Critiquing the eBay Live! Conventions

Milwaukee.
The next speaker at AoIR 2009 is Michele White, who shifts our interest to eBay and its eBay Live! convention culture. This is an interesting translation of the asynchronous online trading model to a face-to-face venue for expressions of community, and through them comsumers are incorporated into and work for the community and brand. These people are consumer-fans who invest time and money into building an identity for the brand - this is for the most part no critical reinterpretation of eBay's brand message, but rather an enthusiastic dissemination.

Brand communities exhibit consciousness of kind, a recognition of similar traits among members, shared rituals, morals, and responsibility to the commmunity and its members. (These kinds of values are also exhibited in Craigslist, by the way.) eBay is built around core values that posit that people are basically good, and that everyone has something to contribute, and the convention is targetting this idea, but also further ties members to what is imagined as their community and utilises them to spread the brand message.

Members contribute by expressing enthusiasm and patrolling the site; they help advertise the convention and share stories about the brand, reiterating stories about the brand and its values. This also assists members in learning communal values, which is a key aspect of many virtual communities. eBay Live! is identified as a wonderful community for members from around the world which enables them to become part of the greater good, even if what 'good' means is never clearly identified. eBay encourages attendees to share images which further support these stories, and these are also used to connect those members who are unable to come to the conventions themselves (many of whom subsequently commit to attending the next convention).

There is also some support from members for members, grouping together to fund travel costs to the convention for well-known members who might not otherwise be able to attend. Attendees attire in eBay signage and visual representations that are only readable to insiders, and this is also used and promoted by the company. Members tend to dismiss any critical commentary of the site and its conventions, and explain this by pointing to the critics' negative seller ratings or other issues rather than by acknowleding problems inherent in the site. Some wonder why people still use it if it makes them so upset. (Perhaps not such an invalid question?)

eBay links what happens at the convention with what happens online, too - items made available at the site (as swag for attendees or employees) are often made available for auction on the site even before the convention is over. But is this also risky? Perhaps some of these items will be packaged away and sold only years later - but then, how valuable and sought-after are such items in reality, anyway? eBay wants to keep members endlessly attached and always investing more, but the shift in members' engagement shows that the strategy is not fully adequate to the task.

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