Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works and I love all things tech. And
Speaker 1: in our last episode, I talked about how Pierre a
Speaker 1: Midier launched a web page over the Labor Day weekend
Speaker 1: in and he called it auction web. It was a
Speaker 1: site that was on a larger site, or a page
Speaker 1: that was on a larger site called eBay, and it
Speaker 1: all started off as something of a hobby for him. Eventually,
Speaker 1: to offset the hosting charges he was getting from his provider,
Speaker 1: A midi Are instituted a small fee for successful auctions.
Speaker 1: If the closing price on an auction was less than
Speaker 1: twenty five dollars, he would put in a five percent
Speaker 1: fee for the final bid, and if it was more
Speaker 1: than twenty five dollars, it was a two point five
Speaker 1: percent fee. It didn't take long for the site to
Speaker 1: start pulling in more money than what it costs to run,
Speaker 1: and suddenly this hobby had become an actual business. By
Speaker 1: mid nineteen, the auction site was earning a Midier enough
Speaker 1: money for him to quit his job and bring on
Speaker 1: Jeff's skull as the president of the company. In June,
Speaker 1: the net worth of all the goods sold over auction
Speaker 1: Web had hit seven point two million dollars. That's collectively
Speaker 1: across the history of the site, and this was when
Speaker 1: things were still pretty darn small. Every single month that
Speaker 1: went by, the company was growing by twenty to fift
Speaker 1: some months, marking a seventy five percent growth rate. In
Speaker 1: no small part this was due to a media are
Speaker 1: creating tools that allowed the community of auction Web to
Speaker 1: form around the site. Users could rate one another and
Speaker 1: were encouraged to do so with a gentle reminder that
Speaker 1: praise is just as valid a form of feedback as
Speaker 1: a complaint, and soon people were using the rating system
Speaker 1: to great effect. A midier was gratified to see that
Speaker 1: people were not immediately leaping to negative comments. A bulletin
Speaker 1: board helped community members get questions answered by other more
Speaker 1: experienced members of the community, and the community values were established.
Speaker 1: Those values are actually stated on the community site. I
Speaker 1: can cite them to you here. They are. We believe
Speaker 1: people are basically good. We believe everybody has something to contribute.
Speaker 1: We believe that an honest, open environment can bring out
Speaker 1: the best in people. We recognize and respect everyone as
Speaker 1: a unique individual. We encourage you to treat others the
Speaker 1: way you want to be treated. Back to Jeff Skull,
Speaker 1: who was the new president of the company, had a
Speaker 1: few things he wanted to tackle to make business operations
Speaker 1: run more smoothly and professionally. One of those was to
Speaker 1: move auction Web and eBay out of a Midiers home.
Speaker 1: Right now, the three people working for the company were
Speaker 1: meeting at his house and it just wasn't really working
Speaker 1: out the way Skull wanted it to, and it ended
Speaker 1: up being a harder thing to do than he had anticipated.
Speaker 1: The real estate market in San Francisco was pretty tight,
Speaker 1: especially for office space, and at first the team moved
Speaker 1: out of a Medier's house into Skulls home, which had
Speaker 1: more room but also had roommates. Then Skull, a Medier,
Speaker 1: and part time employee Chris Garpo moved into a very
Speaker 1: small office space over at the NASA Ames Technology Center. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the team found an office space at the gray Lands
Speaker 1: Business Park in Campbell, California, and they moved in. Now
Speaker 1: I'm gonna flash forward for just a second here. That
Speaker 1: office Suite number two oh five at Hamilton Avenue Technically
Speaker 1: in San Jose, California, is still a part of eBay.
Speaker 1: The company eventually purchased the entire office park, and that
Speaker 1: building is now called Music or Building number six. Each
Speaker 1: building on the eBay campus sports the name of a
Speaker 1: category of items you could list for auction on the site.
Speaker 1: Skull also wanted to update the look of the website.
