Ok, a few questions:
Everybody seems to hate eBay, is it just my impression? If everybody hates eBay, is there a lack of
true alternatives, or the network effect eBay has is just too strong to be beaten? Every now and then an "eBay killer" come up, just to be forgotten few weeks later, some have success but not enough to worry the auction giant. eBay is lacking a consistent user experience, it's bloated, the only social experience is the feedback system, unexperienced users will struggle to set up a store... and yet it has the largest user base.
What does a competitor needs to succeed?
A few points comes to mind:
- Beat the network effect eBay has
- Have a huge catalog (not everything that exists, but everything that people wants)
- Be competitive on fees
- Have a consistent user experience
- Easier to use
- Be social (not the exploit-your-friends-social kind)
- Remove the lock-in ("import from eBay" feature)
- Have a name that's recognized as a valid word by Chrome spell checker (this is subtle)
Is that enough? No, that would be too easy, somebody would have already done that.
What am I missing?
(note: "ebay" on chrome is underlined, "eBay" is not)
