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Competing against eBay is like saying you're competing in a 100m race against someone in a wheelchair. eBay has done nothing to make itself better in the last 1

Competing against eBay is like saying you're competing in a 100m race against someone in a wheelchair. eBay has done nothing to make itself better in the last 15 years. New "features" routinely fail, and their APIs are a graveyard of dropped ideas. I hope Taobao expands to the US, eBay needs real competition, anyone working there should be embarrassed for themselves, more importantly the Directors and above.

ionwake 8y ago
I remember after deving a 50 player 3d networked multiplayer game in nodejs, that they became interested in interviewing me ( at the time node was only about 2 years old ). Unfortunately in the 4 hour pre-interview demo they wanted me to code, there was a deprecated call to a function I referenced later. Due to the time constraint I missed that one line of code. App worked flawlessly as I had tested it. Thing is I even knew I had a line of code somewhere that was deprecated but figured 4 hours was enough time to spend on a coding exercise, especially given, well , my 2 year demo project of a multiplayer game. As you can tell from the tldr; I was politely told they would not be interviewing me. All because of one trivial line of code, in a 4 hour demo done in my own time. To be honest, I knew the chap was giving me a chance to correct it by giving me a few days, but I thought it would be in bad faith to do it when I spotted the issue. Anyway, I didn't sweat it, I walked into a job at good startup, literally with gaffa tape on my sneakers and got it. They obviously make terrible decisions before even interviewing people in person.
- tehlike 8y ago
  It was 99% not because of deprecated method, unless they explicitly told you so. Deprecated code detection is compile/build tools job, not yours.
analyst74 8y ago
Keep in mind that this story happened before taobao was launched in 2003, when eBay was the most dominant e-commerce player.
techwizrd 8y ago
When I was interning at eBay a few years ago, they were doing some amazing work. I worked with the machine translation team and they were doing cutting edge research all over the place with new patents being awarded regularly (even to interns!). Many of their algorithms like spelling correction were significantly better than the state of the art, in part due to their unique data set. They were also actively rebuilding and rewriting critical services to improve reliability and speed, from their computer vision to their speech recognition to their search engine to their seller tools. They split from Paypal and rebuilt and redesigned the app and the website. They started shipping boxes to sellers with the eBay branding to solve the problem of seller's not having shipping material. They started marketing and selling eBay giftcards in numerous stores. They started curated collections of themed finds on eBay (and ML-generated collections). They were reaching out to major brands to sell on eBay as a storefront. They unveiled a really well done AI chat bot to sell eBay items to users. It's an impressively run shop from a technical perspective at least. I do not think it's fair to eBay or it's current and former employees to say that they've done nothing to make themselves better in the last 15 years.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Also easily disproven by comparing the site then to now.
- jdietrich 8y ago
  Clever tech experiments don't make up for hostile UX. I begrudgingly use eBay when I have no other choice, but I don't enjoy the experience one bit. The listings are flooded with obviously counterfeit products, obviously dangerous electrical goods and Chinese sellers who are obviously lying about their location. The massive fees I pay as a seller offer me no safeguards whatsoever, because the seller protection policies are riddled with loopholes that every scammer knows about. I budget for the fact that I'm going to be defrauded about 5% of the time, in the knowledge that eBay will always side with the fraudster. You can do all the machine learning curation you like, but it's just frosting on a dog turd. The core experience of buying and selling is utterly miserable. That's the stuff that needs to be fixed.
  - deleted 8y ago
metalliqaz 8y ago
I think in 2018 eBay has a lot of competition in the US. The bulk of the stuff on eBay are commercial sellers that can also use Amazon. When an average Joe might be selling his stuff, it tends to go on Facebook Marketplace these days, or Craigslist. The only thing they really have going for them is the auction format, but how often does THAT get used, even on eBay?
- jdietrich 8y ago
  eBay own the long tail. Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist work fine if you're selling a lawnmower or a handbag, but they're hopeless if you're selling old baseball cards or an amateur radio transceiver or an Eames chair.
- 83 8y ago
  I heavily use the auction listings. For specialist tools the Business/Industrial category is near impossible to beat. As a seller there aren't enough people interested in esoteric items to offload locally and as a buyer I never see them available on Craigslist in my area. With that said, I only buy on Ebay, never sell. Between shipping, fees, and the non-existent seller protection most stuff is better off given away locally or tossed.
baybal2 8y ago
>I hope Taobao expands to the US, e If you noticed, Chinese dotcoms are extremely bad at overseas expansion, unless they are the only fish in the pond (original alibaba.com) I personally know the man who was singlehandedly responsible for 70% of Alibaba's overseas revenue, and he quit the company because after 5 years of hard work, he was not only not promoted, but got his position superseded by a guy "with big business cred". Soon after, their overseas revenue flatlined. This tells a lot of their culture in the company.
emodendroket 8y ago
And yet there it is, far and away the largest and most successful site of its kind in the United States.
- WilliamEdward 8y ago
  That doesn't stop it from being a bad user experience, it just means no one wants to do it better.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    Perhaps, but perhaps it is simply suited just fine to its users' needs despite looking dated.
patwalls 8y ago
I used eBay to sell a couple of electronics in the last couple months. It was hands down one of the worst experiences I've ever had with software. Scammers made dozens of buy it now requests, fake paypal invoices, losing the auction at the last second to a scammer. To top that off, I experienced a bug that didn't allow me to relist my item, and I still haven't been able to sell the item. I hadn't used eBay in 5 years. I couldn't believe how bad the experience was. If I had money I would short their stock.