Speaker 1: A Medier had built a functional site, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: much to look at, and Skull hated that auction Web,
Speaker 1: the one element that was bringing in all the money,
Speaker 1: was sharing a general website space with a page about
Speaker 1: Tufts University's alumni association and another about a biotech startup
Speaker 1: company where a Medeo's wife worked, and a third page
Speaker 1: about the Ebola virus. He wanted a Midier to remove
Speaker 1: all those elements and have auction Web be the only
Speaker 1: thing at eBay dot com. Initially, a Medier put up
Speaker 1: a defense. He said that Ebola information that page about
Speaker 1: the virus was highly ranked in search and likely drove
Speaker 1: a lot of traffic to eBay dot com. But Skull
Speaker 1: remained adamant, and eventually a Medier would give in pe
Speaker 1: we're already referring to auction Web just as eBay at
Speaker 1: that point, Skull argued, and to include it under an
Speaker 1: umbrella of such disjointed subjects was bound to cause confusion
Speaker 1: further down the road and to make it more challenging
Speaker 1: to form strategic partnerships and to get funding. Skull also
Speaker 1: wanted someone to handle all the customer support questions that
Speaker 1: were coming in because a medier had been doing that
Speaker 1: and it was taking up a lot of his time.
Speaker 1: So he looked through the bulletin board community and he
Speaker 1: noticed that one user who went by the handle Uncle Griff,
Speaker 1: was particularly helpful. But Uncle Griff hadn't posted much over
Speaker 1: the last couple of months, so Skull decided to reach
Speaker 1: out to this person and find out what was going on.
Speaker 1: That person turned out to be Jim Griffith, who had
Speaker 1: attempted to pursue a career as an actor but had
Speaker 1: not seen much success. He was then an artist for
Speaker 1: a while, and then he was in a really low
Speaker 1: place in nine and had been battling depression. He was
Speaker 1: on something of an swing when he got the call
Speaker 1: from Skull, which shocked him, and he got an offer
Speaker 1: to become eBay's second part time employee, Griffith, accepted the
Speaker 1: job and took on the handle Dale as his customer
Speaker 1: service identity for the company, and he was paid the
Speaker 1: princely sum of one dollars per month to answer emails
Speaker 1: and do what he did best on the bulletin board,
Speaker 1: which was to help people out. Skull would actually do
Speaker 1: this again, and he reached out to an antique store
Speaker 1: operator from Indianapolis named Patty Ruby. Patty had adopted the
Speaker 1: handle Aunt Patty on the auction Web bulletin board, and
Speaker 1: so she was known to the community and had been
Speaker 1: helpful on numerous occasions, being both computer savvy and knowledgeable
Speaker 1: about antiques. She too accepted the offer to work part
Speaker 1: time for the company, though she soon moved to working
Speaker 1: full time and she quit her normal job. Both Uncle
Speaker 1: griff and Aunt Patty are examples of how eBay would
Speaker 1: rely heavily on the community they've grown up around the service,
Speaker 1: rather than seeking professionals outside of the site. Skull followed
Speaker 1: his instinct and decided that the most passionate and helpful
Speaker 1: members of the community were the ones to tap. They
Speaker 1: would jump at the chance to come on board as employees.
Speaker 1: They already knew the auction web system backward and forward.
Speaker 1: They didn't have to have any training on that, and
Speaker 1: it was a move that just made sense. In November,
Speaker 1: eBay made the first of many third party licensing deals,
Speaker 1: and this was with a company called Electronic Travel Auction
Speaker 1: or e t A. And e t A wanted to
Speaker 1: create a way to allow users to bid for travel
Speaker 1: related goods and services like airline tickets, hotel rooms, vacation packages,
Speaker 1: and more. Now eBay still officially known as auction Web,
Speaker 1: though no one was calling it, that would host auctions
Speaker 1: not just from individuals or small business owners, but also
Speaker 1: from third parties, and that would continue throughout eBay's history.
Speaker 1: Now I've more to say about these middle days of eBay,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: The following year would be a big one for eBay.
Speaker 1: For one thing, it's the year that auction Web technically
Speaker 1: went away. This must have been a great relief to
Speaker 1: Jeff Skull. The design of auction Web was pretty simple.
