Monday, October 11, 2004

Things They Should Invent (or perhaps they already have but I don't know
about it): A website where people register things they would buy if they
were available on eBay.

I have occasionally considered selling something on eBay. Whenever this
occurs to me, I search eBay for the item that I'm selling to see how much it
goes for. What usually happens is I don't see the item I'm thinking of
selling, so I assume that no one is buying it. However, it's quite possible
that there are willing buyers, it's just that no one happens to be selling
that particular item at the moment. If the website I propose existed, I
could just check that site and see if anyone was interested in buying that
item even if there weren't any of said item for sale on eBay at the moment.

When I decide to post my item for sale, I could click on something that
would alert the people who said they would buy it to the existence of my
auction. If this site were directly affiliated with eBay, the potential
buyers could be automatically alerted when an auction they're interested in
appears (even if the seller doesn't look at the potential buyer site), and
unsuccessful bidders could choose to be automatically listed as interested
in buying that item next time one comes on sale.

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