So...seriously...what's up with ebay?

I love this topic!!!

You'll get so many answers on this, you'll end up not knowing what to think.

So please...allow me to add to the confusion.

In a nutshell:

ebay built its rep on the auction format, selling everything from Jesus toast to plain used household goods.

Then it got big...REAL big. It still sold used toasters, but now it's selling $800 vintage stereos, $500 lamps, and it became a kind of antique mall. All with auctions.

Then it wanted to get bigger. So it let sellers open stores. So all sorts of antique "stores" and new goods "stores" opened up.

Does anyone know about the standard curve EVERY business goes through? Infancy/growth/maturity/death...or something like that. ebay started to mature...not a bad thing...and it could have stayed a successful, mature company. Just not as much stellar growth.

Sorry...not good enough. Hence...ebay canada, ebay spain, ebay china, ebay togo, ebay everywhere. Too many ebays.

And...too many sellers. Too many people selling the same thing (look up "6 foot hdmi cable" to see what I mean).

So it got too big and too large to manage.

"hey, I got an idea. what if we got rid of the gazillion small sellers and get in a small handful of BIG sellers! We can have billions of listings with just a thousand or so sellers to worry about."

So it decided to not just change a bit, but overhaul itself in the eyes of the public...ebay was to become (cue horns that play when the king arrives): THE NEXT AMAZON.

Of course, their first try at this (ebay express) failed horribly.

But try again they did.

And it's not working either.

So...NOW...they want to be (cue them horns again): THE NEXT OVERSTOCK.

Yes..it's true. They wanted to be another AZ. Now they want to be the next OS. For real. Not kidding.


And all the little sellers can say is "Can we have the OLD ebay back?"

Yes, of course you can.

It just won't be called ebay.


More.......................later.....................