Speaker 1: The logo was just the name auction Web, and then
Speaker 1: there was a gray scale bar that was right next
Speaker 1: to it, and it would get darker along its length.
Speaker 1: Until it was black at the very end. Some folks
Speaker 1: would call it the death bar because it was kind
Speaker 1: of grim and black and white now and eBay, the
Speaker 1: parents site that hosted auction Web had the exact same
Speaker 1: bar next to its name, not very inspired. By January nine,
Speaker 1: the site was hosting two million auctions a month. Throughout
Speaker 1: n the site had hosted two fifty thousand auctions total,
Speaker 1: so growth was truly explosive. One thing that fueled such
Speaker 1: crazy growth was Beanie Babies. And you may, Madrugis have
Speaker 1: forgotten about beanie babies, or or maybe you never were
Speaker 1: around to experience that particular fad. And I know there
Speaker 1: was a Beanie Babies two point oh that came out
Speaker 1: sometime around two thousand and eight, but come on, those
Speaker 1: never achieved the fever pitch of that original run. Beanie
Speaker 1: Babies are a line of plush toys. They're kind of
Speaker 1: like bean bags, and they're cute little animals, and they
Speaker 1: caught on like gang busters, and collectors rushed stores to
Speaker 1: grab them as soon as they would hit store shelves.
Speaker 1: A few Beanie Babies were produced in limited runs, which
Speaker 1: drove up their market value significantly. I remember even seeing
Speaker 1: roadside stands with beanie babies, which were probably counterfeits in retrospect,
Speaker 1: but those were being sold on the side of the road,
Speaker 1: and those were heavy days, my friend. Anyway, beanie babies
Speaker 1: were one of the most popular products moving across eBay
Speaker 1: in nineteen seven. According to the company's own timeline, the
Speaker 1: sales of beanie babies hit about half a billion dollars
Speaker 1: and they represented more than six percent of the company's
Speaker 1: total volume of sales going across its site, which is
Speaker 1: a whole lot of beanie babies. And I also meant
Speaker 1: that there were a lot of of of listing fees
Speaker 1: that were coming into eBay as people were bidding on
Speaker 1: and winning these things. In May nine seven, eBay made
Speaker 1: its one millionth sale, or to be fair, users made
Speaker 1: the one millionth sale. eBay profited off of it. Now,
Speaker 1: I know, you just heard me say just a short
Speaker 1: while ago that the company had hit two million auctions
Speaker 1: back in January nine, So how could they only hit
Speaker 1: their millionth sale in May seven. Well, keep in mind,
Speaker 1: not every auction results in an actual sale. So if
Speaker 1: we say that the company had two million auctions in
Speaker 1: January and the million item was sold in May, we
Speaker 1: see the success rate of auctions is less than fifty
Speaker 1: which is kind of interesting. Oh that millionth item, by
Speaker 1: the way, in case you were curious, was a big
Speaker 1: Bird jack in the box toy, as in big Bird
Speaker 1: from Sesame Street, and it was to it's cute. In
Speaker 1: September nine, auction Web officially took its final bow and
Speaker 1: transformed metamorphosis like into eBay, so auction Web was no more.
Speaker 1: eBay was now the name of the service and the company,
Speaker 1: which everyone had pretty much been using since it launched.
Speaker 1: But around that same time, the company received nearly seven
Speaker 1: million dollars in venture capital funding, and Skull decided that
Speaker 1: the logo needed a facelift two, as the death bar
Speaker 1: wasn't precisely appealing. For a very short while, eBay adopted
Speaker 1: a navy blue logo that had a stylized E and
Speaker 1: combined with each other. But this didn't last very long
Speaker 1: and in fact may have never shown up on an
Speaker 1: online site anywhere, and may never have appeared on a
Speaker 1: web page. My research didn't show any signs of it.
