Having trouble thinking of those New Year’s resolutions?  If so here’s an inspiring TED talk given by Rachel Botsman that is making it’s way around the web and it might give you some ideas other than “hit the gym more often”.  Enjoy!

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

We all get gifts during the holidays that we don’t really want… but instead of just dealing with it this year, Listia will help you swap those gifts for something you actually wanted!  For a limited time, you’ll get bonus credits just for listing your unwanted gifts or any other items around the house.  You can then use the credits you receive to get something you really want in return!  To get started, just visit the listing page for complete details…

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year from Listia!

photo via Mulberry24

We’re excited to announce that some long overdue features have finally been released!  The first one is called “Get It Now”, which has been our top feature request for as long as we can remember.  The other is a much better photo uploading system, which will make listing auctions much faster and prevent those gateway timeout errors that occur when listing auctions with lots of photos.  Basically, photos will begin uploading as soon as you select them, instead of waiting for you to click the submit button.  In many cases, they will be done uploading before you even finish typing the auction description!

What is “Get It Now”?  Here is a brief description of how it works:

Get It Now is an optional feature that lets sellers specify the exact amount of credits they would be willing to accept to end an auction early. Bidders would then have the option to “Get it Now” instead of going through the auction process and competing with other bidders. 

The Get it Now option is available throughout the duration of the auction, until a bidder has decided to use it. However, once bidding on the auction has reached 50% of the Get It Now value, the Get it Now option will be removed and can no longer be used. 

The Get It Now option is available for all sellers with the Seller Wings badge. 

Read about all the details here…

Thanks for everyone’s continued support and feedback!  We will continue to push out new and exciting features based on what everyone wants.

Last Friday we pushed out a large change to the ‘Home’ and ‘Account’ pages, effectively merging them into a single new ‘My Account’ page.  In an effort to simplify the user experience and make navigating around Listia easier, we managed to elicit a whole range of feedback from our users.  Some users had the type of reaction we anticipated:

Being able to go to my messages with a quick click on the left. That’s a good addition. The whole bar on the left is good. 

Others didn’t feel quite the same:

I don’t care about anything EXCEPT what I’m dealing with, so I expect to only see what I’m dealing with when I click on MY listia.

Others still had mixed feelings:

I personally like the new setup for our account page. However, it does seem to be a little busy!

We received a TON of feedback (Thank you everyone who chimed in!), and read through every single post to understand the whole range of concerns.  We realized that those who liked the changes enjoyed the (1) increased navigability and (2) ability to explore new and interesting auctions from the same page.  Those who disliked it felt that the explore content was (3) impersonal and irrelevant, and more importantly (4) affected their ability to focus on and use the account pages.

We couldn’t agree more with these points. Today we’re rolling out a few changes that aim to keep the benefits provided by the ‘My Account’ page, but at the same time increase focus on the usability of the account features.  Some things to note about the changes:

We’ve removed the alternating pane showcasing featured auctions
The content wasn’t relevant enough to justify taking up such prime real estate on users’ browsers.

In its place you’ll find a condensed summary of recent auction activity
While the left menu provides an exhaustive view of your account, this lets people quickly see what’s going on and move on to the next task.

Explore content and auctions from people you’re a fan of are still shown
From the ‘My Account’ page you’re still able to check out interesting content from fans and others alike.

The open/closed state of the menu is saved across pages
To reduce clutter and keep the menu as tidy as possible, if you close a menu it will remain closed on the next page.

Our goal is to strike an ideal balance between account management and auction discovery, two things that we feel go hand in hand in creating a great Listia experience.

We hope everyone finds the changes helpful!

photo via Chuckumentary