The Perfect Store: Inside Ebay

As sexy as the story of eBay's success is, so is the story of how it almost failed, on numerous occasions at that. Cohen's book is both astute and honest in its rendering of an Internet leviathan's near drowning. One of the best dot.com books I've read and trust me, there are plenty of them.

Upon finishing this book I was amazed at the detail Adam Cohen presented to readers about the real inside of eBay. The book travels through time playing on various aspects of the company and reasons to why it became and still is one of the world's most admired and successful companies. Sure, eBay has changed the marketplace as we know it and sure it has affected many lives. But the key element in this story is that one guy's vision of a community, free from obstructing walls, became a reality - something many .com companies failed to achieve. A wonderful read...highly recommended for all!

Not a seller or buyer on Ebay, I wanted to learn something about this e-commerce phenomenon. I hoped to get some behind-the-scene information but Adam Cohen gives us much more--an insider's look at how a tiny free website called Auctionweb, hosted by Pierre Omidyar on his personal website, grew into the multi-billion dollar company where 100,000 people now make their living. This engrossing story takes us from the first days of Auction web--where Omidyar, as a lark, successfully auctioned a broken laser pointer to the evolution of a bare bones company where employees worked in cubicles and had to assemble their own desks from kits and finally to a very profitable and thriving business.The most intriguing aspect of the story is the development of the Ebaysian philosophy--Omidyar's vision of a perfect market, an online auction, where the seller would get the market price for the item on that particular day. Part of this philsophy was involvement of the community in key aspects of Ebay operations. The community embraced this concept and, on a volunteer basis, staffed user bulletin boards giving advice to newcomers on how to get started, and sharing marketing and other business operations advice. After Ebay's IPO and the need to generate increasing profits for their stockholders, management ventured into some practices and ventures that violated this philosophy such as commercial ventures including a Disney site that competed with Ebay's own sellers. The Ebay community protested some of these ideas and management did listen and made changes.Just as fascinating as the story of the evolution of the company is the story of the people behind the company. One fascinating character was Pongo, a message board regular who gave tips on adding digital photos to auction sites. This began one of the many Ebay spinoff companies, Pongo.com, which specialized in an image hosting business. The real person behind Pongo was Jane Dee of Sitka, Alaska, an isolated fishing village of five thousand on Alaska's Baranof Island, accessible only by ferry or plane from the mainland. Jane Dee's history was remarkable in that she was a former amnesiac who literally found a new life for herself through a business and social life on Ebay. Other interesting stories include a housewife looking for cheaper shipping supplies, who started a shipping supply company on Ebay and a man looking to have the winning bid in auctions who wrote sniping software and sold it commercially on Ebay. (To snipe is to enter a bid at the last few seconds and win the auction)Ebay also reflects what is happening in our culture and current events. Ebay listings that made the news were the proposed auction of a kidney, a death row inmate trying to sell tickets this execution and collectibles that appeared after a news event such as the purported raft used by Elian Gonzales to enter the U.S. Ebay jokes are also now a staple of Leno and Letterman While Cohen was given unique access to Ebay management an