eBay Motors and eBay.com made a small but significant enhancement to the share functionality on listings this week. Until now, the only sharing capabilities provided on individual listings was via email. In an age of tweeting, online nudging, poking, digging and blogging it is nice to see that Facebook and Twitter have been added to the list.

I really believe that eBay’s (and any ecommerce platform’s for that matter) embrace, or lack thereof, of social media tools into its core marketplace will dictate its future relevancy. I wrote about it for the BBC Digital Revolution Blog back in August:

The advent of the social web has built upon that original eBay ideal – connecting people online – creating virtual villages that introduce individuals with similar likes and views to one another, regardless of geography. The ubiquitous aspects of the new social web, although perfectly positioned for the personality of the eBay community, actually currently goes directly against the existing makeup of the eBay Marketplace infrastructure (currently no external links or social media widgets are permitted on individual listings).

This new functionality is still very much one-way but it’s a significant step in beginning to realize the true capabilities of social sharing for ecommerce solutions.

Cheers,
RBH