eBay has acquired VUVOX (pronounced “view-vox”) to help further develop rich media capabilities in the eBay marketplace. At first glance, the integration of VUVOX into eBay is aimed at creating an enhanced customer experience using the personal media tools and applying them to listings and pages on ebay.com.
From the VUVOX website:
VUVOX is an easy to use production and instant sharing service that allows you to mix, create and blend your personal media – video, photos and music into rich personal expressions. VUVOX reflects your life.
It gives you the ability to:
– Share your personal media with your network of friends.
– Personalize and customize your media to your heart’s content.
– Locate and establish always-on feeds to your personal media.
– Take visual blogging and personal expression to the next level.
The VUVOX team will be hired as eBay employees and will join the design and development teams on the main Marketplaces campus in San Jose.
I didn’t hear mention of VUVOX during the eBay Developer’s Conference last week but rich media capabilities were definitely top of mind. In addition to speaking with flash developers and Interactive TV marketers, I also spent some quality time with the vzaar team in their booth at eBay Live! vzaar launched its free video service for eBay listings in the US back in March.
With vzaar already integrating thousands of videos onto the eBay platform for the past 3+ months, I’m interested to see the ways in which VUVOX will compliment those efforts.
Regardless, I think it’s great to see rich media capabilities being incorporated into the marketplace. If nothing else, it represents another way in which information can be relayed to a potential buyer and can only help determine whether or not they’ll follow-through on a given transaction.
Cheers,
RBH