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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Ebaysian" history, people, business, culture--a great read,
This review is from: The Perfect Store: Inside eBay (Hardcover)
Not a seller or buyer on Ebay, I wanted to learn something about this e-commerce phenomenon. I hoped to get some behind-the-scene information but Adam Cohen gives us much more--an insider's look at how a tiny free website called Auctionweb, hosted by Pierre Omidyar on his personal website, grew into the multi-billion dollar company where 100,000 people now make their living. This engrossing story takes us from the first days of Auction web--where Omidyar, as a lark, successfully auctioned a broken laser pointer to the evolution of a bare bones company where employees worked in cubicles and had to assemble their own desks from kits and finally to a very profitable and thriving business. The most intriguing aspect of the story is the development of the Ebaysian philosophy--Omidyar's vision of a perfect market, an online auction, where the seller would get the market price for the item on that particular day. Part of this philsophy was involvement of the community in key aspects of Ebay operations. The community embraced this concept and, on a volunteer basis, staffed user bulletin boards giving advice to newcomers on how to get started, and sharing marketing and other business operations advice. After Ebay's IPO and the need to generate increasing profits for their stockholders, management ventured into some practices and ventures that violated this philosophy such as commercial ventures including a Disney site that competed with Ebay's own sellers. The Ebay community protested some of these ideas and management did listen and made changes. Just as fascinating as the story of the evolution of the company is the story of the people behind the company. One fascinating character was Pongo, a message board regular who gave tips on adding digital photos to auction sites. This began one of the many Ebay spinoff companies, Pongo.com, which specialized in an image hosting business. The real person behind Pongo was Jane Dee of Sitka, Alaska, an isolated fishing village of five thousand on Alaska's Baranof Island, accessible only by ferry or plane from the mainland. Jane Dee's history was remarkable in that she was a former amnesiac who literally found a new life for herself through a business and social life on Ebay. Other interesting stories include a housewife looking for cheaper shipping supplies, who started a shipping supply company on Ebay and a man looking to have the winning bid in auctions who wrote sniping software and sold it commercially on Ebay. (To snipe is to enter a bid at the last few seconds and win the auction) Ebay also reflects what is happening in our culture and current events. Ebay listings that made the news were the proposed auction of a kidney, a death row inmate trying to sell tickets this execution and collectibles that appeared after a news event such as the purported raft used by Elian Gonzales to enter the U.S. Ebay jokes are also now a staple of Leno and Letterman While Cohen was given unique access to Ebay management and people, he also covers their mistakes and critics. One almost fatal flaw was a major system failure that brought down Ebay's system for several days and resulted in losses (money and confidance) for sellers. It was a real surprise to me how many people count on Ebay for their living, often selling their bricks and mortar stores and hiring people to do listings, close out auctions and ship products from their Ebay sales. I don't read many non-fiction books but I highly recommend this book both as an engrossing story and a preview of what ecommerce and the internet may have in store for us in the future.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The how and why of a terrific idea,
By
This review is from: The Perfect Store: Inside eBay (Hardcover)
The legend of Internet auction site eBay's birth is irresistible: a smart young guy starts it so that his girlfriend, who collects PEZ dispensers, can find more. Pam Wesley, Pierre Omidyar's fiancée, did want more PEZ dispensers in 1997, but in fact this creation myth was dreamed up by AuctionWeb's (later eBay's) Mary Lou Song, who pitched it to Omidyar, reasoning later that "No one wants to hear about a thirty-year-old genius who wanted to create a perfect market." The boyfriend, Pierre Omidyar, was born in Paris in 1967, and moved to the US as a six-year-old. He grew up in Washington, DC in a home that prized brain power and education. (His father's a medical doctor, and his mother has a doctorate in linguistics.) He loved computers early on, and snuck out of PE in order to tinker with his science teacher's cheap Radio Shack computer in a school closet, eventually