4 ms·

Outraged eBay sellers plan boycott

5 points by dcurtis 19y ago

iamelgringo 19y ago
When, oh, when will someone develop a decent competitor to Ebay? The site is awful and is ripe for a startup to carve away market share. They've already proven the business model. We know it makes money. I know the boys at auctomatic are doing their best to help out, but what's needed is a full on competitor. I mean, really. How hard is it to offer a couple of decent looking templates for people to make their own site, to that it isn't such an eyesore? How hard is it to implement a better form of search and categorization? How hard is it to develop a form of authentication to cut down on all the fraud that takes place on Ebay? The last time I used Ebay or thought it was decent was back in 97-98. The site hasn't changed much since. We should have a challenge to see who can develop the best Ebay competitor.
- dcurtis 19y ago
  I think your competitor is Craigslist.
  - iamelgringo 19y ago
    I think that you're right, but for the vast majority of fly-over country, where EBay is king, Craigslist really isn't that popular. Craigslist is a blue state phenomena. Case in point. I have family and friends in Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota. I'd bet most of them had never heard of Craigslist, but they shop/sell on Ebay every other month.
- mechanical_fish 19y ago
  Well, a big part of the problem is Metcalfe's Law, of course. But let's think about this: How hard is it to offer a couple of decent looking templates for people to make their own site, to that it isn't such an eyesore? That's not a bug, it's a feature. I and others have speculated at length about why being an eyesore is a potential advantage for a site that invites the general public to contribute -- people are happier to design their own pages if they aren't being scored against a high standard. Moreover, for an eBay seller, being downscale is a potential marketing advantage. Ask yourself: who seems more likely to give you an amazing deal on the rare antique watch that you're looking for: a random guy who found it in his late father's basement, knows nothing about watches, and is nearly illiterate? Or a professional used-watch retailer with a slickly designed website? It's telling that one of eBay's biggest competitors is Craigslist, which has far less visual design. How hard is it to implement a better form of search and categorization? Pretty hard, I'd wager. What is your problem with eBay's search? I always thought it worked pretty well. Do you have some specific use cases to complain about? Designing categorization systems is hard, very hard. Go Google up "taxonomy vs folksonomy" and you'll find guys like Clay Shirky complaining about it. How hard is it to develop a form of authentication to cut down on all the fraud that takes place on Ebay? Isn't it easy? If you're a buyer, require an escrow service and a money-back guarantee, and bid low enough that you offset the potential cost of return shipping and handling. If you're a seller, require payment in advance and either sell "as is" or make the buyer bear the cost of return shipping. Of course, the added friction is going to cost you money, time, options, and bidder attention, so most eBay customers are nowhere near as paranoid as this. I conclude that these people are happily choosing the risk of being defrauded in the hope of saving a couple bucks. The general problem with building a less-fraud-prone version of eBay is that we already have things like that: they're called "retail stores" and "pawnshops" and "used-equipment dealers". You can compete with these guys, just as you can imagine competing with eBay, but they are veterans who know how to operate within thin margins, so don't expect it to be trivially easy. eBay buried a lot of competitors in the first dotcom boom.
- Harj 19y ago
  the only serious competitor to ebay is google. And it's a very serious one.
- gruseom 19y ago
  The last time I used Ebay or thought it was decent was back in 97-98. The site hasn't changed much since. Someone who consulted there told me that eBay's codebase was a mess (even by the usual standards) and that they had some strange processes that made it worse. If I recall correctly, programmers weren't allowed to work in teams and were frequently 'rotated' through completely unrelated projects. He told me some other weird things that I don't remember, but that combined to form an impression that eBay's culture is really inimical to hackers. That would explain their technical stagnation. But overwhelming market share gives them powerful inertia.
  - pg 19y ago
    Back in the 1998 at Yahoo we used to hear shocking things about how bad eBay's systems were. One of the externally visible signs was their policy of having several hours a week of scheduled downtime. That seemed just inexcusable. Do they still do that? I think the reason eBay is so inept is that they were a monopoly almost from the beginning. So at a stage when other startups (Google for example) had to work hard to succeed, they were already coasting, at least technically.
- paulgb 19y ago
  I would imagine the network effect for something like this is huge, and basically re-enforces the market leader's position to a point that it would be hard to dethrone them. I remember Yahoo used to have auctions, and didn't Amazon try it too? I don't know if either is still at it, but clearly it didn't take off like eBay. The network effect is even more important with the auction model, because both the price and volume of sales depend on the number of buyers. I can imagine that sellers would be reluctant to join a new auction site if it means risking getting lower margins. Although, some of the examples in the article would disagree.

