Wednesday, February 16, 2005
The art of leaving feedback
I've been back spending a bit of time on eBay again (all for the purposes of research, of course!) and my latest passion is not so much to do with picking up fab bargains (no, really!), but more to do with reading item write-ups, or tracing what I call eBay "meme events" in the form of an item for sale that captures the imagination of the eBay community itself, and which often spills over into other venues (more on this in a tick). Before posting some of my finds, I just had to start with one of the most classic personal eBay projects of all time.
No-one knows who andy46477 is, but he somehow managed to crack ebay security codes, set up a fake account for himself and somehow--his programming skills are clearly amazing--was able to leave feedback for products he never purchased (and which were never put up for auction in the first place). He would target usernames and leave decidedly quirky, albeit thematically related, feedback for each of his targets.....
