Nigel Parker's Outside Line : Trade Me

Trade Me Gadget Launched

nparker — Mon, 07 May 2007 04:31:00 GMT

If you are a keen Trade Me seller and a Windows Vista user take a trip over to Rowan's blog to get the inside word.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Visa Pre-Sale! Yeah Right!

nparker — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 23:44:00 GMT

I knew the visa pre-sale for Red Hot Chili Pepper tickets would be popular but this is ridiculous!

I started at http://www.visaentertainment.co.nz I got to the site http://www.ticketmaster.co.nz/promo/wbismv the site became unresponsive at 9am when tickets went on sale.

I got on at 9:01 am and got to the screen to choose my tickets... woot!

Problem #1

The form let you purchase upto 50 tickets in one go!

(I chose 2 tickets)

Problem #2

There was no indication of how many tickets were for sale and when they had sold out!

I select 2 general admission tickets seated anywhere...

After responding to the "cryptic code" to stop robots buying tickets I got this friendly message.

I proceeded to try every combination of tickets for every seating option to find the same result in all.

Good to see there were actually some tickets... they turned up on Trade Me at $600 each.

PATHETIC!

Update: A second show was announced... yup I missed this one to!

From the herald... "The Visa pre-sales are going exceptionally well. Demand was such we felt the time was right to announce the second show"

My take... I have experience one of the worst user experience of my life... there is still no way to tell if the tickets have actually sold out... going to http://www.ticketmaster.co.nz/promo/wbismv you are greeted with a nice message telling you "don't miss out"... although it appears that the boat has long since sailed.

The tickets are all over Trade Me selling from everything from $100 million to $5000... the comments of people seeling go from things like...

"a mate and I tried for ages to get through to no avail, then by chance we both snapped up 2 each, so have 2 surplus to our requirements. Our mistake is your opportunity to pick some up cheap (although I think there is alot of demand and they may sell for over our purchase price!)"

to...

"Cant get time off work :(

Txt offers to 027 388 xxxx"

Bring on a ballot system for selling tickets to events like this!

TradeMe Design!

nparker — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 07:23:00 GMT

I was talking to Rowan a few weeks ago and he mentioned that TradeMe was working on a new CSS designed site (amongst other changes). How did Rowan put it? "it's an evolution rather than a revolution"... I think you could use this same quote when talking about IE7!

Check out the sneak preview at http://preview.trademe.co.nz, and also go and check out the commentary and provide your feedback!

I was hoping to see Natasha talk about this at UPA event in Auckland this week but unfortunately she didn't make it up... next shot WebStock Mini!

On another note a couple of weeks ago I was down in Wellington and I met with Rachel and the team at heliocell. We discussed their site http://www.gofetch.net.nz and some of the challenges they faced building a Standards Complient CSS driven site on .NET.

One of the things Rachel mentioned was the pains she went to to style some of the ASP .NET Server controls.

We can help with this!

If you are looking at creating custom output from .NET controls and even removing <table from your .NET site take a look at the CSS Control Adapters. The control adapters provide a pure CSS based rendering (no tables) for all of the ASP.NET Data (GridView, DataList, DetailsView, FormView, etc), Navigation (Menu, TreeView), and Login (Login, CreateUserWizard, ChangePassword, PasswordRecovery, LoginStatus) controls. Also Expression Web Designer (front page is dead) and ASP.NET for Designers is worth a look.

Well Done TradeMe and Team for evolving a putting a stick in the sand!

Here we go again more company aquisitions IHUG, youtube...

nparker — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 23:39:00 GMT

The buy up of NZ companies to off shore investors has been happening quite a bit recently... I know IHUG had already previously sold to Perth based iiNet for $82 million in September 2003 but this week iiNet is again selling IHUG to Vodafone for half of what they paid just 3 years ago. IHUG has skipped from NZ owned to Aus owned to UK owned property. I have put a graph together to plot the trend over the last couple of years... I'm sure there are other high profile sales that I have missed but the trend is great for the kiwi entrepreneurs but is alarming for our industry as a whole.

In contrast the buy-up of Internet property in the US is again rearing it's head with the negotiations Google is in to buy youtube for ~2.3 Billion NZD.

It really feels like it is the year 2000 all over again! This time more cash is involved!

Some interesting comparisons from the above sales...

Trademe.co.nz was sold for ~14 times more than what Flickr.com was rumored to have sold to Yahoo for!

The TradeMe sale was ~80% of the sale price of Myspace.com.

It will be interesting to see what plays out next in the local and global game!