The Listia Blog

Recently, we’ve seen some cool videos of our users unboxing things they won on Listia or talking about Listia and showing off the web site… so we thought it would be cool to run a video contest!  The basic idea is to create a short video promoting Listia. You can do whatever you like in the video… for example, do an unboxing of something you won, talk about how much you enjoy Listia, or even show off things that you are about to give away!

The grand prize is $300 cash, and we also have prizes for the 2nd and 3rd place winners.  Look here for complete details and to vote for your favorite videos!

Here is our first entry and a great example of a cool video!

Earlier today, we removed the live countdown timer on auction pages because we were receiving complaints about it being confusing.  Some users thought that since the timer was live, the current high bid and number of bids were live as well.  This wasn’t the case (you had to refresh to see updated bid info), so we decided to take it down to avoid confusion.

However, after we did that, many of you then expressed concerns that you rely on the countdown timer and do not like to refresh the page so often.  So, rather than continuing to compromise on the issue, we’ve been working hard all day and night to make BOTH the countdown timer and the bid information update in real-time.  It wasn’t easy but it also wasn’t as hard as we thought… and in the end we think it was worth the effort.

Now, when you are viewing an auction, you will see the bid amount increase as other people bid on the auction.  It will not update immediately if there is still a lot of time left on the auction, but once you are down to the final seconds, the bid amount should never be off by more than a few seconds depending on your computer’s processing power, Internet speeds, server loads, etc.  You will also be notified if you get outbid in real-time so you can immediately submit a new bid. Although this is great for last-second bidding, we still recommend getting your highest bid in well in advance of the final seconds just to be sure 🙂

Thanks for everyone’s continued feedback… we have come a long way and there are still lots of new things coming!

Our countdown timer no longer counts down =(

It was a little bit confusing for some of our users that thought we have live auctions.  We’ve decided to change the timer until we can actually have the entire page be live with real time updates.

Over the next few days, you can get extra bonus credits for listing and giving away your old video games!  If you’ve ever owned a video game console, there’s no doubt you have a bunch of old games sitting there collecting dust.  Spring is a great time to clear out the clutter, and the bonus credits can help you get some new video games in return!

This promo will end on Tuesday night, so start looking through your (or your kids’) old games and give them away on Listia!  Only the actual games are eligible this time, but we may extend it to consoles and accessories next time.

Have an iPhone? If so, you should check out a new feature we just implemented that will allow you to receive push notifications directly to your iPhone.  So, next time you get outbid, receive a comment on your auction or win an auction, you will know right away!  This feature is being provided through the notifo service which just launched today.

You can enable this feature in your account notification settings: http://www.listia.com/account/notifications

Let us know what you think… more phones will be supported soon!

Hi everyone! This afternoon we had an unexpected problem with one of our servers due to a hardware issue at our hosting provider.  The server is now back to normal and all the data is safe, but some of your auctions may have been affected if they were ending during that time.  If you are one of the users who was affected by this, please contact us through our support site at http://help.listia.com

We will do whatever it takes to rectify the situation to your satisfaction.

We sincerely apologize for this and are taking immediate steps to reduce the likelihood of this happening again.  Thanks for your understanding and continued support!

– The Listia Team

We really needed a break from customer support this afternoon so we decided to add something fun.  I’m not sure why we didn’t have this before, but you can now become a fan of other users on the site!  Right now it’s not used for much except bragging rights (you know a leaderboard is coming for sure!), but later on we can show you more information about the users you’re fans of.  For instance auctions they have listed, recent activity, etc.

Be a fanboy (or girl)!!!  http://www.listia.com/profile/fans/9

Finally got around to posting a snazzy new banner submitted by one of our users.  Thanks Craig!  We’ll be continuously adding more of these as we get around to publishing them.  We’ll have them all listed here: http://www.listia.com/account/user_banners

Keep them coming!

Today we pushed some changes to the way credit transactions work after an auction has completed.  A lot of the old methodology is the same in terms of pending credits and users with the Seller Wings badge, but there are some changes that we hope are improvements regarding credit reversals.  You can read the full details here: http://www.listia.com/about#pending_credits (pending credits) and http://www.listia.com/about#credit_refunds (credit refunds)

We’ve had numerous requests for banner ads to help promote Listia on your favorite web sites, blogs & forums so here you go!  There are two sizes right now, 468×60 and 120×240.  We’ll be making a few more in the near future and might even take some user submissions =)  Feel free to email us if you’ve made something cool.

To find all of these visit (be sure to be logged in): http://www.listia.com/account/referral_tools