Relentless Simplicity - The Bonanza Blog

Treat Your Mother Right, or else

This Sunday, May 12th, most will be celebrating a very special lady in their lives, their mother. Moms are the glue that hold our families together. They are the anchor that keep us grounded. Moms bring calm and reasoning in situations that would otherwise send you in a different direction. Thank you to all of our mothers for everything you do. May your day be filled with beautiful flowers, a delicious breakfast in bed, and lots of love. Now a word of advice from Mr. T.

Planned Downtime Friday 12am - UPDATES

Our web hosts are going to be taking our servers on an exciting adventure this upcoming Friday morning, as they relocate their facilities north into Seattle. They have estimated that the migration will begin at 12am PST on Friday morning and be complete by 4am PST Friday.

The site will be unavailable during this window, but should be up and running by 4am PST. Thanks for your understanding.

Update 6:35am PST

The server techs are still working on getting systems operational. We have half our normal web servers online, as well as our database, but they've still got quite a bit to do to get things running normally again. Current page loads are slow whilst they scramble to get the rest of the web servers (and all the behind-the-scenes servers) functional. Though they don't have an official estimate on their completion time yet, I'd wager it's at least 1-2 hours off. Stay tuned...

Update 7:35am PST

Getting closer to normal. All web servers are back online, as well as search. Still working on getting our behind-the-scenes servers running, so stuff like long batch edits won't work yet. Rate of progress seems to be increasing though, hopefully we can be fully operational within the next hour.

Update 8:07am PST

Alright, everything appears to be back online and fully functional! If you find anything out of the ordinary from this point forward, please let support know and we'll address it as quickly as possible. Thanks for your patience.

Evaluating the Forums Experience

Over the last four years, almost every page of Bonanza has gone through one, two, or more evolutions as we continually get feedback to improve what we have to offer. The Bonanza forums have been the exception to this -- they still look, feel, and offer an experience that is largely unchanged since Bonanza's earliest days.

This is partially because we think the forums have delivered a ton of value to users in their current form. But as time passes, we have seen more and more cracks in the forums' ability to deliver on the goals we have in mind for them:

Upbeat, positive introduction to Bonanza for new users
Place to swap tips on how to maximize selling effectiveness
Free opportunity promote booth
Location to keep users up-to-date on what's new on Bonanza without all the overhead of blogging

Since our launch, we have witnessed sites like Etsy significantly cut back on the breadth of topics covered in their forums, while newer sites like Addoway, Copious, and the like don't even offer forums at all. I'm not aware of any credible marketplace launched in the last three years that even has forums.

For our part, we have always had a soft spot for the relationships our forums help to build in our community. We see that 99% of what goes on in our forums is positive friendships being built and productive ideas being exchanged. But that remaining 1% is the reason why forums seems to be going extinct elsewhere on the Internet -- they provide a perfect medium for undermining the platform that hosts them with cynicism and demagoguery (not to mention the ire stirred when a user feels they or their topic are being unfairly moderated).

As we try to figure out the best path forward to maximize the positive characteristics of our forums and minimize the negative ones, we'd appreciate your feedback on how you use the forums, and what impact they have on your selling effectiveness. We've setup a survey we'll be running for about a week to collect ideas:

http://questionpro.com/t/AJ8PvZPbSy

It shouldn't take more than 5 mins to complete. If you have a chance, please click through and let us know what you see as working well and poorly about the Bonanza forums. We'll use your feedback to help us shape our ongoing plan in the weeks to come.

New features, updates, fixes

If you visit our changelist on Bonanza then you are already aware of our often updated programming journal which lists bug fixes, new updates and features as they go live. So if you want to be "in the know," make sure and keep an eye on that page. Here are some recent items to note:

"Show larger images in search results"

This one has not been added to our changelist yet but it is just about ready to be launched. Shoppers will now be treated to an even more appealing search with much larger images. Make sure the images you are using for your main image are tops. Great pictures sell items so be sure to use all of the tools available to you to make that happen, including our background burner!