ionwake 8y ago

I remember after deving a 50 player 3d networked multiplayer game in nodejs, that they became interested in interviewing me ( at the time node was only about 2 years old ). Unfortunately in the 4 hour pre-interview demo they wanted me to code, there was a deprecated call to a function I referenced later. Due to the time constraint I missed that one line of code. App worked flawlessly as I had tested it. Thing is I even knew I had a line of code somewhere that was deprecated but figured 4 hours was enough time to spend on a coding exercise, especially given, well , my 2 year demo project of a multiplayer game. As you can tell from the tldr; I was politely told they would not be interviewing me. All because of one trivial line of code, in a 4 hour demo done in my own time. To be honest, I knew the chap was giving me a chance to correct it by giving me a few days, but I thought it would be in bad faith to do it when I spotted the issue. Anyway, I didn't sweat it, I walked into a job at good startup, literally with gaffa tape on my sneakers and got it. They obviously make terrible decisions before even interviewing people in person.

tehlike 8y ago
It was 99% not because of deprecated method, unless they explicitly told you so. Deprecated code detection is compile/build tools job, not yours.

analyst74 8y ago

Keep in mind that this story happened before taobao was launched in 2003, when eBay was the most dominant e-commerce player.

techwizrd 8y ago

When I was interning at eBay a few years ago, they were doing some amazing work. I worked with the machine translation team and they were doing cutting edge research all over the place with new patents being awarded regularly (even to interns!). Many of their algorithms like spelling correction were significantly better than the state of the art, in part due to their unique data set. They were also actively rebuilding and rewriting critical services to improve reliability and speed, from their computer vision to their speech recognition to their search engine to their seller tools. They split from Paypal and rebuilt and redesigned the app and the website. They started shipping boxes to sellers with the eBay branding to solve the problem of seller's not having shipping material. They started marketing and selling eBay giftcards in numerous stores. They started curated collections of themed finds on eBay (and ML-generated collections). They were reaching out to major brands to sell on eBay as a storefront. They unveiled a really well done AI chat bot to sell eBay items to users. It's an impressively run shop from a technical perspective at least. I do not think it's fair to eBay or it's current and former employees to say that they've done nothing to make themselves better in the last 15 years.

emodendroket 8y ago
Also easily disproven by comparing the site then to now.
jdietrich 8y ago
Clever tech experiments don't make up for hostile UX. I begrudgingly use eBay when I have no other choice, but I don't enjoy the experience one bit. The listings are flooded with obviously counterfeit products, obviously dangerous electrical goods and Chinese sellers who are obviously lying about their location. The massive fees I pay as a seller offer me no safeguards whatsoever, because the seller protection policies are riddled with loopholes that every scammer knows about. I budget for the fact that I'm going to be defrauded about 5% of the time, in the knowledge that eBay will always side with the fraudster. You can do all the machine learning curation you like, but it's just frosting on a dog turd. The core experience of buying and selling is utterly miserable. That's the stuff that needs to be fixed.
- deleted 8y ago

metalliqaz 8y ago

I think in 2018 eBay has a lot of competition in the US. The bulk of the stuff on eBay are commercial sellers that can also use Amazon. When an average Joe might be selling his stuff, it tends to go on Facebook Marketplace these days, or Craigslist. The only thing they really have going for them is the auction format, but how often does THAT get used, even on eBay?

jdietrich 8y ago
eBay own the long tail. Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist work fine if you're selling a lawnmower or a handbag, but they're hopeless if you're selling old baseball cards or an amateur radio transceiver or an Eames chair.
83 8y ago
I heavily use the auction listings. For specialist tools the Business/Industrial category is near impossible to beat. As a seller there aren't enough people interested in esoteric items to offload locally and as a buyer I never see them available on Craigslist in my area. With that said, I only buy on Ebay, never sell. Between shipping, fees, and the non-existent seller protection most stuff is better off given away locally or tossed.

baybal2 8y ago

>I hope Taobao expands to the US, e If you noticed, Chinese dotcoms are extremely bad at overseas expansion, unless they are the only fish in the pond (original alibaba.com) I personally know the man who was singlehandedly responsible for 70% of Alibaba's overseas revenue, and he quit the company because after 5 years of hard work, he was not only not promoted, but got his position superseded by a guy "with big business cred". Soon after, their overseas revenue flatlined. This tells a lot of their culture in the company.

emodendroket 8y ago

And yet there it is, far and away the largest and most successful site of its kind in the United States.

WilliamEdward 8y ago
That doesn't stop it from being a bad user experience, it just means no one wants to do it better.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Perhaps, but perhaps it is simply suited just fine to its users' needs despite looking dated.

patwalls 8y ago

I used eBay to sell a couple of electronics in the last couple months. It was hands down one of the worst experiences I've ever had with software. Scammers made dozens of buy it now requests, fake paypal invoices, losing the auction at the last second to a scammer. To top that off, I experienced a bug that didn't allow me to relist my item, and I still haven't been able to sell the item. I hadn't used eBay in 5 years. I couldn't believe how bad the experience was. If I had money I would short their stock.