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If you want to be the next eBay you need to be radically different from the current one. You can't just one-up them. One thing I've been thinking about is usin
by andr 18y ago
If you want to be the next eBay you need to be radically different from the current one. You can't just one-up them.
One thing I've been thinking about is using double-sided auctions instead of the typical second-price English auction you find at eBay. The idea is that buyers leave bids and sellers leave offers for a particular item class, rather than for a particular item "instance". For each class of item (e.g., 2GB iPod nano) you would essentially have a market similar to the stock market. You can leave an offer or a bid or you can act on a bid or an offer that is already left by somebody else.
This will be a much more efficient market than eBay, so the forces of supply and demand will be stronger. Buyers will be able to choose between speed of sale and profit. On average, buyers will have less of an advantage against sellers - things will be more balanced.
Overall, this greatly decreases the transaction cost, which is the cost of the time and effort to research the item, determine the veracity of the listing, and devise a bidding strategy. In a way, the market has already done the research for you.
In addition, it removes the wait until the auction expires. If I want to buy an iPod for $200 and you want to sell it for $200 we can close the transaction immediately.
The market principle won't be so strong with rarer items, but people will be able to show demand for rare items before sellers list them.
The major problem is the adequate clustering of similar offers (e.g., all 2GB iPod Nanos). It needs to be done automatically, so this idea becomes to eBay what Powerset is to Google.
- dkokelley 18y agoI like it. It's a stock exchange except the stock is all physical goods. Of course as you mentioned there would be clustering of items for this to work, but the principle of the system is that all items in a category are 100% interchangeable. In the stock market one share in X corp. is no different than another share in the same corp. For 2G iPod Nanos there are very specific differences (color, usage, markings, etc.) that will deviate unlimitedly. I guess the way this would work is buyers would know what they want (2G iPod Nano), see what the going rate is (ask), if interested, make an offer (bid), and then when the buyer is matched to a few potential sellers, they would have a chance to look at the individual products to either confirm or deny a final sale. A nice benefit of this is that you can see what sort of 2G iPod Nano $90 will get you (say if you're on a budget), simply by "bidding" $90 on the product and seeing your matches. If they're aren't any matches, you need to bid higher. If you have a few matches, you'll probably be seeing some beaten up iPods, but that's fine - you only wanted to spend $90. With eBay, if you look for $90 iPods, you'll only see current auctions, and the final price will most likely be bid up before the close.
- DougBTX 18y agoEasy way for eBay to implement this: RSS feeds for searches.
- martythemaniak 18y agoThat's an excellent idea, so naturally someone already has a product the implements it ;) http://www.wigix.com/ http://www.wigix.com/ I read about it a few weeks ago when they launched and thought it was a pretty neat idea, so I wish them the best of luck.
- Kaizyn 18y agoWhichever social network site wins is going to conquer the online auction market as well. Think about it. Once your reputation and social capital can be used to help assess your credibility as either a seller or buyer, then a good deal more trust can exist for allowing transactions to occur.