Speaker 1: It did show up on some stationary and letterhead, but
Speaker 1: that was about it. They contacted an ad agency called
Speaker 1: c K S group, and they hired them to come
Speaker 1: up with a new design for the logo. According to
Speaker 1: Bill Cleary, who worked at c k S, the team
Speaker 1: felt that eBay's new logo had to appeal to a
Speaker 1: broad base of people because folks from all different walks
Speaker 1: of life were actually making use of the site. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the team came up with a new design in which
Speaker 1: eBay has a colorful logo with a red E, a
Speaker 1: blue be, a yellow A, and a green y. The
Speaker 1: letters slightly overlap one another, and the baseline shifted from
Speaker 1: letter to letters so they were slightly offset vertically. The
Speaker 1: team felt the new logo was friendly and accessible, and
Speaker 1: the logo rolled out in the fall of n along
Speaker 1: with a complete redesign of the page. Meanwhile, Jeff Skull
Speaker 1: and Pierre A. Midier were looking for someone to lead
Speaker 1: eBay moving forward with the goal of transforming the company
Speaker 1: into a publicly traded company. By now, we're talking n
Speaker 1: and era in which the sky was the limit for
Speaker 1: Internet companies. Things were just starting to really take off,
Speaker 1: and the dot com bubble was poised to expand dramatically
Speaker 1: before it would ultimately collapse. A few years later, eBay
Speaker 1: was on the verge of transitioning from a startup into
Speaker 1: a much larger entity, and Skull in a midi Are
Speaker 1: needed someone with experience to take the helm. The two
Speaker 1: reached out to Meg Whitman. Whitman says she got a
Speaker 1: call from a headhunter about working for eBay and being
Speaker 1: its new president and CEO, but she wasn't eager to
Speaker 1: take the company up on the offer because it would
Speaker 1: mean traveling across the country to take a new job.
Speaker 1: She was worried about the impact this would have on
Speaker 1: her husband and their kids, and when she visited the site,
Speaker 1: she said she saw the stuff about the biotech company
Speaker 1: that Pamela worked for and the Ebola virus, and she
Speaker 1: wondered what the heck was going on, So she must
Speaker 1: have seen the site before omdi Are shifted all those
Speaker 1: pages away. But she did agree to meet with Omdiar
Speaker 1: and he convinced her to sign on with the company
Speaker 1: as the new CEO after she spent about a day
Speaker 1: in the company's offices. When Whitman joined, eBay was a
Speaker 1: thirty person operation and it was pulling in about four
Speaker 1: million dollars in revenue. Whitman had extensive experience in business.
Speaker 1: She had worked as a brand manager for Procter and
Speaker 1: Gamble and rose to the role of senior vice president there.
Speaker 1: Then she worked for other companies like the Walt Disney
Speaker 1: Company and Hasbro. Whitman began work by reorganizing the company.
Speaker 1: She created business divisions focused on specific verticals and formed
Speaker 1: executive teams by pulling people from some of the very
Speaker 1: companies she used to work for to head up those
Speaker 1: new divisions. She also continued work on eBay's redesign, and
Speaker 1: she demanded the site create a walled off age restricted
Speaker 1: offshoot for sales of items that were not appropriate for families,
Speaker 1: things like pornography or firearms. Now eventually eBay would form
Speaker 1: policies that would ban such stuff from their sites. That
Speaker 1: you can't sell firearms that auction on eBay. You also
Speaker 1: can't sell things like drugs or alcohol, oh and body
Speaker 1: parts yikes. In May, the site launched a new feature
Speaker 1: called my eBay, which allowed users to customize their eBay experience,
Speaker 1: making it easier for them to find things they were
Speaker 1: most interested in and to keep up to speed with auctions.
Speaker 1: And in June, eBay acquired another company called Jump Incorporated.
Speaker 1: Jump Incorporated developed a trading service supported by ads, and
Speaker 1: that service was called up for sale before being the
Speaker 1: number four. It would be the first of several acquisitions
Speaker 1: led by Meg Whitman. Not all of them would turn
Speaker 1: out to necessarily be great moves for eBay. Spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: I guess, but Whitman was working hard to prepare eBay
Speaker 1: for that initial public offering, and when it happened, it
Speaker 1: would turn all those who had a significant share in
Speaker 1: eBay into billionaires. I'll tell you more about that in
Speaker 1: just a second, but first let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. In late September, eBay held its
Speaker 1: initial public offering. The opening price for eBay was listed
Speaker 1: at eighteen dollars per share. The stock price behaved a
Speaker 1: bit like an eBay auction. It climbed higher and higher.
