[mario]

We'll see what to do when we get more information on this. At this point it's too soon to know how serious this is. It's a test. If eBay were sure what works best for them there wouldn't be a test. So far I haven't seen this test being conducted on any listing, but it's probably coming.

In general, sniping is still useful even with bid extensions. It's much better to enter a bid late than reveal one's bid hours or days before.

The best strategy will, however, depend on details. It may be to repeatedly bid and increment one's bid to the maximum. It may be to simply place a bid 2 minutes and one second before auction end.

I will sure be looking at this very carefully, and at all the available research. There is no question that this has a potential to drive users away from sniping. Gixen is inexpensive, so hopefully users will still see value in it, but we'll see.