"About Me" Page

[pierrelebel]

From the eBay.com Announcement Board:

http://announcements.ebay.com/2014/01/upcoming-changes-to-about-me-pages-personalize-your-ebay-profi...

Starting June 2, About Me pages will be no longer be available—and as of February 17, creation of new and editing of existing About Me pages will be ended—so if you have yet to complete your new eBay profile, now’s the time!

You can access your eBay profile either by going to ebay.com/usr/eBayUSERID, or by first clicking on your user name that appears in the top left-hand corner of your home page, then clicking on your user ID that appears in the first section of the drop down menu. Learn more about completing your profile, as well as everything the page has to offer.

Announced last year, eBay profiles are the latest—and best—way to engage with other members, share your collections, and showcase your expertise and business.

Starting June 2, About Me pages will be no longer be available—and as of February 17, creation of new and editing of existing About Me pages will be ended—so if you have yet to complete your new eBay profile, now’s the time!

You can access your eBay profile either by going to ebay.com/usr/eBayUSERID, or by first clicking on your user name that appears in the top left-hand corner of your home page, then clicking on your user ID that appears in the first section of the drop down menu. Learn more about completing your profile, as well as everything the page has to offer.

We hope you update your eBay profile, and as always, thank you for being a part of eBay!

Sincerely,

The eBay Social Commerce Team

- See more at: http://announcements.ebay.com/2014/01/upcoming-changes-to-about-me-pages-personalize-your-ebay-profi...

Upcoming changes to About Me pages—personalize your eBay profile today

Announced last year, eBay profiles are the latest—and best—way to engage with other members, share your collections, and showcase your expertise and business.

Starting June 2, About Me pages will be no longer be available—and as of February 17, creation of new and editing of existing About Me pages will be ended—so if you have yet to complete your new eBay profile, now’s the time!

You can access your eBay profile either by going to ebay.com/usr/eBayUSERID, or by first clicking on your user name that appears in the top left-hand corner of your home page, then clicking on your user ID that appears in the first section of the drop down menu. Learn more about completing your profile, as well as everything the page has to offer.

We hope you update your eBay profile, and as always, thank you for being a part of eBay!

Sincerely,

The eBay Social Commerce Team

- See more at: http://announcements.ebay.com/2014/01/upcoming-changes-to-about-me-pages-personalize-your-ebay-profi...

Upcoming changes to About Me pages—personalize your eBay profile today

Announced last year, eBay profiles are the latest—and best—way to engage with other members, share your collections, and showcase your expertise and business.

Starting June 2, About Me pages will be no longer be available—and as of February 17, creation of new and editing of existing About Me pages will be ended—so if you have yet to complete your new eBay profile, now’s the time!

You can access your eBay profile either by going to ebay.com/usr/eBayUSERID, or by first clicking on your user name that appears in the top left-hand corner of your home page, then clicking on your user ID that appears in the first section of the drop down menu. Learn more about completing your profile, as well as everything the page has to offer.

We hope you update your eBay profile, and as always, thank you for being a part of eBay!

Sincerely,

The eBay Social Commerce Team

- See more at: http://announcements.ebay.com/2014/01/upcoming-changes-to-about-me-pages-personalize-your-ebay-profi...

[rose-dee]

Well, the rotten rascals!  No wonder my "Me" page went crazy this past summer and has been unfixable -- they were planning to get rid of it anyway. 

And no wonder the eBay.ca staff were so cagey and unhelpful about questions from sellers on what was wrong with their "Me" pages and how to fix it.  I do get sick of the corporate cloak and dagger stuff around here.

So, they are finally catching up to popular social network sites.  I also see we now have a "followers" feature, but no provision for displaying a web address, direct email, etc., other than a link to a Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest page.  That should be interesting: I wonder how much of a firewall there is between eBay and Facebook?

Well, I guess it's time to get cracking on more promotional work...

By the way Pierre, I wanted to subscribe to eBay Announcements, but I'm not sure what "RSS Feed" will actually mean -- do you know?  Will a direct link appear on my desktop?  Or within eBay somewhere?  How do you receive your subscription? 

Sorry for all the queries, but I'm not sure I want yet another stream of regular messages going to my own email account.

[rose-dee]

I guess I should ask the obvious first: does this apply to eBay.ca as well, in the same timeframes?

[rose-dee]

As a final comment, I noted the following in connection with these new "Profile" pages:

1) This seems to have put the last nail in the coffin of outside website URLs, email addresses, etc. being anywhere on the eBay site.  Any such direct links or information will now be at arm's length, on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

2)  I see there is a very small "Contact Buyer" icon at the top right of the Profile page.  I wonder how long it will be before all direct links to contact a seller are removed from listings and buyers will have to know that they must go to the seller's Profile page to get in touch with them?  Moving the "Contact Seller" to the bottom of listing pages was doubtless the first step in that direction.  I'm dismayed at the slow but steady discouragement of direct buyer-to-seller contact on this site, but not surprised.

P.S. Ignore my earlier musing about whether these "Profiles" apply to eBay.ca as well -- I see I've already acquired one practically overnight.

[karl*katz]

Here is an example of MePages with useful information.

In fact eBay considers them important enough that it is actually linked to through the A to Z help menu.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/vero-aboutme.html

[rose-dee]

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@karl*katz wrote:

Here is an example of MePages with useful information.

In fact eBay considers them important enough that it is actually linked to through the A to Z help menu.

---

Odd that they are now phasing the "Me" pages out completely.  You're right -- they are/were very useful, but not so much if we can't keep them updated.  I appreciated having a page to give some background on myself and my work, it was important to my business, so I'm very upset to see them become basically a useless eBay appendage.   

These "Me" links in the VERO section aren't new though; they have been there for a long time.  I wonder if eBay will be replacing them with links to the "Profile" page?  These "Profiles" pages look pretty, but lack personal substance, and IMO are not a replacement for the "Me" pages.  I see this as another move by eBay to keep anything personal or non-eBay (emails, websites, personal photos, etc.) at arm's length from their site.