The Perfect Store: Inside eBay (Hardcover)

The Google Story by David A. Vise 4.1 out of 5 stars (12)  £5.99

Boo Hoo: A Dot Com Story by Ernst Malmsten 4.2 out of 5 stars (51)  £6.74

The eBay Story Phenomenon: How one brand taught millions of strangers to trust one another by Elen Lewis £6.74

Icon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business by Jeffrey S. Young 4.0 out of 5 stars (10)  £11.19

The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle 4.6 out of 5 stars (11)  £7.31

› Explore similar items

Review
A journalist's admiring history of eBay, written with a dated enthusiam for the new economy. The Web site eBay is quite a phenomenon-the Internet's flea market cum chat room, where only a few clicks separate Rolex watches from Elvis Presley oven mitts. In addition to the thousand-odd people who work for eBay directly, the New York Times estimates that 75,000 people rely on the site for their livelihood. It is, claims founder Pierre Omidyar, the perfect market-a place where buyers and sellers meet without middlemen and where price fluctuates in concert with supply and demand. Cohen is inclined to agree, viewing Omidyar as a visionary and eBay as an exemplar of the new economy as he traces its evolution from an ad hoc garage-based Web site to a multi-billion-dollar corporation. Because the site began as a hobby, Omidyar designed it to be self-regulating so that, rather than officiate disputes, he created a system of feedback that made both parties dependent on strong reputations. In lieu of customer service, he created bulletin boards that allowed users to answer each other's questions. The result, claims Cohen, was an Internet community that saw the site both as trading post and social club. Powerful customer loyalty in its early days allowed eBay to win the dominant market position it now enjoys. Unfortunately for Cohen, however, the quirky start-up story covers only the first half of eBay's history. With an initial public offering that valued the company at $16 billion, eBay became a giant that kept users by buying out competitors rather than improving its own product-not exactly the stuff of a perfect market. But Cohen plugs on undeterred. Although he sees eBay as a philosophically driven experiment in economics, the latter half of The Perfect Store describes a thoroughly ordinary corporation, working to maximize profits and expand operations. An in-depth, if credulous, look at an Internet pioneer. (Kirkus Reviews)

Product Description
eBay is one of the most successful commercial sites on the Internet. This is the story of eBay's humble beginnings, when it was launched from a spare bedroom in Pierre Omidyar's house, to its status today - with 20 million users. eBay started as a way to help Omidyar's fiancee trade with other collectors. It returned a profit in its first month and went on to change the face of business. This volume: reveals details of the company's rapid rise and the impact it has had on its users throughout the virtual marketplace; examines the range of customers, from the woman who wakes at 3 am to bid on a toaster, to the woman who had to rent a warehouse for her thriving business selling bubble-wrap; reveals why eBay has succeeded where so many dot-coms have failed; and provides information for those trying to understand how the Web is changing business, and for those trying to anticipate the next big thing.

See all Product Description

First Sentence
Pierre Omidyar was born in Paris in 1967 to a French-Iranian family that placed a premium on intellectual pursuits. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover

Search inside this book:

3 Reviews 5 star:    (0) 4 star:  (3) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 4.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   15 of 16 people found the following review helpful: 4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating history of a dot.com, 28 Nov 2003 By  James Lucy - See all my reviews This review is from: The Perfect Store: Inside eBay (Paperback) This is not a 'how to sell on Ebay' book. It is a detailed and very readable history of the birth and development of one of the most successful dot-coms. For anyone who lived through the overinflated bubble that marked the start of the evolution of the internet into the commercial mainstream, this will help explain what was happening inside one of the leaders. It contrasts dramatically with, for example, the demise of Boo.com as described in the equally interesting book BooHoo.com. If you have worked for a company that started out lean, agile, idealistic and entrepreneurial and slowly found it becoming mired in legal issues, HR, internal politics and general inertia, you will find it all rehearsed here. Although this book won't start that Ebay busines for you, it will help you understand how Ebay has become what it is today. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   3 of 3 people found the following review helpful: 4.0 out of 5 stars Good start, tails off a bit towards the end, 11 Jul 2005 By  A. I. Mackenzie "alimack" (Glasgow, Scotland.) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    This review is from: The Perfect Store: Inside eBay (Paperback) This is a good recounting of the EBay story - it's not a 'how to sell on Ebay book (most of which are fairly useless anyway). Unfortunately the author doesn't try to 'frame' the story at all, he just tells the story without comment and by about half way through it all starts getting a little dull. Some comment on why eBay did so well when other auction sites didn't and what the future holds would have been very interesting. If you want commentary on the effect the internet has had on people Michael Lewis's book 'The Future Just happened' is much better. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   4.0 out of 5 stars The people behind eBay, 12 Aug 2008 By  Bruce Murphy (Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    This review is from: The Perfect Store: Inside eBay (Paperback) A story of the people and decisions that took ebay from an idea that the perfect market could be realised into a multi-billion dollar company that survived the dot-com crash. This mostly concentrates on the people involved in the early days, but takes time to dwell on outsiders that ebay brought into the fold as well as a few who remained firmly outside. Fascinating. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all 3 customer reviews...		Ad feedback   Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

Some books about marketing that might help the church: A list by tim hunting   Web Standards Bookshelf: A list by K. Dawson "that standards guy!"   How to Get Ahead in Business: A list by Jake Bond Create a Listmania! list

Search Listmania!

• Books > Business, Finance & Law > E-Commerce > E-business
• Books > Business, Finance & Law > E-Commerce > E-commerce
• Books > Business, Finance & Law > E-Commerce > Web Marketing
• Books > Business, Finance & Law > Management > Distribution > Retail
• Books > Business, Finance & Law > Sales & Marketing > Brands & Corporate Identity
• Books > Computing & Internet > Digital Lifestyle > Online Auctions
• Books > Computing & Internet > Digital Lifestyle > Online Shopping > Ebay
• Books > Computing & Internet > Web Development

• Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
• I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
• I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.