EBay’s Path From Humble Hobby to Online Auction Powerhouse
THE PERFECT STORE
Inside EBay
by Adam Cohen
Little, Brown
332 pages, $25.95
Over Labor Day weekend in 1995, a 28-year-old computer programmer named Pierre Omidyar launched a Web site called AuctionWeb from a spare bedroom in his Silicon Valley home. It was badly designed, difficult to navigate and didn’t receive many hits, but because the site was just a hobby for Omidyar, he didn’t mind that people seemed wary of participating in online auctions.
That hobby evolved into EBay, a Web site that receives, seven years later, more than a million visitors each day, bidding on everything from garage junk to celebrity autographs, toy collectibles, fine art and cars. Adam Cohen, a journalist and co-author of “American Pharaoh,” a biography of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, has delved into the making of this wildly successful company and the passionate following it has inspired in “The Perfect Store.”
Cohen explains his interest in writing a book about EBay, calling it “easily the most interesting story of the early Internet age, and one of the most important business stories of our time.” Just as impressive as EBay’s financial success, Cohen argues, is its idealistic mission: to operate as “a perfect marketplace” where all buyers are given an equal opportunity at purchasing power and where they can find a true sense of community. Omidyar “wanted it to operate according to the moral values he ascribed to his own life ... [and] introduced innovations that would make his site in many ways the most genuine community in cyberspace.”
Word-of-mouth publicity about AuctionWeb caused traffic to increase soon after its launch, and back then, transactions ran smoothly. “Trust on the site was so high in the early days,” Cohen writes, “and the feeling of community so strong, that it was common for sellers to ship items even before they had received bidders’ payments.” To deal with the problem of deception in sales, Omidyar created a Feedback Forum on the site, so that buyers could rate their sellers.
That step, which seems so logical and commonplace now, was revolutionary back then. Having a “bulletin board” on the site is partly what made users feel so involved. Unlike most Web sites, this one had more to offer than simply clicking on an icon and making a purchase. It was a place to spend time, to meet others with similar collecting interests such as dolls or antiques, and to buy what you wanted at whatever price you wanted to pay.
The site was not without its flaws, including an unremarkable domain name and a tendency to crash regularly. But after several overhauls, the site became more sophisticated and better equipped to handle its heavy traffic, and was given the catchier name of EBay, along with a bright, friendly logo.
Like Amazon.com, EBay had millions of happy, devoted customers. Unlike Amazon, EBay has been hugely profitable from the start. It is not only a survivor of the Internet boom and crash, but there is no end in sight to its success.
Reading Cohen’s account of the disorganized, overwhelming early days at the company--the small, underpaid staffers had to build their own desks and make policies up as they went along--it’s astonishing to think about EBay’s evolution and how it has shaped online commerce.
Today EBay is run by co-founder Jeff Skoll and CEO Meg Whitman, and it’s a vastly different environment than the one run by Omidyar, who lives in Paris and is a happily married billionaire. The company’s innocent and idealistic beginning is now a faint memory; what once had the feel of a beloved, quirky neighborhood shop is now a powerhouse, multibillion-dollar corporation, with an emphasis on continued profitability and brand expansion. Initially, EBay consisted mostly of sellers seeing what they could get for a Beanie Baby collection or an old dresser; today, sellers are far more polished and professional, and many have even given up their day jobs to make a full-time living on EBay sales.
Throughout “The Perfect Store,” Cohen’s tone is so earnest and uncritical that he fails to investigate any contradictions or possibly troubling aspects. What about the morbid and pornographic items that come up for sale? And what about the con men who are also part of the EBay “community”? Cohen mentions them but doesn’t go beyond that. As for EBay’s detractors, they are dutifully given space in the book, but not much of a voice.
That’s not to say that EBay isn’t a great company with good values and admirable success; it’s just that there must be more to this “perfect store” than this supposedly insider account offers. Considering that Cohen was given an employee ID and allowed to move into EBay’s headquarters to write this book, the lack of surprising information is disappointing. Cohen does offer some colorful stories about some of EBay’s more eccentric users, but these too are told in a straightforward way, without irony or wit.
“The Perfect Store” would be a more compelling story without overuse of the word “empowering” to describe EBay’s effect, and without repeatedly praising the so-called purity of Omidyar’s vision. Too many passages read like marketing material: “That transformation power is the most remarkable aspect of the eBay story,” Cohen gushes. And he offers the dubious assertion that “EBay is the rare company that was created with the express intention of advancing the public good.” Cynicism has no place in charting the rise of this impressive company, but a bit more skepticism would not have hurt.
