The eBay Social Shopping(eSS) gadget is a Google Friend Connect (GFC) gadget. it enables you to instantly add a "social shopping" functionality to your Web site. The eSS gadget re-creates most of the eBay buying experience inside of a gadget, allowing your site users to share their shopping experiences with friends. For instance, users of your site can recommend eBay items to friends and browse their friends' recommendations from within the single gadget. In addition to providing core functionality such as searching the entire eBay site, your site users can also view item details at a glance and watch items without having to go to the eBay site directly. As a site owner, you can configure the gadget with keywords and eSS will customize eBay recommendations and listings to suit your site content.

Any website can be made GFC enabled, and hence can use this gadget. You can put this gadget on your personal website, eBay store, blog, and anything else that you can think of. Find more information about Google Friend Connect and how to make your website GFC enabled at http://www.google.com/friendconnect/

In its early alpha version, eSS gadget requires a minimum width of 300 pixels and a height of 350 pixels.

See the eSS gadget in action at http://ess.ebay.com/demo.html. Please contact us at ess@ebay.com for help.

You should see the following page when you select the eSS gadget in GFC directory. It's a 3 easy step process. Select the gadget width (minimum 300px), generate code and copy this code in any html page of your website.

Once you've copied the generated code in the html page of your site, you will have the eSS gadget up and running instantly. Now, you can configure eSS by specifying keywords related to your site.

To configure the eSS Gadget, please sign in to your site and click on the "settings" link at the top-right corner of the gadget. Under the site description section, you can specify a maximum of three keywords that best describe your site. You can have multi text word for each keyword, such as "Canon Camera" or "Sony DVD Player". The eSS gadget will use these keywords to find related items on eBay and show case them on your site. If you are not a site owner, you will not be able to see and configure the keywords settings for the eSS gadget.

Permissions settings are per user of the gadget and can be configured as per user's needs. By default, all permissions are set to "self" only, so nobody can see items you are watching, bidding, selling or have bought.

Linking your eBay account

When you sign in for the very first time to the website having the eSS gadget, you will be asked to link your eBay account. However, this is a one time process across all sites using the eSS gadget, and you will never have to link your eBay account again.

Tracking your eBay activities

Once you have linked your eBay account, you will able to track your eBay activities from the eSS gadget.

Sharing your eBay activities

You can share your eBay activities by changing "watching", "bidding", "won" or "selling" permissions from the gadget settings.

Friends and site members' activities

You can see what your friends and site members are doing on eBay.

See items at a glance, and watch or recommend items to friends

You can see item at a glance by clicking on the item. If you think it's a good deal, you can watch the item from within the gadget. If you think your friends might like the item, you can recommend the item to your friends.

Track received and sent recommendations

You can see what your friends are recommending, and track your sent recommendations

Search items on eBay

"The Items just for you" pane shows items related to the site you are on. If you do not like recommendations, you can search eBay from within the gadget.

• The eSS gadget requires minimum width of 300 pixels. Maximum width can be anything, but you will get the best look between 300 and 350 pixels.