Is eBay Artificially Inflating Listing Numbers?

[mandy]

We've been taking a look recently into the troubles at online auction and ecommerce giant eBay. Ten days ago we took a look at reasons why many sellers are leaving eBay, and yesterday we covered an Australian ruling that barred the company from forcing sellers to use PayPal as their only online transaction method. Despite the problems the company is facing, their total listing numbers appear to be on the rise. But could they be artificially inflating that number?

Year over year, the number of auction listings at eBay are up according to independent tracking firm MedVed.net. But there is evidence that the listings numbers over the past month or two are being artificially boosted by eBay's recent partnership with Buy.com...

...the number of new listings on the site is a key metric that eBay reports to shareholders in their financial reports. If those numbers are being artificially inflated with empty listings it could indicate that information being fed to investors is not accurate...

full article: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/is_...umbers.php