eBay Launches Custom Web Site

Lifestyle product mashes fashion, pop culture and auction analytics to 'curate' the eBay experience.

By Bill Mickey
Thursday, November 5, 2009

eBay today announced the launch of The Inside Source, a custom-published, Web-based lifestyle magazine that features content that marries fashion and pop culture with auction trends.

"eBay has 88 million users and we have unbelievable access to what people are searching for," Meredith Barnett, Inside Source's editorial director, told AD. "The real editorial focus of the site is on trends. What people are shopping for and what they care about."

Barnett said the site's access to eBay's buyer-seller activity and analytics provides a unique opportunity to uncover story ideas that highlight and curate particular shopping trends. "The amount of stuff eBay has for sale is incredibly vast," she said. "Sometimes people don't know where to look. Curating that experience will be helpful."

Barnett cited to a story that covered the recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert and wove in a roundup of concert t-shirts for sale on eBay.

That access to metrics will also translate into real-time snapshots of marketplace activity—most-watched products, most-searched terms and so on.

Content will be updated daily from writers that have contributed to or worked for Lucky (where Barnett was once an editor), Allure, Cookie, The New Yorker and Daily Candy.

Indeed, Barnett imagines the site as a boutique experience akin to Daily Candy and Lucky, primarily for women, rather than a mass media approach to fashion and pop culture trends.

The Inside Source is also intended to help advance the notion that eBay is not just an auction site. Speaking with The New York Times, Alan Marks, eBay's SVP of corporate communications, said the site is still perceived as an auction site even though the majority of products are sold at the fixed, "buy now" price, and many of the goods are new overstock, and even upscale, items. 

The team showcased a pre-launch, password-protected version of the site to top-rated sellers last week and it will be featured in an upcoming email newsletter to the eBay community. Beyond that, the site is exploring other direct-to-community marketing opportunities, said a spokesperson.