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Ebay is dependent on their fat revenue stream. Free (or very cheap) and "good enough" will beat them. But I wonder if maybe market fragmentation and not a sin
by kingkongrevenge 19y ago
Ebay is dependent on their fat revenue stream. Free (or very cheap) and "good enough" will beat them.
But I wonder if maybe market fragmentation and not a single competitor will beat them. The network value math above might be off. As ebay has grown the fraud and moron problems have become serious. The future may be in the direction of finer grained, more vetted communities. Sorta like usenet got ruined by morons and the discussions largely went to more private web forums.
- acgourley 19y agoI could see it. It's true that the math would be more accurate as a Sigma(autionGenreNodes^2) summed over each auctionGenre. So you could see a better import auto parts site, a better pez dispenser site, and a better clothing site crop up. It's more about consumer education at that point, since any one of those sites could add specialized features and services much better than ebay's generalized ones.