eBay Stock Lowest Point Since May 2003 - Where Are We Going?

Yesterday, eBay stock bottomed out at the end of the day at $23.70 per share. The forums and blogs on eBay.com are still full of vehemently angry, or at least very bitter, site users and store owners. In the past week+ since the latest round of fee increases, the message boards have had dozens of theories about the reasoning behind the fee raises and conjecture about what new direction Meg Whitman and the management are going. eBay pretty much started answering this question a few days ago as they began calling owners of eBay stores to "help them adjust." Their answer: open an ebay Prostore!

What a brilliant idea opening a Prostore is NOT! Frankly I'm a bit confused at this point. My head is spinning from the fact that eBay raised fees on stores and referred to auctions as the "core" of eBay and that they started telling people to close their stores a week ago. This comes as eBay STILL is advertising on their site for sellers to open stores - and at the current rate of course (wonder if new store owners up until the fee increase will even get an email about it). Now eBay is saying that Prostores advertising will triple (how much advertising is 3 times zero?) and that eBay stores' SIF listings will be relegated further down in the searches.

I'm sure eBay has a master plan and I'm sure it will benefit the bottom line and leave sellers with a bad taste in their mouths. I'm also sure eBay planned every step of this fee increase and reorganization of the searches prior to sending out the message about "rebalancing" from Bill Cobb. What I have yet to decide, is what I think the site will be like in late August when the new fees, new search structure (remember, they're including Half.com listings in the results), and decreased store and item listings really start to hit the site. I can't wait. I know I'll be on an eBay vacation that week. That many changes to a search function that is already broken half the time may just prove too much for the system to take.