Who does not know about eBay nowadays? This worldwide phenomenon has grown to be the world's largest online marketplace chalking up millions in transactions in various currencies worldwide on a daily basis. eBay is a place to buy and sell just about anything in the internet, in just about anywhere around the globe. Any business in this magnitude, most would think, would probably have necessitated a huge amount of capitalization. Not quite for eBay.
eBay started out in 1995 as AuctionWeb, a part of the personal site of 28-year old French-Iranian computer programmer Pierre Omidyar. What is odd is that this worldwide phenomenon was actually propelled by the sale of a broken laser pointer. As far as stories go, the broken laser pointer was auctioned off and sold for .83 to a collector.
In 1996, Stanford MBA degree-holder Jeffrey Skoll assumed position as the first president of AuctionWeb. It was also during this year when AuctionWeb inked its first partnership deal with a company called Electronic Travel Auction to sell travel-related products including plane tickets through the SmartMarket Technology.
A year after, the site was renamed to eBay which was short for Omidyar's consulting firm Echo Bay Technology Group. Media interest was generated by a fabricated story that the site was created to help Omidyar's fiancé sell Pez candy dispensers. Much promise was seen in the auction site that prompted venture capital firm Benchmark Capital to invest some million in eBay.
The year 1998 marked another milestone for Omidyar as eBay went public. When the initial public offering opened at .50 per share as opposed to the targeted per share price of , eBay's revenue growth has followed the uptrend for years. Needless to say, Omidyar and Skoll became billionaires in a snap. As the new president and CEO, Harvard graduate Meg Whitman has steered eBay in to steady growth and business expansion through the years. Despite a slowdown in growth in recent years, eBay still continues to enjoy a decent amount in revenues.
This billion company now has websites in some 27 countries although it services wholesale and retail transactions all over the globe. It boasts of an extensive collection of items for sale in almost any condition you can think of. From the usual everyday items like clothes and shoes to mundane items like a cooked but uneaten piece of brussel sprout, to fame-linked items like leftover water from Elvis Presley - eBay has items of every size, shape and category.
eBay continues to grow today with CEO Whitman still at the helm. Community content features have been enhanced on eBay with the addition of eBay Community Wiki and eBay blogs to its standard sections like discussion boards, groups, answer center, chat rooms etc. Mobile services like SMS alerts, WAP access and J2ME clients are also made available in a number of territories. eBay's business has also expanded from wholesale and retail sales into allied businesses like online payment systems, internet protocol systems, classifieds and real estate. eBay's most recent acquisitions include Skype, PayPal, Craiglist, Half.com, Rent.com, Shopping.com and Prostores. These businesses certainly provides eBay the support it needs to spur further business growth.
