Next up at TechCrunch, how Twitter killed Google... Twitter rumored to be acquiring Apple... Apple rumored to be releasing a budget mp3 player priced at $10... How TechCrunch killed the entire newspaper industry...
Seriously. It's just getting ridiculous now. TC - get back to reporting news - you know, facts.
paypal was acquired in 2002, he continued on at eBay for 3 weeks.
This is not evidence that he knows what he's talking about wrt why eBay is dying.
eBay's current pain has nothing to do with "fun" or "the rise of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook and the likes of YouTube", and everything to do with trying to become amazon (via ebayexpress) and google (via the never publicly mentioned K2 project).
I'd argue that Amazon has a larger hand in killing eBay than anything else. After the initial surge of "let's sell every used thing on eBay" was over, it became a marketplace for, well, businesses that sell new stuff.
In the end eBay was just a discount portal to new products - and Amazon did that one a million times better, in terms of selection, ease of use, security, and customer service. I mean this from both the consumer and seller perspectives.
eBay becoming a portal for discounted goods was a direct result of the desire of Meg to compete with amazon. It was remarkably stupid.
If eBay would've listened to many of its employees re: shipping fees, fraud, and something called the ePD; eBay would have owned the used good marketplace.
Instead they largely ignored fraud, and graft; let the core auction platform languish (with the most bizarre rationalization that I ever heard); and in end simply pissed away community goodwill and internal resources competing with ghosts.
eBay will slowly rot because of this stupidity. Good riddance indeed.
Ebay was killed by its own ignorance and avarice -- in that it first began to ignore and later became actively hostile to the very things that had made it popular (small, private auctions), in favor of letting large businesses dominate the site, removing all value for people like me.
I haven't been there in years, and I used to sell my old computer hardware there regularly.
Now, I use Craigslist, and will for the foreseeable future.
I'm interested in the author's perspective, but this piece seemed to end quite abruptly and failed to go into much detail about what the author believes happened to eBay. He states "In a futile effort to compete with Amazon and Google, eBay leadership essentially stripped whatever remaining fun existed out of its marketplace." - does anybody know what changes were made to remove the 'fun' out of the marketplace?
His general reasoning (eBay's success was due to it being used as an entertainment product more than a purely commerce-driven product) was fresh enough to me, and got me thinking enough, that I didn't mind reading what was just a quick editorial instead of an academic paper on the subject.
Nope. Amazon changed from the "internet bookstore" to the "internet everything store," and they killed eBay by the simple step of requiring a credit card for sellers, and holding the money for 2 months, if I recall correctly. As a result, Amazon has never had a fraud problem of eBay's magnitude, and just feels "safer."
eBay changed from the "selling used stuff" place to the "overrun my wholesale resellers" place to the "overrun by scammers, don't buy anything over $20" place. Their reliance on PayPal may have hurt them.
Oh, and buying used items on Amazon = predictable shipping charge. On eBay, you have to play "dodge the 99 cent item, $24,99 shipping charge cow patty" game.
Strongly agree with your points. eBay has never really tamed the chaos or perception of risk. In fact, my perception degraded over the years -- I would say they even doubled their "discomfort" metrics in many people's eyes due to the difficulties of using PayPal, as well as well-publicized cases of people losing their money, having their money held, etc.
Not to mention Amazon is the only one to ever see your financial data, and has a well-executed refund policy for fraud. Consumers are adequately protected on Amazon in a way eBay never achieved.
Ebay killed themselves when they alienated the small sellers, and Amazon helped matters by offering used sales on a lot of its products. Ebay is now trying to be Overstock.com-ish rather than its original self. They still make lots of money but I for one never shop on Ebay for anything I can find elsewhere.
But I would agree that the disappearance of fun was a key symptom of a deeper problem: eBay's management team focused on maximizing profits rather than promoting the wellbeing of the eBay community (buyers and sellers).
The equation here is simple: people stop going to eBay when the user experience is frustrating (otherwise, people stick to their habits) and when other sites perform the same service better (Amazon, Craigslist, etc).
The author actually gives a better and more general reason at the end: "eBay's bureaucratic and political MBA culture". No doubt that manifested itself in making the site less fun, but it also had a lot of other fatal effects, such as being a horrible place for good hackers.
If you don't like Techcrunch, don't be a dick about it in Techcrunch articles. Either don't comment, or don't mention explicitly that you didn't read the article, so that you only get called out for it when you say appallingly stupid things that the article happened to address.
This might be irrelevant, though, since I don't actually read buro9 comments.
Yes, but it turns out it wasn't the auctions that people wanted; it was cheap and eclectic items. Many of the products they used to have a monopoly on (used video games, old comic books, dvds, cds) are available used on Amazon. Homemade crafts went to Etsy. I suppose eBay still has a hold on coins and antiques, but that's too small a niche.
Buro9 has a point though. Where else can I get hard-to-find used items? (article) " it was generally the entertainment and excitement of the chase that brought a buyer to eBay in the first place." Um, no...it was the prospect of getting something I want for cheap. Craigslist sometimes provides, but - at least here in the Bay Area - it's become hopeless for things like computer equipment, having been overrun by spammers from China, something CL seems disinclined to do anything about. Mind you, they are owned by eBay...
Seriously. It's just getting ridiculous now. TC - get back to reporting news - you know, facts.