a real human being, and isn’t being cast in a lightbox somewhere.

If eBay were to integrate Flickr’s pool, I could upload the pictures of all my current gadgets (which I would be doing anyway, if I was a Flickr user), and then if I wanted to sell an item, I could just pull directly from my Flickr account for hosting. The $20 fee Flickr charges could go into this listing allowance, and, say I’m a powerseller, I’m sure there could be a higher-bandwidth account I could load up to support any additional cost.

Some other cool features would be the ability to sell the item directly on my Flickr page, so that if someone is looking at my old Canon SD430, they can get an immediate link to my listing of the item, and I can use Flickr as yet another advertising point for my auction.

eBay Needs to Spend Less Money Advertising and More Money Building Their Product

The eBay and StumbleUpon acquisition was simply another way for eBay to get more users to the site to purchase content. That’s great, and I want the most eyeballs on my listing at any given time, but I truly believe in building the best product, and allowing the product to grow itself.

Allowing users to market products on their Flickr pool, and tap into the 24 million unique visitors per month, it would grow the advertising base dramatically. Plus, you can always focus on the StumbleUpon’s of the world, but you need to make sure you invest enough into your infrastructure to keep your most important users on the site and selling the maximum amount of product possible.

eBay Should Sell Skype to Google

It should have already dawned on eBay that the Skype synergy isn’t going to happen. As an eBay seller myself, I have no desire to talk to my customers anymore than I already have to, right now. And keeping things on email is probably the best way to do this, anyway.

eBay, sell this property off, take the loss, and use the proceeds to buy Flickr. Yahoo definitely has no use for this property, having done nothing with it in 2 years.

OR, you can try to trade Skype to Yahoo for Flickr for a cash and stock trade, kind of like the Kevin Garnett deal earlier this year?