New Gixen improvements

[mario]

From now on, whenever you log in to Gixen, prices of up to 20 snipes in your snipe list will be refreshed automatically with current eBay values. While this does not affect sniping itself in any way, it will improve user experience. This improvement is, for now, available to mirror subscribers only. Also, this change applies to desktop web interface only (but read further below about the mobile site).

Over the following few weeks I will look into whether this is possible to further improve by allowing mirror subscribers to manually refresh prices ad-hoc. In the meantime, prices will also continue to be updated by a background batch process periodically.

On the other side, work is in progress to release a new mobile version of Gixen website. The changes will be more than just modernizing the interface. Once this new mobile site is in place, it will contain all the same functionality as the desktop web interface, including the price updates as described above.

[Guest]

Mario, the link to this post in your announcement email is just http, missing the "s", so my browser gave me a security message and didn't want to let me log in until I corrected the URL.

[mario]

[Ramona]

How do I get on the list to receive announcement emails?

(I did receive the "Gixen outage" messages on 6 Feb, and I do receive "Auction end" and "Outbid" messages, but no other announcement emails)

[Gixen]

[Fuzzbean]

OK, maybe I'm totally wrong here. But my thought has always been that checking into an auction on eBay unnecessarily would register with eBay as "interest" in that auction, which would increase the chances of that auction being "featured" to some other person browsing eBay, and thus possibly increase my bidding competition. I suppose the chances or probabilities of affecting an auction's outcome that way are very remote, but is this thinking totally off track?

[islomane47]

[Jothenurse]

Hi Mario
I am sure this has been asked before, but have you ever considered a Gixen app? I would pay for this!! It would make it so much quicker and easier to use Gixen.
Thank you.

[kaz911]

Hi Mario,

could you make one more "feature" ?

It would be really nice if Gixen could mark auctions that have ended early or have been removed.

I think I'm up to about 20-30% of auctions I follow that either ends early (BIN or removed or ended on 1st bid) - but those auctions still look "live" in Gixen until the end time.

[koalastamps]

Hi Mario,

With the 20 snipe restriction for automatic updates, how will I know which of my snipes have been automatically updated at login, given that I often have more than 20 active at any time?

Thanks, Rod

[artytype79]

This seems very poorly worded.

It implies that people's bids will be changed from their maximum bid to a different amount (something totally disastrous for most bidders, surely?)

But then says it nothing will change.

And surely the prices shown for the high bid automatically update on log-in anyway?

So what would the changes actually do?

[mario]

Nothing like this will happen, that was never the meaning.

[mario]

[mario]

[im2bz2p345]

Mario, thank you for all of your hard work on improving Gixen and the overall user experience.

I am not sure why there are so many comments about confusion; I thought it was a fairly straight forward announcement. It may be confusing for folks that haven't used Gixen too long - but upd_a_ting pricing (i.e. the "Current" field when you login to Gixen to check your snipes) is NOT the same thing as upd_a_ting the "Bid" field (your desired snipe amount). To avoid confusion, perhaps screenshots would help going forward when making such announcements.

I am looking forward to see if you can incorporate the ad-hoc current price updates for mirror subscribers. That would be greatly beneficial. If that cannot be done, perhaps you can include a faint line of text that states when the last batch process ran to update the current price?

Again, thank you for all you do.

Regards,

~ Im2bz2p345

P.S. - I intentionally had to add a "_" symbols in the word "upd_a_ting" to avoid getting flagged for spam.

[Fuzzbean]

Not sure if my previous question was just too silly to deserve an answer, or if my implication relating it to the topic at hand was not clear.

I assume Gixen refreshing prices would be registered by eBay as "interest" in an auction, the same as if I clicked on that auction myself. And again, I assume eBay steers more people towards "hot" auctions than to auctions which garner little interest. Maybe one or all of my assumptions are just my fantasies.

----

Wow, I tried to post this with the word "up*ating" instead of "refreshing" and was informed that the word "*ating" is a spam word that is prohibited here. Even my fantasies did not anticipate that one!

[Fuzzbean]

I see I was not the first one to encounter the freaky spam rules.

[Cupid]

Fuzzbean,

Gixen has always periodically updated the auction price, all this is doing is additionally updating up to 20 of them when you log in to Gixen.

You'd have to ask Ebay how their algorithms work on their side with respect to promoting auctions, it might not be something they want you to know, or you might not be able to get through to anyone that knows, but I doubt anyone involved with Gixen will definitively know the answer.
_________________
Mark

[uncia2000]

[Cupid]

It's unlikely that the additional checks, over and above what Gixen was already doing in the background to update auction prices periodically, is going to make any difference to how Ebay promotes those auctions.

However, as I've stated above, this is really a question for Ebay to answer and not something Gixen can influence in terms of how their algorithms work.
_________________
Mark

[melidian]

Thank you *3!
Great and helpful.

[geo5050]

hi, the new look looked so much like the eBay place bid I got nervous
I had to go back and check if I was on gixen

Mario was that your intention
sorry, I think I like the older look

[Cupid]