Speaker 1: It peaked at fifty three dollars fifty cents per share,
Speaker 1: but were closing a little lower at forty seven and
Speaker 1: three eights. That would be an increase of one hundred
Speaker 1: sixty three percent over its opening price. There were three
Speaker 1: point five million shares offered, which gave the company a
Speaker 1: market capitalization of one point oh five billion dollars. The
Speaker 1: IBO raised some sixty three million dollars in cash. It
Speaker 1: was the fifth most successful I p O ever, and
Speaker 1: this humble hobby turned a metier into a billionaire. Whitman
Speaker 1: jokingly issued a warning to eBay employees that she would
Speaker 1: fire them if they kept their eyes on the stock
Speaker 1: price day after day. They were understandably excited at their
Speaker 1: new found wealth, and people were frequently having the stock
Speaker 1: price up on their web pages and staring at them
Speaker 1: at the screen instead of actually doing their work. So
Speaker 1: Whitman said, hey, guys, if you wanna remain millionaires, turn
Speaker 1: off those screens. In December, the company founded the eBay Foundation,
Speaker 1: and organization that uses pre i p O stock to
Speaker 1: fund nonprofit organizations and entrepreneur ideas around the world. Pierre
Speaker 1: and Pamela have spent much of their time and money
Speaker 1: dedicated to charitable endeavors, and the company has sort of
Speaker 1: followed suit today. The eBay Foundation's mission statement is to
Speaker 1: quote unleash the power of entrepreneurship to build economically vibrant
Speaker 1: and sustainable communities. We develop strategic partnerships with nonprofit organizations
Speaker 1: using our financial resources, platform and people to foster networks
Speaker 1: of support for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Our programs focus
Speaker 1: on vulnerable populations and underserved communities. We also empower eBay
Speaker 1: employees to make a greater impact and communities around the
Speaker 1: globe by matching their donations and making cash donations when
Speaker 1: they volunteer. End quote. Now let's skip ahead a little bit.
Speaker 1: We're gonna skip ahead to these some are of there's
Speaker 1: a lot of things that were happening at this company,
Speaker 1: but we're already getting pretty bogged down in my nusha,
Speaker 1: so I want to hit some of the big, big
Speaker 1: stories of eBay. The company was growing rapidly. We're still
Speaker 1: in the dot com bubble phase. New employees were brought on,
Speaker 1: revenues were up. The stock price had continued to climb,
Speaker 1: hitting more than a hundred fifty dollars per share. At
Speaker 1: this point, the dot com bubble was getting pretty darn big,
Speaker 1: and there were only a few signs the dark times
Speaker 1: were ahead for the industry as a whole. But eBay
Speaker 1: suffered an early setback that got a lot of attention.
Speaker 1: The site started having some serious connection issues. The stability
Speaker 1: of the site was in question. In June nine, the
Speaker 1: site went down for twenty two hours. This was huge
Speaker 1: news at the time, buyers and sellers were angry and distraught.
Speaker 1: Imagine that you're sitting there ready to snipe an auction
Speaker 1: for a signed copy of Weird Old yank of Vic's
Speaker 1: first album, and then the site crashes and it doesn't
Speaker 1: come back for nearly a full day. So what was
Speaker 1: going on? According to eBay, the software powering the site
Speaker 1: was at fault, and that software came from two outside vendors,
Speaker 1: Sun Microsystems and Oracle. Now. I covered Oracle in some
Speaker 1: recent episodes. You can go back and listen to those
Speaker 1: and learn all about that company. It's also a fascinating story.
