Steve Barnhart, President of Orbitz Worldwide, said that he looked forward to benefiting from Bill’s advice and counsel. Orbitz own a number of online travel brands, including ebookers and cheaptickets.com.

Bill’s one-time boss Meg Whitman has also been mentioned several times recently as a possible Vice-President for Republican candidate John McCain.

Speaking of eBay Live!, due to take place in Chicago this June, Wingo likened JD to taking the “CEO of a fortune 100 company and seeing him run a circus”. Mentioning a square peg and a round hole he said one of JD’s challenges will be engaging with eBay buyers and sellers – something that Meg Whitman and Bill Cobb have excelled at.

Whilst Meg and Bill are exceptional and talented business people, they have always connected with the eBay community and appeared to enjoy contact with eBay buyers and sellers. This is something which to date JD has appeared uneasy with; eBay Live! in Chicago will be his first opportunity to set the tone for the eBay of the future.

In fairness as an eBay senior executive it was a trade that was arranged some time in the past, and not based on insider knowledge, but I’m guessing the windorphins kicked in regardless.

Bill is about to take a break from eBay and spend some time with his family. He told me one of his favourite pastimes is golf so he’ll be out on the greens during his time off. It’s a nice little bonus to ensure the green fees don’t hurt his pocket, but currently we don’t know when he’ll be returning to eBay after his break.

Which again raises the question, much discussed in recent days, of whether this special offer might be made on other eBay sites too. Fingers crossed. In the meantime, eBay UK sellers can take a little comfort in the thought that the offer is for all users on .com and .ca, so it will cost them a little less to try to regain their international visibility.

Unfortunately Bill didn’t get the huge round of applause the announcement deserved. It sounded as if it was just for the five winners of community awards, in fact many were stunned that he’d mention a paltry $50.

Bill got the announcement wrong though, as people started to leave they realised he’d meant to say that PayPal were paying for a cab for EVERYONE at eBay Live! PayPal staff were handing out the creditcards to every single eBayer as they left for a free ride back to their hotels. I haven’t a clue how much it cost them in total, but I for one would like to say “Thank you”!

Bill’s answer was straight forward and to the point “Tell Doug McCallum and tell him I told you to tell him”. Doug can look forward to hearing from Sue when she returns from the US

Doug if you’re looking for Bill because he’s put the pressure on, you’ll find him in Michigan with his family probably playing golf – he’s taking some time out soon so you’re in charge of organising eBay Live! (Europe)

“Reigniting the core” remains a priority for 2007; a new marketing program will talk about windorphins, the heady rush you get from winning an eBay auction.

The other big priority for eBay for the rest of the year is improving the user experience. New designs for the header and the home page have begun this process; though reception has generally been positive, many eBay Stores owners have complained that there is no Stores link in the header. The Stores link is to be restored, alongside the link to eBay Express, very shortly.

A new method of visual navigation is to be introduced in selected categories: apparently working alongside item specifics, this will turn up larger-than-Gallery pictures, with specifics of price, title, etc. available as a mouseover popup. This looks a great feature for those of us who buy and sell in highly visual categories: my dreams of selling more beads were instantly overcome by better dreams of buying more shoes

Another change coming to search is the unsnappily titled “price plus shipping search”: finally, buyers will be able to filter search results by TOTAL price, putting an end to 1p items with crazy shipping prices, and, of course, strongly discouraging such fee-avoiding practices.

Bidding will be made easier, with a single click bid available in the last 15 minutes of an auction: no longer will your snipe time be constrained by the speed of your computer. And to ensure you get that snipe in on time, eBay Countdown, described by Bill as “a big clock and price ticker thingy at the top of the page”, will be launched. This small window can be left open to remind you to go and snipe, and it doesn’t require any special download: I love this idea, and it might even rekindle some of the fun of auctions for me.

And for “top buyers”, telephone support will be available from September. Though it’s not clear exactly how many (or how few) buyers this will affect, it’s a complete first for eBay, and should at least make buyers feel that little bit safer trading on the site.

