In the last year, Ebay had made some major changes. first, discounted post Office shipments paid at Paypal. Multiple purchases all paid by one transaction on Paypal. No more lost data from Sun/Java data service. The secret is that their employees also use ebay, and they know what ebay software needs additional services.

In the mean time Yahoo is struggling to find partners. Their own employees do not use Yahoo portal. Most of their services are abandoned by their own employees. MSN suffers the same fate; so merger will not change their luck. Only active participation by their own employees will help.

Its hard to build a community on any website. People don't have the time to help you build a community. Only your own employees can make your website better? When they start to use it, they know what is missing?

We use Tuxmachines.org and have to help build a community(We have some famous members). Comments, blog and forum participation with kindness to other contributors is how to build up our community. Ask for feeds of important changes in Linux advancement? Have fun meeting other characters?

Will a welcome banner "We love Tuxmachines.org community" help? For the past few years, Tuxmachines.org had fewer coarse language and insults to members; because we are friendlier than all other websites?