Here is a quick core dump of what was covered at an 11am press conference held for bloggers:

 

1. There will be a new Diamond PowerSeller tier. It will be for sellers who sell $500,000 a month worth of stuff, and who have a minimum of 4.8 DSR across the board. "It's for those sellers who are consistently delivering outstanding goods and services to our buyers," said Dinesh Lathi of eBay.

 

2. The new 20 percent seller discount tier will be in addition to the current 5 percent and 15 percent discount tiers, not replacing it. So there are three tiers: 5% if you have a 4.6 DSR, 15% for 4.8, and 20% for 4.9. eBay is not sure yet whether the 4.9 rating has to be an average DSR (rounded up from 4.89, for instance) or a "hard" 4.9. They are supposed to look into this.

 

3. The third party checkout program used by many big companies like Infopia will be phased out gradually, beginning in the next couple of months, and the goal is to have everyone phased out by second quarter of 2009.

 

4. The new buyer protection program announced today is U.S. only. No plans as yet to bring it to other countries.

 

We'll fill in more details as we get them.

 
Update:
5.You must have a min of 10 DSRs to be eligible to be advantaged in Best Match. eBay is lowering it to 3 DSRs. eBay said it values low-volume sellers.

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Greg Holden, who lives in Chicago, is an online business consultant and the author of eight books about eBay, including "How to Do Everything with Your eBay Business," second edition, and "Secrets of the eBay Millionaires," both published by Osborne-McGraw Hill. Find out more on Greg's Web site and blog, http://www.gregholden.com.