"Add magic brush to Background Burner"

If you have not used our background burner recently then now would be a good time to get reacquanted with this lovely photo editing tool. We have added new features and continue to optimize this Bonanza exclusive tool. Rumor has it that Bill is going to lift the already low fees for our background burner and make it free for everyone to use! What is this Woodstock?

"Add better tracking of checkout process to ensure that errors never occur"

Having checkout perfect is a constant goal of ours. The insight that we continue to gain from Bonanza sellers and also from your buyers is invaluable. With live support chat we can now chat with your buyers as they are moving through checkout and identify areas where we can improve the process. Setting up tracking of checkout is one way we are being proactive to ensure a smooth checkout process.

"Allow users to review products"

Bill touched on this feature briefly on his blog post in March. We are starting to collect product reviews that we plan on using in the near future. Stay tuned for a more thorough explanation as this feature develops.

"Allow Gold members to create coupons to retain past buyers"

Not to be confused with coupons that all members have access to. This newly added feature will give Gold subscribing members the ability to send targeted coupons directly to their buyers. Gold and Platinum members will see this option in the area where they currently create coupons.

"Implement Twitter Tweet Images"

Once again we asked you what feature you would most like to see on Bonanza and you voted for Twitter Tweet Images. We are happy to announce that we have fully implemented Twitter Tweet Images on our side and are just awaiting final approval from Twitter. Expect this feature to be live soon.

If you have not yet, make sure you click on the "Feedback" link at the footer of every page on Bonanza to vote for your most wanted features.

Find items that interest you with a Saved Item Search

When is the last time you used our feature Saved Item Search? Homie say what? You mean you have never heard of this feature? Have no idea where to find this gem? Well then this here blog is dedicated to you my good friend (aka "homie").

A Saved Item Search will automatically keep you updated on a daily or weekly basis when new items are posted to Bonanza. First created for buyers to shop, we found that many sellers use this tool to keep a pulse on newly listed items in categories that interest them. Setting up a saved item search is easy peasy. To do so, go to your "My Bonanza" page and locate and click on the "Saved Searches" icon.

Once on your Saved Item Searches page you can click on the "Create a new saved search" icon to get started. If you have existing searches you can also manage them from this page.

This is where you will enter the title of your search (this is for your reference and will not influence the search results).
Here is where you would enter your search terms (i.e. "Civil War"). You can edit this at any time to get different results.
You can narrow down the results by selecting a specific category. Leaving this field blank will net you more results but they may not be as relevant.
You can specify if the seller of the item has over 50 feedbacks. Leaving this field blank will net you more results.
This field will only show you new items that have a specified quantity.
Select this option to make sure you get newly listed items that ship to your country.
You can set up a price filter here though it might be a good idea to not select this option as many sellers accept offers.
Here you can select to receive new alerts daily or weekly.
Click on the "Create" button to create the alert.
Below this area is where you will see an example of your saved item search. This is helpful so you can adjust your search to get the most relevant results.

You can remove or edit Saved Item Searches at anytime on this page. You can also create as many as you like.

Supplementary Amazon Results

I wanted to give a heads up about a new featured we launched yesterday in Bonanza search: the ability to supplement search results with Amazon products when Bonanza has little to no inventory that matches a particular search query.

This feature is designed to fix the situation when a buyer comes to Bonanza and wants to find something that is ordinary, or a commodity (things we don't specialize in). For example, if a user comes to Bonanza seeking accessories for "Halo 4 limited edition," they would find just one lonely result:

This is not a surprise. As has been established, new video games are not an area that Bonanza is trying to excel at, so the results for a query like this are limited. And given the limited quality of our results, we can either leave the buyer with the impression that Bonanza was the wrong place to search, or we can show that even when we are short on results, we can still help them find exactly what they seek. Amazon to the rescue:

A couple key points about this implementation should be noted:

Amazon results are not shown when we have more than 20 results for the query the user made (90%+ of searches have thousands of results...a search with 20 results or less happens most often when searching for software, video games, and other items that are ordinary commodities
The results are called out in their own box and marked as Amazon so there is no confusion about the source of these listings
If the Amazon results are more expensive than the Bonanza result, the buyer has the confidence they need to buy from Bonanza, even in cases where we have a small number of items available

Amazon themselves use a similar mechanism when a user searches for an item they don't specialize in. The Amazon Product Listing program allows third party merchants to pay for links on Amazon to their items, so Amazon can always leave the buyer feeling like if they don't have the item, they can refer the buyer to a site that does. We share the opinion that a handful of results from Amazon is a better user experience than searching on Bonanza and coming up with no suitable result. Buyers who have this experience tend to be buyers who will never return.

In general, it's certainly in our best interests to show the best of Bonanza's 4 million item catalog. But in the cases where our catalog doesn't cover exactly what it is the buyer is looking for, we feel the next best thing is to leave the buyer with a positive impression that will keep Bonanza top-of-mind for them the next time they need to find an item that doesn't have a barcode printed on it.

User Story from Kabbage.com

This short user anecdote sent to us recently from Kabbage.com, about a Bonanza seller who had tried Kabbage. I thought it sweet:

My name is Mohamed Rachadi and I am the owner of Morach Regulatory. Our main selling focus is pest management supplies.

I started in the ecommerce world in 2002. We were an import and export company and selling online internationally made the most sense for us economically. At first it we sold our products through our own website and now we sell on Bonanza, eBay, and Amazon.

I first learned about Kabbage through an ad I saw on Bonanza. I thought this was a very creative idea! I applied and was approved in 5 minutes. We have to be very competitive with our pricing in this business and Kabbage has afforded us the opportunity to do that.

It has been very easy to do business with Kabbage. I appreciate how quickly the funds are made available to you. No one else is capable of giving you funds so quickly. I know that with the help from Kabbage my business will meet our goal of a 40% profit margin!

New Focus, New Opportunity. UPDATE

Update Monday Afternoon

Our landlord called and said that he has been unable to get clearance for us to house a limitless number of sick and infirm animals, so it looks like we'll have to put the BPE on hold for now. Thanks to everyone who sent in their animals, we will get them mailed back to you ASAP.

Seems like we always have such rotten luck with the new features we launch on April 1...

Original Post as Follows

Successful business is built on identifying opportunity and becoming the leader of a niche.

When it comes to Bonanza, this can be difficult, because our sellers span such a wide breadth of categories that picking one niche to focus on can be challenging. But after talking with family and friends, we've realized there is one crucial niche that no business has yet to fill.

Today we're excited to announce that we will be closing down the Fashion Exchange, and replacing it with the Bonanza Pet Exchange (BPE). We're confident that the BPE will offer an experience unlike any other you'll find online.

Cocker Spaniel to your doorstep, packaged with love & care

What To Do When Pets Become Pests?

Every year, millions of pets are given up for adoption for a variety of reasons: sometimes the owner is moving, sometimes the pet's maintenance is too expensive, sometimes it causes allergies.

But often times, the pet just loses its novelty. What is an owner supposed to do when the same hamster that put on such a show at the pet store gets home, and suddenly wants to do nothing more than sleep in a burrow all day?

Another common problem is old pets. These indiscriminately peeing, sluggish animals often bear little resemblance to the plucky pet you picked from the adoption center 10 years ago.

You don't want a pet that stinks, squawks, or salivates on the sofa. We'll take care of matching your pet to the perfect new owner (or lab). Depending on the type of pet, you may earn up to $18 for your trouble. Oh and did we mention that we'll cover your shipping costs for free?

"If It Doesn't Bite, It's Probably Alright"

We want to build the Bonanza Pet Exchange into the top destination for all unwanted pets. As of launch, we are starting with two dogs that wore out their welcome amongst Bonanza friends and family. But with pets, like other goods -- we want to have a broad selection of "everything but the ordinary." Whether you've got a fruit bat, naked cat, or sewer rat -- it's suddenly simple to turn your weird animal into quick cash.

