eBay & Distributed Commerce

Looks like eBay is finally waking up to pushing distributed commerce forward. Apparently eBay is in talks with MySpace to provide an easy way for users to post things for sale (assuming the inverse would apply as well). Hopefully the good folks at my corporate alma mater can get past the notion that 'everything needs to come back to eBay.com'. If eBay really enabled a fully functional eCommerce widget/web service, where a seller can post and a buyer can purchase products all within a profile page (e.g. w/o leaving MySpace), they'd have something huge on their hands. If it's the typical affiliate application with a signpost leading back to eBay, well... it'll be something less than huge.

There's a real opportunity on the widget side for enabling a completely remote & distributable eCommerce experience. Cafepress, Qoop and Zazzle are leading the way here, as they begin introducing web services enabling individual users & sites like Rockyou and Photobucket to buy and sell photo and design-focused products. eBay is the natural winner in this space IF they make registration, trust and purchase completely remote from eBay.com the site. To date the company has pushed back on offering that through their web services due to concerns around fraud (which admittedly is a significant hurdle). But a deal with MySpace could be a fantastic motivator for making this happen and ultimately heralding a true entrance by eBay into the Web 2.0 world...