Ok, I know a lot of people have been hating on Ebay the last few months and I’ve heard more than one person in the industry talk about the company’s lack of strategy and the decline of the auction business.

But I just listed an item on Ebay for the first time in a while and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by the experience.  The listing process is still pretty tricky, but Ebay has come a long way to help the lazy-man seller and enrich the buyer experience.  There was a stock photo available for my item, and there was meaningful content integrated from shopping.com / epinions providing reviews for the product.

What’s more, this was a reminder that Ebay really did change the game when it created an easy-to-use way to disrupt inefficient markets like second hand goods.  It’s day as a darling of Silicon Valley may have passed, but the company still provides a very compelling value proposition that I bet a lot of my readers don’t take advantage of as fully as they should.  I certainly haven’t been for the last few months.

I would be curious to hear what people would do to boost ebay’s core business.  Woud love to have a discussion about this.