Half.com was useful back when Ebay was more of a strict auction site. I remember using it circa 2001 or so to buy some rare PS1 games. I may have used it as recently as 2008 or so to buy textbooks. Now-a-days, most Ebay Sellers have "stores" anyway, where stuff is strictly on a Buy it Now price, so half.com is basically obsolete.
Wow this was a name I hadn't heard in about 15 years. The cycle of life is real on the web. A business is born, thrives, and dies. Rest easy old friend.
This was Josh Koppelman's startup, and he went on to co-found First Round Capital.
Sad to hear it. I just started selling my old books on half.com and found the experience to be pretty great. I sold a couple hundred dollars worth of books in a month or two.
I am a bit surprised by this in some ways, but not in others. Half.com was a decent place for textbooks, but they've gone down hill in recent years. Ebay never seemed to do much development though; logging into my old seller dashboard I found it looked nearly the same as it did a decade ago- and it seemed old back then.
I imagine the half.com domain is worth quite a bit. I wonder what their plans for it are?
Half.com was the best place to buy academic textbooks. I just used it a couple of weeks back actually for a copy of On Cooking.
They have some of the worst scores I have ever seen on consumer advocacy sites.
Seems like either they had a model that doesn't work in this day and age or just a site that tries to scam every last cent it can while it lasts.
Too bad, I bought a lot of cheap books and years back, cheap DVDs there.
RIP, just listed 10 books on half.com on Wednesday.
In case anyone was wondering what the service was:
"It was a web site where sellers offered items for sale at fixed prices. The items available on half.com are limited to books, textbooks, music, movies, video games, and video game consoles."[0]
It curiously is also the reason why a town in Oregon was named "Half.com" for an entire year in '99[1]. Man, those dot-com days...
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half.com
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halfway,_Oregon#Half.com_name_...