Listia is looking forward to an awesome 2011, and we hope all of you are able to accomplish everything you set out to do this year.  So, from the entire Listia team.. 

Happy New Year!

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

The holiday season is here, and it’s a great time for giving!  There are lots of kids out there who would love some new toys to play with, so we are doing our best to help spread the love.  For a limited time, list an old or new toy on Listia and get 50 bonus credits (see the listing page for full details and rules).  We want to fill up the toy category for the holidays, and its a great way to trade your old toys for something new or simply pass them on to a new owner.  Either way, everyone wins 🙂

Also, if you have a moment, check out our one-day only Cyber Monday rewards auctions.

Happy Holidays!

photo via meddygarnet

Last week we pushed out a feature for searching and browsing and you will no longer see auctions owned by users you have blocked in your search results.  Likewise, the users you block will not see your auctions in search results.  When you block a user they can no longer bid or comment on your auctions so there really is no point in showing them your auction.  When you are blocked you also don’t want to see auctions you can’t bid or comment on as well.  If you don’t like this type of behavior you always have the option to unblock specific users.  To manage your block list you can go here: http://www.listia.com/account/blocklist

Also a reminder on some advanced search options: https://blog.listia.com/some-advanced-search-tips

Enjoy and happy browsing!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  We are so thankful for all the great members here at Listia!  Thanks again for everything you do, everything you put up with as we continue to improve, and all the great stuff you’ve traded on Listia.  Hope everyone has a great holiday weekend!

This is also our favorite time of year here at Listia, because we love rewarding our users with cool stuff.  Stay tuned for some cool giveaways on Cyber Monday!  We’ll be doing lots of reward auctions, t-shirt giveaways and maybe even some cool raffles.  Things will be added all day long, and all the auctions and raffles will only last a few hours at most, so make sure you login on Monday to see what’s new!

photo via billselak

In order to help keep the auctions on Listia fresh and up to date we are going to begin enforcing a limit on the number of times an auction can be automatically relisted without receiving any bids.  If an auction has already been automatically relisted 10 times it will not be relisted after that, but you may manually relist it from your account pages.  If you have auctions that are well past this limit we’ll be sending you a special email with a summary of the auctions you have that fall into this category.

If you enabled email notifications for relisted auctions (“Send me email when my auctions are auto relisted”) you will get an email both when your auction will be relisted for the last time and when it has been not been relisted due to hitting the limit.  If you do not have this notification setting enabled you will not receive any email messages related to your auctions being relisted or removed due to hitting the limit.

We expect this policy to be rolled out later on today around 5PM PST.  We thank you for listing all this great stuff but if someone hasn’t bid on it after being relisted 10 times, perhaps better pictures, more information or better shipping details may help you get more bids.  Thanks!