teaching himself to program in BASIC. But this was no asocial loner/misfit writing code in a closet. Author Adam Cohen draws a portrait of the young Omidyar as a dyed-in-the-wool humanist and idealist, a brilliant programmer who was also a sociable and thoughtful young man who fully believed that cyberspace ought to be about people and community. Cohen asserts that Omidyar "wanted his corner of cyberspace to be a place where people made real connections with each other, and where a social contract prevailed." Quite deliberately, and with no goal toward making its founder a gazillionaire, Omidyar's idea created, after plenty of tinkering, eBay: "a perfect marketplace." Along the way there are evolving business plans, bright and devoted employees, and a consistent and profitable fiscal (though not cultural) conservatism. According to Cohen, eBay's leaders have been very good at recognizing a poor plan and rejecting it. The feedback practices that eBay pioneered - and so many have adopted - are fully described. There's an IPO, and the swelling and the bursting of the dot com bubble. Cohen is careful to contrast eBay with other big dot coms (Amazon most visibly) whose leaders have been seduced by schemes, nearly all of them involving overinvestment in new and unproven online companies, that consistently failed after bleeding millions of investor dollars. Issues of ethics, legality, fraud, plus the inevitable technological challenges of a fast-growing online site are intelligently and colorfully discussed, too. The vast stuff of eBay is in here, too: knickknacks, new and used clothing, cars, furniture, pornography, antiques, books, Barbies and Beanie Bags, art and things you might not have ever thought existed. There are profiles of real characters - told compassionately and well. Cohen has a sense of humor, but he doesn't laugh at people - no matter how unconventional their practices and proclivities. Cohen discusses the comparatively new psychological disorder of cyber addiction. Ebay took an interest in this, and sponsored a forum for users. People wrote to eBay's Mary Lou Song with their stories. One wrote," I love it when I hear my boyfriend snore, because that means he's deeply asleep and I can go downstairs and turn the computer back on." Clinical psychologists treat Internet addiction, and eBay is often - though by no means always - the drug of choice. The editing of this book could have stood some improvement. I wished for chapter headings more colorful than "Chapter One," "Chapter Two," and photographs would have been a nice plus. The eBay story deserves at least a few good graphics. Some of the book's organization is spotty, too: Chapter Ten is a hodge-podge that would probably defy naming. This is a full and affectionate story about one of our more interesting companies, the fruits of idealism, and (not coincidentally) some great ideas combined with smart business practices. Ebay really IS a community as well as a corporation - and Cohen makes that wonderfully clear. Although the subtitle is "Inside eBay," in fact the story begins in Omidyar's adolescence and concludes in 1999, when Omidyar leaves eBay to move to Paris with his wife (of the PEZ myth) and their baby. Cohen likes these people, and I did, too. I came away with a full understanding of what Cohen means by "the perfect store," and feeling that I'd gotten to know some of the visionary people and the sort of sociable optimism, brainy hard work and creative thinking responsible for eBay's beginnings and its continuing success.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Overall Very Good; NOT eBay Propaganda,
By
This review is from: The Perfect Store: Inside eBay (Hardcover)
Overall I'm pretty happy with this book. The biggest complaints people have about it are Cohen's apparent lack objectivity and that the book doesn't have a consistent, chronological flow in its subject matter. Regarding the apparent lack of objectivity. I think most of these critics think if an author is enthusiastic about their subject then their objectivity is proportionally tainted. While I think that's generally true, I'm not convinced this is very true of Cohen. He gives interesting information about where eBay doesn't work and why. For instance, eBay tried venturing into the high-end antiques/collectibles market where companies like Sotheby's cater to high society at traditional auctions people attend in person. EBay, like the elite auction houses, failed to create a revolution in this market with their online approach to auctions as eBay did in the low-end collectibles market. Why? Cohen speculates that it's because personal attendance at these auctions is so much a part of the experience, and so fulfilling, almost all of which is lost in making an online bid for an item. Perhaps the rich also see eBay as a `riff