eBay Wiki, eBay's new wiki service for community members, went live yesterday. The site is powered by JotSpot, Joe Kraus' wiki startup. Users can create articles on any eBay-related topic - everything from the history of eBay to increasing the number of visits to your eBay auctions. You must be logged in to eBay to edit pages, and your edits are attributed to your eBay username - this will go a long way towards preventing spam. eBay also rolled out a related product, eBay Blogs, which allows members (especially sellers) to expose a bit more of their personalities.
Add to this the recent release of MyCollectibles, and it's clear that eBay is embracing social software in a big way. When the news of the wiki launch started circulating at the beginning of June, it seemed as if eBay was throwing out "Web 2.0 features" to keep up with the hip crowd. But now I'm more optimistic: the wikis work more like a collaborative user manual for eBay, and that could be extremely useful. Judging by the willingness of eBay members to share their tips in the forums, I think it could get some traction.