Is It Safe to Ship My Pet?

Well, you're not going to walk it here, are you?

Try it Today

Some pets become as close to you as family. Don't trade these pets for cash. But for the rest of the pets out there... try the Bonanza Pet Exchange today!

The Bonanza Catalog

This morning we're unveiling a new opportunity for our sellers to earn tokens: helping to build our item catalog.

What is the Bonanza Catalog?

Amazon has built one of the most valuable assets in all the ecommerce land by cataloging all of their products, such that reviews & smart product recommendations are possible. The challenge with bringing this powerful sales booster to a marketplace like Bonanza is that most of our products don't have a unique identifier. Until now, to add an item to a product catalog, a marketplace would need an ISBN, UPC, or MPN. However, after several months of programming, we have developed & patented a means by which a product catalog can be applied to "long tail" (i.e., rare) merchandise like that sold on Bonanza.

The product catalog is not yet visible on Bonanza since we are still working to flesh it out, but we are hoping to present it within the few weeks.

What is the Catalog Builder?

One data point needed to catalog items is the manufacturer of the item. While our servers are pretty smart (and getting smarter) at figuring out manufacturers, we still need some human assistance to pick out the company that created a certain product. Enter the Catalog Builder. It accepts suggestions from our community that help us get the data we need to place an item into the product catalog. And you earn a token for every item whose manufacturer you correctly identify. Score!

The Catalog Builder is now linked from our "Community" dropdown (visible to logged in users). The page has an FAQ and other instructions to help explain the nitty gritty on how you can use it to earn tokens. Happy cataloging!

A Million Users Isn't Cool. You Know What's Cool? A Billion Users.

Alright Bonanzle Action Club members, it's time to step it up! Yeah, we are approaching one million users, but you know what would be cooler? A billion users. Can you help us make it happen? Can you even remember the BAC? Seems like yesterday but that was now over four years ago. Who can remember Bizzy and her grand entrance (and exit)? Good times indeed!

We are literally days away from welcoming our one millionth user which is freaking awesome! We are thrilled to have hit this milestone in such short time. Reaching this number is only possible thanks to our amazing community who continue to organize and carry out events like the "Millionth User" promotion (follow the link to sign up now, it is not too late!). Our one millionth user will be given a welcome that can only rival what it must feel like to win the lottery. There are a "Bonanza" of gifts that will accompany salutations for this one lucky user!

Thank you to all past, present, and future Bonanzlers! Because of you we are. Your excitement and adoption of Bonanza are what motivates us every single day. We see your success on Bonanza and use that as motivation to be better for you. Thank you to all past, present, and future desk-jockey's who have worked hard behind the scenes to keep Bonanza humming along and moving forward. Special thanks to Jordan (one of our original founders) for not only being the first person to code Bonanzle/Bonanza but for sticking it out every week while holding down a full time job! You not only helped shape Bonanza to what it is today but you helped keep Bill safe from early day burnouts. Thank you to Bill especially for even thinking of Bonanza. If you hadn't, I might be on some professional ping pong tour instead of this gig! Thank you investors for your guidance and support, and for not questioning whether we're ordering too many snacks from Costco... wait, come to think of it, we've never ordered any snacks from Costco. No beer in the fridge either, for that matter. What else do they say when they win the Oscar? I'd like to also thank our producer and the amazing cast? And my mother, and my wife, for sticking with me during all the ups and downs? And then we list 100 random names of people we'd like to thank that you've never heard of? Anyway, you get the picture. Super thankful, that's us.

Lets do this again real soon!

