Word: internet
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Omidyar wrote some code and over Labor Day weekend of 1995 launched what he called AuctionWeb, which was supported on the $30-a-month Internet service provider he was hooked up to from home. (The site's domain name was www.ebay.com and eBay was the name that stuck.) There were no Pez dispensers--that came later--but there were listings for a whole lot of computer hardware. eBay started out free, but it quickly attracted so much traffic that Omidyar's Internet service upped his monthly bill to $250. Now that it was costing him real money, Omidyar decided...
Still, today eBay is one of the most dazzling sites on the Internet. Log on and feast your eyes on a global garage sale that includes--well, just about any inanimate object you've ever seen, heard of or lusted after. That Partridge Family lunch box that made you feel like the Man in third grade? The bidding starts at $5. That Art Deco clock you always wanted? There were recently 19 of them being auctioned on eBay. Sure there's kitsch (Elvis snow globes, anyone?), and a scary number of Beanie Babies. But there's also luxe (usually...
eBay is also one of the Internet's greatest financial success stories. It has defied the 11th Commandment: Internet Start-Ups Shall Bleed Red Ink. It's made money from its first month of operation. After only four years, eBay is worth some $20 billion--more than Sears and J.C. Penney combined--and its stock price has surged 25-fold. The rewards for the key players have been lavish. Whitman, after less than two years at the company, controls shares worth about $1 billion. Skoll's net worth is more than $3 billion. Omidyar's 30% ownership adds...
...real genius of eBay is its success in building a community--"maybe the most real community on the entire Web," says Whitman. There's no question people like hanging out in eBayland. The site gets more than 1.5 billion page visits a month. And at a time when the Internet mantra is "stickiness"--how long users stay on a website--eBay is cyberspace superglue. Each visitor to Amazon.com spends an average of 13 min. a month on the site. On eBay, each visitor's monthly average is about...
...destroying the business," says Spotts. "I've seen several shows around the country that are near shutting down." Flea markets could be the next to suffer. When the National Flea Market Association held its annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., in October, 100 members jammed into a session on the Internet future to hear dire predictions of what the Net would do to their land-based businesses...