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Title: The Perfect Store: Inside eBay by Adam Cohen ISBN: 0-316-16493-3 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 03 June, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.04 (47 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Fine book documenting the first years of eBay
Comment: In its few years of operation, eBay has revolutionized buying and selling. The consumer with the spare ticket to a ballgame or the unwanted vase used to have to sell it to a pro for pennies on the dollar, now he can have the full benefit of the resale. The story of how it came to be is Adam Cohen's book.
From the early days as AuctionWatch, Cohen brings us inside the corporation, introducing to the players. To the road trip for the IPO, where the myth of the "Pez dispensers" got started. To the growing pains, to today.
But it is more than the executives that we meet. We meet the members of the eBay community, buyers who add to their collections, sellers who use it as their way to reach the consumer, those who manage the message boards, or who liason with major sellers. We understand the revolution that eBay has caused. Items almost unobtainable are found with a simple search on eBay.
Yet we also meet those whom eBay have harmed. Those who picked up items at flea markets and estate sales and turned them over to dealers to their mutual profit. We may not have all that much sympathy for them--since their living was in getting people to sell their stuff for less than it was worth--but their case is presented to us.
One fault is that eBay's problems are softpeddled a bit. We never do find out who was responsible for such problems as the great outages, and the other problems eBay has experienced. Such soft soaping is the price you pay for insider access, I guess.
It will add to your understanding of what eBay hath wrought.
Rating: 4
Summary: Informative insider look at a bumbling company
Comment: Well, maybe not so perfect. The book itself is fine. What's not so perfect is all the bungling from Ebay's lauded executive team. Particularly by Meg Whitman, the CEO. This book describes the history of Ebay with surprising detail. The author had access to many people involved in that history, including the executives, and it shows. In fact, he was given access to Ebay's premises as kind of their official biographer. These accounts could only come from insiders. It shocks me that Whitman would allow her bungling to come out like this. I would assume she doesn't think she's bungling.
Cohen has a lively and descriptive writing style. Hard to do with a book about corporate business, but he pulls it off nicely. In fact, there where many times I couldn't put it down.
If you want to read the book to figure out why Ebay is so successful I think you may be disappointed. Except for Pierre Omidyar's vision for creating the thing in the first place ... and by the way, the story of him creating it so his girlfriend would have a market for her Pez collection was a fib created by Ebay's promotional person ... what drove the success of Ebay was its community. Every time Ebay's executives bungled, the community stepped in and raised holy heck. Whitman and her staff make poor decision after poor decision yet thanks to the community's outrage Ebay reconsiders and is usually guided onto the right path eventually. And when they're not bungling externally they're bungling internally. Remember that almost 2-day outage in '97? No backups or mirror system! They almost couldn't recover their data and might have had to start over again. Except for Omidyar, who dropped out of the everyday running of Ebay early on, the other executives seemed to be almost amatuerish in their lack of vision and planning. But it did make for an interesting story. The same way that a out-of-control fire is more interesting to watch than a well-oiled machine. I thought Ebay might not have stumbled into their success. I was wrong. The adage about first to market truly made the difference here. This book covers the whole sordid mess surprisingly well.
Rating: 5
Summary: An epic journey from a dream to reality
Comment: Upon finishing this book I was amazed at the detail Adam Cohen presented to readers about the real inside of eBay. The book travels through time playing on various aspects of the company and reasons to why it became and still is one of the world's most admired and successful companies. Sure, eBay has changed the marketplace as we know it and sure it has affected many lives. But the key element in this story is that one guy's vision of a community, free from obstructing walls, became a reality - something many .com companies failed to achieve. A wonderful read...highly recommended for all!
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Title: Amazon.com: Get Big Fast by Robert Spector ISBN: 0066620422 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 22 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Starting an eBay Business for Dummies by Marsha Collier ISBN: 0764515470 Publisher: For Dummies Pub. Date: 15 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $24.99 |
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Title: Inside Yahoo! Reinvention and the Road Ahead by Karen Angel ISBN: 0471007935 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: April, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: eBay Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools by David A. Karp ISBN: 0596005644 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 25 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The e-Bay Phenomenon: Business Secrets Behind the World's Hottest Internet Company by David Bunnell ISBN: 0471384909 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 22 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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