RE:[CR]Suggestions for EBAY Postings ...

(Example: Books)

From: "Steve Birmingham" <sbirmingham@mindspring.com>
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
Subject: RE:[CR]Suggestions for EBAY Postings ...
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 20:29:05 -0400
In-Reply-To: <CATFOODjc0D543TuylJ00000010@catfood.nt.phred.org>


These are really good suggestions for current listings, but won't help much with archived messages. Ebay only saves items for 90 days, and I'm wondering how long they'll continue. There used to be 30 days of closed items available for a title only search, now it's only about 2 weeks. Many sellers who host their own pictures remove them very quickly. Unfortunately I don't see any reasonable way around this, I can't imagine trying to archive all the items somewhere.

Steve Birmingham Lowell, Ma

please remember that this is an "archived" mailing list. What you write is recorded for posterity. As a result, here are some suggestions to improve archive quality :

============== From: somebody@somewhere.com Subject: CR Members, Hey Look at this ?!?!

Can you believe this ??

http://www.tinyurl.com/xxx1 ==============

In the big cosmic email scheme of things, this is not useful to posterity. Both the subject and the body of the message contain no permanent information. First, the TinyURL service may not be around forever. So there is no guarantee that the link will work for even one day. Second, to stay tiny, they _must_ eventually recycle tiny urls (which are HTTP referral responses). I calculate there are less than 1.5M tiny url's available, and if the site takes off they could be wrapping every 30 days or less. So a better message would be this:

============== From: somebody@somewhere.com Subject: CR Members, Hey Look at this ?!?!

Can you believe this ??

http://www.tinyurl.com/xxx1 item #35258892 =============

Now, there are times when i don't have a browser sitting open and in fact URL's wrap and get munged are often painful to follow. So I will not follow an URL with no incentive to do so. If I follow the URL and its not impressive then I will have very bad impression of you forever more. Many people will not follow the URL or will follow it and be disappointed. So this posting is really irritating the CR list.

What's worse, four months from now nobody will ever know what you were talking about since EBAY items last only 3 months. So a better message might be :

============== From: somebody@somewhere.com Subject: Look at the price on this Red Super Mondia !!!

It has "Buy It Now" for only $12.95, seller pays shipping !!!

http://www.tinyurl.com/xxx1 item #35258892 =============

This is an excellent CR ebay referral message. People have enough info to get the precisely right viewership. Uninterested people can skip this URL. Twenty years from now everyone will know what you were talking about.

Thanx for listening,

- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA
------------------------------