5 points by dcurtis 19y ago

When, oh, when will someone develop a decent competitor to Ebay? The site is awful and is ripe for a startup to carve away market share. They've already proven the business model. We know it makes money. I know the boys at auctomatic are doing their best to help out, but what's needed is a full on competitor. I mean, really. How hard is it to offer a couple of decent looking templates for people to make their own site, to that it isn't such an eyesore? How hard is it to implement a better form of search and categorization? How hard is it to develop a form of authentication to cut down on all the fraud that takes place on Ebay? The last time I used Ebay or thought it was decent was back in 97-98. The site hasn't changed much since. We should have a challenge to see who can develop the best Ebay competitor.

dcurtis 19y ago
I think your competitor is Craigslist.
- iamelgringo 19y ago
  I think that you're right, but for the vast majority of fly-over country, where EBay is king, Craigslist really isn't that popular. Craigslist is a blue state phenomena. Case in point. I have family and friends in Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota. I'd bet most of them had never heard of Craigslist, but they shop/sell on Ebay every other month.
mechanical_fish 19y ago
Well, a big part of the problem is Metcalfe's Law, of course. But let's think about this: How hard is it to offer a couple of decent looking templates for people to make their own site, to that it isn't such an eyesore? That's not a bug, it's a feature. I and others have speculated at length about why being an eyesore is a potential advantage for a site that invites the general public to contribute -- people are happier to design their own pages if they aren't being scored against a high standard. Moreover, for an eBay seller, being downscale is a potential marketing advantage. Ask yourself: who seems more likely to give you an amazing deal on the rare antique watch that you're looking for: a random guy who found it in his late father's basement, knows nothing about watches, and is nearly illiterate? Or a professional used-watch retailer with a slickly designed website? It's telling that one of eBay's biggest competitors is Craigslist, which has far less visual design. How hard is it to implement a better form of search and categorization? Pretty hard, I'd wager. What is your problem with eBay's search? I always thought it worked pretty well. Do you have some specific use cases to complain about? Designing categorization systems is hard, very hard. Go Google up "taxonomy vs folksonomy" and you'll find guys like Clay Shirky complaining about it. How hard is it to develop a form of authentication to cut down on all the fraud that takes place on Ebay? Isn't it easy? If you're a buyer, require an escrow service and a money-back guarantee, and bid low enough that you offset the potential cost of return shipping and handling. If you're a seller, require payment in advance and either sell "as is" or make the buyer bear the cost of return shipping. Of course, the added friction is going to cost you money, time, options, and bidder attention, so most eBay customers are nowhere near as paranoid as this. I conclude that these people are happily choosing the risk of being defrauded in the hope of saving a couple bucks. The general problem with building a less-fraud-prone version of eBay is that we already have things like that: they're called "retail stores" and "pawnshops" and "used-equipment dealers". You can compete with these guys, just as you can imagine competing with eBay, but they are veterans who know how to operate within thin margins, so don't expect it to be trivially easy. eBay buried a lot of competitors in the first dotcom boom.
Harj 19y ago
the only serious competitor to ebay is google. And it's a very serious one.
gruseom 19y ago
The last time I used Ebay or thought it was decent was back in 97-98. The site hasn't changed much since. Someone who consulted there told me that eBay's codebase was a mess (even by the usual standards) and that they had some strange processes that made it worse. If I recall correctly, programmers weren't allowed to work in teams and were frequently 'rotated' through completely unrelated projects. He told me some other weird things that I don't remember, but that combined to form an impression that eBay's culture is really inimical to hackers. That would explain their technical stagnation. But overwhelming market share gives them powerful inertia.
- pg 19y ago
  Back in the 1998 at Yahoo we used to hear shocking things about how bad eBay's systems were. One of the externally visible signs was their policy of having several hours a week of scheduled downtime. That seemed just inexcusable. Do they still do that? I think the reason eBay is so inept is that they were a monopoly almost from the beginning. So at a stage when other startups (Google for example) had to work hard to succeed, they were already coasting, at least technically.
paulgb 19y ago
I would imagine the network effect for something like this is huge, and basically re-enforces the market leader's position to a point that it would be hard to dethrone them. I remember Yahoo used to have auctions, and didn't Amazon try it too? I don't know if either is still at it, but clearly it didn't take off like eBay. The network effect is even more important with the auction model, because both the price and volume of sales depend on the number of buyers. I can imagine that sellers would be reluctant to join a new auction site if it means risking getting lower margins. Although, some of the examples in the article would disagree.