eBay makes watch count available and public now

Foo3112

Looks like www.watchcount.com might not be in business much longer ...unless that site was already owned by eBay. Hmmm. Why do you think eBay made that info available for all to view now? Is it to possibly pressure the seller into jumping the gun and purchasing the item in order for them to make more sales and to get them paid sooner perhaps? I can't think of any reason why they wouldnt do something like that if it honestly wasn't going to make them some money. But seriously, does making that nformation known REALY matter to begin with? Sure it's nice to know as a seller but other than that, it s serves very little to no purpose. Or did I already answer the question?

Dpeck100

EBAY is going to a more fixed price listing strategy and I think it is to create a since of urgency on the buyers part.

When you see that others are watching it you may pull the trigger faster.

I only see it on Buy It Now listings. Are you seeing it on auctions? If not then since Watchcount doesn't show the number of watchers on fixed price listings with no bids or prior sales they will still have a niche.

silverinvestor

Watchcount is a pretty handy site, I use it myself. They do more than just show watchers, BTW -- they'll show the final prices of ended Best Offer items, re-activate wildcard searching on eBay, and some other cool tidbits I've noticed.

This business of eBay now showing watchers -- hasn't that been a beta test for a while now? Isn't it still? I've seen it in effect on 1 of my browsers, but not all. Is everyone now seeing number of watchers, for all items?

eBay does split testing like this, whereby they try something out for a small portion of visitors, then run the analytics to see if it helped boost sales. That sorta thing.

But yeah, if eBay does move forward with showing watchers on all items to all people, I could see Watchcount losing a chunk of traffic.

Dpeck100: I'm seeing the same as you -- watchers not seeming to appear on auctions on eBay. Interesting twist.

dtkk49a

I use watcheditem.com and will continue to do so

silverinvestor

Yeah, that's another good eBay research site. Haven't used it in a while tho.