Roll Call, If Your An American Please Drop In and Say Hi

[DancingForRain]

Users on the forum is the only thing I have to gauge it by, and I would say its like 50-1 against the USA.

[astral276]

Users on the forum is the only thing I have to gauge it by, and I would say its like 50-1 against the USA.

Then, as I said, you are basing your results on faulty data.

You could equally say that as there are 2,109 active UK stores on eBid and 1,319 active US stores that the ratio is 2:1. Of course, not all users are sellers, not all sellers have stores, and some sellers have more than one store. So you get a figure but that figure is worthless as it is based on flawed initial data.

[ZonkersCollection]

As Mel points out, forum usage isn't your only guage.
Number of stores is probably a beter.guage.
if you consider we have 5 thmes the population of the UK,
but half the number of ebid stores (and traffic?)...

er...

Oh, never mind, that's just too frackin depressing.

[astral276]

As Mel points out, forum usage isn't your only guage.
Number of stores is probably a beter.guage.
if you consider we have 5 thmes the population of the UK,
but half the number of ebid stores (and traffic?)...

er...

Oh, never mind, that's just too frackin depressing.

Some of that could be down to American parochialism. We have had Americans state that they would not use eBid just because it is a UK based company (though its servers are in Dallas TX), and others because it is not a .com domain (which many in the US see as their country domain name - rather than meaning a commercial enterprise).

[DancingForRain]

Forum gauge is only thing when I am talking about forum use. But never mind.

[ZonkersCollection]

Some of that could be down to American parochialism. We have had Americans state that they would not use eBid just because it is a UK based company (though its servers are in Dallas TX), and others because it is not a .com domain (which many in the US see as their country domain name - rather than meaning a commercial enterprise).

I disagree.
I don't see chauvinism. (in the original nationalistc sence you are using parochialism)

What i've seen:
My landlord resisted my suggestion that he check-out ebid for his Superman collectables,
because he expected to need Euros and shipping from the UK. ... a hastle.

The folks that regestered my .info domain in 1999 (face to face in their office), strongly recomended a .com instead.
Commercial sites NEED to be .com in their view. Anything else is fringe, not serious business.
(I think you know that ebid.com was taken)
I've never heard anyone say .com was the US domain. Only that everything is about commerce here.

Even comix fans looking for my UGcomix.info site, will type in UGcomix.com.
(UGcomix.com is now owned by GoDaddy, which thinks i'm gonna pay them to get it back.
Fat Chance. I never wanted anything other than .info)

None of that is chauvinistic. They just have their heads up their butts.

[tony41]

The Belgian site also has .net. Doesn't seem to have done them much harm because they have just registered their one millionth member.
Zonkers - you won't pay to get your .com site back so why should eBid do so.

[ZonkersCollection]

Zonkers - you won't pay to get your .com site back so why should eBid do so.

That's not what I said.
What i said was:
"Commercial sites NEED to be .com in their view"
Not in my view.

I got no problem with the .net part.
It's the ebay typo - ebid,
It looks like a me-too in this market. Where ebay came first, and always dominated.
It might as well be ebay.net for the way it keeps this site down, in the background.


"Typo" is printer's slang for "typographical error" or a misspelling. (which i do a lot)

[JaBek1]

Actually, eBid, as far as I know, hasn't made too much of an effort to advertise in the US. I don't think, however, that being based in the UK or the .NET vs .COM matters that much. The lack of name recognition over here probably won't improve without some sort of ad campaign.

Of course, there have been times in the past that some of the phrasing of things has drawn attention the fact that eBid didn't originate in the US. "Buy Now: This Item" immediately comes to mind, but I suppose that sort of thing could play havoc in other places outside the UK.

Oh! I agree that eBid can and does get mistaken for a typo of the eBay name. Of course, there is a site called eBates I believe, that's been advertising fairly heavily on the television over here. It too brings eBay to mind every time I see one of their ads.

[astral276]

Of course, there have been times in the past that some of the phrasing of things has drawn attention the fact that eBid didn't originate in the US. "Buy Now: This Item" immediately comes to mind, but I suppose that sort of thing could play havoc in other places outside the UK.

That didn't make sense even in the UK. I, for one, kept pushing for it to be changed to comprehensible English. eBid's use of the English language has often been what can the most kindly be described as 'interesting'.