Ebay shuts down Half.com

Ebay shuts down Half.com(pages.half.ebay.com)

40 points by lnrdgmz 8 years ago | 16 comments

In case anyone was wondering what the service was:

"It was a web site where sellers offered items for sale at fixed prices. The items available on half.com are limited to books, textbooks, music, movies, video games, and video game consoles."[0]

It curiously is also the reason why a town in Oregon was named "Half.com" for an entire year in '99[1]. Man, those dot-com days...

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half.com

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halfway,_Oregon#Half.com_name_...

slackingoff2017 8 years ago | |

Hahaha that's the best 99 throwback I've seen a long time! Funny part is the web is just as influential as they thought it would be someday, just in a different way than many expected.

Seems like the hype cycle brings out all the crackpots. Once everything explodes businesses come in and start welding the pieces to existing processes. That's when most of the real potential is realized.

AdmiralAsshat 8 years ago |

Half.com was useful back when Ebay was more of a strict auction site. I remember using it circa 2001 or so to buy some rare PS1 games. I may have used it as recently as 2008 or so to buy textbooks. Now-a-days, most Ebay Sellers have "stores" anyway, where stuff is strictly on a Buy it Now price, so half.com is basically obsolete.

zongic 8 years ago | |

You are mistaken. eBay is good for unique items, but Half.com was better for books, CDs and DVDs.

eBay is worse than Half.com for the buyer:

- Search results on Half.com were selected by item, grouped by condition and then sorted. Search results on eBay are by keyword match only (and then sorted). You have to read every listing to see whether it's the right item and what condition it's in. - eBay shipping cost varies from seller to seller.

eBay is worse than Half.com for the seller:

- 30 cent per item per month listing fee for items beyond the first 50. Useless for large catalogs of slow-selling items. - Buyers can make a purchase and never pay.

VerDeTerre 8 years ago | |

I don't think it's entirely a matter of Half.com becoming obsolete because of changes to eBay; I suspect they lost out to Amazon Marketplace, which provides basically the same service with (I'd assume) a larger reach. I would often check both sites and see the same listings by the same sellers.

Pxtl 8 years ago | | |

Yup. My first textbooks I sold on half.com. My last textbooks I sold on Amazon marketplace.

philfrasty 8 years ago | |

I once got shouted at by an ebay service rep over the phone that you „cannot BUY“ on ebay (because I mentioned the word „buy“) ... well times have changed ...

iopuy 8 years ago |

Wow this was a name I hadn't heard in about 15 years. The cycle of life is real on the web. A business is born, thrives, and dies. Rest easy old friend.

khazhoux 8 years ago |

This was Josh Koppelman's startup, and he went on to co-found First Round Capital.

jacobkg 8 years ago |

Sad to hear it. I just started selling my old books on half.com and found the experience to be pretty great. I sold a couple hundred dollars worth of books in a month or two.

kilroy123 8 years ago | |

Same here. I would buy and re-sell all my textbooks back in college.

pitaa 8 years ago |

I am a bit surprised by this in some ways, but not in others. Half.com was a decent place for textbooks, but they've gone down hill in recent years. Ebay never seemed to do much development though; logging into my old seller dashboard I found it looked nearly the same as it did a decade ago- and it seemed old back then.

I imagine the half.com domain is worth quite a bit. I wonder what their plans for it are?

kingnothing 8 years ago |

Half.com was the best place to buy academic textbooks. I just used it a couple of weeks back actually for a copy of On Cooking.

tinus_hn 8 years ago |

They have some of the worst scores I have ever seen on consumer advocacy sites.

Seems like either they had a model that doesn't work in this day and age or just a site that tries to scam every last cent it can while it lasts.

whipoodle 8 years ago |

Too bad, I bought a lot of cheap books and years back, cheap DVDs there.

arosier 8 years ago |

RIP, just listed 10 books on half.com on Wednesday.