Speaker 1: But other people were suggesting that perhaps the site had
Speaker 1: stability issues due to scaling up to a larger platform,
Speaker 1: the issue being that more and more people were using
Speaker 1: eBay and the company just wasn't prepared to handle the
Speaker 1: increase in traffic. Meg Whitman and Pierre a medi Are
Speaker 1: issued a letter of apology to eBay users. They explained
Speaker 1: that the company was working hard on creating a backup
Speaker 1: system that could keep the site running in case of
Speaker 1: a failure, and that sadly, this backup system just wasn't
Speaker 1: quite ready before the crowd actually happened. So essentially they
Speaker 1: were saying, we anticipated that this could be a problem,
Speaker 1: and we were working on the solution. The problem was
Speaker 1: the solution wasn't ready before the problem happened. They also
Speaker 1: said that they had contacted not just their own experts,
Speaker 1: but people at these vendors like Sun Microsystems to work
Speaker 1: tirelessly to get the site back up and running, and
Speaker 1: they said they would institute a new policy moving forward.
Speaker 1: If the site were to crash for less than two hours,
Speaker 1: any auction that was scheduled to end during those two
Speaker 1: hours would automatically get a twenty four hour extension to
Speaker 1: allow for additional bids unless the seller wished to end
Speaker 1: the auction, and for any outage lasting more than two hours,
Speaker 1: eBay would refund the fee it charged for a successful auction,
Speaker 1: so in other words, there would be no listing price
Speaker 1: that would be charged to a seller if the if
Speaker 1: the site had been down for more than two hours,
Speaker 1: and according to estimates, that twenty two hour crash cost
Speaker 1: eBay about two million bucks in revenue, and while some
Speaker 1: users were motivated to leave the platform for other places
Speaker 1: like Amazon, many people chose to stay. The site had
Speaker 1: a few more allegies that same summer, including a nine
Speaker 1: hour outage that happened in August nine, and while this
Speaker 1: wasn't a pleasant experience, it did have a positive outcome,
Speaker 1: according to Jim Griffith, a k a. Uncle griff He
Speaker 1: said it caused eBay to realize that their work affected
Speaker 1: real people in a very tangible way. People were relying
Speaker 1: on eBay as a storefront, and when that storefront is down,
Speaker 1: they can't make their living. He said. This realization motivated
Speaker 1: eBay to step up and work on creating a reliable
Speaker 1: service that was more robust and resistant to outages. In
Speaker 1: July nine, not even a year after the I p O,
Speaker 1: eBay expanded internationally, launching sites in Germany, the UK, and Australia.
Speaker 1: Women demanded that each country of its own tailored version
Speaker 1: of eBay that would appeal to the people of those countries,
Speaker 1: and in January two thousand, eBay would purchase several buildings
Speaker 1: in the business park it occupied. This is when they
Speaker 1: created eBay Park, and as I said, earlier buildings took
Speaker 1: on the names of the various categories eBay offered, and
Speaker 1: in April two thousand, eBay introduced a new company called
Speaker 1: eBay Motors, At the time, it was a pretty wild
Speaker 1: idea to purchase a new or used car from an
Speaker 1: online storefront. But it worked, and it works so well
Speaker 1: that others began to follow suit, and suddenly eBay Motors
Speaker 1: had some pretty stiff competition. Like the normal auction site,
Speaker 1: eBay Motors would only charge users if a transaction completed
Speaker 1: across the site. At that point, eBay would charge the
Speaker 1: seller a listing fee, which was capped at a maximum
Speaker 1: of one dollars. Since the acquisition of Up for Sale
Speaker 1: back in, eBay had purchased several other companies, and most
Speaker 1: of the were either auction services or payment systems. In
Speaker 1: two thousand one, eBay bought a French company called I Bizarre,
Speaker 1: which gave eBay another foothold in Europe. It was another
Speaker 1: similar service that was going on in France, and all
Speaker 1: of this led up to the largest acquisition the company
Speaker 1: would make in those early years, which was PayPal. That
Speaker 1: acquisition happened in two thousand two, and it was valued
Speaker 1: at one point five billion dollars, making it by far
Speaker 1: the largest acquisition eBay had pursued up to that point.