Bonanza Circa 2008

Bonanza Circa 2010

Bonanza Circa NOW

Lexity Update and Feedback-Voted Features

A couple quick updates we thought you may want to be in the loop about:

"New" Lexity Features

Well, it might not quite be "new" anymore (launched a couple weeks ago), but in My Bonanza, there is a menu item called “View buyers in real time” from our friends at Lexity. Lexity recently enhanced this feature with several more tabs so you get lots more info to help you run your business:

Insights tab - gives you analysis of your store's traffic and makes helpful suggestions.
Traffic & Revenue tab - shows you graphically the sources of traffic to your site such as Google, Facebook, Pinterest, and more. You can use checkboxes to turn off and on different sources.
History tab –provides you a graph of your traffic over the last 12 months, which you can adjust for the time period you want.

One note is that you’ll need to click on these new tabs and typically wait 48 hours for the information to be refreshed. Go check it out..!

From Our Feedback Site...

Since launching our new feedback.bonanza.com a few weeks ago, we've had a plethora of terrific suggestions submitted. In the weeks since launch, we've already implemented the following top-voted features:

Submit any value for item traits on the new item form, have those traits submitted to Google Shopping
Add USPS first class parcel for packages under 13 oz
Show transaction count next to feedback on product detail page (going live next site update)
Give Google+ share button alongside other buttons (going live within next week)

We are also currently investigating how we might allow merchants to accept credit cards directly (another top-voted feature).

Thanks to everyone who has participated in submitting ideas and voting, we love to be able to add new features that are important to our community, and this site has been a very exciting way for us to keep the pulse of what's top-of-mind with all of you. Keep the great ideas coming!

Ecommercebytes 2013 Results Announced, Plus New Features

The results are in for the 2013 edition of the Ecommercebytes Sellers Choice awards, and with more than 11,000 sellers voting (!), Bonanza has won the "Ease of Use" category for the second consecutive year! We could not be more thrilled with this result, and we deeply appreciate those in our community that took the time to vote for us. Bonanza again had a very strong showing in all categories, ranking 3rd in "overall recommendation" and 4th in "communication," "seller support," and "profitability." These results are all the more encouraging when one considers that more than 40% of all survey respondents had experience using Bonanza, which indicates that our appeal isn't only limited to a small number of niche sellers, as is the case with some of the other marketplaces that ranked highly on the list.

Lessons Learned

One of our favorite things about the Sellers Choice awards is that it gives us the opportunity to get honest (sometimes brutally honest) feedback about what we are doing well and what we need to improve. This year, there were two primary themes amongst those that offered ideas for improvement: (1) Bonanza should try to do more to raise brand awareness amongst buyers ("do more advertising") and (2) Bonanza must remain mindful of the balance between adding new functionality and improving existing functionality.

I'm excited to announce that as of today we are updating Bonanza to improve our performance in both of these areas.

Advertising for Advertising

One of the themes that we saw often in the survey (and we hear frequently in our forums) is that Bonanza needs to raise its brand profile through more advertising. We couldn't agree more. The challenge to executing this idea has always been the high cost involved in doing any high-scale advertising campaign. In reviewing how other marketplaces accomplish this goal, we were intrigued by Ruby Lane's mandatory $30 monthly fee to subsidize advertising. This seems like a very effective way to raise the money to cover the high cost of buying ads, but the idea of forcing all sellers to pay $30 monthly simply to keep a store open was... less exciting. So instead, we've decided to take a page out of Amazon's book, and subsidize our advertising costs through a contextual ad on our product detail page.

We expect that this ad will generate a new stream of revenue that should be sufficient for us to finally break into print advertising (particularly in magazines), while having a relatively minimal impact on the buyer experience, judging by the presence of similar ads that have been user-tested and are currently present on both Amazon and eBay. And, as is the case on the other marketplaces, we will actively filter out any potential ads that could be competitive with Bonanza or reflect poorly on the Bonanza brand. If you see any ads that you think don't belong on Bonanza, please take a screenshot of them and email support -- we will address them immediately.