As far as sellers are concerned, Bill affirmed that eBay Stores continue to play a vital role: we are committed to the long term success of eBay Stores owners”. Featured Stores owners will, from September, have access to 24/7 telephone support. The price of Anchor Stores is being lowered by $200 per month to $299. This is the first hint that the crippling blows dealt to Stores last summer may be taking effect, and that eBay want to stop the rush of sellers to quit the site in favour of their own websites.

The US Powerseller Program will be extended to include volume sellers too; very much as the UK Program is at the moment, membership will be based on either sales value *or* volume. And the criteria will be changed for seasonal sellers too, so that they will have access to Powerseller support at the beginning of their busy period. Phone support will be available for Bronze Powersellers starting in the fall.

As of August 1st, Powersellers filing unpaid item strikes will have a refund not only of their FVFs, but also of feature fees. Though dependent on some listing requirements such as offering Paypal and having reasonable shipping fees, this is wonderful news for sellers, and should even encourage the take up of listing features.

Most excitingly, Powersellers are to be advantaged in “best match” search results. Demo results showed large Powerseller medallions alongside listing details in search, with Powersellers’ sales at the top of search results.

And finally, well, “we want more of your listings”. From June 19th to August 5th, the first tranche of FVFs on core listings will be reduced from 5.25% to 4.5%. It’s not quite the absolute fee reduction we predicted, but it should keep listings going through the summer holiday slump.

All in all, a very positive set of announcements from Bill Cobb that should please buyers and sellers alike. Now (in good TameBay tradition) can we please have them in the UK?

For those that haven’t heard StumbleUpon is a discovery/search site. It aims to show you a combination of your own preferences and those of people like you to present websites, videos, photographs, and even information you didn’t even know you might like. That’s a great fit for eBay – if they can tie the technology into the auction platform they can promote listings you might like based on those people who have purchased similar items to you in the past like. For instance if you purchase clothes for a two year old they might present you with toys. Equally the software might establish that people with two year olds also purchase something totally unrelated and offer you a new hammock – you might just like it if others do!

Either way it’ll be interesting to see what eBay do with StumbleUpon, it can’t do any harm having an eBay owned toolbar on millions of browsers around the world!

UPDATE: Bill Cobb has just posted on the .com announcement board… they haven’t a clue how to integrate StumbleUpon with eBay, PayPal and Skype, but when they figure it out they’ll let us know!

To be honest I’m gobsmacked! It’s standard in the UK that when you open a shop for the first time you always get a 30 day free trial whether you choose featured or basic, the only time you don’t have a free trial is if you open an anchor shop. eBay know that sellers that open a shop go on to sell more – this shouldn’t be a limited time offer, it should be standard for all sellers on eBay.com just as it is on eBay.co.uk. Cobb and Linton need to get their heads together on this offer and extend it indefinitely!

The only advice I can offer anyone in the US is TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF THE OFFER and OPEN AN EBAY STORE TODAY!

The detested Detailed Seller Ratings are of course enabled, time will tell how many buyers leave them, and whether in general they prove to differentiate sellers. I still suspect buyers will in time start to leave four out of five – anyone that’s filled out ranking surveys will recognise that it’s not the norm to leave the highest score available.

The page is particularly badly laid out, in fact it just looks a mess with new sections squeezed in. It’s a shame they didn’t get the guys that designed the new eBay.co.uk home page to lay out the new feedback view. Useful links to About Me, Trading Assistant, reviews and guides and ID History being hidden on a drop down menu. Strangely they’ve added a “View Item” link, but haven’t bothered to make the item title or number clickable. The page is also much longer as each feedback now takes two lines instead of one. Finally some of the fonts on the page have been reduced in size, and the detailed seller rating box dwarfs the size of the recent feedback ratings.

Of course Cobb also promised it would be “introduced, monitored, tweaked and only when running smoothly and any ill effects ironed out introduced on the North American site“. In other words he doesn’t care less about International markets. Feedback was the one thing that set eBay apart from other sites, now eBay have trashed it we might as well be selling on Amazon for those that know what a joke feedback there is.

It’s a sad day for eBay, in trying to improve something that was working they’ve ruined the one unique feature that set the site apart.