eBay 2.0 to introduce user blogs, wiki and tags

eBay is launching new community tools and features to help sellers better market their products, according to a report on AuctionBytes. In particular, the online auction behemoth is adopting tagging, blogs and a community wiki.

Good move, by my reckoning...

eBay Blogs will enable sellers to provide their listings with a marketing boost by blogging about them. More will be revealed at the eBay Live conference in Las Vegas, taking place between June 13 - 15.

AuctionBytes says eBay's existing blogs are powered by Six Apart's easy-to-use Typepad platform, which may point to a full-scale rollout for eBay Blogs.

eBay is keen to improve its search rankings so this seems like a smart move, since users will be creating content (at no cost to eBay) and blogs posts are known to rank very well on the likes of Google and MSN. Maybe we'll see an eBay-produced guide to online copywriting for SEO.

Users will also be able to add search tags to blog posts. Tags are also superb for search engines, since they provide solid internal links to themed category pages. Tags are essentially user-defined classification metadata. Tagging was arguably put on the map by delicious, which Yahoo acquired last year (it spent between $15m and $30m according to rumours).

Last week Yahoo and eBay jumped into bed together, in what many believe is the first step towards a bigger deal. An eBay + Yahoo megadeal would surely provide some significant food for thought for executives at Google and MSN, as well as the likes of Amazon.

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