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I thought the guy built it for his wife to sell pez dispensers? I seem to remember hearing that 20 years ago.

cmacaskill 7y ago
Hahaha, that story really caught on but Pierre confessed it was made up for the purpose of getting people to relate to eBay. Netflix's story about late fees was same.
sireat 7y ago
I was a tiny tiny competitor to eBay some 20 years ago and the pez story was pure BS. The reality is that eBay (that is AuctionWeb) got its initial traction from spamming Usenet as the story correctly states. Very quickly they moved from spamming themselves to letting their users spam Usenet. This is the "growth hacking" model still followed today by many. The question is there any moral middle ground? If you can search Usenet archives you can find remnants of that AuctionWeb spam and people complaining. Soon others tried to copy them but it was too late. This was in mid 90s after the first mass spam from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Siegel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie... .
- XaspR8d 7y ago
  Being "born from spam" really explains a lot about how most eBay sellers communicate to this day.
  - redis_mlc 7y ago
    Never seen that over the past 20 years (I have 3,000 feedback, so I would know.) However: - You can sign up for a store newsletter - in the past few months, ebay is sending auction time notifications, and pinging sellers to offer discounts to viewers. That's the only thing that has the spam smell, but the discount offers do help distinguish who wants to make a deal :)
    - XaspR8d 7y ago
      To be clear, I didn't really mean "spam proper", moreso the flea market / carnival barker language, eg "REAL 100% HD VIDEO BRAND-NEW CANON REBEL 5T QUICK SHIP WITH ORIGINAL LENS KIT", that often obstruct the info I'm actually searching for. I'm sure folks who use the platform consistently either know how to avoid that content or are much more efficient at sifting through it (or my anecdata of its frequency is way off!). I agree in my limited experience there isn't much in the way of "true spam" itself.
gumby 7y ago
Companies typically make up their creation stores after the fact because a nice crisp story gives people something to hang onto. The reality is always much messier, more diffuse, and too much of a long story.
rmason 7y ago
That story was invented by a PR agent to pitch eBay to the press.
- eternalban 7y ago
  And the press is not in the journalism business so no one bothered to ask around. Their job is to publish the PR apparently.

Hahaha, that story really caught on but Pierre confessed it was made up for the purpose of getting people to relate to eBay. Netflix's story about late fees was same.

sireat 7y ago

I was a tiny tiny competitor to eBay some 20 years ago and the pez story was pure BS. The reality is that eBay (that is AuctionWeb) got its initial traction from spamming Usenet as the story correctly states. Very quickly they moved from spamming themselves to letting their users spam Usenet. This is the "growth hacking" model still followed today by many. The question is there any moral middle ground? If you can search Usenet archives you can find remnants of that AuctionWeb spam and people complaining. Soon others tried to copy them but it was too late. This was in mid 90s after the first mass spam from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Siegel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie... .

XaspR8d 7y ago
Being "born from spam" really explains a lot about how most eBay sellers communicate to this day.
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  Never seen that over the past 20 years (I have 3,000 feedback, so I would know.) However: - You can sign up for a store newsletter - in the past few months, ebay is sending auction time notifications, and pinging sellers to offer discounts to viewers. That's the only thing that has the spam smell, but the discount offers do help distinguish who wants to make a deal :)
  - XaspR8d 7y ago
    To be clear, I didn't really mean "spam proper", moreso the flea market / carnival barker language, eg "REAL 100% HD VIDEO BRAND-NEW CANON REBEL 5T QUICK SHIP WITH ORIGINAL LENS KIT", that often obstruct the info I'm actually searching for. I'm sure folks who use the platform consistently either know how to avoid that content or are much more efficient at sifting through it (or my anecdata of its frequency is way off!). I agree in my limited experience there isn't much in the way of "true spam" itself.

gumby 7y ago

Companies typically make up their creation stores after the fact because a nice crisp story gives people something to hang onto. The reality is always much messier, more diffuse, and too much of a long story.

rmason 7y ago

That story was invented by a PR agent to pitch eBay to the press.

eternalban 7y ago
And the press is not in the journalism business so no one bothered to ask around. Their job is to publish the PR apparently.