Speaker 1: According to a press release, Meg Whitman said, quote eBay
Speaker 1: and PayPal have complementary missions. We both empower people to
Speaker 1: buy and sell online. Together, we can improve the user
Speaker 1: experience and make online trading more compelling. We can also
Speaker 1: capture greater value from the e commerce opportunities occurring both
Speaker 1: on and off our site. PayPal had been founded by
Speaker 1: Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, who had worked together on
Speaker 1: a business called Confinity. In nine Confinity launched PayPal to
Speaker 1: fill in a gap the two perceived an online payment processing.
Speaker 1: PayPal had just held its own I p O back
Speaker 1: in February two thousand two before this acquisition, and it
Speaker 1: would remain part of eBay for more than a decade.
Speaker 1: It would eventually spin off in two thousand and fourteen
Speaker 1: as its own company after leadership faced some tough demands
Speaker 1: from important investors. More on that in an upcoming episode,
Speaker 1: and I'll also cover an even larger acquisition in that
Speaker 1: future episode, one that raised eyebrows and Silicon Valley and
Speaker 1: created a buzz that perhaps Whitman was making some fullhardy moves.
Speaker 1: It's another big name in tech that would eventually find
Speaker 1: a new home at Microsoft. And of course I'll talk
Speaker 1: more about Whitman's legacy at eBay before she stepped down
Speaker 1: as CEO, as well as what the company has been
Speaker 1: up to more recently. One thing I do want to
Speaker 1: cover since we're talking about the dot com boom and bust,
Speaker 1: is how eBay was all to weather that storm. In
Speaker 1: large part, it was because eBay fell into a category
Speaker 1: that we largely associate with the concept of Web two
Speaker 1: point oh. And I've talked about this before about how
Speaker 1: web two point oh is kind of a weird phrase.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it was the next version of the
Speaker 1: web that you first had Web one point oh and
Speaker 1: then you had Web two point oh. It's not quite
Speaker 1: that simple. Web two point oh was really more about
Speaker 1: a group of best practices that if you followed, you
Speaker 1: were more likely to survive than if you did not
Speaker 1: follow those and that included having ways for users to
Speaker 1: interact with each other and with the site, to have
Speaker 1: some sort of dynamic user generated content be part of
Speaker 1: your experience, and that that would demonstrate more value and
Speaker 1: people would be more likely to support your company. And
Speaker 1: so eBay fell into that category, as did companies like Amazon,
Speaker 1: whereas other companies that did not have this feature found
Speaker 1: it more difficult to survive. Now it's too simple to
Speaker 1: say that just because the community eBay was able to
Speaker 1: weather the storms of dot com, they also were flush
Speaker 1: with cash. They had had a very successful I p O.
Speaker 1: They were they had a successful way of generating revenue,
Speaker 1: so they were actually making money because people were still
Speaker 1: using eBay to sell things, so they had a working
Speaker 1: revenue model. That was a large advantage over a lot
Speaker 1: of the startup companies that bloomed in the dot com
Speaker 1: days before they wilted away because they no longer could
Speaker 1: demonstrate value. They couldn't make money. They had these great
Speaker 1: ideas and they had a lot of investors, but they
Speaker 1: didn't have a business plan, and ultimately that ended up failing.
Speaker 1: Or they tried to expand so quickly that eventually they
Speaker 1: realized they were reaching too far and they overbalanced themselves.
Speaker 1: eBay did not do either of those things, even though
Speaker 1: it did make this enormous acquisition in PayPal. Our next
Speaker 1: new episode will actually be a celebration of tech stuffs
Speaker 1: tenth anniversary. Yep, we're turning ten years old, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna put the story of eBay on hold until after
Speaker 1: our ten year celebration episode, but we will pick back
Speaker 1: up again once we finished partying, you know, and the
Speaker 1: streamers have come down, and I've taken the lamp shade
Speaker 1: off my head, and we'll be picking back up in
Speaker 1: about two thousand two with eBay and I'll see you then,
Speaker 1: party people. For the meantime, If you guys have any
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Speaker 1: talk to you again on text stuffs tenth anniversary? Can
Speaker 1: you leave it really soon? For more on this and
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