INFORMATION PRESENTATION AND MANAGEMENT IN AN ONLINE TRADING ENVIRONMENT

摘要

A method and apparatus for information presentation and management in an online trading environment are provided. According to one aspect of the present invention, person-to-person commerce over the Internet is facilitated by providing prospective buyers the ability to quickly preview items for sale. Images are harvested (455) from a plurality of sites based upon user-supplied information. The user-supplied information (420) includes descriptions of items for sale and locations from which images that are to be associated with the items can be retrieved. Thumbnail images are created (430) corresponding to the harvested images and are aggregated onto web page for presentation at a remote site (470). According to another aspect of the present invention, a user may submit a query to preview items for sale. After receiving the query, thumbnail images corresponding to items that satisfy the user query are displayed, each of the thumbnail images previously having been created based upon a user-specified image.