First, it must be said: eBay is one of the ugliest sites out there. It’s definitely the worst-looking in the top 25 most popular sites.

I can only speculate that eBay is deliberately cultivating this thrown-together feel. It’s been over a year since I saw Meg Whitman on a BusinessWeek/CSPAN special complimenting Amazon by saying “They have a wonderful user interface.” Whitman is one sharp operator, so if they haven’t overhauled the look, it must be working.

Perhaps they think it would be a fruitless exercise when the sellers create 90% of the product page content. Not everyone is an artist, and sometimes the products themselves are weirdly ugly.

Other times you just have to wonder about the sellers. I was doing a search for “Linksys wireless” on a whim, and I came upon a USB adapter. The seller noted:

My son went off to college, taking his computer with him. I am hoping he stays in school, so I am selling the adapter.

I was amused, so I clicked to see what else the man was selling. The fun items include a Browning pistol barrel, an inside-the-waistband holster, and a bullet velocity measurer.

If I were the son, I’d be looking to stay in college, too. Far, far away.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 1st, 2002 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Geekery, WtF.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.