eBay plans to shut down its Half.com site next year and the head of Half.com will leave the company, closing an independent site for book, music and video sales that eBay once hoped would compete fiercely against Amazon.com.
However, eBay executives say the company has already added many of the most significant features of Half.com into its main eBay site and that the bulk of its sales of entertainment products occur on eBay.com. Half.com"s president Josh Kopelman said he plans to resign from the company next month and that Half.com"s approximately 65 employees in the Philadelphia-area will be offered jobs in other parts of eBay.
The changes represented a strategic adjustment in eBay"s sale of entertainment products, a growing category that pits the San Jose, Calif., company against another important online commerce player, Amazon.
More than a year ago, eBay talked about plans to merge Half.com with the main eBay site, taking some preliminary steps to do so, but it backed away from a full-blown combination of the two sites after complaints from some of its users. The company is now reviving those plans, but it won"t shutter the Half.com site until the end of next year, at which point it hopes Half.com sellers will move to eBay.