is reporting today that eBay has reached out to the shopping community using Communispace to create a Shopping Community.

This is an invitation only offer and apparently refers to special offers and prizes and will be limited to 500 users.

While buyers and sellers have been offering their comments for years, this appears to be a much more direct effort by eBay to communicate with buyers and learn what is really happening.

While it is important to do this, I wrote a blog on one of my other blog sites regarding who actually owns the buyer information. As it turns out in most cases it is the selling venue, and not the actual seller. What this basically means is that in an effort such the one eBay has embarked on, the information will be used by the site and not really provided to the actual sellers, at least not in it's entirety, and then only the information they want you to see.