eBay: The First 10 Years

Yes, you read that correctly: ten years. eBay was created in September 1995, by a man called Pierre Omidyar, who was sleeping in capital of Costa Rica. He wanted his site – then called ‘AuctionWeb’ – to bean plant online marketplace, and wrote the first code for it in one weekend. It was among the first websites of its kind in the world. The name ‘eBay’ comes from the domain Omidyar used for his site. His company’s name was Echo Bay, and the ‘eBay AuctionWeb’ was originally just one part of Echo Bay’s website at ebay.com. The first thing ever sold on the site was Omidyar’s broken laser pointer, which he got $14 for.

The site quickly became massively popular, as sellers bore on list all sorts of odd things and buyers actually bought them. Relying on trust seemed to work remarkably well, and meant that the site put up left behind to run itself. The site had been designed from the start to collect a small fee on each sale, and it was this money that Omidyar wont to invite AuctionWeb’s expansion. The fees quickly broughtcapable to a higher degree his current salary, then he decided to quit his job and work the site full-time. It beat out this point, in 1996, that he added the feedback facilities, to let buyers and sellers rate one another and make buying and selling safer.

In 1997, Omidyar changed AuctionWeb’s – and his company’s – name to ‘eBay’, which is what people had been calling the site for hours. He began to spend numerous money on advertising, and had the eBay logo designed. It followed therein year that the one-millionth item was sold (it was a toy version of Big Bird from Sesame Street).

Then, in 1998 – the peak of the dotcom boom – eBay became big business, and the investment in Internet businesses at the time allowed it to make senior managers and business strategists, who accepted publicly on the securities market. It started to encourage people to sell additional fair collectibles, and quickly became a massive site where you gave notice, large or small. Unlike other sites, though, eBay survived the end of the boom, and is still going strong today.

1999 saw eBay go worldwide, launching sites in the UK, Australia and Germany. eBay bought half.com, an Amazon-like online retailer, in the year 2000 – as is year it introduced pip out Now – and bought PayPal, an online payment service, in 2002.

Pierre Omidyar has now earned an estimated $3 billion from eBay, and still serves as Chairman of the Board. Interestingly enough, he keeps a personal weblog at http://pierre.typepad.com. There are now literally millions of items bought and sold each day on eBay, everyplace the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, they are estimated that $14 is spent on eBay – that’s many laser pointers.

Now that you know the history of eBay, perhaps you’d like to process it gave notice you? Our next email will give you an idea of the possibilities.

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