Of course, this being Bonanza, we still didn't want these ads to be mandatory. So for our subscribing members, we are offering the opportunity to either disable ads (for silver members) or to use the advertising box to display items from their store (for gold members). The contents of this box can be adjusted by visiting the edit booth page, then selecting "Edit Booth Options" -> "Booth Appearance". It is the last option on the page.

For users that choose to advertise their own items, we will automatically select a similar item from their booth to show, but there is also a link on each item page that allows the seller to manually choose which item they want to appear in the box. It can even be an item from another seller's booth if you want to collaborate between yourself and your selling friends.

That said, we hope that even our gold/platinum sellers will consider the possibility of leaving the default Google Adsense ads enabled -- this revenue will be our main source of funds used to buy advertising, and we have plans in the pipeline to begin documenting the various places in which we have purchased advertising, so that we can be as transparent as possible in how we're using our ad revenue to buy more exposure for the Bonanza marketplace as a whole.

Balancing New Features and Improvements to Old

The other new update we're launching today is a feedback section where our users can submit ideas to us and vote on the ideas that are most important to them. Old timers may recognize this idea as being very similar to the "Next Up Improvements" list we used to feature on our help pages. Some of the key differences between our new feedback section and the old one:

Users can now directly submit their own ideas for voting, rather than submitting the idea to support and waiting for support to get around to posting the idea for vote
Users can now cast between 1 and 3 votes for a given idea, depending on how important it is to them
Much easier for Bonanza staff to give progress updates on the ideas that we will be implementing, and/or explain why a given idea would be difficult to implement
Easy to sort to see the features that have are currently the most popular amongst voters

Our inspiration for the implementation was Zendesk's feature request area, which does a supremely good job of providing a tool for Zendesk to gauge which potential features or bugfixes would have the biggest positive impact on their community.

The hope with this new feedback area (now linked prominently in the footer of every page on the site) is that if there is some bug fix or new feature that would be very useful to our community, that we will be aware of it as soon as possible. Of course, this doesn't change the reality that all potential features and fixes still need to be balanced with our business' overall objectives. Some improvements are fast & easy, but many are very time consuming, so we need to balance that amongst our objectives. But my hunch is that if a feature is overwhelmingly popular, more often than not we'll find the time to address it.

With this new feedback area, I predict that we will be able to better align our users' goals with our own, and extend Bonanza's lead on the competition when it comes to great ease-of-use.

Suggestions are now open

It has been a week or two since our last site update, and as regulars know, stuff gets done fast at Bonanza. Do let us know if you see any peculiarities in our newly available offerings, and we'll get them addressed as quickly as possible. Thanks for continuing to vote Bonanza as your favorite marketplace, we couldn't be more excited about the new advertising and user-requested improvements that are in store for us in 2013!

Nifty NIF Updates

We've just added three new features to the new item form (NIF) that are worth a quick blog.

1. More room for your pictures

The standard size for Bonanza images is increasing from 125x155 pixels to 185x155 pixels. This change came about as we have seen the availability of broadband internet explode over the last couple years, to the point where it's now possible to feature much larger pictures than would have been practical back when 20% of our users accessed the site via dialup connection.

We've also changed the default cropping mechanism so that your entire picture will fit in the 185x155 window, even if it is horizontal (previously, if a picture had the wrong dimensions, we would cut off the edges). This means that even if you've cropped your pictures specifically to the old 125x155 dimensions, you will still have the entirety of your picture visible (with white borders) in the new image dimensions.

2. Upload pictures en masse

Feel the surge of productivity as it flows through your veins, as six pictures upload all together

Uploading six pictures one-by-one is no pleasure. So as of today, we are allowing you to select multiple pictures from your computer, drag them onto the new item form, and have all images get uploaded in a batch. For those that use the NIF regularly, we think this should speed up the listing process significantly over the previous system.

3. Guess your category

Another painful part of listing a new item is sifting through three, four, or even five category dropdowns before you've found the right category for your item. So we have launched a new category guesser that will analyze your item title and make up to 10 suggestions on the best category for your item. When we guess right, you can have your item categorized in about 3 seconds rather than the 30 seconds it would have taken before. And when we guess wrong, we can still use that data to make the category guesser get smarter and smarter over time.

