EBay Plans to Shut Down Half.com Unit (Whoa!)

Could or would someone explain this to me... I have seen the same expression on a number of threads and I don't have any idea what it means...

A while back ... six months to a year ago? ... someone (I wish I could remember who) started a very bizarre thread about some utterly meaningless issue. There's nothing special about that, but what was special was this person's less-than-perfect command of the English language (and/or his drunkenness). He used an amusingly odd syntax, with even more amusingly bad spelling. Needless to say, the thread immediately turned into a running joke, and at some point, he got so exasperated at being made fun of that he posted a response that included the line "This is VEY SERIES! It's HUGH!" And, well ... that was the point of no return.

So now, whenever anyone posts a thread that isn't deadly serious (like this one) or is especially tinfoily ("Auugh! My cable system just ran an Emergency Alert System Test! The terrorists are coming!"), people post responses saying "This is vey series!" either as cheeky fun or as a coded insult to the thread starter's exaggeration.

I wish someone could find the original thread.

Man, this sucks....every CD I have bought for the last few years has been from half.com....awesome prices, and no hagling.

I did a little digging, and confirmed that Half.com was indeed successful as an independent company; I don't know if had yet turned a profit when eBay bought them, but they were spot-on with their business plan and would definitely have become profitable by the date they'd always expected to. The creator/owner simply decided to take the easy money and run when eBay showed up with a big check.

What seems to be the problem, in eBay's eyes, is that Half.com is cannibalizing eBay sales, and they usually make more money when a seller posts his/her items on eBay than if he/she posts them to Half.com.

So, IMHO, it's pretty much inevitable that someone else will create a Half.com clone as soon as eBay kills it off. It's one of the rare dotcom ideas that works.

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