March 4th, 2010
The following is the first ever post I made to eBay Ink on April 2, 2008:
I thought I’d try and address two questions many of you have already expressed (or likely will) about this blog, its purpose and, well, me.
1. Why are we doing this?
It’s pretty simple really — we need to become better listeners. Period.This blog is just one way I’m hoping I can help the company achieve this goal, by listening to your opinions, insights and perspectives, and where I can, facilitating conversation and providing you with the access to those here, inside eBay, who need this information most.It bears mentioning, I think we need to become better communicators too. Again, this blog will help with that in time, no doubt. For now, we’ll focus on getting the listening part right…2. Why me?
Because I’m an outsider, frankly. While some people will see this as a handicap, I believe others will see it as I and others here do, as an advantage. I’m being provided with an opportunity here to approach and report this company’s story from the perspective that many of you share (i.e., from the outside looking in). I have no delusions of this being an easy assignment, nor beliefs that I’ll always be absolutely objective, but I’ll try…
Since I joined in January, 2008, my goal for eBay Ink has always been to help integrate opinions into the strategic discussion within eBay – ultimately strengthening the company for the better. I hoped to achieve this through 5 key objectives:
1. Tell this company’s story in our own words, in our own voice and from our perspective.
2. Provide new levels of access to all layers of the organization – from the top down.
3. Humanize our company by capturing and sharing/showing the people behind the brand (and their stories).
4. Open up a transparent conversation about eBay operations and business decisions.
5. Open up new feedback channels online and show that we want to both listen and engage in dialogue about our business.
We’re coming up on the 2nd anniversary of the introduction of eBay Ink and although I feel we’ve made a positive change in the openness of communication, I also feel that we can do a lot more – and we will. Although the interaction here on Ink has been strong over the past two years, the conversations I’ve been enjoying with people on Twitter seem to be more interactive and real-time. I wanted to try and capture that real-time conversation here on the blog itself, in order to better accomplish our original objectives set up more than 24 months ago. Working with the same great folks that helped me build the first iteration of eBay Ink, I’ve tried to create a kind of “life-stream” for our corporate blog to encourage more interaction and conversation similar to those found on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
It was actually Facebook that was the inspiration behind the new scrolling conversation feed. For those familiar with Facebook, you’ll notice that the new discussion engine here on eBay Ink – running down the center of the blog – resembles the Live Feed found on the FB homepage. I am now writing tweets, blog posts, uploading videos and images all through the eBay Ink interface. I can then automatically have certain updates & posts feed out to other social media channels like Twitter.
On the right side of the page you’ll see three new discussion boxes. The first, “recent Twitter responses” is fairly self-explanatory and captures recent retweets of discussions we’re having here on Ink. Immediately below is “popular thoughts” that breaks down the most popular conversation starters (blog posts) here on Ink based on the number of comments associated with each. “Inked” breaks down the conversation on Twitter in which eBay Ink is involved.
Because eBay Connect is now your place to find all blog posts coming out of the company and our landing page for our official blog roll, I felt Ink could focus on what matters most… hearing what you have to say and trying to give you the best behind-the-scenes seat at the corporate table.
As with everything we do here on Ink, it’s a work in progress and I’m continually striving to improve and enhance the experience here. Please let me know what you like – but, more importantly – please tell me what you feel it’s lacking. Where can we improve? What would you like to see more of?
Let me know. Looking forward to taking the conversations to the next level in the near future!
Cheers,
RBH
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