Along with the recent speedups we've made in the CSV importer, plus improvements to how eBay imports are handled, we hope the net result will be a significantly listing process no matter which method you're using to add your items.

Advertise your business for free

Since the beginning of Bonanza (then Bonanzle), providing a first class support experience has been a priority. Fortunately for us, we have a Founder/CEO who agrees and backs it up with every imaginable tool and resource that our support team desires (still waiting on the taco truck we requested a week ago!). We also have solid examples of world class customer support right here in the Pacific Northwest (Costco, Nordstroms, Starbucks, and Amazon) that we can draw on for examples on how to best serve our customers.

We receive about 10,000+ new opportunities (aka support requests) to interact with our customers every month. The majority of our requests are via email (Bonanza"Contact" page) but some are also via our Live Chat Support. We also receive requests via our numerous social networks (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc). That is quite a bit of opportunities to interact with our customers. Most of them are not "on the fence" customers or people who we have to convince to visit Bonanza, they are already here.

Having that sort of access to our customers is a prime opportunity to advertise our business. We may not be pushing specific services or items, but by providing the best customer service we can, we are building trust with our customers and giving them confidence in our product. We are also creating advocates that will share their experience with others who may have a need for Bonanza in one way or another. The advertisement we receive from our customer service team is not the type of advertisement you can buy but if you could it would be super expensive!

So keep in mind that every time you answer an email, send a package, upload a tracking number, etc. that you are advertising your business. Seize those opportunities and provide your customers with the best service you can and you will be rewarded with happy buyers. Happy buyers come back and are more apt to tell their family and friends about your exceptional service.

What steps have you taken to go above and beyond when serving your customers?

Best of 2012

Well it's not really a vote for a contest or anything like that. I just thought it would be fun to review some of our changes from 2012 and see which top 3 features mattered to you most. Below is a list of some of the more major enhancements we have made this year. To get the full list, go to our changelist page (aka, "What's new"). You can "vote" by replying to the blog in the comments section with your top 3 choices from the year. One thing I noticed while compiling this list is that our programming team could never be accused of being slackers. There are a bunch of other improvements that would invoke sleep if I listed them, but they are necessary to run a site ( aka, update hardware <yawn>, etc), as well as a ton of bug fixes, etc. So nice work team GSD!

Top features from 2012:

Launch the Background Burner
Add custom signature option for Bmails
Add ability for buyers to leave feedback without logging in
Add mobile site
Add ability to mouse over item image to zoom
Add Lexity Live to stat pages
Add new rewards for tokens (i.e. massage by Helga)
Add Pinterest for pinners
Enable seller reviews to show on Google Shopping
Add better SKU integration for inventory management
Launch advertising platform
Launch new/old home page
Add online support chat for subscribing members
Add online support chat for buyers during checkout
Add Kabbage
Add Infiniscroll to booths
Add Infiniscroll to Hand Picked Lists

Let's also take a moment to honor those features that we lost this year.

Remove personality questions/links for the time being
Replace "Fave" buttons with Pinterest buttons
Suspend Rushes
Remove fashion centered home page

Finally, we have some internal awards to hand out to recognize those who deserve such honors:

Top ping pong player of 2012: Jordan (relentless with class).
Most responsible person of 2012: Bill (he became a homeowner).
Rookie of the year? Tie between Eric (programming) and Keilani (support team)
Wordsmith of the year? Jeremy Kwanukkamas
Best prank of the year? Nico Scout, Hana, Jordan, and Mark (pranked Bill with fake Nico scout gift)
Best vacation of the year? Judy's Road trip and Facebook posts
Most patient support team member? Angelica
Best community ever! The Bonanza Community, duh!

Have a great New Years Eve celebration everyone. We are very thankful to have such a wonderful community and sincerely appreciate you. We are looking forward to an amazing 2013!