raff' way to auction. Speaking of riff-raff, I don't think Cohen gives short shrift to eBay's most vocal detractor either, a leftist moron eBay seller whose rabble rousing attempted to inspire the laughable Million Auction March, a flight of eBay auctions to competitors The seller felt, with the usual paranoid leftist panache, that eBay had `sold out' by allowing a toaster company to have a banner ad. And what about the chapter on the thrift store junkie who hates eBay and has plenty of valid reasons why? Though I think Cohen could have given more depth and range to his business analysis, I think it was his lack of intelligence and/or education in these matters that makes him come up short here. After all, he's a technology writer by trade, not a Wall Street broker. Regarding the choppy flow complaint of the book. I think this benefits more than detracts from the book. Some have remarked that this makes the company history chronology difficult to follow because it is often interrupted by a lengthy digression into a seller biography or otherwise. I can't argue with that. Moreover, the further you get into the book, the more chronology seems to break down into random events, which speaks to the writer's laziness. The last few chapters of the book are strictly a hodge podge of anecdotes about the eBay community. It certainly seems that Cohen simply tacked onto the end a bunch of notes hastily expanded into 1-2 page pieces when he ran out of company narrative material. But I welcomed the variety and inconsistency in the book's chronological flow. While I don't feel this latter strictly anecdotal material is filler, I found myself getting bored by its consistency. It was nice to have a seller anecdote appear out of nowhere amidst an IPO story or company politics. I feel Cohen has an engaging style of introducing incongruous subject matter into the narrative, making the topics both more compelling in themselves and making the transition to another subject pretty seamless. It would have been interesting if Cohen had given more of a history on auctions. I read a fascinating article recently on thoroughbred horse auctions. Often attended by wealthy Arabians and Americans, one of the interesting aspects about these auctions is that there is so much money at stake that buyers prefer anonymity to avoid price fixing. If they personally attend their bidding method is very discreet. Auction employees constantly scan the crowd, looking for a subtle gesture, whether it be a nod, pen click, or otherwise, indicating a bid. But I enjoyed Cohen's occasional classical references, such as likening the eBay community to the chorus in ancient Greek tragedy. But Cohen's writing style is very bland; it isn't exactly on par with The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire! I laughed out loud at the hall of fame auctions, such as the guy trying to sell his soul or the auction for "pure, uncut cocaine" and appreciated the URLs for websites specializing in notable past auctions were included in the book. I think the book's biggest flaws are 1) it's central, unquestioned thesis that it's community that built eBay and 2) it doesn't get into nearly enough depth about the company principals for my tastes. Cohen claims that it's the community that eBay fostered from the beginning that made eBay the powerhouse it is today. Though the community concept of business is compelling, I'm not sure how true this is with eBay. I'm an eBay seller. I occasionally chat with my clients, but it's nothing that keeps me coming back to the site vs. other auction sites. Other reviewers here have mentioned that they have never visited the eBay message boards, and I haven't either. I've visited off-site boards, and never felt like contributing or coming back. The message boards hold far less (if any) appeal for buyers. I think what made eBay successful was that it was the first site where you could easily look for anything you wanted to buy, probably find it, and maybe even find it really cheap. I think that is far more responsible for the site's allure than any sense of community. But, then, the thing that keeps me coming back to Amazon (and wanting to write these reviews) is not price but its community aspect: reading what other people think about books I'm interested in! Only chatty sorts of biographies are offered for eBay's principals, and the occasional quote, mostly from Meg Whitman, eBay's CEO. I would have welcomed even a brief interview with any of the three key players at eBay. There is often more biographical space given to quirky sellers than them! Perhaps they weren't interesting enough to sustain more biographical information ... perhaps Cohen didn't want to burn his bridges with three people who are billionaires! This book is a must for eBay sellers.
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